First Leg Chaos Erupted When 13 Teams Were Given Express Passes All At Once

For Season 39, The Amazing Race is giving away thirteen Express Passes at once, which is an unusual number of shortcuts. The premiere then opens with a twist by turning the first leg around.

Host Phil Keoghan surprised the Racers at the starting mat in Vancouver, Canada, with the season’s first major twist. Every team starts with an Express Pass they can use in one of the game’s first six legs. The catch: only one pass can be used at each Roadblock or Detour.

The Teams And Their Passes

Before the Race started, Phil spoke with the new teams, pointing to a cast that features many female partnerships. The group includes former professional soccer players Ali Krieger and Joanna Lohman. In a preview interview with TVLine, Phil said the cast is packed with strong female teams, such as a mother-daughter pair in Ann-Marie and Riley, sisters and BFFs Dafina and Saran, and esthetician sisters Katie and Charlotte.

He pointed out that an all-female team hasn’t taken home the Race prize since Season 25, when Amy DeJong and Maya Warren walked away with the $1 million check. Will these women rule Season 39?

The Roadblock And The Early Elimination

Zach and Nate chose to head straight for BC Place, a stadium at the center of the city, which placed them near the back of the group right away. The first Roadblock tasked teams with leaping from the stadium’s rafters 300 feet up to grab a salmon using oversized bear claws.

A married couple from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., named Erin and Javi arrived 12th and chose to use their Express Pass right away, on the season’s very first task. Their decision worked out well for them, because they ended up finishing the leg in first place.

The season opener brought up some compelling group tensions. Javi is working hard to show his wife that he’s a man, while Michelle and Matthew, a married couple from Rutherford, N.J., handle their jobs in very different ways — and so do their interviews. Matthew, maybe don’t refer to your wife as a “neurotic” on national television, my man! The bickering brother-sister pair of Cody and Jaime are worth keeping an eye on.

The Detour Drama

The teams took an aqua-bus from the scene of their first near-fatal task to the Vancouver Maritime Museum, where they collected their next clue. That accounted for the premiere’s Detour. In “Run It Up,” teams have to commit maritime flags to memory and then pass a test administered by a captain. Should they succeed in hoisting the correct flags in the proper sequence, they will receive the next clue. Alternatively, in “Paddle It Out,” they may choose to paddle a tandem outrigger canoe out into the bay and fetch the clue from a buoy.

Lots of crews decided to take up paddles, and a great many of those crews wound up capsizing their canoes and getting soaked.

Erin and Javi’s flag work won them Leg 1, a solid performance. The bottom three teams faced the Detour together, and the atmosphere was tense. Zach and Nate, Dafina and Saran, and Daisha and Dalton all sat at the bottom of the pack. Dafina and Saran played their Express Pass, which stopped everyone else from playing theirs — a clever tactic.

Chicago’s team came in ninth, while Ali and Joanna took 10th. Daisha and Dalton made it through with their Express Pass intact, landing on Phil’s mat in 12th. Zach and Nate were the final pair to arrive and were immediately cut from the competition.

Guess they should have hailed a cab to the stadium.

What The Premiere Proves

The premiere opens with an excess of Express Passes, thirteen in total, which gives rise to disorder from the very first episode. Teams must decide when to use their single chance, and the results appear at once.

The show opens with a wonderfully chaotic elimination of Zach and Nate for choosing to run rather than hailing a cab, which rewards careful preparation while punishing rash action. It also uses this first episode to make a point about its cast: this season carries a heavy load of female teams, and the premiere sets up a question about whether one of them can finally end the win drought.

From the first episode onward, the season’s format makes teams decide whether to use a pass right away or save it for a future moment. This selection process determines which groups stay and which ones get eliminated.

Jaime and Cody’s conflict, Michelle and Matthew’s struggle, and Javi’s wife’s troubles are all still unfolding. The season has barely begun, and with the Express Pass overflow, no leg can be counted on to follow any expected course.

Every team is walking into this season with a loaded gun. One shot, six legs. The premiere has only just begun to build the drama.

Source material: “The Amazing Race Premiere Recap: A Surplus Of Express Passes Turns The First Leg Upside Down,” TVLine.

Amazing Race · elimination · Express Pass · reality TV · TV Recap