38 seasons. Nearly 450 episodes. 2 years. And countless minutes. I just finished watching The Amazing Race in its entirety.

I first watched The Amazing Race (TAR) in high school with my family, and even wrote one of my freshman composition papers in a dual credit class evaluating the show’s level of “realness” as a reality TV show. I even plotted out a fan fiction version of TAR featuring fictional worlds and characters (including my own). When I went off to college, though, I stopped watching the show. A couple years ago, I rediscovered it with the premiere of Season 36. Returning to the show for the first time in years, I fell in love with it all over again, and I determined to give TAR a full watch-through. It took two years of on-and-off watching, but I’ve now finally caught up on TAR, which remains my favorite reality TV show.  

One of the most intriguing parts of watching a reality show with a 20+ year run like TAR is how it functions like a time capsule of the 2000s. From the older camera quality and aspect ratio changes over the years, to the fashion trends and cultural events, it can be both nostalgic and surreal to watch some of the earlier seasons. When digital cameras and voice-to-text features in vehicles are high-tech innovations that teams have to use to get their next clue, it puts into perspective how recently some of the technological marvels are, and how quickly they became every day, ordinary use. It’s a very interesting way to look back at the years of my childhood, for sure.

In terms of why I like the show, I think TAR highlights and celebrates the vast diversity of our world. Though it can lead to some moments of awkwardness when first world problems clash with third world struggles, on the whole, most teams on TAR take away a deep respect, appreciation, and often sympathy for places in the world with less means or prosperity than the United States. Plus, it is extremely humbling, insightful, and amusing when teams struggle with mundane tasks that are everyday occurrences for the residents of a particular city or country they are in. One of my favorite repeated parts of the race is watching the locals laughing at teams grappling with an ordinary task. No matter where the race takes the teams, TAR highlights and respects the beauty of the places, cultures, and people all over the world.

What really makes or breaks a season for me, though, is the casting. The people who run TAR are who I remember much more than the route taken or the specific challenges done. (Though there are some challenges that I can’t ever forget, like the Swiss cheese rolling challenge that made me laugh harder than any other TAR moment.) Most of my enjoyment of the show stems from the many interesting relationships and people who make up the teams. Some interpersonal dynamics are dysfunctional, leading either to entertainment or discomfort, but just as many are wholesome, heartfelt, and tender. The best teams are the quirky ones who get along well with one another. Just as much as I walk away from an episode appreciating another part of the world, I also tend to walk away from an episode appreciating the uniqueness of individual people, too.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my The Amazing Race journey and hope the show keeps up its momentum. I’d potentially be interested in running TAR someday too, but we’ll see. For now, I’m content to enjoy it from my couch.

To close, I’d like to give out some (spoiler-free) season recommendations. I’ve grouped the seasons by different “eras,” picking a couple of my favorites, just because the tone of TAR does shift over time as the show evolves. Also, there are way more good seasons than what I can reasonably include on this list, so these are the seasons I found most memorable.

Era 1: The Beginnings (Seasons 1-11): These seasons are all fairly strong and work on refining the formula of the race. Many iconic moments and teams are highlighted in these early seasons, making it very hard to narrow down favorites.

–Season 1: Season 1 is an incredibly strong start to the show. While there are some noticeable differences even between the first and second season, most of the show’s formula is set and solid. Plus, the drama and tension between teams in this season is very consistent with the level of drama that comes in future seasons. And this season has one of the wildest elimination twists out of TAR. Definitely worth starting with.

–Season 3: This season is memorable to me for its drama, specifically surrounding Flo. She and her friend Zach start the race somewhat curious about what a dating relationship might look like for them, but that quickly becomes something Flo is uninterested in. I still feel bad for Zach to this day.

–Season 9: After a long hiatus caused by Season 8’s awkward family edition, I jumped back in with Season 9, and B. J. and Tyler are still one of my favorite all-time teams, and probably my favorite all-time team to not appear in an all-star season. Their enthusiasm—and how the other teams seem to have an irrational hatred of them—made this season memorable.

–Season 11: The first all-star season does not disappoint! In general, I’m a fan of all-star seasons because they tend to bring back some of the most memorable teams, and while this is probably my least favorite of the all-star seasons, I still enjoy it and find it’s a good cap on the first era of TAR.

Era 2: Tried & True (Seasons 12-24): These seasons are characterized by an overall sense of the show’s refinement. While there are still a few curveballs or new elements in these seasons, they’re all pretty consistent across the board.

–Season 12: The first appearance of the U-Turn and Speed Bump, future staples of TAR, and a season full of memorable teams, including one of my favorite father-daughter teams.

–Season 20: One of the most high-drama seasons. Very entertaining.

–Season 23: This is the season I remember watching in high school, mostly because of Leo and Jamal, who are actually quite entertaining (whereas when I was younger, I was not a fan of them because I thought they were too deceptive, but on the rewatch, I think they play the game so well). This season still holds up.

-Seasons 18 & 24: These are both all-star seasons with excellent returning teams, some of whom appear in both 18 and 24.  

Era 3: Age of Experimentation (Seasons 25-32): These seasons stand out in my mind as somewhat gimmicky with some new twists implemented to try and shake up the formula. Some work, which led to a couple of my favorite seasons, but others fell short. Some seasons in this stretch were also fairly normal, but don’t always stand out as particularly memorable.

–Season 25: One of the wildest endings of a season, and I’m not entirely sure that I liked how this one ended. But it has some very memorable moments.

–Season 28: This season featured social media stars / personalities, and while that angle on TAR falls on the gimmicky side, having teams full of people accustomed to being somewhat over-the-top on camera makes for entertaining TV.

–Season 29: This was a twist that worked really well: 24 strangers, who—after a single challenge—have to pick a partner to run TAR with. It worked so well because not only do you have the challenge of TAR but also the challenge of working with someone you don’t know. This season also gave us Team Fun, who are my favorite TAR team of all time. This might be my favorite season of TAR of all.

–Season 31: This is the most recent all-star season, but with a twist: it also includes Big Brother and Survivor teams, in addition to returning TAR teams. It is highly competitive and a fantastic ride.

Era 4: The COVID Bounce-Back (Season 33-present): Season 33 was disrupted by COVID, and the seasons that follow are marked by adjusting to the post-COVID era and regaining the show’s footing. I disagree with the sentiment that these seasons are not as good as in the past; they are different tonally, but I still think they are fairly fun in their own way.

–Season 33: The COVID-adjusted seasons are weird and in my opinion not as competitive because of the use of private planes to transport teams (removing the staple TAR challenge of navigating public transportation), but Season 33 is the most interesting of them because it’s when this model begins. It is a really interesting watch because it starts normally, but has to adjust halfway through when COVID shuts down their production.

–Season 37: This one is my favorite of this era of seasons, in part because this season starts to bring back a lot of TAR staples that the COVID era let fall by the wayside a little. Plus, the teams are all very interesting and fun to follow.