The Amazing Race season premiere recap: Phil-opian Tubes

Tonight, as season 21 of The Amazing Race got underway, we viewers at home learned a great many things. First and foremost, we learned that “abacus” is a really, really challenging word whose mere combination of letters can bring people from all walks of life to their knees. We also learned that this season, contestants will be going to 9 (nine!) countries and will cover more than 25,000 miles during the course of the race. And most importantly, we learned about a new twist being introduced to the competition this season: Any team that wins both the first and last leg of the race will double their prize money and be rewarded with two million dollars. It’s a…. rrrrrrace around the world and God, how I so badly want to be on this show!

Tonight was really all about getting familiar with the new contestants, and honestly, it all seemed daunting. Two Jameses, one Jaymes and two Robs? Plus identical twins? Plus two blond girls who aren’t twins yet appear to be?

You can get an intro to the teams on EW.com and we’ll dish on them some more in a sec, but first let’s take a minute to quickly recap the locations and tasks our teams had to tackle on leg one of their rrrrrrrace around the world.

Starting point was Pasadena, CA, and in order to get their hot little hands on the first clue and hop into their Ford Escapes (#Ford!) and head out into the race in earnest, teams had to rappel 10 stories down off a bridge. I like it! Getting the party started.

Meanwhile, Trey, the college athlete is an outrageously fast runner!

The teams had to make their way to Shanghai, and, as their Fords explained to them, only 7 teams would get on the first flight out of Los Angeles; the the remaining teams would be booked on a second flight which would land over an hour later. Race to LAX! The sad teams relegated to the later flight turned out to be Rob and Sheila (lumberjacks), Gary and Will (giant/tiny teachers), Josh and Brent (goat farmers) and Trey and Lexi (college sweethearts).

Once they landed, groups taxi-ed it to Yuanshen sports center stadium to get their next clue. It was really hot out. Ryan (divorced guy) was sweating in his day old panties.

Roadblock. “Who’s ready to get paddled?” the clue card read. I enjoyed the racers’ responses to this, especially the people who didn’t miss a beat and were like Oh me! I’m ready! The task: score one point in a game of table tennis against a 10-year-old Chinese junior champion who hates losing and, moreover, is extremely adorable. To level the playing field this tiny prodigy was even willing to forego her paddle and use increasingly absurd and clumsy household items like a clipboard, a saucepan, a tambourine and, eventually, an Amazing Race clue card. The front-runners after this task were Abbie the divorcee, James the rocker and James the Chippendale. Elsewhere, Monster truckers Kelley and Rob were still roaming China trying to find the location.

NEXT: Going tubing, but not in a fun way on a lake during the summer

When the next clue had teams make their way to Cui Ping Jiu Jia restaurant, I knew something bad was going to happen. China + a food-related challenge = trouble city.

“Who wants to go tubing?” Well, it doesn’t matter who wants to go. The team member who did not play ping pong had to complete this roadblock. The task: eat two hollowed out papaya bowls of hasma, a traditional Chinese dessert made of frog fallopian tubes. Are you vomiting yet? The stuff actually looked like a gelatinous yet rather benign cousin of sticky rice, but judging from some of the restaurant patrons’ (and contestants’) nose-holding, it smelled seriously foul. Watching the racers do this task was a highly uncomfortable experience for me. Also, I thought this was a pretty stupid task, especially for the season premiere. Sure, it was hard in the sense that a gross-out task is hard because it’s gross, but it didn’t have anything to do with skill, and it sure didn’t give us a chance to get to know the contestants at all or distinguish them from one another.

James and Abba (the rockers) finished the fallopian tube-chowing first, and the next task was to make their way to the Bund and look for a woman using an abacus. It appears — based on editing, anyway — that the 2nd plane containing the four remaining teams was just landing around this time.

Amy and Daniel (snowboarder) actually turned out to be the first to retrieve the clue from the abacus lady and the first to head to the pit stop atop the Bund Observatory, thanks to some help they got from a kindly dude who showed them a photo of the building on his phone. But before they could skidaddle over there, Caitlin and Brittany (blondes) and Ryan and Abbie (dating divorcees) approached and asked our frontrunners where to find said abacus woman — and in the kindest, politest, least competitive moment I’ve ever seen on this show, Amy and Daniel told them exactly where to find her. They included the number of yards and everything. It was so maddening and crazy! Especially because, as a result, Ryan and Abbie managed to overcome the snowboarders on the way to the pit stop and won the leg. When the snowboarders arrived mere moments later, they were all f***, that was dumb. Their chance for two million, lost. But they won my heart. So. That’s something. What a bad mistake though.

Anyhoo, let’s talk a little about the teams. Here they are in the order in which they finished:

1) Abbie Ginsberg and Ryan Danz (dating divorcees) – I don’t have much of an impression yet of Abbie, a dance instructor/choreographer, or her partner Ryan, a former The Apprentice: Martha Stewart contestant who loves Jiu jitsu. They seem really in shape and tough. Ryan made a lot of sense at the end when he apologized to the snowboarders, but was all it’s a competition and we gotta bust a move. But actually the moment I decided I liked Ryan came earlier in the episode, when he was eating the hasma and deadpanned “Mmm, amazingly good. Have you not had fallopian tube, Abbie?”

NEXT: A lotta contestants, a whole lotta hair

2) Amy and Daniel (on and off daters) – She is a double-amputee and snowboarding champion. He is a shaggy-haired puppy man. My impression of this couple is that they are incredibly in love. When he was talking about what an honor it is to do the race with Amy I thought he was going to cry. Let’s hope this power couple doesn’t go the way of of Army Dave and Rachel. Ryan called Amy the biggest threat in the race, man or woman. Big Statement.

3) Caitlin and Brittany (BFFs) – Both girls played college sports and want us to know they had a lotta ‘tude on the field/court. Good. At the beginning of the episode, my impression was: here are two girls with fantastic, tremendously healthy hair. As the episode went on, though, I was pleasantly surprised at their competence and strength. Though it must be said that Brittany’s pronunciation of abacus (aBACKus) was one of the crazier ones of the night.

4) Natalie and Nadiya (twin sisters) – The moment the one with the bun took her hair down I was toast. I needed that bun! I have no idea how to tell these two apart now. As a unit, these two have the potential to fall into annoying territory very soon, but for tonight, anyway, they amused me. Remember the impromptu dancing that broke out as they did their fallopian tube challenge? And they were totally unhinged during the ping pong; I liked the way Natalie or Nadiya was barking “Relax!” while Natalie or Nadiya was getting worse and worse at hitting the ball. I also liked the way Natalie or Nadiya didn’t merely thank the tiny, child-player but rather picked her up and flung her ’round like a rag doll. Most of all, though, I love the way they both kept calling the girl a “he.” Boy did I love that.

5) Rob and Kelley (married monster truckers) – When Rob had to eat the fallopian tube dessert a second time around, I wanted to cry for him.

6) James and Mark “Abba” (friends) seem like good dudes. More great contestant hair here. James is a rocker who used to play with White Lion and Megadeath and Ozzy Osbourne and others, and Abba is an entertainment attorney. Together, these two wanna “rock the race” and I hope they do. When the Children Cry!

7) Josh and Brent (life partners/goat farmers) – I think I’m going to like their droll ways. Plus, I always appreciate stories about late bloomers and people starting a new chapter in life, so these guys are compelling to me for their interesting backstory. They’re used to being on TV (The Fabulous Beekman Boys– anyone here a fan? Never seen it myself) so hopefully that means they’ve mastered the art of giving good camera while avoiding Brenchel-style drama. How cute was Josh’s “I won a sporting event!”

NEXT: Gentle teachers, my ass

8 ) Gary and Will (BFFs and substitute teachers) – Who doesn’t love a short and tall pairing of humans? Nothing on earth is funnier to look at! These two have applied for the show seven times, and this super-fandom makes me both nervous and excited for what’s to come. Gary strikes me as a ticking time bomb. He seems one — maybe two — small mishaps away from freaking out. I’m really looking forward to that! And these two are wily. When they ran into the Chippendales guys they lied and said they hadn’t found the abacus lady. Which was the right move, of course, but the fib flowed out of them so seamlessly. As they explained it, they’re in it to win, and will cheat and deceive and do whatever is necessary to get there. In a season premiere episode marked by an overabundance of politeness, these two turkeys were the only ones talking competitively. I loved the disbelief and glee in Will’s voice when they left Chippendales in the dust and he said “we beat those guys.”

9) Trey and Lexi (dating couple) – He played college football at the University of Texas, and she was a cheerleader. Now she wants a ring so they can move in together. These two are pretty cute, though Lexi’s pronunciation of abacus (OCK-u- puss) might have been the nutsest of the night.

10) Jaymes and James (Chippendale friends) – I’m just extremely relieved that they didn’t wear their bow ties in the competition. The abs are impressive, but only time will tell if these two have enough brains to be competitive here after barely surviving elimination on leg one.

11) Rob and Sheila (engaged) – I like this couple, and even though there was no way they could thrive in the race, I wish we’d had just one or two more weeks with them. Do they remind anyone else of sweat-suited couple Ron and Sheila Albertson from Waiting For Guffman? Something about this picture made me draw the parallel. In any case, Rob and Sheila were basically absent from this episode. It’s as if they were just doing a cameo, for the sole purpose, perhaps, of pronouncing abacus as “a-BASKET” and then, later, “AL-ba-coss.” If it wasn’t for sweet Trey and Lexi bringing them over, it’s likely they would still be wandering around the Bund today.

So, TAR fans, what did you think of the season premiere and our new crop of racers? Any early favorites? Who do you think may not be long for this season? Let’s discuss – I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

ncG1vNJzZmidp2OwsLmOq5ycmaBkwamxjJqkmrKZo7RuvsCcnGarlZbAsLqMa2hmnaCewLCwxGZoaA%3D%3D