Season 30 debuted this week. New episodes are airing Wednesdays at 8pm Eastern in the US. I won't spoil the first episode, but will say it was a doozie and I think the cast is strong. Worth watching if you're a fan, or, given the strength of the cast, if you'd stopped in recent years.

I haven't watched in about 6-10 seasons (Not entirely sure, the format just got too repetitive.) I have watched the first twenty minutes of this season and am really enjoying the cast thought, so I most likely will stick out the season and hope for some new things I haven't seen before.

I jumped back on for this season.

It was a very entertaining premiere.

In

Ratings were up a lot which is good since the show was on its last legs

While I've been watching the past few seasons, it's been too many gimmicks. Just give us good teams with good relationships and the format still clearly works.

I'm guessing Wednesday at 8 eastern helped the ratings .

It's been airing at some awful times recently.

While I personally agree with this statement, unfortunately I think the show do need some headliners to catch attention from casual viewers that normally don't watch. Seems they might have succeeded of such with the 'Big Brother' casting, at least based on ratings from the premiere. But obviously the time slot probably helped as well.

As for the episode itself, it was a bit meh. The first episode really need to be 2 hours long to get a feel for all the teams, but with the 1 hour format it's always gonna feel a bit frantic.

Should be a good season though, and hopefully the ratings can stay up so that more seasons will follow Been a huge fan of the show for many years now, and never tire of it.

I like the idea of this show running 1x/year and filling the gap between the fall and spring Survivor seasons.

Decent cast. Rooting for the snowboarder chicks and hope the Big Brother team crashes and burns cause Cody deems himself as too cool to put on a costume or something.

well, the show has had headliners going back to OG TAR with people Chip&Reichen, Rob&Amber, etc. So, I'm always cool with some headliners being in there, I just want the headliners to actually be strong like they've done in the past and looks like they've done this season.

Cody's "I really don't give a **** about reality TV and will do what I want, regardless of what the producers say I should do" went a long way to making the last season of BB quite great.

I’m watching for the first time in like 10-15 years just because of Cody and Jess

is it worth it? tried watching show once and i hated it but i am a big bb fan so was considering watching this year.

first 2 episodes were decent imo

Now I recall why I stopped watching this show.

I'm watching this season. First one in probably 10 that I'm watching. I've never minded the gimmicks or the kitsch - this hasn't been a great show since season at least season 7, really started sucking when the FFs were neutered since that was the only real strat that mattered - but the show is always better when the teams are strong and those strong teams hang around.

This season is progressing very well in that the two weakest teams, arguably, were the two first to go. There also are two potential elite teams (Yale and Olympians) and another three teams that wouldn't shock by winning it all (Big Brother, Well Strung, Indy Car)

If you put five teams in a race that look like potential winners and they don't go in some flukey way (Jesus that H2H was tilting) then the season is likely going to be better.

Addendum: If you never watched Season 3 and wonder what all the hubub about this show is, then go watch Season 3. IMO it's the best season of reality television ever produced.

what was so special about season 3?

a couple hours tonight...

I much prefer season 5. Yes, the season was built around Charla and Mirna, but in the process we got the GOAT team of Colin and Christie and a great final leg.

Enjoyed this episode. The best racer this season might be Mr. Proposal. I always enjoy legs where there is no airport since the airport has been severely nerfed since early seasons.

Season 3 was just plotted, edited, delivered, and ran really well. Tons of mat tension, upsets, surprises, good and bad mistakes while racing. It was also a tough ****ing race. The Vietnam legs at the end were particularly brutal. Episode 10 of that season is, imo, the best episode of TAR.

I'll have to go back and watch season 3 again. But, during the OG era of TAR, basically every odd season (1,3,5,7,9) was really good while the even seasons were solid to good (we're pretending the family season never existed). Season 3 had Flo and Zach right? I don't know how Zach ever put up with her meltdowns, especially since he was Friend-Zoned well before that by her (seriously, I wouldn't be putting up with that **** unless I was ending up sexing her)

Re Season 5: it's a real bummer that Colin&Christie were pregnant when the first season of All-Stars happened and they were never given another shot. I was def bummed that they didn't win that season. They have to be up there with Rob&Amber+Andy&Tommy for best teams never to have won.

It's interesting to go back and watch those early seasons (1-5 especially) and just think how they existed really before social media was even a thing. I watched season 1 ep 1 live (right after 911 iirc) and I was seriously jonesing for information about the show. I couldn't find much. survivorsucks and televisionwithoutpity were my prime resources and while each had its pluses the minuses were there too. The people just behave so differently. It's like they're unaware of the effect that the internet will have on them forever for having been on that show. Completely 180 from how sterilized the teams are now. Jon & Victoria? Flo and Zach? Even "calmer" teams like Freddy and KKKendra would set off some serious heat in this current social climate.

Back in the day there were legit sleuths over at sucks who would pull public record building permits and the like in order to spoil locations and seasons. We would zapruder photos to see who was eliminated when. Some seasons were completely spoiled in the mid 2000s even after CBS took to running "decoy" teams who had already been eliminated. I used some JRB posts here and poker tweets to spoil Tiffany Michelle when she ran. It was my only post on that site, I was always more of a TWOP guy. Miss Alli wrote AMAZING recaps of the early seasons.

I watched it and was pretty good. I liked how half of the teams put unleaded in the diesel pickups, some teams got taxis to run reds and how Flo was bouncing around and wanted to quit for the last couple legs.

Phil Koeghan is in my top 5 of celebrities I very much would like to have dinner with. There are stories from those early seasons which kind of explain the race being neutered like it has been. Some overt - The top two teams in season 1 managed to get an entire day ahead in India, and stayed ahead, and it really cost production to try to film multiple legs at once - to some more covert - apparently Millie and Chuck attempted to survive on next to no sleep, instead researching stamps on their passport (which are prestamped before the race) in order to try and get an advantage... and then they almost killed themselves (and their crew) a few times falling asleep behind the wheel driving across Malaysia or something. From that point on they significantly nerfed the driving the contestants do. I want to know more stuff like that.

Also, if you're ever in Europe and want to know how to put your car in reverse there's a small, circular lever under the head of the gear shift. Pull up on it and then either put it in extreme 1st or extreme 5th/6th depending on the car. Otherwise just push down on the entire gear shift and do the same. I thought this was common knowledge but apparently it isn't.