~ Hour 2 of the Season Premiere…for Hour 1, click here ~

On the previous hour of The Amazing Race…twelve teams raced Thunder Road, the Japanese showed they’re no longer afraid of The Bomb as long as it’s of the wasabi variety, and I named a team after one of my favorite OPI nail polish colors.  Yay!

Meghan and Cheyne (I so badly want to write Cheyenne…and that is driving me crazy like a wasabi-eating Amazing Racer) were the first to arrive around noon, and are the first to depart around midnight. Clue-rip. Teams have to fly to Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, and then bus it for two hours to the rural village of Cai Be. Once there, they’ll race to – I don’t know…something Vietnamese – and get their next clue.

In the cab confessional, Meghan lets us in on Cheyne’s secret to success…don’t plan anything! His famous phrase is, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.” You know, there’s a certain synergy to that ideology. As someone who tends to over-plan, I’m well versed in this thing we over-planners like to call “analysis paralysis”.

Justin and Zev leave next, and also have a confession to make…they’re already playing the Aspergers card. Tsk tsk tsk. Shame shame shame. Here, let me wag my index finger at you a little bit. *wag wag wag* They head to a local hotel to get on the Internet, which is the same idea Team RoidRage had. They aren’t going to lollygag, or waste time, or try to “find” each other…because Mr. RoidRage already knows where he is. Want to know where he is? Here. With his biceps. Oh, spoiler alert – they bicker a lot.

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~As an aside, I haven’t blogged eps of The Amazing Race in some time. Why haven’t I been blogging? The answer is simple…the show had gotten stale, the teams pretty darn boring, and I didn’t really feel like I had anything to contribute. Last night though, things changed. I watched an ep that was so fresh and so exciting…it reinvigorated me…blah blah blah.~

Panoramic shot of Los Angeles. Phil VOs: “It’s early morning in downtown Los Angeles and the temperature is rising fast in the movie capital of the world.” Cut to the Los Angeles River. “This is the Los Angeles River, an iconic setting that’s been used as a location for stunts and movies such as Grease and Terminator 2.” As we watch two police cars race down the river and swerve, lights a-flashing, I’m thinking this would have been a great opportunity for CBS to tie in the beginning five minutes of any new NCIS: Los Angeles episode. Nah…the Emmy-award winning The Amazing Race is too cool to whore itself out to the network or blatant product placement.

Our twelve teams are on their way to the Los Angeles River in buses likely driven by Sandra Bullock, and because I think every reality show should have an element of The Bachelor embedded in it, I do believe these teams should have arrived via limo to greet Phil.

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Previously on The Amazing Race, Father-of-the-Year Ronald inspired his daughter (and us) with his motivational haranguing, I saw way more of Grampa Underbritches than I ever hoped to (even in my wildest dreams), and married ministers Kate and Pat finished last because from what I’ve heard, that’s what nice girls do.

Nine teams remain…who will be eliminated…next?

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