Yeah I hate to go on about that season as well but I have to agree completely.
The seasons released around that time (late 2000's) were mostly very weak in my opinion.
TAR 17 doesn't have anything necessarily bad about it, it is just very average... The cast are alright and it has some of the best NEL placement of the show but the locations were underwhelming (except Ghana and Sweden), the Nick & Vicki falling behind sucked and nothing truly memorable really happened other than a female team winning for the first time. Even then, I was not a huge fan of Nat & Kat. It is a season I would happily skip, along with the two seasons before it.