Treasure Hunters Does Boston

Last night's episode of Treasure Hunters featured Boston as the location for the third leg of the competition. I was initially thrilled to see my hometown featured on a reality show, especially considering that they billed it as an exploration of the historical sights of the American Revolution, but I was heavily disappointed in the choice of locales used on the show. It turned into the Boston Massacre. The leg started teams at some random abandoned elementary school in Chelsea, then had them run to some random Colonial house in Portsmouth, N.H. that I didn't know existed and some random Colonial prison in Connecticut that I didn't know existed. After a stop by the Old North Church, the leg concluded at a lighthouse in Boston Harbor that (stop me if you've hear this before) I didn't know existed. One team misinterpreted a clue and started heading toward Lexington, but turned around before they arrived and before camera footage could be shown.

However, the biggest insult was when they showed what they assumed mass-market America would think was the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Freedom Bridge in downtown Boston. (see above left) Yours truly was not fooled though, easily being able to identify the bridge pictured as the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston, S.C. (see below left) Can you tell the difference? For starters, the fact that the Cooper River Bridge is surrounded by estuarial tidelands rather than, um, buildings is a dead giveaway. I'm very disappointed in Treasure Hunters, who not only failed to show much that was interesting in Boston, but failed even to show Boston itself. The Amazing Race wouldn't have made such a mistake. (And speaking of The Amazing Race, how did the the Treasure Hunters teams automatically teleport from Montana to Boston? You mean they didn't have to run around the airport trying to find flights? That's the best part!)

In other news, the Wild Hanlons' complete and total lack of intelligence finally caught up to them, which is a shame, considering that they were the most colorful and entertaining of all the teams. The Air Force team freaked out that everyone was teaming up against them (even though the competition rules explicitly required teams to pair up). The Brown Family continued to be slowed by The Nutty Professor. The Fogal Family found out that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. The Grad Students (i.e. The Bartender Bimbos) withdrew when one of their team members was injured. And the Ex-CIA's continued their best Eric and Jeremy impression by trying to sidle up with the Miss USA's.