Episode one of Season 20 served to introduce this race's cast, which we discussed last time, but was also a leg in its own right. Normally there are certain rituals to the first episode. For instance, Phil introduces each team one by one, then they all line up or are in a big arc, Phil reminds the audience what the basic rules are since frankly, if a team has gotten to the starting line and doesn't know they're in a race for a million dollars, telling them now won't save them. Then he does a variation of his usual send-off: "The world is waiting...travel safe....go!" And they're off.
In the early Races, the first clue was sitting on your backpack and told you a location in a foreign country to travel to. It would also say that there would be three flights out at different times, and it was first come, first serve. That tended to spread the teams out in the early going so that the producers could focus on only a few teams at a time. It also meant that the first team eliminated was inevitably from the last plane in, so the early teams were battling for position while the last few teams were battling for survival.
Over the last couple of Races, though, they've added an intermediary step where you have to complete a challenge at the starting line before you get that first clue. The problem is, the initial challenge is a luck thing, not a skill thing. In this case you had to pull down balloons over a vineyard to find the ones that held clues. There were eleven clues and a hundred balloons, so the last team to find a balloon, Misa and Maiya ended up wasting two hours looking for the damn thing, but that wasn't enough to keep them off the last plane, so it makes you wonder what the point of it was in the first place. Especially since they skipped all the airport and travel stuff and cut from Misa and Maiya finally getting their clue to the teams from the first (of only two this time) plane getting going.
They make it to Santa Barbara, Argentina, which was cute since the Race started in Santa Barbara, California, and get to the first Roadblock. That means you pick one teammate to do the task and the other to watch. Since the destination was a small airport, it was pretty easy to guess that the task would probably involve exiting an airplane in flight, so pretty much everyone put the more adventurous partner up for the task and made sure to not pick the team members who are scared of heights. Which was then that they discover that it's a flipped task. The non-participating teammate has to skydive, while the active one has to follow a map to find them. And, despite some hand-wringing, everyone gets out of the plane and to the ground easily, since it's a tandem jump.
Let me take a moment to note something here. Never, in any of the Races I have seen, has any contestant ever failed to complete one of the various scary tasks, like bungee jumping, ziplining, or skydiving. And yet, every time they show one of those tasks they always go to commercial on someone saying something like "I can't do it!" And then, every single damn time, we get back from commercial and said person can do it after all, and away they go out the airplane. They've been pulling the "will they or won't they" editing since the very first Race, and the answer is always "of course they will, dumbass...there's a million bucks on the line!" I'm tired of the gimmick. Unless someone actually chickens out, I wish they'd cut that trick out of their playbook.
Anyway, while the exiting the plane part was easy for everyone, the partners driving by map to find them wasn't as simple for everyone. In fact, two teams in the second group had problems. Joey "Fitness" of the Jersey Boys can't drive stick, so his progress was slow. Meanwhile, Maiya manages to drive off the road and get her SUV stuck, requiring some random passersby to save her by winching her vehicle out. It turns out that one big mistake is worse than Joey "Fitness'" driving misadventures, so Misa and Maiya are the last teams to arrive at the next challenge.
Said challenge was to watch a pair of chefs make two types of empanadas, then to make sixty of each type yourself. The sneaky part was that the meat empanadas and the veggie empanadas had to be folded closed in different ways. If you didn't notice that, you could waste a lot of time doing half of your empanadas wrong. Which is precisely what Team Border Patrol members Art and JJ do. Even though they'd arrived at the challenge first, they ended up coming in third, while getting lapped by Blonde Rachel and Dave, who arrive first and get the coveted Express Pass, and Brendon and Red Rachel, who come in second.
The show itself is pretty unconcerned with the remaining teams, choosing instead to focus on the drama of the bottom-feeders, the Jersey Boys and Misa and Maiya. Misa and Maiya actually get the task done first, despite arriving last. But, having made the poor decision to leave their bags in the car they lose time running back to get them and then, in the most inexplicable Racing moment I've ever seen, manage to get out behind the building and within line of sight of Phil...at which point, they turned around and went back inside! According to the post leg interview, they somehow managed to not see Phil, despite him being right there!
Well, fail that badly, and karma will strike you down. Before Misa and Maiya manage to work their way back to where Phil is, the Jersey Boys finish their empanadas and aren't struck blind by panic, see Phil, and come in tenth. Which is a tragedy, because I don't care for them, and was hoping the designated Doomed Hot Girl Team would be able to last at least until the second episode. But it was not to be.
So, after episode one, here are the standings:
1st - Blonde Rachel and Dave
2nd - Red Rachel and Brendon
3rd - JJ and Art (Border Patrol)
4th - Nary and Jamie (DEA)
5th - Vanessa and Ralph
6th - Eliott and Andrew (Twins)
7th - Kerri and Stacy (Cousins)
8th - Dave and Cherie (Clowns)
9th - Bopper and Mark
10th - Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Jersey Boys)
OUT - Misa and Maiya
Dead Team Obituary: Misa and Maiya
I hate to say it, but that was one of the worst performances over the course of a single leg that I've ever seen. Fine, being last out of the vineyard was probably just bad luck. Once they were the last ones left, they'd have to find the one clue out of a hundred balloons. And it didn't even really hurt them, since they were still on the same plane as four other teams. But driving off the road and getting your car stuck? Leaving your bags in the car? Finding your way to the Pit Stop and then turning around? And since they only lost by a matter of minutes, correcting even one of those mistakes, especially the last one, would have kept them in the Race!
Rarely has a team self-destructed so completely, and usually when you see such failures it's well into the Race whre Killer Fatigue starts to set in and people start making stupid mistakes because they're no longer thinking clearly. But this was in the very first leg! You shouldn't be that tired yet! Especially for a young and fit team. There's really no excuse for that.
Alas, the Doomed Hot Girls Team proved to be exceptionally doomed in record fashion.
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