SVNBob

Because it likely wasn't supposed to be a thing at all. At least, that's the speculation. If you take a closer look at this cast, you'll see they're not just one of the more racially diverse casts, but when you add in the missing person (a white woman) they're exactly as diverse as Cook Islands (only gender flipped). The theory is that this season was originally going to be "Race War 2.0", but they dropped that concept as soon as they realized they were going to have to start with 19 people. And the Have vs Have Not concept was the best alternate idea they could come up with at such short notice. Well, we the audience needed to know why they were starting with an odd number of contestants. But after the game got under way, that was no longer a factor. All it meant was one less vote out to deal with. As for the players, they would have kind of known. She was around until just before starting, so they all would have seen her, seen her panic attacks (which was the reason she got DQ'd), seen the medics examining her, and then not seen her anymore. So they would have had a clue as to what was going on. Or they were brought up to speed totally off-camera.

That's because Lyta's not part of Psi-Corps anymore. It was never the telepathy that bothered her, like it did Garibaldi. It was the Corps.

I think this is the point of them doing EoE again. And I think they may have thought they were doing something good for us by doing so. Think of it this way: this is the All-Winner Season. Every single contestant has an established track record and fan-base. And there's a non-zero number of viewers that would tune out of the season once their favorite gets voted out. But, with EoE in play, and the likelihood of anyone leaving near 0%, that means that all the winners will still have a chance. Everyone's favorite winner (from the selected 20) will most likely be there the entire duration of the show and may just win in the end. There'll be no need to get upset and quit watching... unless you really hate EoE (like @Nashville). So this might be a case of good intention, bad implementation. This reasoning would also explain why they did EoE for S38. It gave them a test run on the logistics of the format, and it also put the concept on tv for the winners to see before they encountered it live on the island.

And as a Texan, I can confirm that Austin, aside from being the state capitol, is the SoCal of Texas (minus the beaches). The unofficial city motto is "Keep Austin Weird." So C&C living there now makes perfect sense to me.

Somehow, that seems fitting.

Not just any dog. Picard seems to be as fond of pit bulls as Sir Pat is. (From what I've seen, most of the dogs he fosters are pits. And I assume that making Picard's dog a pit is a conscious attempt to help give the breed a new public image.)

For anyone attending ComicCon: Shout! Factory will be showing the DS9 documentary there on that Friday at 7 pm.

I just finished a re-watch of S08, the Family Edition, and was thinking of some ways of re-tooling it. Because the concept is not bad, and there's a lot of great scenery. It's mostly just badly named. It's not an "Amazing Race"; it's a "Great American Road Trip (from the people that brought you The Amazing Race)". So I've been thinking on how I would do a GART 2.0. To begin with, most current TAR rules are still applicable. Pit Stops, Detours, Roadblocks, Speed Bumps; all still present. Second, the larger team dynamic is still pretty good, so we'll also keep the team size of 4. Also, having teen and pre-teen Racers is also interesting, so they'll still be allowed. Third, all the Roadblocks are the 2-person variety instead of it depending. Most of, if not all, the Roadblocks in S08 could easily been done with two people, either in tandem (like the infamous red bean), consecutive (the trapeze), or equally split (the go-karting. There was a mandatory stop in that Roadblock after the driver completed 25 of the 50 laps; that would have been a natural place to swap drivers). So make that a permanent feature. Now for a major change. Phil has gone on record as saying that the thing he hated the most about S08 was having to look the children in the eye and eliminate them. So for version 2.0, all legs are NELs. In exchange for this, the number of teams is cut in half. 5 constant teams, instead of reducing from 10 to 3 over the course of the course. With all legs as NELs, that means there's going to be a Speed Bump in every leg (except the first). It also means that U-Turns serve no real purpose other than to antagonize other teams. So those are out of play. But since there's only going to be 5 teams, and they'll all be there for the entire run, there's going to be 5 Fast Forwards as well. Each team can still only use the one, but they'll all get equal opportunity to do so. (And all 5 will probably get used this way.) I'm also thinking that there could be an option for one person to do a Roadblock instead of two, in exchange for some kind of benefit. Like a limited Express Pass; good on the next leg only, but can be used on the Speed Bump as well. That adds an element of strategy into the mix. There also needs to be some advantage for winning a leg, outside of a prize. So what about each 1st place finish gives a hint (or other appropriate advantage) on the final puzzle. Or maybe there's 4 levels of hints (5th level being no hints) for the final puzzle, and a team's overall rank determines which level they get.

I always preferred the term "Phil-ching" (read: filching). But I never liked the act thereof in the Race. It was never a good look for the Racers to have to beg. At least most of them realized this and tried hitting up tourists and the other Race teams instead of locals who actually needed the money.

Over the last few weeks, we've made our way through this season and finally finished earlier this week. The biggest takeaway from the whole thing was that it had the wrong name the whole time. The route wasn't too bad for what it was, and it showed off a lot of the diversity of the American continent (lots of great scenic shots of the Southwest). And the teams were overall pretty good. But it just wasn't an "Amazing Race". If it had been called "The Great American Road Trip (from the people that brought you The Amazing Race)", it probably would have had a much better reception at the time. It's still a bit of a pity that TPTB have more or less disavowed this season even existing (barring keeping the numbering scheme intact). There's several Racers from this season that would be great to bring back. The 4 most deserving would be the Black brothers (as I mentioned before) and the Gaghan siblings. All 4 would be in their mid-20s to mid-30s at this time, so they'd be right in the current "Racer demographic".

Those first couple episodes especially it feels much more like a documentary than a reality show. It's interesting to see how far its come. There's a couple other major differences in TAR1 and the rest of the seasons that aren't as noticed as having Phil at the Mat for everyone and course tweaking. First of all, the tasks. We're actually shown everyone complete a Detour or Roadblock (except the FF users, natch) before leaving the task and moving on to the rest of the leg. Second, placements. We're only told team positions when they arrive at the Mat. It's educated guessing otherwise. Combine this with the weird task-first editing, and it's really hard to get a good sense of the Racing part of the Race. Jockeying for position, who might be lost, who might have a shortcut or quicker cab...all very hard to tell. Bizarrely, I think it was the last two or three legs of this season and the huge time gap therein that helped end this pattern. When 2 teams are able to complete a leg before the other two even start, the positioning is clear. And the basic drama of that simplicity (Rob/Brennan vs Frank/Margarita for first, then Guidos vs Frats to avoid last) where we're clear on who is in which position made for a better show. I think that's part of why things got changed to a more "real-time" chronicle of events starting in TAR2.

Which is really impressive, since it was kind of an all-star cast. Theme song is also pretty awesome.

In addition to everything @Nashville said, she'd also hosted the official additional Survivor content for CBS prior to All Access. And that led to her gig as the host of People NOW on People.com. Basically, a similar post-Survivor path as Parvati, minus the win, marrying another Survivor, and having a kid (not yet on those at least.). Also, according to her website, she's done some theater too. One that looks like Jane Austen (or a pastiche), and another that could be Hair-like.

The Family Edition did both. That Race was only in North America, and there was a final memory challenge.

Speaking of scripted dramas on MTV, there was also Dead at 21. This was a short-runner from the mid-90s. It was about Ed Bellamy, a brilliant 20-year old college student, who got framed for murder. It turned out that Ed and the murder victim were part of an experiment where people got microchips implanted in their brains as infants. This made them super-intelligent, but also killed them when they turned 21. The experiment was deemed a failure, and the "shadowy agency" that ran the experiment was cleaning up after themselves (hence the framing for murder). But the main thrust of the series was Ed and his Action Girl companion Maria traveling the country trying to find a cure for him, all while evading the agent sent to apprehend him. It ran for only 13 episodes, and ended on a sort of cliff-hanger. Ed may have found a cure just before his 21st, involving some sort of mental connection with 2 other people like him, but the final shot of the series was him falling face-down on the floor. We never actually found out if the cure worked or not.