Note: As you may have guessed, this post contains full spoilers for Season 1. It contains no spoilers for any other seasons.

I recently started watching through The Amazing Race with my fiance, who had never seen the show before. As I believe the best place to start is at the beginning, Season 1 was the first on our list, and it did not disappoint.

I’m always happy to watch through Season 1. Even though I started watching the show during Season 18, I believe that the inaugural season is the one that I have watched the most times. Since I first received the DVD set at Christmas 2012, I have now watched the entire season a total of five times, including this one, and while I don’t keep records of how many times I’ve watched each season I do believe that will remain the most even after another viewing of each other season. Through all of this, Season 1 remains one of my favorites. I’m not sure if I’d put it as a top 5 season, but it quite likely will end up in or very near my top 10 if I decide to rank the seasons as well as I go through them.

So why do I love Season 1? Not only is it a solid season in its own right, and, of course, The Amazing Race, but it is also an entirely unique season, both in the beginning and end. Really, the whole season can be fairly neatly divided into three main segments, so I’ll discuss those individually.

SEGMENT 1: LEGS 1-3

Ah, the opening. An establishing portion of any season. But this season’s opening was particularly special because the episodes are literally the first episodes ever of The Amazing Race.

This fact is pretty obvious whenever you watch. Not only are the teams beginning to try and figure out the strategy of the game, where to go next, what to do about alliances and such, but more obviously, the viewers at the time knew nothing about the Race itself, and so Phil has to explain literally every aspect of the Race. And since it hasn’t yet been established, the exposition style is sometimes quite different from what it will soon become. Showing the leg 1 Pit Stop at the beginning of the leg, explaining when things open and what difference it makes, explaining the Songwe Museum clue in detail… things like this really give these episodes a flavor that is never repeated, and it’s a lot of fun if you can imagine how this would feel for a first-time viewer (or, I imagine, if you actually ARE a first-time viewer).

The editing is definitely a bit odd in the first segment, as editors preferred to show each team during one specific part of the leg, all at one time, which leads to weird parts like seeing Joe & Bill and Kevin & Drew at Victoria Falls in the same segment, when in reality they were 7-8 hours apart. On the other hand, there has not yet been time for all the drama that permeates the later season to unfold, so we get a few episodes without that – and for me, that is a plus.

At this point though, beyond the premiere, I’ve seen the opening legs so many times that they’ve lost some of their charm, so I wouldn’t put them as high now as I would have earlier. They’re more on the level of the second segment…

SEGMENT 2: LEGS 4-8

This is probably the least overall interesting segment of the season, at least as far as uniqueness goes. By this point in the race we’ve settled in some. The teams know how the Race works, we know how the Race works, and those little editorial idiosyncrasies from the first few legs are gone. This segment of the Race goes very similarly to any other early season, and is as a result not very special. That’s not to say it’s bad. It’s perfectly decent stuff, but if the entire season was like this then I wouldn’t love it nearly as much.

SEGMENT 3: LEGS 9-13

But the end. The end is where things really get amazing.

If you’ve watched the season (and I can’t imagine you haven’t if you’re reading this), you know how it goes. After the gigantic mess that is leg 9, Kevin & Drew and Joe & Bill get trapped by falling on the wrong side of operating hours, eventually dropping to an unwinnable position as it becomes the only extended two-team race in the show’s history. Now, if this happened every season, it probably wouldn’t be too interesting, or we’d get tired of it always happening, but this is literally the only time in the Race’s history that this will happen. (A couple of later seasons do have fun bits where for several legs, teams fall significantly behind, but in those either all trailing teams are eliminated, or else a giant equalizer is plopped in place by production.) And because it is the only time that it happens, it’s really fascinating to watch unfold. Even in the later episodes where this aspect is diminished somewhat, we still have the epic scramble for third place by the trailing teams, and then the final showdowns between the top teams, to keep things exciting.

The whole thing is just so unusual, so crazy, that it’s amazing to see happen for the first time, and rewatches are enhanced by closely scrutinizing things both during and before this segment, to watch the stage get set and the intricacies of how it unfolds. Certain parts are just surreal to see.

That’s what truly makes the season special for me.

THE SEASON IN GENERAL

Of course, the uniqueness alone does not make the season great. It’s what makes it stand out, sure, but the season still needs a solid foundation – and that’s exactly what it has, in the forms of both the racecourse and the teams.

Let’s address the tasks first, since those are undeniably the season’s weak point. As is common in early seasons, Season 1’s tasks are not designed to allow teams to gain or lose a lot of ground. Instead, many of them are simply thrilling, frightening, or culturally relevant and feel more like they’re put there for the experience than to present a tight competition. There are only a handful of tasks throughout the season where one team passed another or went out noticeably ahead when they started behind – the Eiffel Tower Roadblock, finding Foucalt’s Pendulum, camel riding, biking Detour, first Indian Roadblock, searching for a private car, the Chinese transportation rally, the eating Roadblock, and the dogsled race, as well as a few Detours where teams chose differing options. Other than those, teams went into a task and came out in the same order, often all taking about the same amount of time.

Of course, that’s not all bad, because quite a few of these tasks were interesting or produced amusing moments. Swinging into Batoka George Gorge, riding in a glider over Italy, or walking through a tiger pit are still interesting things to watch. But overall, if you like the tasks to produce meaningful differences, this is not your season.

However, on the racecourse, this is made up for in two ways. One is for the competitive element, which, as in many of the early seasons, comes primarily from transportation. Teams have to navigate themselves places. Teams have to negotiate through an airport strike in Tunisia. Teams can move ahead by learning of local shortcuts. Teams have to choose which method of transportation is better (seriously, this particular element is all but extinct in modern TAR). This doesn’t always work, but it often does and helps massively in making up for the tasks.

The other way in which the racecourse helps the quality of the season is simply the places they go. For the inaugural season, they chose an overall good course. Of course, one obvious thing is that since this is the first time any of these locations has been visited on the show, producers were able to go crazy on the famous landmarks. Victoria Falls, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Sahara Desert, the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Wall of China all make appearances. But in addition, all around they visit a nice variety of destinations, show off the diversity of the different places they’re going, and are good at including culturally relevant locations and tasks. It’s not perfect (especially seeing as only four of the continents are touched), but it’s pretty solid and enjoyable to watch.

The last main aspect to this season is the teams. Season 1 certainly did not have the strongest group of teams ever – but it’s also far from the weakest. There’s a lot of variety in the teams, and other than the couples no two teams are very similar (and even amongst the three regular couples there’s a lot of difference in personality), so overall casting did a decent job. And while I wouldn’t say that any all-time greats were yielded by the season, it’s certain that no all-time bads were either, and the top teams would all be pretty solid contributors to any season.

Speaking of which, this is one of the most top-heavy seasons ever as far as teams go, in terms both of performance and of editing. The top three teams from the first leg went on to be the final three teams, and were generally in the front-running pack except for some hiccups (and Joe & Bill’s extended defeat). After the first leg, Kevin & Drew were right up with the lead pack all the way up until their defeat in legs 10 and 11. These four teams dominated the season, taking all leg wins except for Pat & Brenda’s random Fast Forward victory. The remaining teams were all left in a more or less underdog role, getting picked off one by one until none remained. The only team that came anywhere close to the success of the top four was Nancy & Emily, and putting it that way when the best they did was back-to-back third place finishes is a bit of a stretch. But still, those were the only non-Fast Forward finishes in the top three that any team outside the eventual top four recorded across the whole race.

With this success and ultimate importance to the story, these same four teams also eat up the editorial spotlight. Again, Nancy & Emily are the only team that really compares in this regard. Go back to the first episode again, and see who the biggest characters are. Frank. Team Guido. Kevin & Drew. Paul & Amie – okay, so the comparison is not perfect. But if you look at the trailing teams in the premiere, Kevin & Drew get WAY more airtime than most of the others, and Joe & Bill and Frank & Margarita get significant portions as well. (Only Rob & Brennan really missed out due to taking the Fast Forward and thus not doing a whole lot during the leg.) This continues throughout the season – there is never any doubt that the top five teams are the principle characters.

Now to discuss an important aspect to the racecourse that sees its prime form during the initial seasons:

THE FAST FORWARD

For those who might not be aware, I’ll give a brief history lesson on the Fast Forward.

During the first four seasons of the Race, there was a Fast Forward located at the beginning of every leg (except, I presume, the last). You all should know how the Fats Forward works, so I won’t explain it to you, but the kicker in terms of strategy, besides the fact that there was only one per leg, was that each team could only use the Fast Forward once over the course of the season.

Starting in Season 5, each season has been limited to 0-3 Fast Forwards. This effectively killed it as a meaningful strategic tool and it became more of a gimmick. In recent seasons, it’s failed to appear at all more often than not, and further silliness with it has even made it so that the decision to use it rarely turns out well for a team. Because of these factors, I predict (after the end of Season 30) that it will likely totally cease to exist in the race sometime in the near future.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Instead, since this is Season 1 we’re discussing, I wanted to talk about how it was a great strategic tool back in the day.

The implications of the Fast Forward are immediately obvious: a free leg win for the team that takes it. Overall, this is indeed how the twist is used, and as long as the team that takes it is in a position comparable to that of the other teams, it can reasonably be expected that it is the ultimate result.

So, having this leg win available is a tempting prospect. Maybe you want to start off the season strong like Rob & Brennan. Maybe you’ve been doing middling and want to try to kick off a better streak, like Frank & Margarita. Maybe you’re ahead and want to preserve the momentum, like Kevin & Drew. Maybe you’re behind and want to resurrect your chances, like Joe & Bill and Nancy & Emily.

But there are the two risks involved. For one, if you go for it but another team beats you to it, you’re probably in trouble. Dave & Margaretta and Nancy & Emily both experienced that here. And for another, if you use it then it’s gone, and you might end up kicking yourself later, wishing you still had it. I’m sure that in the middle of Tunisia, Rob & Brennan were wishing they could use theirs to climb out of the back of the pack. If Kevin & Drew hadn’t used theirs in Paris, they could have used it in Thailand or China to overcome the operating hours gap and get back in with the leading teams. And of course, even a Fast Forward cannot make up for poor judgement, as Joe & Bill found out firsthand.

Overall, this makes for a meaningful and interesting strategic choice. I especially like seeing what happens later on when only a few teams are able to use the Fast Forward.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say about the season in general. Let’s move on to what will be the regular features for these posts:

GOOD THINGS ABOUT THE SEASON

-Fast Forward present in every leg.

-Lots of major landmarks.

-No terrible teams.

-The beginning.

-The ending.

-A bunch of tasks were interesting or showcased the local culture.

-Close two-team races at the end, both in legs 11 and 13, were lots of fun and fairly tense to watch.

-The whole ending sequence in New York is great.

-Joe & Bill falling 24 hours behind the other teams and ending in Alaska is a great ending to their storyline as the season’s villains.

-Teams very often had to choose a method of transportation, which was another interesting strategic element and especially interesting when teams chose differing methods.

BAD THINGS ABOUT THE SEASON

-No truly standout teams or leg designs.

-Tasks were often finishable in about the same amount of time by each team.

-Some tasks weren’t particularly exotic or interesting, such as everything in leg 10.

-Non-elimination legs were kind of pointless.

I don’t have a lot else bad to say about the season, really.

LEG RANKINGS

Before I dive in, a couple of things.

Firstly, I should give credit where credit is due. This and the team rankings coming later were inspired by, and the general format copied from, Logan Saunders’ TAR blogs at thesupacoowackiestblogintheuniverse.wordpress.com .

Secondly, I’ll explain roughly how leg rankings will work. This is a bit simpler than the team rankings. Leg rankings are based off of the leg design in terms of locations, the leg design in terms of tasks, and what actually happens during the episode. They’re basically rough measures of how much I enjoyed the legs.

Without further ado, let’s go on:

13) Leg 12: Beijing, China – Middle of Nowhere, US (Other than Joe & Bill officially becoming a day behind the others and the Great Wall of China making an appearance, there was nothing very interesting going on in this leg. Climbing a glacier, walking up to a pavilion, and jumping on a trampoline pretending to get tossed because you broke the blanket are pretty mundane tasks. The fact that it’s non-elimination and ultimately everything in it makes zero difference doesn’t help.)

12) Leg 6: Gabes, Tunisia – Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy (That one dramatic moment aside, the airport scramble at the beginning was pretty good and watching the teams branch out, plus Lenny & Karyn jumping in front by being patient and staying behind, was quite interesting. Unfortunately once things got started in Italy it was pretty boring, slight amusement from the Smart Car Roadblock aside. Non-elimination leg to make things not matter + nothing else really significant happening = usually dull leg.)

11) Leg 3: Paris – Chateau de Baux, France (I love the beginning – the rush to get the La Grande Roue before it closes, Kevin & Drew’s visit to the FF, sleeping on the streets, etc. But after everything opens the leg just isn’t that interesting, including the train ride to the Pit Stop.)

10) Leg 4: Chateau des Baux, France – El Djem, Tunisia (Way too much focus on building up drama and stuff on the boat ride and stuff at the beginning of the leg. Once teams got to the market it got a lot better. Detour was acceptable and interesting, navigating through the chaotic market. Taxi-or-train choice was interesting and meaningful, with lasting consequences. Roadblock was pretty cool if nothing else.)

9) Leg 2: Songwe Village, Zambia – Paris, France (I love the Songwe Museum clue. Rest of the Africa stuff is pretty meh but we get some fun times at the Eiffel Tower. Just not enough in general to propel the leg that high.)

8) Leg 8: Agra – Bikaner, India (This is a NEL, but it’s a good one. On the one hand, all the destinations and traveling the teams do is interesting to watch and gives a good view of various aspects of the Indian culture – Taj Mahal, some other cool palaces, travelling by overnight train while interacting with the locals, and a temple to rats. Narratively this episode also is interesting and helps to set the stage for the remainder of the Race. Frank & Margarita’s FF lead is diminished but not gone at the start, Rob & Brennan have cab troubles, Joe & Bill’s money woes begin, and they and Nancy & Emily are left in the back-of-the-pack position that triggers the next leg’s events.)

7) Leg 7: Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy – Agra, India (The glider task is lots of fun to watch, especially with Kevin & Drew’s commentary. The bike thing is also not too horribly boring to me. We get our first good look at culture shock, although after a while it starts becoming grating – especially when the teams start lashing out at the locals. Frank & Margarita’s FF might be my favorite ever, thanks to Frank’s reaction and the huge lead they get from it.)

6) Leg 13: Middle of Nowhere – New York City, US (There wasn’t a lot of good material for this episode, but editors milked it for all it was worth and we got a decently entertaining episode as a result. I love the idea of the dogsled challenge and I think they should try that next time the Race returns to Alaska – the showdown in the middle was also fun to watch and made you forget that it made no difference in the end. Rob’s cellphone strategy was great. The final showdown in NYC is a classic, and Joe & Bill reading that Rob & Brennan have won while still stuck in Alaska is great. Not too good of a standalone episode, but it’s a worthy conclusion to the city.)

5) Leg 9: Bikaner, India – Krabi, Thailand (Leg itself was weird but not too fascinating, as it was almost entirely travel with a quick stop at a tiger pit. But the drama is oh-so-good. First is the epic Fast Forward showdown between Joe & Bill and Nancy & Emily, then is the ending part where we realize that Joe & Bill actually screwed up massively but are still in because Nancy & Emily quit. The ending is kind of mind-blowing to somebody seeing it for the first time, and on repeat watches the episode is fascinating to watch unfold as you know that three teams are essentially making game-ending mistakes.)

4) Leg 11: Ao Nang, Thailand – Beijing, China (First part was okay and the things they did were interesting enough to keep it mildly entertaining. But the second half gives us the truly epic showdown between Kevin & Drew and Joe & Bill. The end up super close together for most of the episode, giving us a truly intense and great viewing experience – even as the final nail is driven in the coffin of whichever team survives.

3) Leg 1: New York City, US – Songwe Village, Zambia (The premiere is and will always be a classic. The opening is great. Frank gets upset as Joe & Bill beat him at every turn. Rob & Brennan make a strange strategic maneuver. Team Guido is ridiculous. Frank is hilariously over-the-top. Batoka Gorge is a winner. I like the style in which Phil presents the tasks and other information for the leg. I think this is my most-watched TAR episode ever, and with good reason.)

2) Leg 5: El Djem – Sahara Desert, Tunisia (The first part was OK. The radio challenge was decent and Kevin & Drew taking the roofs to throw off Team Guido was a classic moment. But what really propels this leg up is making teams navigate themselves through the Sahara Desert. It’s really cool (not literally, of course) and almost every single team struggles with it at least some. Riding a camel isn’t the best task ever but is appropriate. The concern that other teams showed for Paul & Amie at the end gets the point across that this was legitimately potentially dangerous conditions the teams had to deal with, but everybody’s okay at the end so that’s a plus rather than a minus.)

1) Leg 10: Krabi – Ao Nang, Thailand (No, the stuff the teams have to do on the leg itself isn’t the most fascinating, and yes, it is a non-elimination. But this is the leg where the final separations truly unfold, and it’s fascinating to watch. First we get Kevin & Drew struggling to beat the hours of operation, and ultimately failing. Then Team Guido leaves too late to do anything for the night anyway, and the leadup to that is quite interesting indeed. Seeing Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita check in to the Pit Stop, followed immediately by Joe & Bill leaving the previous one, is when it really sinks in just how far behind they are. Operating hours have never been more interesting.)

TEAM RANKINGS

An explanation of how these will work is also in order. Team rankings criteria, and what a team ranking means, are a bit more nebulous and unclear than leg rankings. The factors I take into account when ranking teams are: how much I enjoyed them on the show (both in terms of likability and entertainment), how interesting they were as characters, their relevance to the narrative of the season, and the amount of time they last. Thus, lategame teams are often likely to rank higher unless they’re particularly bad, or early-game teams are particularly good. This season in particular, the rankings are largely affected by the focus given to the top four teams throughout, which helps a lot in beefing up their positions.

To the rankings:

11) Kim & Leslie (Yeah, they got screwed by the edit, but they didn’t seem especially likable anyway. No tears shed by me that they were gone. They seemed to take too much pleasure in Amie’s annoyance, and “The thing I’m most afraid of is… dying” isn’t enough to save them for me.)

10) Pat & Brenda (They took a Fast Forward then got confused by Foucalt’s Pendulum. Pat’s glasses were on crooked for a bit before jumping at Batoka. Not much else to say about ’em.)

9) Matt & Ana (“Batoka George? Batoka George? Batoka George?”)

8) Lenny & Karyn (First dating couple. Karyn was serious about the relationship but getting increasingly frustrated by Lenny as the Race went on, which generally translated to non-enjoyable viewing. Her yells for Lenny never resonated with me. A couple of fun bits like Lenny making up answers to the Eiffel Tower Roadblock or their incredibly awkward high five in Leg 5, but overall I didn’t enjoy them very much.)

7) Dave & Margaretta (Typical older couple – very likable, not especially good at the race. They, especially Dave, seemed to struggle with details. I liked Margaretta complaining in leg 4 about Dave running all the time. Ultimately they just don’t have enough going on to get them too high.)

6) Nancy & Emily (I liked them fine, but for the most part they simply weren’t the most interesting characters. Their differring reactions to the increasing stress of the Race were somewhat interesting as Emily got fired up but Nancy just got tired of the whole thing. Their throwing in the towel in Leg 9 is simultaneously fascinating and incredibly frustrating to watch. If they hadn’t quit, they might have even had a (very slim) chance of winning with a Fast Forward still to use in a future leg!)

5) Paul & Amie (I seem to like them more than most. Amie is likeable, plus their dynamic is quite interesting. Paul didn’t even want to do this in the first place, and only did it for Amie. He keeps wanting to quit because Amie is getting frustrated/sick from the Race. It’s worth noting that most of their arguments only come because Paul loves Amie and doesn’t like seeing her get upset.)

4) Rob & Brennan (Original winners, and probably the correct ones out of the final 3. Some amusing bits (especially their continual bad luck with taxis), but overall they’re much less interesting than the other teams in the final 4. In this most recent watch I noticed that they tend to low-key complain about their situation a lot, but they always took it relatively philosophically and soldiered through. They complained early on about equalizers always removing their leads that they made – eventually they got their wish!)

3) Joe & Bill (The original villains. For my part, I neither see them as exceptionally villainous nor as groundbreaking strategists, just mostly solid racers who squander their money and resultantly fall to the back for the second half and die the longest Race death ever. I think they’re much more entertaining to watch when you stop looking at them as a formidable foe for the others to overcome and start looking at them as these guys who think they’re the best but keep underperforming or screwing up to various degrees, while worrying too much about where the rest of the teams are in comparison to them. That’s what got them to this high of a level for me.)

2) Kevin & Drew (The fan favorites. I think I enjoy them more every time I watch them (which started with not enjoying them very much at all to start with!) Despite being the frat bros who argue a lot and make a lot of dumb jokes, they have a good amount of character depth and are shown to be pretty interesting guys. Not all of their humor hits home for me, but a decent amount of it does. Their downfall is interesting. They tend to enhance most of the scenes that they are in, which gets them this ranking (and frankly, this is not the strongest cast ever to go up against).

1) Frank & Margarita (Frank has to be one of my favorite individual characters in TAR history. He’s a bit of a ham and I think he knows it. I probably most enjoy his over-the-top reactions to going to NYC in the finale, winning the FF in leg 7, and everything in the premiere, but he’s a solidly entertaining character throughout. And Frank & Margarita, without a doubt, have the most interesting in-team relationship and story of the season – the story of separating parents attempting to reconcile and get back together in the context of the race, and (seemingly) succeeding while also showing the signs of the permanent separation that comes later IRL. They aren’t really villains and are pretty rootable even up to the end, but make for sufficiently satisfying losers to Rob & Brennan in the end as sparks have started to fly again and they’re overconfident heading to their hometown. Overall, between a fascinating story and Frank being Frank, they’re easily the top team of the season for me.)

CONCLUSION

It’s a testimony to the overall quality of the season that, despite 9/11 happening less than a week after the premiere, the show turned out to be popular enough to continue, and is still going sixteen and a half years later (and counting!). I humbly submit that if you don’t like Season 1, you probably won’t like TAR. This season offers some stuff that no other season can, which makes it an interesting watch at any time, and is overall quite solid.

And that’s a wrap! I will soon begin watching Season 2, so once I complete that watch I can write up the next post in this series. In the meantime, I am probably going to soon write up more in-depth/verbose leg and team rankings – same order, just more writing about the legs/teams themselves, so you can look for that coming relatively soon (hopefully).

Please give me feedback if you have any so that I can be encouraged in what I’m doing well, and do as good of a job of this as possible! This applies if you read this on the night that I post it or five years out – I’m always happy to hear from you. Thanks!