I Like to Watch

"The Amazing Race" and "Notes From the Underbelly" demonstrate that the joys and perils of family are as countless as the dirty dishes piling up in your sink.

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: TV, Family, Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, I Like to Watch

Nov. 25, 2007 | From the outside looking in, family life seems chaotic and irritating. Meandering through the world like multiheaded beasts that sweat and squeal and bicker and grumble, families take up too much space, make loud, unpredictable noises and leave big messes everywhere they go.

It's easy not to want a family when you see one lumbering toward you from a distance. It wouldn't make much sense to wish for an army of little mouths that need to be fed and limbs that need to be washed and butts that need to be wiped. It wouldn't be logical to long for big piles of filthy laundry and stacks of dirty dishes and tens of thousands of necessary errands and appointments. No one daydreams about snotty faces and unmade beds and day-care bills.

And when you throw in your childhood memories, a string of mildly oppressive family activities, pesky chores and unbearable car trips, punctuated by countless little breakdowns and clashes and standoffs and shouting matches, it can be troubling, indeed, to contemplate creating a topsy-turvy emotional fiefdom of your own.

But once you have a family, all of that fades away. When you settle into the necessary rhythms of recurring Monopoly games and slow-cooker recipes and activities designed to contain the chaos of small people, neurotic worries sink into the background. Emancipated from the incessant demands of the ego, you're free to revert to your basest, dorkiest state. Conveniently, this is also the state that kids like the most: the singer of dumb songs about putting on your shoes, the aggressive landlord at St. Charles Place, the wide-eyed moron who's awed by big trucks and helicopters, the freak who'll dance to anything, from Radiohead to the nursery rhyme electronica of children's toys.

Becoming a cheerful, enthusiastic halfwit turns out to be tremendously relaxing. And while a family can feel like an unwieldy clown car with a flat tire and bad steering, most of the time, it's pretty fun to drive.

Offspringing forward
But you youngsters, with your glossy hair and your big ideas and your endless hours of leisure time, you don't understand these things yet. And look, don't hurry. Slow down and smell the tequila, for chrissakes! Don't even think about having a family until you're boring enough to handle one.

Maybe all young people who want to get married and raise a family together should be forced to complete some kind of elaborate, stressful obstacle course, to give them a realistic idea of whether they're old and washed up enough to handle it. The course could be specifically designed to incite bickering and emotional breakdowns and blaming. Couples would emerge traumatized but less starry-eyed about their futures together, and the parents and ministers and friends who came to watch could share a big, hearty laugh at their expense, then place their bets on how long they expect the marriage to last.

This is the basic spirit of CBS's "The Amazing Race" (8 p.m. Sundays), that long-standing international scavenger hunt that's not for the weak of heart or the short of temper. Of course the show's producers are looking for at least a few combustible personalities: teams of two, either couples or close relatives or friends, who are likely to curse each other mercilessly while navigating crowded, unmarked streets in Shanghai or racing along treacherous paths in New Zealand.

This year, the show's wily producers have had a soft spot for difficult challenges involving temperamental pack animals. In the first leg of the race, the teams had to coax donkeys to carry a small load down a rocky road. The teams that whispered and cooed at their donkeys finished the task easily, while the teams that lost their tempers found themselves with donkeys that planted themselves in the middle of the road and refused to budge. Remember Jack and his stubborn mule on "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams"? Well, it was just like that, except with more flailing and shouting.

And on last week's episode, Lorena had one of the worst breakdowns in the show's long history when she was forced to milk a camel and her camel not only ran out of milk but began kneeing her sharply so that she kept spilling all the milk. Her boyfriend, who described himself as having "one foot out the door" of the relationship in the first episode of the season, stood by looking vaguely amused in that way that says, "My other foot is heading for the door, too."

But those camels were the real stars of that challenge. Camels, like donkeys, are the karma police of the animal kingdom. They don't tolerate hotheads, and they refuse to be rushed, whether it's an impatient nomad on their backs or a troop of do-gooders with care packages ready to feed the world to let them know it's Christmastime. Camels don't give a hot damn about Christmastime, and they'll let you know it, too.

Aside from the colorful beasts of burden, there are some pretty amusing teams this season: Goth couple Kynt and Vyxin, with their hot pink hair and their confusing tranny-show looks mixed with a cutthroat competitive spirit; Shana and Jennifer, blonde dummies who, confusingly enough, look older than their age and look like they've already had work done; Ronald and Christina, a controlling, temperamental father who can't shut up and his mild-mannered but exasperated daughter; Rachel and TK, a hippie couple who are known to chuckle softly when other teams get "totally fraahhh-zzled"; Azaria and Hendekea, geeky, likable brother-sister duo; Nicholas and Donald, outspoken, brash granddad and dorky grandson; and Jennifer and Nathan, wildly dysfunctional couple fueled only by their contempt for each other.

Right now my money's on Kynt and Vyxin, oddly enough, but that could change if -- or should I say when -- they start fighting. They always do, sooner or later. Unless they're too old and washed up to fight, of course, in which case they're also too old and washed up to win this race.

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