'World's Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji': TV Review

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Gone since 2002, Mark Burnett's ultra-endurance competition series 'Eco-Challenge,' a progenitor to 'Survivor' and 'The Amazing Race,' returns with a new season on Amazon

The ultra-endurance race created by Mark Burnett evolved as a television format first on MTV, then on ESPN, eventually making its way to Discovery and then USA. It was great television because it was a pure competition, with dozens and dozens of teams of racers making their way across difficult and varied terrains, pushed beyond any reasonable limits in conditions that looked all the more harrowing from the comfort of your couch.

You need to keep that last part in mind, because even with a 10-episode season, it's hard for Burnett and his team to really captureas a win-or-lose event. The first episode features one solid bit of back-and-forth jostling between a team of prohibitive favorites from New Zealand and a group of fast-starting Americans determined to make an early statement.

The teams are really competing with their own limitations, as individual racers and as a unit. Within a day or two of racing — the winners complete the course in under six days, but teams have 11-plus days to finish — the gaps between leaders, the middle tier groups and teams struggling to make it to several pre-announced, timed cutoff points can be hours and then days.

Fortunately, there are spectacular storylines aplenty and those emotional connections, remote for the first episode or two, become a deep investment by the time we reach later episodes. It's impossible not to grow attached to Team Endure, featuringveteran Mark, whose worsening Alzheimer's symptoms mean this will be his last chance to race with his son, Travis. It's easy to quickly warm to the familial bickering of Team Able Abels, featuring an experienced racer and his two daughters.

The spacing out of the racers means that a winner is crowned with several episodes to go and that the team arcs I cared about were mostly wrapped by the conclusion of the last of eight episodes sent to critics. That just means that it's a formula that still has room for refinement and hopefully fans won't have to wait another 18 years for the next

 

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Please don’t support Mark Burnett. He buried the Trump tapes and got a $26M payout to keep quiet.

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