Amazing Race Review

Yay! Amazing Race is back! This is easily my favorite show and it feels good to be able to relax on a Sunday night and watch it. (I'd love to go on it, but the FP Gal doesn't want to go with me. So I need a volunteer . . .) Spoilers ahead, you've been warned.
The idea behind this season is to bring back teams from past years that were competitive but fell short. That means we can watch two of our favorites again, the cowboys and the globe-trotters. It also means that we don't spend the first four weeks saying 'who was that again?' over and over. This is a good idea as long as they don't do it too often.
They started out with a brief competition that would shuffle the eleven teams. The first eight to find the correct flag would go on the first plane to Sydney. The last three would be on a second flight that would be 90 minutes behind. They've done similar things in the past but the timing has been too long. 90 minutes is short enough where teams can conceivably make up ground. As chance would have it, the first flight was diverted to Honolulu and they came up just late of the second flight.
The teams had to dive into a shark tank that looked very similar to the Underwater Adventures. The show made a big deal of the scary sharks and rays but really, they overfed the beasties and they couldn't be more docile.
Next up they had to translate some naval flags and bring a phrase to a guy some distance away. This seemed amazingly difficult for the teams especially since many of them decided that they could just translate the first part and bluff their way to the end. Nope. There was much sharing of information and you could see more teamwork than is usual.
There was a twist at the end, well, not the end. This is a two parter and everyone is still on the move. I hope that the tail end guys start to take it more seriously . . .