Phil Keoghan, The Amazing Race: All-Stars
CBS' The Amazing Race doesn't hit the road again until this Sunday at 8 pm/ET — this time with an elite group of "all-stars" — and yet people are already buzzing about the return of Rob and Amber, and whether it is fair that one-time winners Uchenna and Joyce got invited back. When TVGuide.com asked affable host Phil Keoghan how the encores were chosen and if this season would in fact be harder than ever, we were relieved to make it through the Q&A without being Philiminated!
TVGuide.com: What made you want to do All-Stars? Phil Keoghan: To be honest with you, in the beginning, I wasn't so keen
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Seriously? A second second chance for David and Mary? For all the talk this week about the Six Pack (formerly and now once again the Back Pack), the alliance with Alabama and the Cho brothers isn't doing half as much for Kentucky as good old-fashioned dumb luck. Then again, to show how much I know, I was thoroughly convinced that leaving the salt detour was Race suicide — and that seemed to work out just fine for everyone involved. Similarly, the brouhaha at the ticket counter between the single moms and the beauty queens (over Team Barbie helping the male models leapfrog in line) was more or less a nonissue. Yes, it was an uncool move, but all six teams made it onto the same flight, so why bicker? No need to antagonize the competition when there's still a yield looming somewhere up the road. And speaking of antagonizing, Rob and Kimberly are so the new Hayden and Aaron. (Hell, I'd say we're about one broken ox away from them being the new Colin and Christie, so stay tuned.) Ro...
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How's that for anticlimactic? Those oh-so-clever producers of The Amazing Race throw a kink in the works with their new post non-Philimination round "come in first or you'll incur a 30-minute penalty" scheme, and then they promptly render it useless with a fast-forward. As happy as I am to see David and Mary go from worst to first — especially after that incredibly selfless gesture from the Cho brothers — I must confess, I'm a little disappointed that the new rules didn't make for a more exciting leg. Of course, we did have Peter and Sarah's navigational ineptitude to make up for it. Seriously, is there a greater harbinger of doom on the Race than being told to go directly to a pit stop without finishing a task? That's when you pretty much know it's all over. (The only worse instance I can think of off hand is those poor Mormon sisters from Season 6 who couldn't find the clue in a haystack — and Phil actually came to them. Heartbreaking.) Here's the thing about Peter ...
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Is anybody else exhausted after watching this one? The bickering, the yelling, the crying, all that rowing... it was like Thanksgiving, only with less turkey and more primitive sea travel. If they didn't insist on using cutesy quotes from the teams as titles (more on that later), this week's episode might well have been called "Rob's Anger Management Issues and Other Maladies That Can't Be Cured by a Vietnamese Steam Bath." Seriously, could this guy have a shorter fuse? Between his multipart taxicab meltdown ("I'm done talking with foreigners" — yeah, there's a good attitude to have on a race around the world....) and his constant screaming throughout the entire pearl-harvesting detour (during which Kimberly did most of the work), I was having major Colin-and-Christie déjà vu. Despite all the unpleasantness, The Magnificent Bickersons came in first — winning a pair of Jet Skis (and not, sadly, a free week of couples' counseling). Luckily for Rob, he wasn't the on...
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I hate to get all My Name Is Earl on you guys, but if ever I've seen a glowing endorsement for karma, this week's Amazing Race episode is it. I was a little dismayed that only two teams — Tom and Terry and the Cho brothers — took a moment to stop and appreciate the magnitude of former prisoner of war and current U.S. Senator John McCain's flight suit on display at the Hanoi Hilton. I understand it's a race, but sometimes you've simply got to stop and show some respect. As it turns out, both teams were rewarded for their displays of human decency: Erwin and Godwin finished the leg in first place, while Tom and Terry narrowly escaped Philimination after incurring a 30-minute breaking-the-rules time penalty. (No motorcycles, boys!) Which is not to say our departing team deserved what they got — I'm disappointed to see Duke and Lauren go home this early in the race. As parent/child relationships go, I thought Duke was making an admirable effort to understand his daughter ...
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Hands down, this was the funniest tribal council ever on Survivor. It was like watching group therapy. Between Billy and "Mr. Bully's" fight, and Billy's declaration of love for Candace, I'm not sure what I laughed at more. It was tears-in-my-eyes laughter. I'll make a declaration of my own: I love Jeff Probst. He is the best reality-show host out there, with Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race a close second. While everyone else was laughing and/or rolling their eyes at Billy, Jeff managed to respectfully question Billy's love connection ? and he did so with a straight face. Almost.I found it odd that Billy uttered the words "I love you" after the challenge, but I didn't think anything of it. Especially since I was looking for furtive glances and accidental touches between two other castaways. After a week of keenly watching CBS ads that heavily promoted a romance like no other in Survivor history, I was sure we were going to find out that Brad and Nate were a couple. I was so wrong. ...
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Phil Keoghan, The Amazing Race
Phil Keoghan, the globe-trotting host of CBS' The Amazing Race (returning tonight at 9 pm/ET), takes TV Guide readers along on the exotic new season's first leg.
DAY ONE 6:30 amThere's always this great feeling right before the race begins, this calm before the storm. And as the teams arrive in this spectacular location — Red Rocks Amphitheatre, outside of Denver — you can't imagine that in an hour and a half, this wild animal will be let out of its cage. I always like to walk along the line of the teams' bags. I pick them up and see who is carrying what, to see who has planned ahead and who is completely unrealistic about what they're going to haul around the world for the next month. While some teams have decided they're on a luxury trip, the husband-and-wife team of Lake
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Last year was busy for Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan. Not only did he film three back-to-back editions of the reality hit, he also launched his new TV series No Opportunity Wasted and published a book based on the program. "I only had two days off and traveled 465,000 miles," says the exhausted New Zealander. "I really need to take a bit of a break."
Before he can slack off though, he's got to tell TVGuide.com all about the seventh edition of The Amazing Race, which premieres tonight on CBS at 9pm/ET. Keoghan acknowledges it's strange to be gearing up for another season so soon after the previous one wrapped, but he's very high on Amazing Race 7. "My favorite season before this was Season 5," he says. "There was something about that season that captured the magic of what the race is all about. I never thought it would get any better than that, but I have to say that Season 7 is now my favorite. It is, without doubt, the strongest one w
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Laughter. Route markers. Noisy fights in airports. A snowmobile race across the world's largest glacier. That's right, TV's best reality show is back for another action-packed season! Tonight's premiere of The Amazing Race (9 pm/ET on CBS) finds 11 new daring duos racing from downtown Chicago to Iceland's famous Blue Lagoon, with lots of difficult — but hugely entertaining — challenges along the way. Here, TAR host and published author Phil Keoghan (whose book No Opportunity Wasted is out now) shares his thoughts about the show's eagerly anticipated sixth season.
TV Guide Online: This is the first time Amazing Race has gone to Iceland, right? It's a great location for the premiere.Phil Keoghan: Yeah, we always try to do something that captures people's imaginations, and it's a challenge because you've got to outdo yourself every time. But this season has a great start to it.
TVGO: Any other big "firsts"
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The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan was only 19 years old when his life almost ended. "I was working on an adventure show and I followed this guy into a shipwreck where we were going to be shooting," recalls the 37-year-old New Zealander. "The wreck was about the size of the Love Boat and it was underwater. I go further and further into the ship, and I get separated from the guy I'm with. Suddenly, I don't know where I am. I started to panic.
"I'm very claustrophobic," he continues, "and I'm completely disoriented because I'm in this big, black mass of steel. I don't know where I am and I don't know how to get out. So I suddenly realize that this is it: I'm going to die."
Obviously, Keoghan eventually made it out of the wreck, but the scare profoundly changed him. "When I got out I was motivated to live — it was like a switch went off," he says. "I sat down and wrote a list of things I wanted to do before I died, and that became my life contract
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