Things look promising for The Race on Sunday nights. One might have expected this quirky weekend television outpost timeslot to bleed The Amazing Race 10 of much of its rating starpower — wobbly though it is — but, behold, the 90-minute premier received a slightly higher audience (approx. 10.11 million viewers) than the premier of the fabled and routinely ostracized The Amazing Race: Family Edition did nearly one year ago. This is promising.

By David W. Taylor (Email The Author)
Reality Reel Media
09.21.06

And knowing that this somewhat hefty audience took-in a whirlwind of adventure with teams heading headlong, pell-mell, and right away, to Bejing, China (without the almost prerequisite softening-up drill to South America, etc.), it may assure that The Race's Sunday fans will only balloon in number. Let us pray.

And speaking of... I can't say that I'm brimming with joy (no, a mite relieved?) that the two muslim dads — Bilal and Sa'eed — were the first to squirm in the elimination seat. One has to only wonder as to what political agitprop would have emerged over the unfolding months with two fundamentalist muslims from Ohio hogging the Race spotlight. I mean these two "muslim-Americans" made Big Brother's Kaysar — a worldly, cosmopolitan muslim from Iraq — look positively like Lord Halifax.

Within the first half, or so, of the premier we saw these two "muslim-American" dads — bedecked in flowing Arab garb and tangly beards — pray twice to Allah and then refuse to shake the hand of a fellow contestant — a female, naturally — due to their "religion." The fact that these two strictly wired fundamentalists ended up "Last Team" at Bejing's Meridian Gate and acquired the dubious honor of being the first pair ever eliminated from a non-Pit Stop locale is a weird irony. But their reward is elsewhere, naturally, or so we were told bluntly.

This distinction, this new twist, as well as the initial plunge to China, certainly ramped-up the tension and energy of this uproarious tenth edition of The Amazing Race. Things went and were constantly fast and furious. And when did we ever see such a slick and cool and lit-up Amazing Race time-pulltab kiosk as the one we spied at the Forbidden City? Despite the eventual bummer it eventually produced for Bilal and Sa'eed, the mere high-tech luminescence it displayed gave me pause that maybe, finally, the producers of my favorite television show have "Got It" and have decided to liven up their Reality gig with some much needed new flavor.

The "Last Team" pulltab created a stir within me when it was first shown and one couldn't help but rack one's brain as to what would befall the team that happened to own it. To be honest, I never for one second thought the outcome of this mystery would have been out-and-out elimination from The Race. I thought, possibly, oh losing one's money and belongings or adding an hour or more to a team's departure time the next morning... but full-tilt elimination? Hardly.