There had been rumblings of this earlier in the year, but now it's official: the next season of
The Amazing Race will be an All-Star Edition. CBS announced this to little fanfare, but this is pretty important to me.
The Amazing Race is the most well-produced reality show on television and, easily, my favorite. The coming all-star edition, which will premiere in the early parts of 2007, will be very interesting.
CBS has done all-star editions for its two other big reality franchises (
Survivor, and
Big Brother) with mixed results.
Survivor: All-Stars was generally well-received and brought an interesting dynamic to the game.
Big Brother: All-Stars, on the other hand, was perceived as a mild disappointment, with its detractors citing the lack of conflict resulting from all the HouseGuests knowing each other.
The Amazing Race putting forth an all-star edition shouldn't really change the game too much. Much more so than CBS's other reality shows,
The Amazing Race is an insular game; the teams don't really interact with each other that much. The biggest draw will be Rob and Amber, who will have now been on two
Survivors and two
Amazing Races each, as well as their own TV special. Talk about milking their fifteen.
The Amazing Race: All-Star Edition will be fun. That's the bottom line. It may be a gimmick, but so what? It's nice to see a familiar face now and then.
-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer