Amazing Race 17: Storming the Castle

The 17th season of The Amazing Race started in Gloucester, Mass., and through the magic of television and the power of Phil Keoghan, it did not look like the Gloucester I know. I have good friends who live there and I don't recall it looking that, well, lush. But good for them. And the lobstermen who ferried the 11 teams in for the start.

Phil launches the season with an arched brow and the unveiling of the Express Pass, a little piece of paper that gives a team the chance to skip a task entirely. It could, Phil tells us, be the difference between going home and staying in. Which seems obvious to me but still. I'm thinking based on 16 seasons of watching this show that a piece of paper that allowed you to change your horrible cab driver into the world's greatest cab driver would be more valuable since that more often makes a difference in who finishes where.

The teams are: Brooke and Claire, shopping channel hostesses who shall be known as Melon Heads because of what happens to poor Claire in the English countryside; Chad and Stephanie, known as The Ring because he plans to propose to her during the race; Rachel and Katie, beach volleyball players form New Jersey, which somehow makes them less hot; Jonathan and Connor, Ivy League (Princeton?) a capella singers; Nat and Kat, surgeons and one diabetic; Michael and Kevin, an Asian-American father-son team who are apparently a YouTube sensation; Nick and Vicki, all tatted up and heretofore known as Dumb and Dumber ("Ah, yes," Phil says, "the country of London."); Ron and Tony, who I would call Biggie Smalls because of the difference in their sizes, but that seems wrong; Jill and Thomas, boyfriend and girlfriend; father and daughter Gary and Mallory, and she's Miss Kentucky and wakes up every day with a song in her heart; and Andie and Jenna, biological mom and daughter who have never met before.

The opening is sort of slow, as everyone has to get to Logan (not easy, we New Englanders know) and then from London to Stonehenge, in clown cars. From there we have one of those "clues" that they have to decipher and they must find their way to Eastnor Castle, a ways away.

And here many teams completely fall apart, because apparently they can't read road signs in English. This does not bode well for the rest of the race, when they are in places where English is a Ninth Language.

So at the castle they scale the wall while toothless Brits pour dirty water on them, and then "sail" across the moat in upside-down turtle shells, and then hurl watermelons at knight suits (and where Claire nearly decapitates herself with a back-shooting watermelon and then, because Brooke tells her to, finishes the task even though she has gone numb from the neck up) and then find Phil hanging in the woods with Robin and the boys.

Jill and Thomas are first, and they get the Express Pass, and then lots of others come in (my favorite part was when Dad and Son and Dad and Daughter came in together) and then, way, way, way, way, last are Ron and Tony and by week 3 we won't even remember they were here.

Next week we head to Ghana. I'm guessing the road signs are going to be more confusing than in England. How about you?