‘The Amazing Race 22’ preview: Quitters never win

If you are as diehard of an “Amazing Race” fanatic as we are here at the site, then you know already that Sunday night marks a major reason to celebrate. After all, it is the long-awaited return of “The Amazing Race” to TV, and season 22 looks to have all sorts of reasons to be excited.

First of all, it’s just the premise of the show itself that is worth watching time and time again: it’s a competition where it really is all about teamwork and ability, or at least as much as it can be when you consider that there is also a TV show that needs to be made for the viewers at home. They have a pretty good cast assembled (which you can read some more about here), and there are promises to go to some new destinations.

As for the twists, there is no more $2 million prize if the winner of the first leg also wins the race. Instead, they’ve made this new twist into a blessing and a curse. The winner of the first leg gets to keep an Express Pass for themselves and hand out one to another team, which immediately puts two targets out there for the rest of the other teams to go after. If you want to level the playing field, why wouldn’t you want to U-Turn one of them later?

The preview below suggests that three teams quit during the very first episode, but by “quit” we aren’t sure just what the show is talking about: are they going to give up on the season, or are they instead just going to give up on a task and take a massive penalty at the pit stop? Our money’s on the latter, mostly because watching three teams all simultaneously give up would pretty much ruin the rest of the season since there would have to be non-eliminations pretty much every other leg.

Be sure to also check back tomorrow, as we’re going to have our full predictions up for the season as a whole. Last year, we backed the Chippendales … and at least they made the final three.

Photo: CBS