The twelfth (!) race kicks off in California, which is fitting, since it"s where about half the teams are from. They head over to Ireland, running into the not-unusual circumstance in which the "better" flight hits a delay at Heathrow and winds up as the emphatically worse flight. There"s a funny sequence with a ferry that certainly makes it appear that perhaps there"s a task missing, unless just riding a ferry was seen as particularly engrossing. Things accelerate as the teams ride a big bicycling contraption over a zillion-foot drop, and then things become utterly awesome as the final task brings donkeys into the mix. Ah, stubborn pack animals...that"s the stuff. There is some luck involved in choosing the correct donkey, but there is also some skill involved in understanding how to treat an animal and, more importantly, how not to. Bickering HugeTinies Nathan and Jennifer wind up with a stalled donkey that, shockingly, does not react very well when they stand there and yell at it, while Ari and Staella, the "we"re going to be the bitchy best friends!" best friends, yank and slap and screech at their donkey, with similar results. Team after team strolls right by all these fools, until they"re battling it out for last place -- a denouement that, for once, can only end in joy. Ultimately, it"s Ari and Staella taking the first long ride to Sequesterville, which: awesome, and there are still ten teams left, solidly eight or nine of which seem mostly likable. It"s one of the stronger premieres they"ve had, and if you can get over the preposterous presence of Ryan freaking Seacrest"s freaking ex-freaking-girlfriend, there"s a lot to like. Oh, and did I mention the stubborn pack animal standing in the middle of the road yelling, "DONK-eeeee-DONK-eeeee-DONK-eeeee"? Because it was pretty magnificent.