“I Told You, Less Martinis and More Cardio” spoilers below:

Things that Happened

It’s back! And we are too! We promise to play catch-up over the next few days!

The race is on! After the obligatory introductions and back stories, the teams must get to the Miami International Airport and fly to Ecuador! There are two flights: American Airlines and Copa. American Airlines leaves later but arrives earlier. The teams split the flights fairly evenly, with Rob and Amber (Romber), Danny and Oswald (Cha Cha Cha), Teri and Ian (nickname-less and apparently aware of such….poor them) and others on the AA flight and Dustin and Kanidce (the Blondes/Beauty Queens), Joe and Bill (Team Guido), David and Mary (Kentucky) and others on Copa. Once they get to Ecuador, they need to find Pim restaurant, where the get a check out time, a meal and a place to sleep. Based on what time they get to the restaurant, they can leave at 7:00, 7:15 or 7:30. Jokes and introductions all around, while Kevin and Drew (the Bald team) nearly throw themselves out of contention with a fall to the ground and a very sore shoulder. But not to worry, all is well!

The next morning, teams head to the detour in a gigantic national park with an unspellable name. Romber follows a cab, others navigate calmly and Charla and Mirna and John Vito and Jill get very lost and end up on the wrong side of the park. To make it to the detour, they need to cut across the park, which takes seemingly forever. Kevin and Drew get in trouble again (today is not their day) with a flat tire Drew refuses to fix (well, it could be Kevin, I cannot tell them apart yet). They eventually make it to the detour, where teams need to choose between wrangling and grooming a horse or finding parts of a missing soldiers uniform in a giant field. Romber was the only team to pick the uniform one, but gave up quickly, switched to the horse one and still finished the leg first. Would you expect anything else from this team? Teams finished in a fairly unsurprising order, except David and Mary stay, and John Vito and Jill go home. That’s what you get for not being able to read a map. However, they declared their never-ending love for each other, and even though they came last in the race, they are first in each other’s hearts.

Things that were good

• Lots of hilarious comments! When there are this many teams in the race, it’s hard to flesh out anyone’s personalities, but the editors did a great job of collecting and putting together sound bites that made the episode enjoyable.
• David and Mary tricking the Beauty Queens! They haven’t gotten over last season yet!
• Romber is on their game! This wouldn’t be a season if they sucked.
• It’s back! With all these teams knowing the other racers styles and habits, it should be an interesting season.

Things that were not so good

• This was a weak start. There was no roadblock and the detour choices were fairly lame. Getting spoon-fed cars and nights off may lead to building up a more difficult and exciting race later, but makes for fairly boring television.
• All the “Oh my god, I loved you on Season X” talk, complete with an entire interview segment about how Rob and Amber are the team to beat. I think we know that already. Danny and Oswald summed it up nicely “Of course we know Rob and Amber. We do live on this planet.”
• Not making the teams wrangle their own horses. Now that would have been great tv!

Worth watching if……

…You need a refresher of all the teams in this race. Knowing who these teams are already makes their introductions non-essential, but a reminder is nice. Plus, it’s a good show. This is only the first episode. It will get better, it always does.

In Five Words

The race is back! Hooray!

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