Lost In The Amazing Race

Thursday is TV night for me. Two of my favourite TV shows are on, Lost followed by The Amazing Race.

LOST

Lost, if you haven't seen it before is about a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a remote island. The show is created by J.J Abrams. I loved his other series Alias with the constant twists and turns. I gave up Alias after two seasons when things just got too strange and nothing ever really happened, you don't get that satisfaction of learning more about the conspiracy.

So far, Lost is shaping up the same way. The flashback sequences in the first season was very entertaining as you learnt more about each character, but now they just seem a little annoying. After teasing the audience for a whole season about the "other people" on the island, what lies underneath the island, the monster and all these other secrets, nothing much has been revealed so far. So we know that there are other people on the island who want the little boy Walt for some reason, and we've seen under the island that there is a scientific research centre of some sort. However, so much is still unknown and will probably never be known. I'll still keep watching as it is still interesting but unless they give some answers this season, I may not be watching next season. You can only tease the audience so much before they lose interest.

The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race is one of the grandfathers of the reality genre. While other reality tv shows have come and gone, only The Amazing Race and Survivor have had enduring power. I've watched The Amazing Race right from the first season when I must have been one of only a few people to watch. I used to tape it at all hours in the night. I even wrote in to Channel 7 to stop moving the show around and put it in a decent time slot, obviously to no avail. Finally Channel 7 realised what a good show it was and from about season 6, started to schedule it in a good time slot. Now, the show is winning its time slot in the ratings.

The Amazing Race is simply a race around the world where each team consists of two people with an existing relationship trying to finish the race first. The part of the show that really appeal to me are the great locations, you see places and things that you may never experience personally. The team dynamics are also important, choosing the right people in any reality show is one of the major key to its success. The Amazing Race always seem to pick very interesting teams. The cocky, arrogant, loud, rude Americans really make the show. I can't see another culture doing this show as well. Like imagine Japanese racers, they would be too polite to push people around or yell at taxi drivers. No, Americans really do loud, rude and arrogant the best. Occasionally the good guys do win, like in season 7 when the nice couple who helped other people won.