Silly Little Country

Morse Code is For Smart People

We're now five episodes into this year's The Amazing Race and that is about where I start to get a feel for the twosomes.
I continue to believe that this is the reality show that most rewards competence, and competence is tricky to measure. Who are my favorites this year?
I really like the cowboys; they did so well in early rounds. I love Steve and Allie (dad and daughter), who are just so positive all the time; as a basketball coach and a marketer one can see the personality fit.
I can barely stand brothers Dan and Jordan, or the other Jordan and Jeff, who seem to spend all their time complaining. As do the lesbians - dammit, they are giving lesbians a bad name, I suspect undeserved.
It utterly fascinated me that none of the eight teams willingly tried the, to me apparently simpler, test of translating some Morse code, with the damned code in your hand, compared to fighting one's way through barbed wire in a simulated WW1 battlefield. And it was fun to watch the different responses to that effort - Steve and Allie finding it cool!
As for the Morse code, the Wangs had to try to get it and were an utter disaster. Can it be that hard? I do not believe I could have failed as monumentally as they did, given the incredible amount of time they had. They never even came close to the message!
My favorite moment in a way was when the detectives decided to condemn Joe and Heidi to their fate - it was so arbitrary, turning on some simple small arrogant statements overheard on a bus. And with what consequences!
Some other things struck me. One surely knows coming in to it that there will be major tests of fitness, and yet the detectives seemed to have done NO preparation. Well, lots of other preapration has not been done.
This is about my favorite time of year for reality shows - we have The Amazing Race and very soon Dancing with the Has-Beens.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 4:42 PM