Eleven teams started from Locarno into a twelve-leg route through Romania, Russia, India, Thailand, and China. CBS held the Sunday hour and the production ran the format cleanly inside the rhythms it had spent eight years tuning. The casting leans on long-running partner duos and the editing trusts the unfamiliar Eastern European start to do the heavy lifting. Phil Keoghan hosts a spring outing that earns its slot without reaching for novelty.
Slot #20 of 38 in the The Amazing Race Editor's Canon. The seasons on either side show what I ranked it against.