When last we left it, Amazing Race was becoming more X-Treme to the Max....Since people liked couples that fought, the producers gave them more bickering. Of course, these heel characters were so one dimensional, that they made the evil foreigner heel from the mid 80's WWF look complex by comarision. There's only so much you can discuss and analyze about a woman who is constantly yelling at her boyfriend.

Along the same lines, it's impossible to truly develop a character when you limit their experience to a high stress, but non diverse, setting. The high stress of the race actually hurts the show, instead of helping it (assuming that character develop is the reason you are watching. If you aren't, then the other issues will be discussed later). To a certain degree, you'll be able to see if the characters crumble under the pressure or if they are "clutch", but that's about it. That, and whether they own up to their own mistakes or take out their frustrations on others is all there is to the show. It's like how Real World now only shows you how people act when they are drunk. Yeah, it's fun for awhile, but it's unsatisfying.

If character development isn't your cup of tea, then I suppose you can actually be into the race. This is something that i would find interesting if the contests inolved some type of skill. Strategy, ingenuity, ability to adapt to new surroundings, ability to communicate w/ foreign people, etc. The race however tends to consist of thing such as finding the right key to go with the right lock. Or rolling bails of hay until you happen to stumble upon the next clue. The race is 90% a boring combination of luch, endurance, and physical prowless. Why should i care about watching which team gets lucky? One event involved driving cars that were on the brink of breaking down. Through no fault of hteir own, some teams had cars that broke down and had to wait on the side of the road until a tow truck came. Woo hoo, what fun.

and the absolute worst part of the show is that 55%-70% of it is pointless. The first legs of the race don't matter b/c they'll have a checkpoint halway through the show (or later) where everyone matches back up (oh, look the store doesn't open for another 12 hours). This might be a necessary evil to a race show....but I'm sure it can be done in a less offensive manner. For example, maybe not necessarily having the eliminations at the end of the tv hour would make things more interesting. but, as it stands now, there's really no reason to watch the 35 minutes of the episode.

And finally, if you watch the show b/c you are into seeing the exotic locations, you need help. Watch National Geographic on the discovery channel or something.

It's not that I don't get the appeal of the show..... I like it, and watch it. What i don't get is why it's so critically aclaimed. It's not really that much different than any of the other reality shows. It's dressed up in a nicer package b/c it rewards success instead of punishing failure, and takes place around the world, but that's it.