Thursday, September 23, 2004
So Season 5 of the Amazing Race is over. Yeah, yeah, Reality TV sucks, believe me, I know. I hate Survivor, the Apprentice, you name it. But sometimes Reality TV just works, and the Amazing Race is a great example of it.
(The other great example was Season 1 of Big Brother UK. THAT worked because the show had a villain so improbably good he had to be scripted: "Nasty Nick". Nasty Nick avoided being nominated for eviction by becoming everyone's best friend by telling them all sorts of fascinating and contradictory lies. Of course, the viewer could see every single stinking lie, so it became compelling viewing to see what he'd say next. Eventually the rest of the housemates forced a showdown -- one of the greatest moments in British television history, honest -- and Nick was thrown out of the house. Gripping stuff.)
Anyway, the Amazing Race works because... well, stuff happens. Yeah, it has the stupid and contrived games from Survivor/Fear Factor/Big Brother/Your Reality TV Show Here, but in between all that you have people racing across the globe, trying to get the best cab, racing to find the best flights, and so on. Actually, for a good example of why the Amazing Race works, let me spoil a whole chunk of the last episode for you. Really, it's gripping stuff. There were three teams left:
Colin & Christie, aka Team Psycho: Very, very, VERY good team, won half of the legs of the race, but very intense and very angry (hence the Psycho). Chip & Kim screwed them over, and since then they've been... well, angrier.
Brandon & Nicole, aka Team Jesus: Models and Christians. When they're not praising Jesus, they're doing stupid things like Nicole passing out because she can't finish a bowl of caviar or Brandon refusing an instant pass to finish a difficult leg of the race by refusing to shave his head (he's a model, see).
Chip & Kim, aka Team Parent Trap: African-American parents who were painfully nice at first, but as the end nears changed their spots to screw everyone else over (albeit legally!) with the finish line in sight.
The episode starts with everyone jumping on a plane in Manila bound for Calgary, Canada. The cold of Calgary totally catches Team Parent Trap out, and they fall behind as they get changed into something warm. Their task is to climb 1000 feet in snowshoes to the top of a mountain to receive their next clue. Team Psycho lead Team Jesus up the mountain before both women on the teams start to slow up, leading both men to encourage them in their own special ways:
Brandon: Baby, just imagine that Jesus is on top of the mountain with this arms reaching out for you.
Colin: ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS.
Brandon: Go to Jesus, baby. Go to Jesus.
Colin: ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS.
At the top, they find out their next clue is at Olympic Park. So they all race back down again, with Team Parent Trap falling even FURTHER behind, to discover that they have a choice of two tasks here. The first is shorter, but scarier: Run a two-man luge in under 34 seconds. The second is longer, but harder: Speed down a slalom course in a mountain bike in under three minutes. Team Psycho picks the luge, and does it on the first go. Team Jesus has no clue what they want to do. Brandon chooses the luge after resistance from Nicole, who then points out while they're walking to the luge how close the mountain bikes are, so Brandon changes his mind (and gets bollocked for it) and picks the bikes. Nicole then has a mental breakdown when she realises how hard the task is (they were clocking over four minutes) and how she can't reach the ground from her bike to slow down. Eventually she cries so much Brandon has to piggyback her all the way to the luge, which they also complete in one go. This prompts Nicole to complain that Brandon can never make up his mind and what a stupid idea it was to choose the bikes in the first place, which is ironic given that it was her idea. Finally, Team Parent Trap arrives, chooses the luge, and crash twice, putting them even FURTHER behind.
In fact, they're so far behind that by the time they finish Team Psycho is already at Calgary airport booking the first flight out to Dallas on American Airlines. Team Psycho has so much time that they start making plans for Dallas, calling their own cab to be ready to pick them up at the airport and deciding to check in their luggage -- their idea is that it'll make them faster, because they won't be carrying all that junk around and when the race is over they can go back to the airport and pick their stuff up. Team Jesus arrives, books the same flight, and also decides to check stuff in.
This is where the Amazing Race gets, well, Amazing: Team Parent Trap gets a huge, huge slice of luck. When THEY call American Airlines, the airline tells them that they just found out that the early flight to Dallas is delayed by two hours. They book a flight on United via Denver instead, and don't tell the other teams. The next morning the other teams figure it out and despite the flight being overbooked manage to wrangle their way on to the United Calgary-Denver flight. They DON'T get confirmation for their United Denver-Dallas flight (the one Team Parent Trap is taking), but stick themselves on standby and grab an American Airlines flight that arrives 10 mins after Team Parent Trap.
When they all get to Denver, Team Parent Trap calmly boards their plane while the others wait and beg to get on. And that's when they get screwed: Just as enough seats open up, they're told that their luggage is on American Airlines. And as we all know, you can't send your luggage on one flight and go on another (the whole bomb thing, you know). So they're resigned to giving up 10 minutes on Team Parent Trap, and despite their best efforts that 10 minutes -- 10 minutes gained purely because they were so damned slow that they found out the flight was delayed -- proved enough for them to scoop the million dollar prize.
That's just a minor taste of what I like about the show. I like the way everyone's racing around, trying to figure out the fastest way to get from point A to B. I like the way there's so much intrigue over flights, especially when teams split up (in one episode, two teams seperated from the pack and tried to get ahead by taking a different route that would have got them in earlier... if their connecting flight wasn't delayed by two hours). That stuff is just plain fun.
And there were so many other great things about this series though. There was the Amazing Race's very own Nasty Nick, Charla and Mirna, a pair of cousins (one of them a midget) with annoying voices and sour dispositions that delighted in screwing everyone else over. They provided one of the season's highlights when Mirna screamed at her midget cousin Charla to finish her scrambled eggs... except they were in Africa, and it was a scrambled OSTRICH egg, which by the way was the size of Charla's HEAD. There were the various fights between Team Midget and Team Psycho. There was the Caviar Fiasco, where women started crying when faced with the prospect of eating a kilo of caviar. There was Colin almost getting arrested for fighting with his taxi driver. Or Colin having an absolute meltdown when he couldn't figure out how to drive an ox. And best of all, there was Team Jesus getting swindled, Africa-style, when they were charged US$200 for a bus journey to the next village. The other teams were charged $3 and $5. Oh, and their bus broke down. And Nicole almost got beaten up by the driver. And the driver put a curse on them.
Brilliant stuff.
Posted at 6:41 AM
