Monday, April 02, 2007

Amazing Race Rant

Wanted to say some things about last night's episode of 'Amazing Race'. [Everyone who doesn't watch and/or care should skip this post.]
So you've got a fairly scattered set of people due to airline problems in Africa. Very long separations because of the lack of flights in the sub-Saharan part. If your flight is overbooked, you're out of luck because the next one isn't out for hours and hours. That heightens the drama but completely screws some teams. Small time differences in going to the airport become days long penalties. It makes it impossible for the back teams to compete.
So we get to last night's episode. To the producer's credit they tried to take up some of the slack by guaranteeing a ticket on the last flight out. So the front teams, with time to kill, went to a travel agency. And then the bitchiest pair of women on the show in a long time decided to freak out the poor agent that they drew. Let me give you a clue, if you want good service from someone, don't get into their face with strange demands. (And drop the phoney accent when you talk to non-Americans, too. I'm soooo ready for that pair to leave.)
So the teams sit there for seven hours as the poor agent tries to find them earlier flights. Seven hours. Why so long? Booking systems have trouble with more than two connections. They also have problems with multi-airline connections. That's just the way they're designed. The trick is to break it down and look for portions of it. Jo-Burg? No problem. From there to London, Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt (the largest entry airports in Europe)? No problem. And then on to Warsaw. Very doable.
My beef is with the second leg that they showed. After marking the last team for elimination, they gave them no reasonable oppurtunity to catch me up. The first teams had a preset four hour headstart and then they got a headstart to skip to the end. That meant that the last teams were jammed together with no chance to make up time. What's that about?
Seriously, if we're going to watch people race, let's watch them race. They're taking all of the fun out of it when no amount of skill effects their position. Step it up, CBS.

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