The Race Is Back On

The Amazing Race kicked off its seventh season last night (I'm likely going to spill info, so if you haven't seen it, but were planning on watching and don't want to know - this is your red light).
This one kind of got me back into it - last season seemed so blah.
I am enjoying Rob and Amber and I am enjoying the other teams gunning for them. I didn't like Rob or Amber on Survivor, but here I am rooting for them after just the first episode.
I also thought there was a lot less screaming and yelling and bitching between couples/teammates/lifelong friends (yeah RIGHT!!! Just say you're girlfriends - how annoying). Not that there was no yelling, there was a little, but it was a better amount than the constant onslaught from last season (not to producers: people who are consistently horrible to each other are not always the most entertaining - now teams being horrible to other teams is totally different in my book and I look forward to a little healthy backstabbing in a game show/race).
I'm the sort of viewer who gets fed up with certain things pretty quickly like the older woman's "dog gonnit" - blech. Frankly - the older couple bugged me the whole episode - Geronimo indeed! (names - Meredith and Gretchen)
I'm also not loving (I'm going to cbs.com for a minute to get the names of these people - be right back [or for you IM junkies - brb]) Ron and Kelly - I can't qualify this dislike very much, but I already don't like Kelly, not fair, but true.
The funniest part for me was when brothers Brian and Greg got to the sand dunes to dig for plane tickets and saw that there was only one that said 7:40 but three that said 7:00 - they stopped, kind of stunned and were trying to figure out why there were 7:00 ones left and what the trick was. Finally one says to the other, "7 is before 7:40, right?" The reply - "It is where I was born." I laughed out loud at that.
I also enjoyed the change in prize for the team that made it to the pit stop first. I'm sure it will go back to being trips, but $10,000 each is a nice little surprise!
Take care (and happy TV time - I am so devoted to my friend from Panasonic!)
V