Amazing Race Recap

I love watching TV. Almost as much, I love reading the TV Watch recaps on Entertainment Weekly. Because the writers have such an intimate relationship with the shows they cover, they sometimes point out important details I might have missed or explain events in a larger context. Moreover, for the most part, the writers put such a humorous spin on the shows, I always end up laughing out loud. For example, Josh Wolk begins his recap of last night's episode of The Amazing Race thus:

Sometimes it's funny when Amazing Race teams prove their ignorance of everything other than how to match sweatsuits. When, say, a Racer speaks Spanish in Turkey, or can't pronounce ''Bulgaria,'' it's amusing: ''What dopes!'' I cry smugly and we can all laugh together at the ignorance of this one random doofus on a reality show.

But on last night's show, five out of eight racers had never heard of Anton Chekhov. Not ''didn't know how to spell'' Chekhov: Had never heard of him. And when asked to unscramble his name with seven letters, they reacted as if they were told to name something incredibly obscure and local, like, ''Unscramble the name of Siberia's top mailman.'' Suddenly, dopiness couldn't be dismissed as an isolated incident. It made you think, ''Good lord, is this an exact microcosm of our country?'' I've got something else to unscramble, too: WEER SRCEWED.