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Previously on The Amazing Race, a terrible team became the upset champions in a season that had three great teams, one of whom got cheated out of an appearance in the finals when they had to participate in a surfing competition against professional surfers.

There were also some super-obnoxious wrestlers who cried foul over the eventual winner’s finishing last during a non-elimination leg, possibly the most tone-deaf and hypocritical argument made in the last ten seasons. After all, the whining team had survived in the identical situation earlier in the season. Basically, what we’re saying is that we enjoyed several teams last year, but the finale left a sour taste in our mouths.

Now, we move along to season 26, which features a hook eerily similar to the one that TAR recapper Daron Aldridge proposed during his audition a couple of years ago. Complete strangers will compete against teams comprised of long-time partners. Daron may or may not be sitting out this season’s recaps as a form of protest. Okay, that’s not the reason, but he would be justified to do so. Anyway, this is a fresh take on the TAR premise, but the results seem predictable. Most of the strangers will fail, because it’s simply too demanding a contest for strangers.

We know this from a trial run a couple of seasons ago when fan favorite Bopper could not receive medical clearance so his friend Mark was forced to race with Mallory, a fellow Kentuckian. That team…was a trainwreck. In fact, we’re pretty sure that Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens could have done a better job as a team, and they are usually pointing guns at one another. Also, they’re fictional. Still, we think they would have been a stronger tandem than Mark and Mallory. As such, we have legitimate concerns about the upcoming season, at least the first part of it until the strangers have their ranks thinned. It’s possible that a couple of duos blend well and become lifelong friends, but most of these teams will fail.

Phil Keoghan appears with a group of 17 people, an odd number, to explain the rules. There are six competing couples who have been in relationships for a respectable period of time. There are five single men who are going to repurpose the term speed dating. The men are about to be introduced to their partners, who will join them for a presumably brief run on the show. The only good news for them is that since not every team will be eliminated at once, a couple of groups should hang on long enough to know each other for a few weeks. That may be enough to negate some or possibly even most of the advantage of knowing your partner. The other real asset here is that people in new relationships always try hard to impress one another, so that could prove helpful in the short term.

Barely any mention of the existing couples is made beyond the fact that a former (or current?) member of New Kids on the Block is competing with his boyfriend. So, if you had “gay boy band” in your betting pool, it only took 15 years to pay out. The joke of the humiliation of being in a boy band is the money shot in Rock of Ages, but since few people have seen it and those who did generally disliked it, you’ll just have to trust us. What you’re expecting us to say here is that we wonder if Jonathan Knight has the right stuff, so we’ll go with that.

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