The Amazing Race 14, Episode 1 Part 1
Don't Let a Cheese Hit Me
By David Mumpower
February 16, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The season starts with a pair of helicopters flying through southern California. Phil Keoghan, clad in what I may only describe as a Members Only jacket, describes the situation this season's competitors are currently experiencing. They are on the helicopters and are being flown to the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, California. A quick shot of the interior of the helicopter shows 22 people I have never seen before yet already despise. Let's examine each team and discuss why they are despicable.
Christie and Jodi are flight attendants. Enough said. Throughout the race, we can expect them to never have a bag of peanuts readily available or produce a refreshing beverage for the other travelers. They'll make up a bunch of vague, arbitrary rules and they'll constantly be telling people to sit down and put on their safety belts. People like this make me want to grab an airsickness bag and fill it to the rim. Oh yes, these women go out of their way to make my job of hating them as easy as possible with this quote: "Blonde women in foreign countries can kind of get away with murder. We are going to use that to our advantage." This is unquestionably the quickest murder threat in the history of reality television. Watch yourself, Phil. That Members Only jacket isn't bulletproof.
Tammy & Victor are attorneys. They both went to Harvard. The Amazing Race is only two teams old and I already feel completely justified in hating everyone. Ivy League attorneys? Ye Gods. Do they bathe in the blood of virgins every morning, too? I'm going to be disappointed if people this evil make it through the entire season without John McClane showing up and beating the Yippie Ki Yay out of them. Note: I am saying this despite the fact that BOP is chock full of attorneys and has more than a few Ivy Leaguers. No one has a better understanding of how evil these people can be than me. Trust me and if you don't trust me, trust Billy Shakespeare. Tammy & Victor are exactly the Army of Darkness Bruce Campbell has waged war against.
Margie and Luke are a mother and son tandem from Colorado. Well, everybody hates...mothers. Hmm. Gimme a sec here to come up with something. Okay, Luke informs us that he's deaf and that "mom is my link to hearing people on the race". Now we're getting somewhere. Everyone hates...err, no, I probably shouldn't say that. Anyway, surely there is nothing likable about a heroic mother being the ears of her disabled son. OH COME ON! This is cheating, The Amazing Race producers! I'll have to come back to them later. I'm sure they'll punch out a nun or something by midway through the first leg. Don't let the sob story fool you. These people are sheer evil.
Next up are Linda and Steve, the self-professed white trash participants in this year's race. Hailing from Virginia, the 52-year-old woman and her 43-year-old husband of the past 17 years are not quite the hicks their accents would indicate. In fact, they are accomplished world travelers and he is professional fisherman of some renown. So, I hate them because they are old, she's a cougar, he's a fisherman and their accents make me ashamed of my southern heritage. Bill O'Reilly is really on to something. Hating people is easy.
LaKisha and Jennifer are sisters who grew up in the Bronx yet wound up playing college sports at the University of Louisville. How that happens, I have no idea. LaKisha played basketball for whomever was the women's equivalent to Rick Pitino at the time while Jennifer was a volleyball player. LaKisha now coaches basketball for a living while Jennifer sends out annoying "please send us money" newsletters. I'm going to skip the obvious "too butch" jokes and focus on the Nigerian Prince scams Jennifer's job presumably entails. What a thieving punk.
Even if I were not planning on hating everyone this season, I would still despise Preston and Jennifer. Inside of ten seconds, the viewer knows everything there is to know about their relationship. It's 100% based on looks. Otherwise, they hate one another. Each is a control freak who wants the other to acknowledge their superiority in the relationship. Their bio page at CBS.com indicates that they have been dating for a couple of years now and - surprise, surprise -, they have broken up several times. They are one of those annoying couples who know they have absolutely no business being together but they stay together anyway. My bold prediction is that they have two kids together then get divorced when the oldest one is three. The only good news I have for their future children is the idea of two Christmases. For them, I have but one thing to say. No unhappy couple has ever gone on The Amazing Race to find out if they can make it together and left the show thinking, "I wonder what our wedding day will be like." Instead, the focus is usually upon the best attorneys for restraining orders, meaning you two should pal up with Tammy and Victor. Of course, I'm not saying anything all of your friends and loved ones haven't told you before. Your marriage is just as inevitable as your divorce.
The next team to hate is Brad and Victoria and the reason is egomania. "We are the bad-assed older couple," they assert. Heavily edited footage shows them working out in a gym together with him throwing a medicine ball directly at her stomach as hard as he can. Charming. This team is particularly easy to hate in that any time their names are mentioned, long time viewers of The Amazing Race will hear Jonathan Baker's voice saying "Victooooooooriaaaaa" and shudder.
Next up are Mel and Mike, the source of the greatest amount of curiosity this season. Reality television shows have decided to cast one semi-famous person each year in order to create more intrigue. In this case, it's Mike White, the writer of School of Rock and Nacho Libre. The box office analyst in me feels the need to point out that each of these movies earned over $80 million domestically. The movie lover in me counters that School of Rock was a great premise that was poorly executed and Nacho Libre was a film I ranked as the #155 film out of the 159 I saw in 2006. In short, I loathed it and wished bad things upon its writer. The Amazing Race is kindly offering me the opportunity to relish in Mike White's suffering as revenge for my suffering through Nacho Libre. So, I love the producers of the show and haaaaaaaate the team of Mel and Mike.
Amanda and Kris are an early 20s couple who have already been together for three years. Their interview segment consists of them expressing monogamous devotion to one another. They are young, beautiful, and hopelessly in love. If you can't hate them for having everything you want but don't have, you're just not trying. All kidding aside, After super-mom Margie and her adoring son, Luke, these two make me want to perform acts of violence upon them the least. They forcibly remind me of season 6's uber-popular couple, Kris and Jon, which is almost certainly the point.
The second to last tandem is Mark and Michael. These two are hard to hate unless you had a negative experience watching the 1981 classic (?) Under the Rainbow. They are brothers who are both 4'9" tall yet have found clever ways to take advantage of their shortcomings (I swear that pun is unintended). As professional stuntmen, they have worked on big budget actions films such as Spider-Man. Even better, they have gotten work as jockeys and stuntmen in productions such as Seabiscuit that require men their size for the racing sequences. In fact, Mark is a professional jockey as a side gig in addition to being a stuntman. These overachievers have capitalized by turning the potential negatives of their lives into positives, making them shiny, happy people with vacation homes in Hawaii. You may be taller, but they are richer and more successful. Hate them with every fiber of your being.
The hate train makes one final stop before pulling into its destination. In this case, the choices are Cara and Jaime and I have to say that they are quite easy to despise. The former NFL cheerleaders love them some them. Jaime has a passive-aggressive discussion wherein she indicates that strong, aggressive women are castigated as bitches but then she immediately states that she doesn't care about such allegations. It's hypocritical nonsense, but she huffs out her ample bosom while saying it, making her words quite a bit easier to ignore. For her part, Cara doesn't seem that bad, but I think that she is going to be found guilty by association a lot over the course of the season. Jaime has all of the classic earmarks of the reality television uber-bitch.
Now you know why we hate all of the contestants. Check back tomorrow to read the recap of the episode itself.