I love my TiVo. Okay, I’m obsessed with it. It has completely changed the way I look at television – on demand, and with no commercial interruptions. Did you know you can actually watch 3 hours of the Today show in 3 minutes that way?

But there is one show I don’t TiVo. I can’t TiVo it, because I cannot wait to see it every week, and delaying the pleasure would be unthinkable –and that’s the Emmy-winning adventure reality show The Amazing Race (Thursdays, 10pm, ET/PT, CBS; repeated Saturday night).

If you have a reality show bias, as I did, perhaps you are lumping this show in with all the others. Please reconsider. I, who have never seen Survivor and feel no shame, who felt bamboozled and manipulated by The Apprentice, and have grown increasingly disgusted with America Idol (if Simon Cowell feels that way, why shouldn’t I?), am happy to find a reality show that gives that genre a good name.

If you have ever wanted to jump 18 stories from the top of a hotel, ride a cable into white water rapids, see the new Vietnam, navigate the canals of Venice, hop trains, planes and automobiles to crisscross the world, The Amazing Race, the ultimate ticking clock show, is your round-trip ticket to adventure. When TAR5 began this season, there were 11 teams of two, 22 ordinary people in the race of their lives.

Over the first 4 cycles, the racers have included siblings, married couples, gay couples, parent/child tandems, exes, grandparents, virgins and best friends. With limited funds, the teams must cover an average of 73,000 miles in 29 days, more than 3 loops around the world, over 6 continents, in the hope of outsmarting their competitors, circumventing roadblocks, and tackling challenging tasks that not only force them to face their fears, but make them question how much they want to win $1 million dollars.

Contestants kick into such intense overdrive that their behavior often stuns the production team. As The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan puts it, “We’re the only reality show on TV where we have no control”. This results in moments such as a racer emerging from the water naked to open a coconut on the beach, two others engaging in a manure fight, and a team with different priorities putting the race on hold to go boutique shopping in Hong Kong.