'Race' stays right on pace
10th edition kicks off Sun.
If you don't want to root for a pair of cheerleaders, the male models, the gay couple or two inner-city single moms, you can root for the team of robed and bearded Muslims from Cleveland or Sarah Reinertsen, who has a metal leg.
Watching Reinertsen battle to climb her way up the Great Wall of China, a task that requires balance much more easily achieved with two regular legs, is one of those rare moments on "reality" shows that transcends its setup.
It makes the viewer want to stop and watch - not just because there's an image on a screen, but because you sense there's a lot more going on there than a TV moment.
Naturally, the producers and much of the audience expect and hope things will take an adversarial turn.
But meanwhile, many of the dramas are charmingly small, like blissful couples turning snippy when they can't agree on whether to get off the interstate and try to find an alternative route to the airport.
Because part of the competition involves physical challenges, like climbing up the wall, viewers will quickly figure that contestants who are younger and in better shape, like male models Tyler Denk and James Branaman, may have an advantage over, say, 52-year-old Duke Marcoccio or other entrants who look to be in less than Parris Island fighting shape.
But winning the race also requires luck, timing and even small bursts of thinking, among other built-in equalizers.
Marcoccio, for instance, doesn't flinch when one of the challenges in Beijing is to eat a plate of fish eyes. That sort of yuck moment is mandatory in the "reality TV" biz. Still, the new "Amazing Race" rises above other shows in its sometimes dubious genre because its most interesting moments are the small human ones, not the ones manufactured for TV.
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