'The Amazing Race' season premiere recap: What a Cheesy Episode

The cheese was heavy, the backpacks were fragile, and the hill was slippery with wet grass and animal poop. It was glorious. The cheese racks splintered into pieces, and the cheese fell to the ground and roll all the way down the hill into the woods at great speeds. At one point Luke lost his balance and his legs began pinwheeling down the mountain as he desperately tried to keep upright, until he finally tumbled to the grass, his cheese flying out of his hands. Mel, who had said he'd prepped for the trip by doing pushups and sit-ups, suffered a groin injury and could only slowly inch down the hill on his butt, cheese in his lap: if only he'd done some groin-ups! And all the while, locals below laughed and laughed, much like the Russian marching band when frat guy Dan attempted to master marching last season.

When the show cut to a wide shot, you saw some people trying desperately to climb the hill, and others nearly passed out on the way down, a giant hunk of cheese pinning them to the ground. It looked like Hamburger Hill. Well, I guess Cheeseburger Hill.

I thought Linda and Steve would be goners. Earlier in the race, weepy Linda demonstrated that she had the lung capacity and stamina of a popped balloon. And even when she wasn't moving via her own power, she was incapable of going fast: She told a cabbie, ''Can you go fast, but follow the speed limit?'' When they arrived at Mt. Cheese, Steve said to her, ''You gotta think. That's the only way we're gonna beat 'em. We didn't get here by being idiots.'' To which I thought, ''Then how did you get here?'' But just as I began building up a head of steam of hillbilly mockery, Steve proved that, dagnabbit, he was the smartest: He just fashioned his wood backpack into a sled of sorts and rode the cheese down the hill.

When Marge and Luke finished first, they dashed off with Luke not realizing he still had a board strapped horizontally to his back. I figured he'd figure it out as soon as he tried to run through a narrow doorway; I just hoped there'd be a cameraman there to catch it. (What? If deaf people are like everybody else, you can laugh at them when they do a Keystone Kop pratfall.) The mother and son made it to the pit stop, which they had to find by listening for yodelers, which, frankly, was a cruel thing to do to a deaf guy. But they found Phil first, and the host signed ''You are team number one!'' and the tears started flowing as Luke said, ''A lot of people think deaf people can't do things. They can do a lot of things but talk.'' And you can certainly add ''Lug enormous amounts of cheese through a field of animal crap'' to that list.

Everyone else gradually trundled in, no doubt lactose intolerant for life, and last came Preston and Jennifer. I was a little sad about this, because I do enjoy a good dose of mutual loathing in my Amazing Race. In his farewell, Preston said, ''It was frustrating at times. I hated her at times,'' and she said she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. If they do get married, I wonder how many times they will break up and then get back together during the walk down the aisle.

So which team are you rooting for, and who do you think will win? (They can be very different things.) What did you think of the cheese challenge? And at what point during the first leg do you think Mike White thought, ''What the hell am I dong here? I could be eating candy off a crafts service table on a movie set, and here I am rolling down a hill past my groin-pulled dad!'' And while you're mulling these questions, don't forget to check out our new addition to EW.com, Phil Keoghan himself! He'll be blogging after each episode, so send him a comment too. And to make him feel at home, end every post with a very special Browsie emoticon. /:-)

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