Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Two For The Price Of One
By Miss Alli | Season 10 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.16.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Another season kicks off, this time from Seattle, where the first encounter with law enforcement comes from the brothers Cho, who couldn't even wait until they weren't in an airport to haul out their water guns. Smart! In China, we get an unfamiliar-food challenge, but not one involving enormous quantities, which is a huge improvement. A taxi ride later, we find ourselves at the halfway point of the first leg, at which point a Philimination unexpectedly occurs, sending home Bilal and Sa'eed, the Muslim friends who learn that even constant prayer cannot overcome so-so navigation and a bad cab driver. In the second half of the leg, an interesting Detour includes a concentration puzzle disguised as rock-hauling and a complex coordination task designed as "easy." After running into severe navigation issues, lovely Indian couple Vipul and Arti fall seriously behind and are unable to catch up, so they suffer the second Philimination of the episode. The bigger news, however, is that almost no one is severely unlikable in this first hour and a half. Several are sketchy -- a bickering couple of High-Strung Boyfriend and Wigged-Out Girlfriend who will probably yell at each other a lot, the weirdly motivational boyfriend of the ass-kicking triathlete with the artificial leg, and a Kentucky couple who need to get along a little better, specifically. But it's infinitely more promising than the past several seasons, in that it's mostly people you don't want to punch in the face and a few you might, rather than almost exclusively people you do want to punch in the face and a few you would spare. There still models and cheerleaders and beauty queens, but they'reâ¦you know, they're all right. All in all, a very auspicious start in spite of the unfortunate loss of a couple of teams who might have been some of the most different in background from past players. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: I loved this show more than most of my possessions, because it was funny and sharp and affectionate and packed with people who didn't have raging personality disorders. About the worst thing you ever saw was, like, Guido, who were just moustache-twirling puppy dogs, really; or Flo, who's probably an okay girl as long as you don't have to travel with her or ask her to apportion blame for undesirable events, and you keep her away from the internet. And then the really boring fourth season happened, and all the air drained of the show because the casting was dreadful. People hadn't ever really watched it that much anyway, so it made a last-ditch grab for attention in season five with the motto, "We have a little person and an incredibly angry shrimpy dude!" Everyone watched it. So of course, it was concluded that if some obnoxious people losing their shit and going to war with each other were good, more would be even better. On that theory, they cranked it up to nothing but toothy models and wife-shoving creeps, and then the next season they threw in some highly controversial stunt casting and people who were just dark-hearted and mean. Even more people watched. At that point, some genius came up with the idea of starting from scratch by casting one family of freakishly awesome ass-kickers along with a bunch of generic whiners and sending them to do heart-pounding tasks like shelling peanuts in clown costumes at Six Flags Over Louisville. That experiment was so disastrous that the show immediately tried to rebound by returning to its original format and hanging on for dear life, but the casting misfired again when it was all a bunch of arrogant young assholes trampling a pile of pleasant cannon fodder. The situation was dire. And that brings you up to date.
We are in Seattle, which you can tell by the contractually required shot of the Space Needle, demanded by the Seattle Department Of Tourism And Street Cred, which watches over portrayals of the city to make sure monuments and coffee are adequately represented. It seriously appears from everything I have ever seen on television that Seattle has no landmarks but this. Not one. If the Space Needle had to be dismantled, you would be forced to begin Seattle montages with a picture of a map with a dot and an arrow pointing to it that said, "Seattle." Phil "I Feel Bad About Jonathan Baker And The Weavers And The Choad Explosion, And I Am Wearing Inoffensive Pants To Win You Back" Keoghan is strolling on the deck of a boat. He looks delectable, but I freely admit that I could be starved for host-related normalcy after watching Julie "You Weren't Expecting...This Camera Angle, Were You?" Chen all summer. Twelve teams are about to leave on a "race around the world for one million dollars." Per person, that's only a so-so night on Deal Or No Deal, which makes me think the booty needs increasing. Phil further explains that the racers are currently making their way to the starting line in seaplanes. I'm still waiting for them to be shot out of cannons so that our introductions will involve watching them crawl out of nets. But barring that, let's meet them anyway.
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