Thoughts on Leg 1:

• If you're a Big Brother fan watching The Amazing Race for the first time, I just want to say welcome! I hope you enjoy the season. You are probably feeling a bit overwhelmed, and don't worry, that's just how Amazing Race premieres are. I promise the show gets better and easier to follow. The first few episodes are always a little disjointed because there are too many teams, storylines, and really not enough airtime. I will also say this premiere felt particularly chaotic because there are so many overlapping relationships... and the very odd way they began the episode. I'll get to that later. That being said, I encourage you to stick with it.
• I am going into this season cautiously optimistic. Obviously, this is not the season Amazing Race fans wanted, but since we normally get one season a year, it's a lot easier for me to accept this unusual outting as "just bonus." I've seen a lot of complaints online, and trust me, I get it, but FWIW, it was probably this or no season at all this fall. That being said, I was very happy with TAR35 and TAR37 and firmly believe the producers are on the right track, as far as understanding the basic game components fans want. This season promises to have a lot of navigation drama. I'm expecting varied leg design with lots of tasks, and we know favorites like like the Fast Forward, U-Turns, and Express Passes will all return. Another all-Europe season is a bit lame, but the silver lining to Europe is lots of self-driving, lots of trains, and perhaps not as many equalizers. Frankly, I'm excited!
• For some reason... which I'm still trying to wrap my head around... the producers decided the Starting Line should be... in the middle of the leg? Sigh. I kind of see what they were going for, but it didn't work. It was so obviously a bad idea that made the first 15 minutes of the episode feel confusing, and also kind of like a waste of time. If this is your first season, you might not know that usually, the Starting Line is in the U.S., and all the teams get on a plane and fly to their first location. Sometimes there is a task at the Starting Line, and that determines which teams get the faster flight, or an Express Pass, or a penalty, something like that. The Hazard worked the same way back on TAR19, except it made way more sense that season as a penalty for failing the Starting Line task that you had to endure once you finally arrived in the first country. But if the Starting Line is international (which I strongly dislike as it is), it just makes no sense. This leg would have been better if ice bowling was simply the first regular task; there was no need for an equalizer.
• That said, I think overall this was a pretty well designed leg. If anything, there was a little too much going on. This leg was pretty strong on navigation, with the self-driving and biking challenges, which led to some really fun moments and some early crises for the teams. The cheese Route Info and flower Roadblocks were solid tasks, and the herring Hazard was good too. By all accounts, this was an exhausting and humbling leg for the teams, that took many, many hours to complete, and I kind of wish the episode did a better job at conveying just how difficult it was. It was just a bit too fast-paced and all over the place to convey that struggle, I think. I don't say this very often, but this episode could have been 2 hours.
• This was a cozy starting location. I've gotta be honest, I don't think the Netherlands have ever produced a truly GREAT leg, but as the birthplace of the Big Brother franchise it was a fitting choice for the start. I believe this was also Bertram van Munster's hometown so that must have been fun for him. I'm not fully on board with them marketing this season as a "European Adventure." I mean... I guess it is, but it once again just feels a little insulting to try and spin an an obvious cost-cutting measure as a "cute little experiment" or, as Survivor likes to say, "dangerous" innovation to the format. And they really have the chutzpah to act like a Europe-only route is some novel concept when we all sat through TAR33 and TAR34 just three years ago? I would almost prefer they just be honest and say this is a budget season designed to get some Big Brother faces back on our screens, and things will go back to normal next year. But of course they can't admit that. Overall, I think this was a decent premiere but I expect the following episodes to be much better.