Underdogs: Another Essay On The Amazing Race

Last Wednesday, I was posting on the Primetimer.com (formerly Previously.tv) forum for The Amazing Race. With only two more episodes left for the thirty-first season, four teams were left going into this coming Wednesday's two-hour finale. One of the duos was Nicole Franzel and Victor Arroyo. They had met on Big Brother 18, a season where Nicole (in her second season) won and Victor finished in fifth place.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have a profound disdain for Big Brother, which I will be explaining shortly. Here's what I wrote on the episode thread:

"Nicole & Victor are probably nice and decent people . . . but they're still Big Brother. Big Brother is the antithesis of The Amazing Race . . . very little substance, crap host, but CBS treats it and the fanbase so much better. Nic & Vic winning wouldn't be as hard to stomach as Cody & Jessica last year . . . .but they would still be Big Brother. Fuck, CBS would probably end up with 4-5 people from the next BB to "suggest" to [series creators] Elise [Doganieri] & Bertram [van Munster] when another TAR gets cast. And that's even if Nic & Vic go out in the penultimate leg."

Soon, someone else posted, and this person took great exception to my opinion. Here were the points made:

• Big Brother lasts three times longer
• More strategy is involved
• There isn't "tourism porn" to "spackle over the cracks"
• Julie Chen-Moonves hosts episodes on live television
• The time TAR host Phil Keoghan visited Big Brother 17, showing embarassing clips of past champions Rachel Reilly and Brendon Villegas, who had run TAR and finished third both times. The poster added: "Pissing on 'our' contestants on our show.  I'm still not over that"

The poster ended the rant on my rant with this:

I'll take being the unappreciated underdog.  (And the show that gets nothing but "wacky" promos from CBS, instead of the drama generated for the other two shows.  Eh, who needs respect, right?)

Oddly enough, priority to that Wednesday night, I was thinking of writing about TAR being the underdog  of CBS' reality programs. My opponent taking that angle for Big Brother was unexpected. If you think about it, who doesn't want to be an underdog in any area? "Underdog" means that the odds are against you, that your opponents are the insidious empire, and you're a plucky band of rebels looking for freedom. Right now, both major sides of the American political spectrum claim underdog status: one holds more power, but claims that the other side's media dogs them at every turn. Their opponents decry the dwindling rights of their base enforced by men in power who couldn't care less about them. But that's a story for another post. Or you can visit my Facebook. I'm very easy tor rile up about national politics.

For me, The Amazing Race has been the least-favored child of CBS. Survivor coasts on its past successes from long ago, as host Jeff Probst wields more power, drowning the show with his abiding love of alpha males, dismissing of female players, and an abundance of hidden immunity idols that adds unneeded chaos to the game; the worst case happen in Game Changers, when fan favorite Cirie Fields was eliminated because all the other players were protected.

Meanwhile, Big Brother chugs along with its drama and controversy. I confess that I don't watch the series, but anything I hear isn't usually good. Recently, some past "housemates" (including Victor) have popped up on The Challenge. This is akin to throwing a ton of trash into an already-raging dumpster fire. Sure, Victor was inoffensive in his one stint (Vendettas) and Da'Vonne Rogers has established a sold base for future appearances, but then you have the more toxic element making bad things so much worse. This is personified in Paulie Calafiore; after Big Brother, he went to the American edition of Ex on the Beach before getting picked up for The Challenge, where his ambition to take over the series and his nauseating relationship with veteran Cara Maria Sorbello are hard to watch unironically. Also on Big Brother: something called a "Zingbot." I think that's supposed to be a selling point.

The Amazing Race doesn't see a natural underdog for some people. The main argument would be that it won seven straight Emmy Awards for Reality-Competition Program and ten total in that category. Some dismiss those, bringing up the valid point that the voters deciding that Emmy could care less about the category. My argument for that comes with Jeff Probst winning four straight Emmys for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program. Once again, I don't think highly of his work. I'd expand on that, but then I'd get more off-topic than usual.

In recent years, CBS has removed TAR from the regular schedule rotation, while Survivor gets two edition per traditional season (September-May) and Big Brother is guaranteed to air in the summer months. When TAR fans aren't sweating their show's future, they have to wait for it to be scheduled. And while TAR's returns are diminished from seasons past, it isn't as bad as the other two series. Survivor had an unusually good season with David vs. Goliath  in Fall 2018, but then came Edge of Extinction. The gimmick for that was players that got voted out got the option to go to Edge of Extinction; a barren area away from the "normal" game. With every Tribal Council, EoE filled with players looking to get back to the main action. Once the carnage settled, the person on top of the heap was Chris Underwood. He was voted out of his tribe on Day 8, and he elected to go to EoE. He would fail to win his way back on Day 16, but he was allowed to stay on with the other losers. Not only that, anybody that did not wish to leave the game would wind up on the jury. The end result: Chris was able to re-enter the game by winning a challenge on Day 35, managed to stay in contention, pulled off a ball-busting move by challenging Rick Devens (the other player to win their way back into the game) to a firemaking challenge, won that, and wound up with nine out of the thirteen votes cast to win $1 million . . . all thanks to a format that favored anyone who had spent almost four weeks with other cast-off castaways.

That night, as Jeff Probst grabbed the lipstick and worked to make the turkey of a season look good, I saw zero commercials from CBS for The Amazing Race. At the time, TAR had been following Survivor on Wednesday nights, and it would take over the 8 p.m. slot the following week, starting with a two-hour episode. But CBS didn't seem interested in promoting the show. Granted, the series finale of The Big Bang Theory was airing the following night, so those commercials had to be plentiful (and understandably so). Also promoted was the upcoming season of Big Brother, which would not air for another month. And there was something called Love Island, a dating show that is set to air in early July. The impression that I got was that CBS was looking into very attractive people exchanging social diseases . . . a market currently cornered by ABC (The Bachelor franchise), Fox (Paradise Hotel), and MTV (any reality show that doesn't involve women giving birth at a young age. Also, anything related to Rob Dyrdek, whom I find so much less annoying than the average Challenger). Oh, and in one of the commercials about Love Island that aired on that night, they was a shot of a woman's swimsuit area as she exited a pool. Draw your own conclusions.

As a fan of TAR, I've gotten used to being unhappy. Sure, we're going into the final legs with only one team away from the norm (Nicole & Victor), but the road to get here was rough. First came the end of TAR30, airing on February 21, 2018. In a tense final leg, it came down to a three-way Roadblock. In the end, Cody Nickson and Jessica Graf -- who had met on Big Brother 19 -- walked away with the $1 million. To add insult to injury, Henry Zhang had unknowing completed the Roadblock, and he would have won alongside fellow Yale debater Evan Lynyak, but he continued the task. Given how competitive she looked on the show, I'd say that Evan probably still has Henry locked up in a basement somewhere.

The worst part was that a Big Brother-born team had finally won. To use a well-worn phrase: "fetch" had happened at long last. This was great news for some fans; after all, a good chunk of the crowd at the starting line in Washington Square Park (which I had gone to see for myself and subsequently wrote about) were pulling for those two. CBS celebrated their win harder than most of the recent winners of TAR. I had figured the worst was over, and that the odds of CBS cancelling the series because a Big  Brother team won were pretty slim.

But then came rumors centered on casting for TAR31, and things felt even more dire, especially for a worrywart like myself. The speculation was that the cast would be all or mostly filled with Big Brother contestants. Names were thrown out, and the dread increased. Haven't not followed the series, I wasn't familiar with how bad the worst case scenario could be, but those that did brave that show filled in the blanks. The best analogy I could think of came from the movie Slap Shot, at the point where the Charlestown Chiefs had decided to play "clean" hockey (i.e., not beating the snot out of everyone on the rink) for the championship game . . . over to see their opponents stack their roster with the dirtiest players they could find at the last minute. Names from Survivor were also volleyed about, but they weren't much better. In my mind (which I will admit -- once again -- isn't the most stable of places) was the worst possible choice a fan could make. Would viewers stay with a dumbed-down version of their beloved show, leading CBS to continue stuntcasting people that would never have made the cut under normal circumstances? Or would they abandon the ship and possibly contribute to cancellation?

The end result has worked out well: TAR31 wound up bringing in teams from Big Brother, Survivor and The Amazing Race (including Rachel Reilly, who had done two seasons each on BB and TAR). While the TAR teams were outnumbered 6-5, they have managed to dominate throughout this edition.After border patrol agents Art Velez & JJ  Carrell fell in the first leg, no other TAR-based teams were sent off for another nine episodes, where Becca Droz & Floyd Pierce (the self-proclaimed "Team Fun") were eliminatied. In that span, all three Survivor-based teams were eliminated, including Rupert Boneham (who peaked as a "character" in 2004) and his wife Laura, as well as friends Corrine Kaplan and Eliza Orlins (two two-time Survivor contestants who went out ugly in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam). Nicole & Victor have made it farther than their fellow Big Brother alumni; including Rachel, who had finished in third place twice on TAR with her husband, Brendon Villegas. Running with sister Elissa in this edition, Rachel proved to be one of the more annoying Racers, and the team was eliminated after eight legs.

If you think I've been rambling and/or been fanatical about The Amazing Race, I wouldn't blame you. But in my mind, TAR is the best reality show CBS has, and probably one of the best competitive reality shows, period. Meanwhile, Survivor and Big Brother have been mired in allegations of racism and sexism. The former is set to redo their format from Ghost Island, drowning players in hidden immunity idols. Even the name of the season -- Island of the Idols -- suggests Jeff Probst spinning the series as still being relevant, all the while setting up altars for alpha dudes. Oh, and Rob Mariano will be returning to offer "guidance" to contestants. If you never watched Survivor, all you need to know is that he is the most overrated player in the history of the series. It took him four tries to finally win Survivor, and that only happened after he was fed a cast of dummies and given a safety net (Redemption Island) which he didn't need. While two-time champion Sandra Diaz-Twine (the only player to lay claim to that title) will be in a similar position, I expect the editing will wind up favoring "Boston Rob."

The finale for The Amazing Race airs this Wednesday night. Also, not only has a thirty-second season been filmed, none of the teams running appear to be stuntcast (here's the article, with location and casting spoilers only). While it might be a while before CBS decides to air it, I'm certain it will be a fun season. And if you've never watched TAR . . . .give it a shot. There are 31 seasons to root through, albeit with some less-than-pleasurable editions (the sixth season basically kicked fans in the privates week after week). In the end, not only do I believe that The Amazing Race should be considered an underdog even with its length and awards, I believe it is an underdog worth watching when it airs.