It's a treasure, matey!

Well, we have a new reality game show for me to obsess on: Treasure Hunters! Thanks to my friend Judy for tipping me off to this one. I didn't even know anything about it until she gave me a heads-up last week. I watched it last night, and I'm going to stick with it and recap like I do for The Amazing Race.

For anyone who didn't see it last night, it's like TAR on steroids. You have to figure out all kinds of clues and puzzles, and they mix it up with the teams - sometimes you're working with someone and sometimes not. It's pretty cool so far. I haven't figured out some of the specifics, like how they got from Alaska to Nebraska last night. Does everyone automatically end up on the same flight? I didn't see teams scrambling for flights like they do on TAR, so I'm wondering how many automatic catch-ups there are going to be where teams all even up regardless of how they're playing. I assume the one last night was designed to set up the meeting between the two sets of teams, but I wonder if there will be a lot of that as the game goes on. Anyway, let's do a little recapping for the inaugural episode of Treasure Hunters!

We've got two sets of 5 teams. First set: Air Force, Geniuses, Graduate Students, Fogal Family, and Brown Family. These teams started competing from Hawaii. Second set: Young Professionls, Miss USAs, Southie Boys, Wild Hanlons, and Ex-CIA. First, team commentary.

Air Force team's Matt, you know you love me and want to marry me, so just win some money and come on down here and pick up your lady love. I'll start wedding plans now, and by the time you win the show, everything will be ready.

Grad students made me want to puke by saying they'd ride the coattails of the geniuses. It makes women, even educated ones, look like they're not as smart as guys. And the bikinis didn't help. Don't be bimbos.

Geniuses. Can you be a genius with sideburns like Francis'?

Southie Boys. These guys are all great looking, but dear Lord, I don't know that I can listen to those accents.

Wild Hanlons. My first thought was, "Oh, pleeeeeease don't let them be from Texas." They are from Texas. What can I even say?

Now, the action.

Keith Brown can't swim. Does anyone listen to me? How many times have I preached this on TAR? If you're going to do one of these shows, know how to swim and how to drive a standard. Swimming in the open ocean would be a little scary to begin with, but if you don't know what you're doing, well, what are you doing there? Then, he ended up getting help when they reached the island with the downed plane. I don't want the man to drown or get chopped up in boat propeller blades, but is it really fair for him to get taken to the beach while everyone else had to swim it? I think not.

The second team started in Alaska. Sigh. This is where I started to get more understanding of how this game would be played. Finding the morse code and the decoder book in Hawaii was one thing, but having to actually figure out the Stillwater Washington clue got me going, "Oooooooh. Okay." This is going to be much more of a thinking game than TAR. But then when they got to Lake George and just had to start digging in all the rock piles with no clue which one would be the right one? Well, that was just luck, picking the right pile. I think I might have a hard time if I were playing this game figuring out when to just plunge in because it's luck, and when there's a clue to figure out, and I'm afraid I might overthink some of the clues or not get them.

Like the Mount Rushmore clue about history changing things. At first, I thought that was applying to how you viewed the faces. There was a spot where you could only see two faces by virtue of how the mountain was carved, but then there was another spot where a tree had grown up to block the view of one of the faces. So, there was more than one place where you could only see one face, and one of them had only developed over time (with the tree growing). I'm still not sure because of the editing which of those two places ended up leading people to the lockboxes. And I don't know how the teams figured out that the combination was the presidents' presidency number. But if I'd gotten that part, I would've intuitively known to enter the numbers in the order that the presidents appear on the mountain. Yet, it turns out, that was what the clue about history was about - that you enter the numbers not in chronological numbers, but in the order of appearance. So, you see what I mean about the clues - I'm not sure I'd get them all, and if I did, I'm not sure I would interpret them right. I might overthink. I have a very analytical mind, and sometimes it goes into overdrive, complicating things.

A word about the Fogals. It's nice that Preacher Fogal prayed before one of the legs of the hunt, by he's not much of a man of God if he would steal someone else's clue. That was not cool at all when he took one of the Grads' clues right out of the girl's hand. Of course, they were equally foolish asking at the plane crash site if the Fogals would leave them the key to their locker. Why would anyone do that (leave the key)? That would only make sense if you were teamed up for some reason, like the Hanlons and Geniuses did with the lock boxes. Of course, I didn't entirely get that either. What were the Hanlons offering the Geniuses in that team-up? And why couldn't the Geniuses get their box open after the Hanlons got theirs open and told them the combination was "What you just said." And why did they say that anyway, instead of saying the numbers out loud? Was the other team too close and they didn't want them to hear, or do you think the Hanlons were just trying to be coy and not give away the answer, even though it had just been given to them?

The Hanlons can't last too long in this. They're not figuring things out very well, just sort of relying on other teams to carry them, and they're giving stuff away without realizing it (telling the Young Pros that the right location was Mt. Rushmore, not Mt. Roosevelt...has anyone ever heard of Mt. Roosevelt?).

I'm glad the Browns aren't out yet. I kinda like those guys. I would've rather seen the Geniuses go down than the Young Pros. When Francis said they had to dumb themselves down to work with the Young Pros, I automatically wanted them to be eliminated. I imagine they won't last too long. The others will get tired of that one guy barking at them all the time.

And there you have it: Week One. This is going to be fun!