An old western movie ranch is the starting line for the twenty-third season of The Amazing Race. So who are the eleven teams racing around the world for a million dollars?

• Ally and Ashley are LA Kings Girls and pretty pretty blonds, so I have no choice but to call them The LaLas.
• Chester and Ephraim are NFL Teammates so yeah, Team Touchdown
• Jason and Amy are dating. Aww. Isn’t that sweet? It would be, except they’re from Massachusetts so Massholes it is.
• Nicky and Kim are MLB baseball wives. One of them is training to be a pilates instructor, and the other one wants to be an actress or a model. Team Golddigger.
• Tim and Danny are friends. They’re both in the oil industry, so Team Liquid Gold.
• Travis and Nicole are married doctors, so Team Doctor Doctor.
• Brandon and Adam love their beards, and who am I to question a man’s love of facial hair? Team Beardo.
• Hoskote and Niana are father and daughter, which means they have little chance of winning (I don’t think a parent and child team has ever won, and no, The Season That Shall Not Be Named does not count). Team Father Daughter.
• Leo and Jamal are cousins. They’ve already named themselves the Afghannibals because they’re from Afghanistan and…are cannibals? I don’t know, but Team Cousin until I figure it out.
• Rowan and Shane are best friends and actors, and I think I’ll name them Team Jazz Hands!
• Tim and Marie are exes, which is always a little weird. Why would you want to travel around the world with someone you decided not to spend the rest of your life with? Team I Hate You Too.

Each season has its own thing starting out. The teams are racing to Iquique, Chile. The winner of the first leg of the race gets an Express Pass for themselves, and a second Express Pass that they must give to another team by the fifth leg of the race.

It’s a race to the airport to get on the first flight to Chile. The Cousins get to the airport first. Touchdown, Jazz Hands, I Hate You Too, the LaLas, and Gold Diggers, Doctor Doctor all get on the first flight. The next flight is two and a half hours later, so anything is possible.

And by “anything is possible,” I mean that the second flight is stuck in Santiago, Chile, so they are quite a few hours behind. Once in Chile, teams drive out to somewhere very remote where one teammate will go paragliding while the other has to follow them in a taxi to wherever they land. Team Jazz hands is ready to “drop like a prom dress,” and is now my favorite team. There’s some major shrieking from one of the blondes, and a Golddigger is freaking out because ZOMG, I’m so scared! It’s almost like she’s never watched The Amazing Race before.

After landing on a beach and meeting up with their teammates, teams receive a clue that takes them to Muelle Prat to search for their next clue. Meanwhile, the second plane is first landing.

Muelle Prat is a wharf. Whichever teammate did the paragliding must row a very heavy rowboat and search the harbor to collect five fish from one of three fishing boats and deliver the fish to the fishmonger. Team Doctor Doctor are killing it and finish the task before other teams even set foot in their boats.

Once teams finish the stinky fish task, teams must make their way on foot to Teatro Municipal de Iquique where Phil is waiting to check them in and hand out those magical Express Passes. Team Doctor Doctor are the first team to arrive…however, they took a taxi to the pit stop. READ YOUR CLUES, PEOPLE! Yikes, imagine if they didn’t read “Allergic To Everything” on a patient’s chart, they’d get a lot more than a thirty-minute penalty.

Another team that didn’t read the clue is Team Cousin, who sent the wrong person out to do the task. Oopsie? While Doctor Doctor sit out their penalty, I Hate You Too win the Express Passes. They credit their success in the race to all of the insult hurling. Doctor Doctor check in second, and Jazz Hands are third.

Touchdown check in as Team Number Four, Golddigger check in fifth, LaLa are sixth, and the Cousins bring up the rear of the first airplane to check in as Team Number Seven.  So now it’s a race for last place. And how’s that going? Not so well for Liquid Gold who can’t seem to figure out the rowing concept. The Massholes fly through the task and do a lot of cheering because of course they do, and Beardo is struggling with the weakness of their arms.

The Massholes check in as Team Number Eight just as Father Daughter arrive at the task. He’s yelling “rowing motion! Rowing motion! at his daughter because otherwise she would never know what to do. Then she realizes that she read the clue wrong and her yelling father has to do the task. Liquid Gold check in ninth, and Beardo tenth. Night falls, and Father Daughter are the last team to arrive. They are eliminated from the race, and don’t win any Father Of The Year awards, either.

Next week, the teams struggle in a salt mine.

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