Challenge Guide Update

Just a quick update - I was originally planning on releasing the first part of the updated challenge guide (which, as you'll no doubt remember from when I shoved the details in the blurb for the Amazing Race guide, is going to be a single-format with shows uploaded in stages rather than all at once) in the next week or so, but that's not going to happen.

Basically, the first batch of seasons I was planning on uploading were the civilian seasons of The Apprentice US, the first few years of Big Brother UK, and a section of The Challenge - three long-running shows I haven't really done anything with on this blog yet, and where better to start than with ABC? - but in keeping with the blog's updated subtitle (the reasons for which should go without saying), there's going to be a change of plans. I'll still be starting with some long-running shows, yes, but the line-up has changed somewhat. Instead:

• The first third of Big Brother UK (five seasons, plus four spinoff seasons)
• The first quarter of The Biggest Loser US (four seasons)
• The first third of The Challenge (nine seasons)
• The first third of Masterchef Australia (two seasons, plus two spinoff seasons)
• All of The Mole US (five seasons)
• The first third of Ninja Warrior Japan (eleven specials, plus two spinoff specials)
• The first fifth of Project Runway (four seasons)

The good news is I'm about half a celebrity season away from finishing the Big Brother section, and a lot of what's left just needs to be reformatted from old drafts on my computer. The bad news is it's still a lot of work, and it's probably still going to be at least another month or so away. Apologies for the delay.

Eurovision Revision II: Love Enough for Two

Having last time discussed the entries from all seven countries competing in the first Eurovision Song Contest, today we discuss... the entries from all seven countries competing in the first Eurovision Song Contest. Confused? Let me explain.

Essentially, Eurovision is the world's longest-running reality show. And much like basically every one of the bigger modern competitive reality shows is vastly different in its first season than it is from its second season onwards, the first Eurovision was very different from the contest we know and grudgingly watch each year to see which country in Eastern Europe Scandinavia gets given the trophy by default. In addition to being the only one of the sixty contests to date without a female host or cohost, and in addition to being the only contest where voting results were not revealed, this is also the only contest where each participating country sent more than one song, mostly to help fill the broadcast at a time when broadcasting simultaneously in seven countries was prohibitively expensive and thus needed to be justified. (By the following year there were ten countries, and voting was used to fill out the remaining time instead because the thought of a Eurovision with twenty songs competing would just be nonsensical.)

And now the stage is set, on with the show.

#8. Voorgoed Voorbij (Corry Brokken, Netherlands 1956)

Going into this marathon, I was expecting a lot of these early songs to be difficult to get into, just by virtue of being the sort of music even Eurovision doesn't bother giving exposure to any more. But in spite of being a pretty standard break-up song, this doesn't feel all too different to the sort of thing France would send to a modern contest just to be faux-edgy? Of course, the fact that it's good is an easy way to tell it apart from most recent French entries, but let's not split hairs. In fact, it's good enough that Corry Brokken is one of only three artists from this contest to return in later years (along with St. Lys Assia and Poor Fud Leclerc), and the first in a long line of singers to also be found guilty of Attempted Hosting. Not for twenty more years, but still. Pays-Bas, huit points.

#9. Refrain (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1956)

So... I'm supposed to love this one, right? Because it was the first winner, and that's supposed to be important or something? I'll work on it, I swear. But right now, I kind of feel like the lyrics (an old couple remembering when they were young and carefree) don't fit with the music? It's a fine entry, sure, but the reputation it has is a little overdone considering the actual quality of the song, which is really just a piece of background music from a 1920s silent film scene showing a love interest's introduction, with some lyrics over the top that feel a little too strongly-voiced for what it is. Or to put all of this another way, it's a good winner (and we'll have some truly awful ones in later years), but it's not one of the greats. Suisse, sept points.

#10. Le Plus Beau Jour de Ma Vie (Mony Marc, Belgium 1956)

Oh, Belgium. You're not going to make this behemoth easy on me, are you? Everyone else, you know how sometimes with old music the way the notes are held in that weird way that makes the voice sound distorted like you're literally listening to them through a foam cup with a piece of string attached? That's this song in a nutshell, even before you get to the story basically being a woman explaining how seeing her husband on her wedding day was the proudest moment of her life. Which despite failing the Bechdel Test on its own somehow manages to not be the most outdated Eurovision entry about weddings containing the words "ding dong" as a key part of the lyrics, so that's a plus for it. But it's pretty much the only one. Belgique, trois points.

#11. So Geht das Jede Nacht (Freddy Quinn, West Germany 1956)

Whereas Germany's first entry in this contest was something that would make you wonder just how big Shatner was in the country, this one's a bit more of an actual song. It's still not the sort of thing that would work at Eurovision - we've seen numerous times that swing is just one of those genres that never really catches on that well within the confines of the contest (rap and Motown have both failed in the past, and it took until the final song of this year's contest for someone to actually do well after trying to bring opera to the masses), plus the lyrics are pretty damn slut-shamey - and it's not even the best swing entry the Germans have sent, but taken on its own it's not that bad. That said, I'm not judging these songs in a bubble, and all of those things combine to give it a mediocre result. I'm sure Germany will wise up in future and send us a string of truly great entries, right? Right? Allemagne de l'Ouest, quatre points.

#12. Il Est Là (Dany Dauberson, France 1956)

In recent years, it's become common for the lesser singers to be overwhelmed by their backing tracks. And certainly this started in the same way, almost as if it was a deliberate attempt to lull you into a false sense of security like Dany's psychosomatic stalker seems to be. But then it kind of turned it around and became an adequate if unremarkable entry to the Eurovision canon. Unfortunately, by the time it did it I'd already zoned out. Sorry, France! France, six points.

#13. Les Amants de Minuit (Michèle Arnaud, Luxembourg 1956)

What I Thought The Song Was Going To Be About Before I Heard It: Consoling a premature ejaculator. What The Song Is Actually About: The 1950s version of a one-night stand, involving a late-night snack that isn't that kind of eating. So... close enough, but I still like my version better. And that's really the problem here - the version of this song I had in my head was much more interesting and involving than the song actually is. Especially compared to Ne Crois Pas, it just doesn't hold up. Luxembourg, cinq points.

#14. Amami Se Vuoi (Tonina Torrielli, Italy 1956)

And so we finally wrap up the first contest with... more of the same, really. I've been splitting hairs a lot of the time trying to work out how to analyse these songs since so many of them are pretty similarly slow and meandering, but this little ditty about how love never dies (or, if you prefer, only love survives) is among the best of those entries this time around. However, being the best of a mediocre bunch only gets you so far, and as it turns out that's somewhere around the upper-middle of the best-to-worst ranking right now. Italie, sept points.

===

NEXT TIME: Austria. Also Denmark and the UK, but it's not like either of them ever produce notable Eurovision entries, so I don't know why I'm even mentioning them. (Also: video!)

Eurovision Revision I: Congratulations, I Have Arrived

This is an idea I've had floating around for a while and never really felt confident enough to do, but it's been far too long since I posted here with any regularity and this is a perfect way to fix that issue, so here we are. Basically, over the next however long, we'll be visiting each and every of the 1396 entries in the Eurovision Song Contest catalog and discussing them one at a time before making foregone conclusions and declaring ABBA the best and Jemini the spawn of Satan. (Except not, because I don't actually believe either of those is true, but more about them when we get there.) Along the way, we'll be giving each song the traditional score from zero to twelve points (but, as one Scandinavian host put it, "never the points nine or eleven"), and then at the end I'll reveal a comprehensive best to worst ranking of every entry ever.

But there are a few things to note before we get there: First, I'm not counting any songs that weren't performed in competition at Eurovision itself, which means among others that the songs which lost in the qualification rounds in two mid-1990s contests aren't included and we (thankfully) won't be discussing the Wombles or Riverdance. Second, while semi-final qualifiers will be reviewed in the order they were performed in the semi-final, I'm using final performances wherever possible. (I'm certainly not implying Youtube is your friend if you want to play along, but if you put "Eurovision" followed by the country and year, you should be able to find everything you'll need.) Third, the 1956 and 1964 contests no longer have viewable video footage, but it's not as if Lys Assia was doing cartwheels in a bikini while performing, so I think we'll manage. Finally, I have the lyrics and translations for every entry, but I'm still under no belief that I'm ever going to understand what's going on, and while I've heard a huge number of these songs before I'm not going to claim I've heard everything. Shall we begin?

#1. De Vogels van Holland (Jetty Paerl, Netherlands 1956)

Looking through the prism of modernity, it's easy to think that a 1950s-style Dutch ballad about birds would be monotonous and depressing. But Anouk isn't involved with this inaugural performance, so put down your noose and your razor blades for a little while, even if it's still not a toetapper. Instead, we have this peaceful and relaxing number, almost saturated with the upbeat wistfulness that infects the best Dutch entries to the point that it starts oozing from an open wound, about how birds love wet weather and are thus happier in the Netherlands than in other countries. And... like, it's great you want to use your song to make a point about how delightful your country is, but maybe don't point out the constant rain if you want people to drop by for some hash brownies? Just a thought. Pays-Bas, huit points.

#2. Das Alte Karusell (Lys Assia, Switzerland 1956)

Or, as I like to think of it, "Mary Poppins goes to Hell". The song is actually about the titular old carousel needing a bit of lube to get it working again (and don't we all), but: come on. It's Julie Andrews riding down the River Styx in a boat made from the kneecaps of her enemies. Who said Switzerland was neutral? And it's not that it's a bad song (because it's not), it's just that like said rusty carousel, it goes round and round in circles instead of taking us on a journey. And I just can't with that unless it's a peppy mid-90s dance track. Suisse, cinq points.

#3. Messieurs les Noyés de la Seine (Fud Leclerc, Belgium 1956)

With a name like Fud Leclerc I'd contemplate drowning myself in the Seine too. Wouldn't you? There's no explanation of why Belgium actually sent a song about a depressed French hobo, but at least they made it sound appropriately Parisian, and I kind of love it? It's definitely my favourite of these opening seven songs, but frankly central European music of the 1950s really isn't my thing (not least of all because we won't actually get to the songs I was alive for until entry #585, the infamous "Bandido" from 1990), so take it with a pile of salt the size of Moldova. Belgique, dix points.

#4. Im Wartesaal zum Grossen Glück (Walter Andreas Schwarz, West Germany 1956)

It's lovely to see the tradition of Germany trolling Eurovision started so early in the contest's history. That's pretty much the only reason I can see for sending a song where everything but the chorus is spoken-word and where it can't decide whether it wants to be Pink Panther or Frere Jacques. Unfortunately, the end result is that it ends up somewhere around I'm Coming Home, which I think we can all agree is one of the lesser songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and yet that musical is so good throughout that almost anything that can be compared to it is going to come across poorly. Plus - and this may be because this contest is audio-only, but I suspect not - Schwarz just doesn't have the gravitas of Tim Curry. Also, the lyrics make precisely zero sense even by Eurovision's lax standards for coherency, and kind of come across as though Schwarz (who also wrote it) misheard the English expression "if wishes were fishes" as "if wishes were fishers" and decided it would be good to base an entire song around. Which: no, dear. Allemagne de l'Ouest, deux points.

#5. Le Temps Perdu (Mathé Altéry, France 1956)

I listened to this song (subject: the futility of waiting for someone at night when there are no belltowers ringing to demonstrate the passage of time) an hour ago and my ears still hurt trying to figure out what to say about it. It's the sort of song where I can't tell if the performance is just offkey or if it was legitimately supposed to be so sharp you could cut diamonds with it, but either way it's an actively painful way to spend three minutes, and now that I've done it I probably never will again. France, nul points.

#6. Ne Crois Pas (Michèle Arnaud, Luxembourg 1956)

It's much more apparent in later seasons that Eurovision is a socially liberal event, but the signs are present even in this first contest. In an era where women were still treated as submissive and a decade before bra-burning was even a thing, here we have an entry entirely about how beauty fades over time. More specifically, we have an entry about how MEN'S beauty fades over time, performed with the kind of upbeat excitement you'd expect from someone finally fighting back. It's simply delightful, and if the results of this contest were ever released (they didn't start showing the voting until the following year), I wouldn't be surprised to find out this finished second. Luxembourg, dix points.

#7. Aprite la Finestre (Franca Raimondi, Italy 1956)

Sometimes, there are songs that really don't merit much analysis. This is one of them. It's a pretty unremarkable deal about using the arrival of spring to get your creative juices flowing and so forth, with the requisite spring in its step. (So to speak.) And... I got nothing else. It's fine, but it's nothing particularly inventive or exciting or even notable. Solidly middle of the road. Italie, six points.


===

NEXT TIME: It's all just a little bit of history repeating.

Race in the Hole

There are very few competitive reality shows that have demonstrated the longevity of The Amazing Race - indeed, to the best of my knowledge the only ones to have matched the show's twenty-six seasons are the creatively-titled The Real World spinoff The Challenge (also airing its 26th season at the time of writing), CBS stablemate Survivor (which just began its 30th), and the British version of Big Brother (33, with the caveat that over half are shortened celebrity seasons and other similar spinoffs). But where the problems with those shows are fairly easy to point out succinctly - The Challenge's recurring cast being so familiar and awful even the contempt is breeding contempt, the Big Brother UK producers valuing style over substance, and Jeff Probst - The Amazing Race has experienced a rougher fall from grace than any of them, seemingly almost out of nowhere. So the question must be asked... why has this show declined so much so suddenly?

To analyse the situation, we must first look back about halfway through the show's lifetime to the fourteenth season, one that is incredibly divisive in fandom but which the show's producers seem to inexplicably love. There were two big changes this season that affected how the show developed: firstly, the producers thought the cast was too friendly towards each other and started turning the usual "eat, sleep, and mingle" rest between racing legs into a sequestration period with food to make the contestants crankier and more antagonistic towards each other, then on a more superficial level it was the first time the show's graphics got a major overhaul. The results of these were underwhelming to say the least - the casts for this season and the next two went down as three of the most unpopular sets in the show's history, and most of the lesser graphical changes were retooled very quickly even if the most troublesome of all (the subtext behind the new logo being akin to the show calling itself bigger than Jesus) remained - but by and large what's most important here is that this also happened to be right at the point the show rather paradoxically lost its confidence and started with a whole lot of self-affirming bluster about how capital-letters-and-fingerquotes "AMAZING" it was. On top of all of this, it's the first season to actively avoid new countries (Romania gets its first visit and Switzerland gets a second, both for single episodes with extended travel sequences that mean they really don't get started until about twenty minutes in, while everywhere else is appearing for at least the third time) and the entire back half of the route is a stale copy of the very first race, plus there are huge challenge design problems with many tasks favouring cheap comedy over being classy towards local cultures, so it's fair to say it's not one of the better ones. Sure, there were certainly attempts to remedy both the casting errors and the task design in later seasons, but it seemed as if the show seemed to think the opposite of "negative" was "not negative" and thus we got several middling seasons that kind of did nothing for anybody.

Which brings us a bit closer to the present day. You see, after a particularly controversial slip in The Amazing Race 22 that managed to offend people on both sides of the Vietnam War (the show routinely uses an alternate set of race flags in Vietnam as the usual design is similar to the flag of the former South Vietnam, yet in this instance the usual race flags turned up at a downed US jet left as a monument to North Vietnam's victory in the war, although of COURSE the conservative media only took offense at the side where Real I Was Born Here Americans got angry), there was a concerted effort to revitalise the show again. And the following season was legitimately quite good, especially if you can ignore the premiere and the finale, which have been such a sticking point for so long that it would have been more shocking if they weren't. Unfortunately, those are the episodes that tend to stick in the minds of viewers, and with the second episode of the season being the next least impressive (which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with Chile being one of a handful of countries that keeps turning up despite it never hosting a great leg in any franchise), the season was doomed from the start even though that middle run of episodes (from Leg 3 to Leg 8, certainly, and you could make a case for including Leg 9) is genuinely the best run of episodes the show had produced since at least the opening half of season ten, if not earlier.

So how, then, do you react to viewers not getting invested in the season? Well, if you're this particular set of producers, it's only too logical to put the problems with premiere design in the too-hard basket like so many "find a clue buried on a beach" premiere tasks of yore and instead decide to make season 24 an All-Stars season featuring memorable players from prior seasons. With the previous such season steadfastly refusing to cast from the early seasons under the belief that nobody would remember them (not that the show was available on DVD or anything, or that giving people a reason to buy them would make the show more profitable), the problem should be apparent: the teams that weren't milquetoast were almost universally teams who, frankly, were assholes who made for terrible viewing. So the cast was probably never going to be perfect, but out of all of the possible combinations you could have come up with from the six seasons considered, there's basically only one or two ways the season could have had a worse cast. And we very nearly got it. The basic problem, really, was that the cast included seven teams who filled the same Big Character archetype that appeals only to a vocal Twitter minority (including three who were making their third appearance and had all well and truly worn out their welcomes by the end of their first appearances), two teams who got in because of the unusual ways in which they were booted early in their first season rather than because they were entertaining (both of whom proved to be utter funsucks), a filler team seemingly only cast because it's not an Amazing Race without a team of generic blonde women who vow to use sex appeal to get ahead, and a team who was generally received well but was still a lesser imitation of better past teams. So your odds were basically one in eleven that the season was going to turn out well, but then one half of the good team was forced out of the game before starting due to a medical emergency, forcing the show to either scrap the team entirely or give the healthy partner a new teammate with a tenuous connection to him. They did the latter, and wound up being one of the most uncomfortable teams to watch in years before they were mercifully eliminated in Leg 2. (This will be important in a moment.)

So the self-congratulatory season 24 was a bust, mostly because the recent seasons were dull and it was more of the same featuring the teams you didn't like the first time around. Naturally, the cure was... to make season 25 even more self-congratulatory? I kid, a little, but that's definitely one of the numerous big problems with the season, which succeeded in spite of its changes rather than because of them. The anniversary theme itself is a tough one because while I have no objections to doing it in theory, the way it was handled was kind of a failure. Put simply, the show also decided to finally do the island-locations theme that had been mooted by fans since at least season four (every single place visited except Morocco and the final city of Los Angeles was an island, and even the LA leg included a shipping task and a lighthouse), and having the anniversary theme on top of that meant neither shined the way they were meant to because the show spent a significant portion of the season ticking off memorable past tasks to recycle instead of capitalising on filming in places they'd probably never use otherwise, with the end result obviously being that precisely none of these recycled tasks lived up to the originals while the new tasks felt particularly uninspired, almost as if they'd been taken from a 1960s version of Wikipedia. (On behalf of the viewership, I thank the show for not referring to Berber nomads as "noble savages", but on the other hand they really should have avoided spelling Marrakech "Marrakesh" in the final task.)

There was also two other stylistic additions that didn't work and has inexplicably survived into the current season. One of them we'll save for later because Oh Yes There Will Be Ranting, but the other was having host Phil Keoghan make cameos on the course, introducing tasks while teams are running past. Sure, it was cute the first time it happened, but even as early as its second appearance it felt like a running joke that had run its course. And breaking the fourth wall and taking viewers out of the show just for a sight gag - not to mention giving some teams an advantage in knowing their positions because Phil mentions it - just isn't worth it.

In terms of the actual race itself though, there were three new twists. First is the Save, a shameless and extremely flawed attempt to seemingly answer an executive note from CBS asking why the show doesn't have something like Survivor's Hidden Immunity Idol or Big Brother's Power of Veto. And there are two incredibly obvious answers: (1) Non-elimination legs, and (2) Why don't Survivor and Big Brother have ten Emmy awards? But of course, the problem doesn't end there. The way it was handled, it could be used at any elimination up to and including Leg 9 to spare its holder. Except the problem is it couldn't be used in what was already a predetermined non-elimination leg (as we saw when the team tried to save themselves in Leg 4), meaning that for them to actually be eliminated they needed to finish last in an elimination leg, forfeit the Save, and then finish last again in another elimination leg. Not seeing why that's an issue yet? You soon will.

The second of these was the mid-race twist of having teams faced with two tasks at what the show calls a Detour and forcing them to pick a task knowing only their arbitrary titles. This one here undeniably had the most chance of succeeding out of the three twists, but even then the execution was abysmal. Pairing the twist with the two most lopsided Detours of the season, and giving those Detours lame and unhelpful titles on top of that, was an awful decision that turned what could have been an interesting study in decision-making into "don't pick whichever one of 'This' and 'That' is an hour away". I love that there was an attempt to create a mid-season twist in an era where reality shows have all but given up on the concept, and in another situation - say, season 22's choice between Tasty Puddin' and Whisky Rollin', in which the tasks (making haggis or rolling whisky barrels up cobblestone streets, because SCOTLAND) were fairly balanced and were right next to each other meaning your only decision is in whether to take the task that suggests a food-eating task - it'd work well, but here? No.

The last twist, and by far the most actually stupid because there is at least a way to justify coming up with the concept of the Save, was the decision to get rid of the elimination in the penultimate leg and have four teams in the final leg instead of the final three. A pre-finale non-elimination is perfectly fine in theory, and indeed most of the "classic seasons" had them, but this was catastrophic. Not only was the previous leg before this also a non-elimination, meaning that a season that didn't have all too much suspense to begin with gave up on limping home to a conclusion and called a taxi (no doubt earning a time penalty for not walking as specified in the clue), but the final four was cut down to the standard final three with a mid-leg elimination anyway, defeating the entire purpose. So in essence you have a Save that all but guarantees its winner a place in the final leg given the unlikely odds of finishing last twice in a specific subset of six legs, combined with removing the lid from the metaphorical pressure cooker, combined with a twist that amounted to letting a team get all the way to the finale without getting to finish the race? Beyond awful. Put simply, it's the least thought-out twist in the show's history (and I'm including the early-years non-elimination penalty that amounted to begging for money in havens of wealth such as Senegal), but it still pales in comparison to the show's attempt to embrace social media.

The show's existing social media strategy was actually quite good - one hashtag for the show, then Phil hosting a Q&A during broadcasts when he wasn't busy filming. But due to what I can only assume was more CBS meddling, the usual team relationship chyrons that appear onscreen were replaced for season 25 (and now for 26) with team hashtags ranging from the cutesy reminders of Treasure Hunters and Expedition Impossible and the other knockoffs I'm probably forgetting (#SoulSurfers) to the inane (any of the #TheSharedOccupation hashtags) to the pointless and spoilery (is there any way they would have kept #TheDatingCouple as a hashtag if the team had lasted more than two legs?). Here's the thing: It doesn't work. In fact, speaking in my official capacity as manager of Australia's national Twitter account, it actively hinders the show. Within the context of this pre-recorded show, the only way hashtags are valuable is by making the show trend, and splitting the number of tweets about the show over twelve hashtags - especially when it's just been moved from a high-rating Sunday slot to the Friday Night Death Slot and the timeslot move wasn't advertised particularly well - is a disastrous decision. And that's even before you consider the hashtags themselves don't seem to have been created with either an understanding that economy is key on Twitter - you only have 140 characters to work with, so nobody will ever use hashtags with fifteen to twenty characters on a regular basis - or that Twitter is an interactive medium. With the creators of this show also heavily involved with The Quest and its brilliant embrace of social media, it's inconceivable to think that a show like The Amazing Race that's usually pretty good at whatever it does (even if the risks don't always pan out quite as intended) is failing so spectacularly at this.

Which is, finally, how we get to the current season. Throughout the entire run of The Amazing Race, there has been only two constants: that Phil will be delightful (though even that is waning now he's turning into Kiwi Probst), and that the least entertaining, most forgettable team of the season will be a young dating couple. So, naturally, the season is made up exclusively of dating couples, five of whom are actually solo applicants the show has paired up for "the most extreme blind dates ever". Because heaven knows what we've wanted all these years is more footage of people who've barely met being unpleasant. And which teams did they use to showcase the concept of "dating couple" in a season-opening montage? A whole bunch of the most awful couples of recent years, several of whom have broken up since, plus the aforementioned #TheDatingCouple, plus a random dating couple from a decade ago that nobody could identify in a line-up. Not, say, any of the dating couples who were received positively over the years, or either of the two lesbian couples from the show's history (which is especially noteworthy in this, the first season ever without an all-female team, even moreso because a female team won last season). And if this gimmick wasn't enough to doom the show - and even the producers themselves appear to think it is, given they have openly made "at least it's not the Family Edition, right?" comparisons to the most-hated season of the show in multiple preseason interviews - giving the teams phones to take selfies of their journey certainly is. Because you know what I want to watch in the middle of a race for a million dollars? People taking selfies. (Indeed, in Episode 2, people pausing to do so led to an anticlimactic elimination when they missed their train.)

Frankly, the combination of the selfies, plus the season theme, plus the hashtag debacle makes me think all of these changes are being forced upon the show by a clueless CBS executive who wants to make the show cool for a younger market yet still thinks MTV is a music channel. Like, I'm pretty sure the "most extreme blind dates" spiel was pitched in a memo that spelled it "X-Treme" and may have also included the non-word "kewl". If the show gets another season (and it could go either way at this point), it really needs to be a back-to-basics season with no new changes or gimmicks, and most if not all of the existing ones removed. Of course change over time is inevitable, and the show is going to be completely different now than it was back when the first season was airing after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But not only is it not that show, it's not the show it was when the forgettable dating couple from the montage was racing. It's not the show that took baby steps to recover from the season fourteen mess. It's not the show that took a hit with the Vietnam incident but had enough goodwill to survive it. It's not the show that had a renaissance just eighteen months ago. It's not even the show that I found myself falling back in love with when I was writing the challenge guide late last year. All of those shows are far better than this.

The World is Waiting for You: A Brief Obsessive Guide to The Amazing Race

Still the best/only non-Bigger-than-Jesus show logo.

Here you go. (PDF, 1.36MB.)

I was planning on waiting until next week to release this, but with recent events we totally need a pick-me-up right about now. Consider it an early Christmas/on-time Hannukah/late Ramadan present. And so, to celebrate the finale of The Amazing Race's 25th season, it's the next in my series of reality show challenge guides. It's not quite complete because there are seasons currently airing and one that's finished too recently to get done in time, but they'll all be added in later versions. (I'll also hopefully be back sometime next week with the latest in my other ongoing series of posts, analysing and criticising said 25th Amazing Race season. Because as much as a whole bunch of things worked, a whole bunch more didn't.)

Which brings me to the other big news I was hinting at (if you came here just because of the guide, feel free to skip this bit): This is the last full-show guide I'll be releasing. From here on out, I'll be releasing seasons individually and combining them into a single giant compendium, allowing me to cover smaller shows without feeling like I have to come up with a way to justify picking, like, The Quest (delightful) over Big Brother (...not delightful). And when I say "giant", I mean it: including rewriting the old guides into a consistent format, the list of shows I want to get done is currently at over 130 entries and being added to all the time. The actual format is going to be almost identical to the one used for this Amazing Race guide, partly but not entirely because after watching that much of the show I have no burning desire to ultramarathon it again for a little while, and the only non-visual change is (obviously) removing the location column.

So that's where we stand right now: with the promise of more output, even if still only occasional, but also with more reason for all of us to keep remembering this blog exists. And that can only be a good thing.

Drumroll, Please

Oooh, look at me, being all mysterious and junk...

The Amazing Revival (Spoiler: It's Crap)

Yesterday, before the first episode of The Amazing Race: Australia vs. New Zealand aired in the former country (the latter is getting the episode tonight), I tweeted that the spectacular failure of this twist is almost as predictable as Channel Seven's catastrophic revival of The Mole last year. The implication at the time was that I wasn't going to be writing up another post like this, but after some genuine curiosity and support I've changed my mind. (I know. You're shocked. Also, the last paragraph has task and location spoilers for upcoming episodes; skip it if you don't want to read that sort of thing.)

The Amazing Race has always been one of the great 'positive' reality shows, where your fate is entirely in your hands rather than at the behest of other players trying to fuck you over, overpaid hasbeen talent show judges, or the general public. But without the strategy or the audience influence, how do you make people want to watch? The obvious answer, and the one most seasons so far have used, is "make the show as good as possible and hope people have discerning taste". It's paid off - despite being a show about travel and having its first season air in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks, the original version has won all but one Emmy in the 'best reality show' category since it was introduced shortly after the boom of reality television, the show has been franchised in over a dozen countries and is Baywatch-in-Germany big in several, and the previous season of this very franchise we're discussing won an International Emmy for its excellence. So, naturally, with the respect the show has internationally, Channel Seven have decided that they know better than the rest of the world and have instead decided to produce this third season in-house rather than use the experienced producers prior seasons had.

This is a massive double-edged sword. On the one hand, new producers make it far less likely we're going to have to sit through leg upon leg of tasks recycled from other Amazing Race franchises with the excuse that nobody could possibly have used this newfangled interweb thing to research or watch said other versions or could possibly have watched it while actually visiting another country, which is a massive plus. On the other, the pedigree of the previous season means there is going to be less than zero tolerance for inadequacy this time around, and by giving the season its "Australia vs. New Zealand" theme, it's as good as sunk before it even leaves the harbour.

Put simply, The Amazing Race as a show is all about combating xenophobia. The whole point of the show is for people to see and experience a world they would never otherwise be exposed to, and learning to appreciate it. That's the very reason why countries like China and India turn up in so many seasons, and why we rarely if ever get tasks referencing the negative aspects of countries - the only time I can remember the show coming unreasonably close to the Line was an episode in Dhaka, Bangladesh involving picking dead rats off the streets, and even then the focus was definitely on the efforts to make Dhaka cleaner rather than being all "Ewwww, RATS!" So to entrench xenophobia - even in the context of the alleged playful rivalry of the sort Australia and New Zealand have - as the entire theme of the season frankly just proves these particular producers are idiots who have no business being anywhere near this show. There really is no better way to put it. It's like they watched the second season and decided, "This is okayyyy, but you know what have would make it really good? More Kym and Donna!", when everyone else had already forgotten them two weeks after they quit.

But television is also a business, and to maximise your profits, you must also maximise the audience. That isn't going to happen either. The cross-section of society that likes this show tends to overlap with the same sort of person who hates this kind of shit, so you're going to lose a decent portion of those viewers. The cross-section of society that would be intrigued by the twist would be turned off by the actual concept of the show. Where you could have sold another Australian-only season to a variety of obscure cable channels around the world and made a decent profit for your investment, much the same way as many of the major American reality shows are sold internationally, the idea of having to explain a rivalry that doesn't even really exist beyond My Sheep Joke Is Funnier Than Your Kangaroo Joke is going to turn away potential buyers. Even if you play along and assume the show could possibly overcome all of these obvious disadvantages, the show has been delayed for so long that it's now airing directly after the Commonwealth Games, which in Australia at least aired on a different network and means that basically nobody who could possibly be sold on the idea is even aware the show has started yet because they were all too busy watching actual Australia vs. New Zealand competition and are probably by now thoroughly sick and tired of it.

All this, of course, assumes the show itself is as good as it always has been. (Your mileage may vary on how good it has been, between the obnoxiously terrible elimination order of season one and all the missing tasks of season two, but let's say it's been adequate at the very least.) Unfortunately, having now seen the first episode, it's fair to say it's not going to be. In the interests of fairness, the show has decided to cut the number of teams from eleven to ten - five per country - and yet, even with a two-hour premiere, fewer teams, and fewer and simpler tasks than the two previous season premieres, it still didn't feel like we had any chance to react positively to anybody. It's not the worst premiere an Amazing Race season has ever had (that title will perpetually belong to The Amazing Race 15's premiere, with a start-line elimination and several gratuitously-outdated Japanese stereotypes including a sadistic '80s-style game show), but it's probably pretty close to the bottom of the list. And when the last US season premiere felt fresher despite featuring a cast of returning contestants so poorly chosen the general audience reaction was disbelief that anybody could possibly have got it so wrong combined with bad recycled tasks in a country that's been done to death AND the twelfth Los Angeles-area start in thirteen seasons, there's not much more that can be said.

But why exactly was this premiere so stale and uninviting? It's not exactly as if there have been so many trips to the central Australia or South Island wells that they couldn't have sustained one more. There are quite a few reasons. Insisting on building up "Team Australia" and "Team New Zealand" meant brushing through the teams rather than introducing them properly, which led to the situation where viewers were practically compelled to support their own country in the opening tug-of-war task even though, as noted above, nobody watching this show was likely to give a shit. Using a tug-of-war as an opening task sapped all the excitement out of the race's start when instead of running for their first clues, players basically stood still and pulled a rope for a few minutes, with half of the teams being given an immediate time penalty for losing the contest. But hey, it's not as if we're trying to sell this as some kind of a race or anything. Having the teams head directly to the airport after the tug-of-war meant that they were basically split into the two available flights by country, all but eliminating any possible drama the twist could have possibly had beyond building resentment and making the season bitchy and unpleasant to watch. The tasks themselves - the lame and counterproductive tug-of-war, an overnight wait in Christchurch, then the most boring footage of whitewater rafting ever and a Road Block literally involving tractors and sheep, because nothing says excitement and high stakes quite like FARMING - left a lot to be desired and meant that without a Detour whoever sat out of the Road Block spent the entire leg just helping nine other people in a tug-of-war and not particularly paddling a raft very hard in terms of tasks. Even with two hours of airtime, none of the ten teams proved themselves to be particularly supportable regardless of which country you're from, the ethnically varied casting of the previous two seasons seems to have been replaced with White Pride and Two Token Maoris, and host Grant Bowler was faking his middling enthusiasm even more clearly than he was last season, complete with an explanation for the tug-of-war that was clearly written by whoever had made poor Shura Taft sound like a condescending nitwit on The Mole last year. Oh, goody.

And that's just in last night's episode. Now I know somebody will probably surmise - as at least one person has with one of my past posts - that I'm a failed auditionee who was so disillusioned by failing to make the cut that I'm taking my anger out on the show. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've never auditioned and I don't particularly have any burning desire to. And to be fair, as most of the tasks last night were explained they did feel promising. The twist of the start line not being the start line was genuinely surprising and undercut only by the way it was completely mishandled. Christchurch as the first location was a refreshing change from the tropical Asian islands of the first two seasons, except then it turned out that instead of a decent city leg with an air of earthquake-related defiance, we were going to be stuck in some generic rolling hills. Whitewater rafting is by far one of the better extreme sports activities that turn up every so often on the race, and then it was a complete and utter funsuck. The Road Block sounded genuinely brilliant - driving wacky vehicles around an obstacle course and dealing with unruly animals are recipes for success, and we had both in a single task - but on paper the first half was completely uninvolving and the second seemed dangerously close to animal cruelty the way the sheep were being handled. And then the big Lord of the Rings knockoff they were pushing throughout the episode - where you had to collect two halves of a matching ring to reveal the final clue - was a bust as the clue formed by the matching ring was so vague teams clearly got some additional information to help them narrow down "go west" to find the actual Pit Stop location.

But that's now all in the past, so what of the future? Most of the countries visited this season have already been spoiled, as have a few of the tasks, and while there are some good unexpected countries coming up, it doesn't seem as though the season will actually get any better. In fact, it's probably going to get worse. The preview for next week broke one of the fundamental rules of reality television and fixated on a local delicacy challenge, and while I admit "tarantulas in Cambodia" is nowhere near the level of Fear Factor's "horse rectum for the hell of it", showing that kind of challenge in a preview tends to actively drive away an audience. I get why the challenge is there, but even then local delicacy challenges make for mediocre television at the best of times, and expecting your audience to be excited for it is an unparalleled level of genre blindness. There are other major problems too, though. With The Amazing Race 22 having recently finished airing at the time this season was being planned and having generally been considered anywhere from underwhelming to shockingly atrocious, it should have been fresh in producers' minds how poorly it and its tasks were received, but two of the very worst - an opening needle-in-a-haystack task involving sandcastles and a Survivor-esque firemaking task inspired by bushmen - have been confirmed as appearing later this season, with the firemaking task taking place in a different country (but Africa is like totes all one homogenous wasteland, so it's not in the least bit offensive or something) and the luck challenge being recycled in the season finale. Yes. They're recycling a challenge so terrible three teams quit during a season premiere when they weren't all fatigued and hadn't really done anything yet as one of the last challenges of the entire season, at a point when players tend to be struggling to even stand up straight. Slow clap, show. Add to this schlepping all the way to Portugal for a task involving counting beach umbrellas, because Portugal doesn't have a rich and varied culture or history you could exploit, and doubling down on continuing to refuse to cast non-heterosexual contestants (for the third season in a row, with excuses given in the past that are about as homophobic as you can get without actually having a smackdown with equal rights lobbyists) by celebrating with a trip to exotic Russia, and there's really nothing so far that suggests it won't be the Worst Season Ever. Let's hope they manage to polish a turd, otherwise this show's chances of survival are in deep shit.

(Addendum: The show got just 588,000 viewers last night. Blog favourite The Mole was dumped in a late-night timeslot last year with 555,000.)