'The Amazing Race' revs up once again

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. The 16th season of TV's best reality show is about to get under way.

Yes, it's the season premiere of "The Amazing Race" (Sunday, 7 p.m., Ch. 2). And Season 16 gets off to a promising start.

If you've never watched the show, the concept is actually quite simple. Eleven two-person teams race from country to country, where they have to complete a variety of tasks as they try to reach each episode's pit stop first.

With the exception of a couple of non-elimination rounds, the team that gets there last is eliminated. And the team that reaches the final pit stop first wins $1 million.

That brief description doesn't do the show justice, however. It's part travelogue, part competition, part psychological drama.

The teams travel to some pretty spectacular locations and do some pretty cool things. In Sunday's premiere, they're off to Chile. And they're performing a bit of a high-wire act.

A key element in the show is the casting. There are, as always, people to root for and people to root against.

There are a few somewhat familiar faces this season. "Newly dating couple" Jordan Lloyd and Jeff Schroeder met on last summer's edition of "Big Brother." (She won; he won fan favorite.)

And Caite Upton — half of the "dating models" team — is the former Miss Teen South Carolina who became an Internet sensation in 2007 with her nonsensical answer to a question about why many Americans can't locate the United States on a world map.

("I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as …)

She tells viewers she's trying to redeem herself on the "Race," but, uh, she'll have to do better than she does on the premiere and such.

But then she does seem smarter than Lloyd, who asks for tickets to China when she really wants to fly to Chile.

As the race gets going, some of the contestants crack under the pressure. Or just do dumb things.

Actually, there are several dumb things done in the first episode. You'd think people would know enough to actually read the instructions they're given, wouldn't you?