Amazing Race 5

I’ve found my new favorite show. I watched _[“The Amazing Race 5”:http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race5/]_ last night and loved every minute of it. I’ve seen advertisements for this show many times before and was always mildly interested, but somehow I never got around to watching it. I’m not sure how I missed four whole seasons, but I’m definitely hooked, now.

I’ve never been a big fan of reality TV, since most of it is pure drivel — steamy romance, bickering, foul-mouthed slander, etc. — but this show is clean and has a great premise. Teams compete to see who can be the first to reach various checkpoints. They don’t know where the next checkpoint is until they read a clue found at the current checkpoint. At the end of each episode, they reach a pitstop, where the team in last place gets eliminated, and everyone gets to take a breather.

I’m hoping my brother-in-law will get interested, too. He and I, along with several other family members, had a bracket wager on the third _American Idol_. We’ll have to see about setting up something similar for this show.