Well, not exactly, but the original Amazing Race “villain” team, Joe Baldasarre and Bill Bartek, called themselves Team Guido in honour of their “dog” – dogs shouldn’t have “toy” in its breed name. Just my opinion – a toy fox terrier. The life partners were involved in the inaugural season The Amazing Race and finished third. During the season, they accomplished several feats:
– First gay couple to appear on a nationally televised prime time program
– First team to finish first on a leg without the use of a Fast Forward (this was back when Fast Forwards were available on every leg)
– First team to use a Fast Forward yet finish last in a leg.
– Most last place finishes with four (the first they were saved due to a time penalty assessed to another team, the next two were non-elimination legs, and the last was the final leg)
– First team to reach the Final Three but never reach the Finish Line (they made it as far as Alaska, due to being about 24 hours behind the lead teams)
Indeed, the duo proved to be tough competitors, never finishing lower than fourth in any of the legs. But why were they portrayed as villains? Surely a couple of older, gay men couldn’t be considered “bad guys”, could they? Well, apparently they were. According to Murtz, they were “killed in the editing,” but also they “pushed and did whatever they had to,” the latter being reminiscent of a certain Italian-American guy from New England.
These guys are seasoned travelers, and as we’ve seen, they work well together as a team, but can be prone to the occasional brainfart – other teams arrived ahead of them to tasks in Paris (where they’d lived for a couple of years) and despite gaining a Fast Forward, they were the last team to arrive at a checkpoint. The benefit of experience should help Team Guido avoid making the same mistakes again, but now there’s another question – that of age. It’s been over five years since the original season of The Amazing Race. Will time catch up with the Guidos, or can they avoid it long enough to reach the Finish Line again?
