"I've Become the Archie Bunker of the Home! (The Amazing Race)", 11-11-2007

"The Amazing Race", for those who haven't seen it, is the American version of world travel, which I call "if this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium". Eleven couples in every sort of relationship you can imagine (friends, divorced, married, gay, straight, black, Asian, students, models, models, models, and models) compete in an around-the-world race split up into trials called "legs". The goal is to avoid showing up last in the leg -- the couple that shows up last for a particular leg is eliminated, and the couples are whittled down one by one until only two or three couples are left to race for the final leg (which usually finishes close to the initial starting point) and the couple finishing first in the final leg will win $1 million.

Of course, it can never be as straightforward as that. On each leg, couples might face:

* a detour, where the couples are given a choice of two tasks to complete before they can proceed,
* a roadblock, where only one member of a couple may complete a given task before proceeding,
* a fast forward, where the first couple performing a task may proceed directly to the end of the leg, or
* a yield, where the first couple arriving at the yield point might make a designated couple wait after arriving at the same yield point.

Of course, all of the tasks are "kooky" in that they are broadly indicative of what goes on in the given country. The detour for this episode involved two activities supposedly local to Amsterdam, furniture hoisting and bicycle riding. The roadblock was something called "ditch vaulting", which is just what it sounds like. Now, I'm sure that furniture hoisting -- using a tackle and pulley to carry furniture to the window of a building -- and bicycle riding aren't activities local to only Amsterdam. But you can expect such vaguely stereotypical activities to take place on "The Amazing Race" and viewers to get the same smattering of culture one might get when driving by the Grand Canyon really, really fast. "Too much in a hurry to take it in! Have to go forward!"

(I mean, what did the viewers expect? Wooden-shoe building? Dike-finger-stopping? Smoking hashish? A prostitution competition?)

When last we left the Racers, their numbers had been whittled down to ten. The couple Ari and Staella, the designated psychos of the mix this year -- every reality show has to have one contestant/couple that needs mental health counseling -- had already been eliminated, and viewers relaxed to a hopefully peaceful experience. We could finally relax and begin to choose "favorite couples", couples for whom one roots because they share one's problem-solving style or demographic representation. I've put my money on the Goths, Kynt and Vyxsin, due to the woeful underrepresentation of the Goth demographic in the modern media. (We can be further glad that they aren't depicted as trenchcoat-wearing sociopaths.)

And we could also settle down to watching every leg play out the same way that every other leg of "The Amazing Race" has played out, with the following scenes:

* The "I'm completely lost" scene, where a couple argues over the proper reading of a map. Usually a dissonant chord is played, and we fade to commerical.
* The "we're all waiting at the airport" scene, where everyone gets to the airport a little too early and stresses out over the limited availablity of tickets.
* The "we're wearing goofy costumes" scene. I'm surprised they didn't put everyone in Dutch Boy Paint outfits.
* The "I'm having a mental breakdown and making a fool of myself on national television" scene. Unfortunately, this scene takes place rather frequently.

Today's mental breakdown was brought to us by Ronald and Christina, who get to represent both the Asian demographic and the father-daughter demographic. From what I've been able to glean about Ronald and Christina (more on that later), Christina's goal was to form a closer relationship with her father, but it seems that daddy has some problems of his own. Her father prides himself on his "honesty", even when his "honesty" is frankly counterproductive. To paraphrase what someone once said about John Lennon, Ronald has cast himself in the role of "truth-teller", and as truth-teller, he is able to justify whatever pig-ignorant thing he chooses to do in the name of honesty.

Some illustrations: at one point, Nicholas and Donald, the son/grandfather duo, were pressing a ticket agent at an airport for tickets and were rather rude, causing the ticket agent to walk off camera. Ronald, of course, had to walk over and point how rude Nick was. Nick answered, ruefully, that he recognized that he was rude, but wanted to say a few things. Ronald, his ability to make a point muted by Nick's recognition of his own bad behavior, went off, saying quite loudly that he didn't need to hear any more information. Indeed, Ronald made more of a scene with his bad behavior than Nick had made.

And that was just his behavior towards complete strangers. Ronald would end up berating his daughter during slipups in the name of honesty, until a tearful Christine pointed out that Ronald's behavior would be counterproductive to them winning the race. Ronald was forced to concede the point, but even at the end, couldn't stop giving what he considered helpful advice in the ditch vault to Christine until Christine told him that his advice wasn't helping. (Ronald later said to the camera that he thought he could have done a better job.)

When thinking about Ronald and Christina, I'm reminded of one of the complaints about reality television, usually from Omarosas-in-training: "My behavior was a lot better than the behavior you saw on TV...'selective editing' made me look bad!" With the removal of Ari and Staella, a couple actually looking forward to their reign of terror, I figured that there would be peace in the valley, but the producers were able to whip up a big dose of Ronald and Christina. However, I suspect that in most instances, the camera never lies. There are some acts that are "beyond the threshhold" of good behavior, some acts that most normal people won't be tempted to commit no matter how much adverse pressure they face -- and really, how much pressure can you be facing in a game show? Ronald's actions don't necessary label him a Boston Rod type of personality, or make him the Puck of "The Amazing Race", but they portray that Ronald can be a jerk, at least sometimes.

As for the end, the last team to cross the finish line was Kate and Pat, the married lesbian ministers, which sends up a hallelujah chorus across Middle America, which is terrified that their kids might catch TEH GAY with only an exposure in the milligrams. But cheer up, as there's always the Goths. Your kids might be trying out eyeliner before you know it.