New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Previously on The Amazing Race, one of the worst seasons on paper proved to be THE best season in the history of the show. A series of long-standing couples faced off against a bunch of “blind dating” teams. We naively believed that the people who already knew each other would have a huge competitive advantage, said as much repeatedly, and then had to laugh when the final three teams were all blind daters. How do the producers of The Amazing Race plan to follow such an inventive cast?

By going back to the same old boring format of the past. Ah, well. At least we’ll always have Season 26.

The first couple we meet is Justin & Diana, aka #TheGreenTeam. They must have spent all of 15 seconds coming up with that one. They’re such superfans of the show that their de facto audition was Justin creating a fake edition of the race. They traveled 5,000 miles across six states and two countries, somehow avoiding The Amazing Race’s legal team. At the end of the adventure, he proposed to her under the Northern Lights. After almost 150,000 people watched, the show felt compelled to cast them.

Next up is a pair of doofuses named Tanner & Josh, who don’t even introduce themselves before proudly displaying that they think with their penises. Most people talk about winning The Amazing Race. They talk about all the cute women. Ladies and gentlemen, meet #TeamTexas.

Cousins Alex & Adam, code named #TheCousins, are next up for discussion. All we learn about them is that one wrestles, one of them is into theater, and both of them have a rare form of dwarfism.

The following team enjoys slightly better branding. Team #ChacAttack is comprised of newlyweds Cindy & Rick, both of whom are “doctors.” Well, he’s a real doctor, an OB-GYN. She’s a dentist, so it’s cute that she calls herself a doctor, too. We don’t know what the ChacAttack means quite yet, but they’ve printed T-shirts, so it must be a big deal.

#TeamAlabama is next. Unlike #TeamTexas, neither of them is into girls. Mother Denise once had a close relationship with James Earl – unexpected since she named him James Earl – but then he came out to her and she apparently handled it horribly. Her comments make it clear that she’s desperate to gain his forgiveness. His body language indicates that he’s not over it yet. The other memorable thing about James Earl is that he looks like a small Peyton Manning.

#TheTrackStars are up next. Apparently Jazmine broke UC Riverside’s school record for the heptathlon one year and then Danielle broke it again the following season. They then annoyingly reference themselves as the “Dream Team,” which no one has ever said about a UC Riverside sports team.

Logan & Chris are up next, and after two sentences, we’re ready to punch them. They’re dating paparazzi (and have the hashtag #ThePaparazzi, natch). In their own words, they were chasing Justin Bieber two days ago, and they’ll spend the next month chasing Phil Keoghan.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5