Detour for "Amazing Race" Leads It to New Night and Time

Everything about the next installment of The Amazing Race is brand new. Or, at the very least, that's how CBS would like to paint it.

What is new about The Amazing Race 10 is a new night and timeslot (Sundays at 8 pm ET/PT, which I am really growing to like the more I think about it) and some new exotic destinations for the teams to get lost in, including China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Madagascar. Teams will depart from Seattle and travel westward for the first time in the series' history.

(Fortunately, one thing that isn't new about the series is its host. Uber-host Phil Keoghan will return for the tenth installment of The Amazing Race.)

According to the show's producers, the teams themselves will be more diverse than in previous installments of the Race.

"This cast is as different as it's ever been," executive producer Bertram van Munster told the Television Critics Association's summer meeting. "It's meltdown city on this trip."

Van Munster said the language barrier made traveling difficult for the teams, along with 130-degree heat in Kuwait and filming in Communist countries. In Vietnam, the government insisted on viewing daily footage but didn't request any changes or cuts.

(Hell, at least they didn't end up in Beirut with Anthony Bourdain.)

The twelve teams competing for the $1 million grand prize were announced on Saturday at the Television Critics Association gathering in Pasadena and include:

Vipul Patel, 29, and Arti Patel, 26, of Windermere, Florida; the first Indian-Americans on the Race.

Erwin Cho, 32, and Godwin Cho, 29. Brothers from San Francisco.

Tom Rock, 39, and Terry Cosentino, 45, a gay couple from New York City.

Kellie Patterson, 22, and Jamie Hill, 22. Friends from Columbia, South Carolina.

Lyn Turk, 32, of Birmingham, Ala., and Karlyn Harris, 32, of Helena, Alabama. Friends.

David Conley, 32, and Mary Conley, 31. Married couple from Stone, Kentucky.

Bilal Abdul-Mani, 37, and Sa’eed Rudolph, 39, of Cleveland. Friends/Muslims.

Peter Harsch, 35, of Laguna Beach, Calif., and Sarah Reinertsen, 31, of Trabuco Canyon, California. Friends. Additionally, Sarah has an artificial leg.

Rob Diaz, 31, and Kimberly Chabolla, 28, of Los Angeles. Dating.

Tyler Denk, 29, and James Branaman, 27, of Los Angeles. Friends/models.

Dustin Konzelman, 24, of Riverside, California, and Kandice Pelletier, 24, of New York City. Friends/former Miss USA contestants.

Duke Marcoccio, 52, and Lauren Marcoccio, 26, of Warwick, Rhode Island. Father and daughter.

Is it just me or are there an inordinate number of teams comprised of "friends"? Well, better than too many teams made up of models, I suppose...

The Amazing Race's tenth season will kick off this fall in its new timeslot of Sundays at 8 pm on CBS.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

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Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

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