‘The Amazing Race Canada’ season 2 review: Tea time in Victoria
We love “The Amazing Race.” We also love the majority of the international editions of it. “The Amazing Race Canada” did a great job last season of being able to give us a wide array of Canadian culture and geography, even to the point that we almost didn’t care that it was not an international race. There were also a great cast of people from all across the country.
So far this season, we’re feeling mostly good … but we do wonder a little bit about if this is just going to be a clean sweep. Are hockey players Natalie & Meghan huge favorites to win the race? They’re national Olympic heroes, and Canada cares about hockey in the same way America cares about football. They’re going to have attention and help put upon them, but we will give them a little bit of credit, as well: Even with some sickness problems at one of the Roadblocks, they still managed to blow through the challenges enough to get first place and the dual Express Pass.
Let’s backtrack for a second now and talk this first leg, which to us was the weakest part of the episode. We were thrilled to see the show go to Victoria, British Columbia, but why would you do this only to then have a skydiving Roadblock? That teaches us nothing about the location, and we’ve seen it so many times now that it no longer feels interesting or exciting that people “conquer their fear of heights.” Even the Navy-themed challenge late in the episode could have done more than establish the location rather than just show teams on the inside of a ship.
Now, we’ll move to the best part of the episode to us: The tea challenge. Seeing contestants have to slow down and use their brains was fun for a change, especially since it also required them to wear funny costumes. This was the deceptively hard task of the night; all you have to do to jump out of an airplane is step forward; here, you had to concentrate and avoid distractions. This almost cost married couple Jen & Shawn, as he struggled to keep it together. Luckily for them, Shahla & Nabeela could not keep it together aboard the Navy challenge, and kept dropping things in the water to the point where they got extremely cold and had to quit the task.
As for some other assorted highlights:
- We didn’t get enough of all the teams to really know who our favorites are right now, but Rickey & Pete look fun. Despite their frontrunner status, we do like the hockey players pretty well.
- Cormac (of Cormac & Nicole) may be the only son alive to actually refer to his mom as “mother” during conversation.
- Rex & Bob seem like they are constantly on the cusp of a meltdown, and that alone is reason enough to want them to stay.
- How many huggers are on this season? In between the embrace of host Jon Montgomery and even the man running the tea challenge, many people may have been harmed in the making of this episode.
The only other criticism we’d level on the show is that we wish they’d try a few little format tweaks to make it more original, similar to how “The Amazing Race Australia” had the Salvage Pass in season 2 and changed things up with the U-Turn. Borrowing too closely from the American version doesn’t give it a huge identity. Also, we’re not going to hate it too much for the product placement; this show can’t be cheap, so we’d rather have it than no show at all. Grade: B-.
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Photo: CTV