The Amazing Race 35, Episode 1

Los Angeles, CA (USA) - Bangkok (Thailand)

Broadcasts of Season 35 of The Amazing Race began this week, with some changes and some reversions to pre-pandemic form for the around-the-world travel “reality” television show.

Sheridan and Alexandra, the first pair of racers to be eliminated, were among those cast members who talked in this episode about how they had been watching The Amazing Race since they were little children. That suggests a curious shift from The Amazing Race as a way to fulfill a bucket-list travel fantasy to the “reality” TV show as a bucket-list fantasy in its own right.

In the real world, my sense is that people are not only travelling more than during the pandemic but are willing to spend more than they were before the pandemic in order to catch up on deferred travel dreams and bucket list trips. Travel companies seem to think the same thing, judging from the resurgence of travel advertising on this week’s broadcast of “The Amazing Race”.

I’m travelling more cautiously than before, but I’m travelling again. Next week I’ll be in Iceland, representing the National Writers Union and the International Federation of Journalists in discussions of generative artificial intelligence and other issues at the annual meeting of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO).

How about you? What’s on your travel bucket list? How has it changed since before the COVID-19 pandemic?

One of the major changes in The Amazing Race this season is that the episodes have been lengthened from 60 to 90 minutes.

With screenwriters organized in the Writers Guild of America out on a justified and ultimately successful strike over residual payments for online streaming and use of generative artificial intelligence to replace human creative workers, TV networks have been scrambling to find enough attractive programming to fill their schedules without writers.

Extended use of “unscripted” reality shows, especially those already filmed before the strike, has been part of the TV networks’ attempt (which failed, fortunately) to ride out and break the WGA strike. A settlement to the strike was reached this week, but by then the fall TV broadcast schedule was already set.

Each episode of The Amazing Race 35 was re-edited from the originally planned 60 minutes (as in all previous seasons of “The Amazing Race”) to 90 minutes of air time including advertisements. It remains to be seen whether the additional time will be used to show us more about travel practicalities or more of the cast members’ travel and relationship soap operas.

Meanwhile, in a reversion to pre-pandemic practice, the cast and crew of The Amazing Race again traveled by scheduled airline, rather than on a chartered plane as in the last two seasons.

After a high-wire challenge in downtown L.A., the racers had to fly to Bangkok. That’s not as simple a choice of airline or route as you might think: There have been no scheduled direct flights between the US and Thailand since 2018. No Thai airline serves the U.S., and no U.S. airline serves Thailand. The racers were offered a choice of connections via Taipei on either of the two Taiwan-based airlines that serve the U.S., China Airlines or EVA Air.

Neither China Airlines nor EVA Air is as well known in the U.S. as some other Asian airlines, but both have long been good choices for savvy budget travellers between the USA and Southeast Asia.

China Airlines is owned by the government of Taiwan, and started out operating mostly charter flights, mainly for cargo rather than passengers, including transporting supplies for the “secret” US war in Laos. EVA Air had its origins in a very different cargo transportation operation, as an airline division of the Evergreen Group whose distinctive green ships and green cargo containers were already a familiar site at seaports and intermodal terminals around the world.

Despite choosing to travel on Taiwanese airlines, the TV producers missed an opportunity — as do too many through travellers — by changing planes in Taipei without stopping over. Viewers weren’t even shown the Taipei airport, falsely suggesting that the racers’ flights went nonstop from LAX to BKK.

Taiwan is an interesting and distinctive place that’s worth visiting for at least a few days if you are passing through. The Amazing Race has visited Taiwan only once, in season 19. The language barrier can be high, but isn’t insurmountable. Most of the foreign visitors to Taiwan are ethnic Chinese visiting friends and family or travelling on business, but in tourist areas and big cities, you can often find a visiting Taiwanese-American or English-speaking overseas Chinese visitor from Singapore, Malaysia, or elsewhere to help you. Taipei is a mega-city, but the island has areas of great natural beauty, especially in the mountains and along the rugged east coast. Because people came to Taiwan from throughout mainland China, you can find a microcosm and melange of every variety of regional Chinese culture, art, and cuisine, in addition to indigenous Taiwanese influences.

Does the return of The Amazing Race to some of its pre-pandemic ways mean that a trip around the world is back on your travel bucket list, or that you are back to pursuing that bucket list in the post-pandemic, covid-endemic real world and not just though armchair travel as during the peak of the pandemic?

Please share your fantasies and your plans in the comments.