You wouldn’t think you would say that watching The Amazing Race perhaps, but there you are. So I’m continuing my inane trek to catch up on all season on TAR, and I just started Season 8. True fans will realize this is the first “family” season, and one of the highest rated “most annoying teams”. But let’s get right to the oddities.
Right out of the gate, they announce the families and already it hits home this is going to be an odd season. “…and we have the Weaver family, blah, blah, blah, … and we have the Black family..”, who indeed, were black. Thankfully their last name was actually Black and this wasn’t some racist announcer. On a sad note, they seemed nice, calm and friendly, and were first to be eliminated.
Next we have a dad and his three daughters (guessing 2 in high school, 1 in college). Then we have 3 brothers and 1 sister, all college age. This only gets awkward as the brothers start talking about the daughters. Dude, that’s jailbait. Of course, this was made worse when one of the daughters mooned the siblings. Yeah, I said that. Of course the guys responded in kind later, but you expect that from guys honestly. Though maybe not on TV.
The Paolo family had a fun NY accent. Unfortunately they couldn’t stop yelling and actually hitting each other. You might expect this from the dad, but he was rather collected. But the oldest son and his mom kept smacking each other around. Hello, child services?!
Yet the families weren’t the only one to make us feel weird. The producers decided to have a stop and activity in Talladega. There they had to go out on the track and race a weird family bicycle. This was fine for everyone. Everyone except the family who’s dad had been killed on a racetrack. You’d think someone might have looked that up ahead of time. Even more impressive, the producers had yet another race event later in the show. This time go karts, but still. Why not just punch that family in the gut upon arrival and get it over with?
There was also a family where the dad is old school biblical and believed the man rules everything. They were eliminated early. In the end, the young siblings edged out the dad/daughter team by only minutes to win it all. Sadly, not much “where are they now” gossip to be found on this season. Perhaps everyone just wants to forget the awkward.
Clay “sorry to hear about the bumps on your ass” Berry
