In Destination X, ten contestants are flown to Europe, with all of them wearing goggles that act as high-tech blindfolds, controlled by host (and one of the EPs), Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The idea is that they will be shuttled in a big tour bus to different parts of Europe, and have no idea where they are; they will have to guess where they are, and the one who is furthest away from the location gets eliminated. The winner gets $250,000.
Opening Shot: “I am Jeffrey Dean Morgan,” says Jeffrey Dean Morgan, “and I’m turning the world into one… giant… game board.”
The Gist: While Destination X seems like a straightforward game, the reality if a bit more complicated than that. Morgan gives the group a challenge right on the tarmac, for instance, where the winner gets to pick someone to get a clue about their destination. In the first episode, that clue entails the pair being dropped in a location that should give them visual clues.
Then, the group is dropped off in a town short of the destination to compete in a larger challenge. Two teams are formed; each team has a “searcher” looking in the town for coins that contain clues about the destination, but the members that are left behind also have to answer clues in order to release the searcher.
In the first episode, there are five clue coins; the more coins that are gathered, the more clues the team has. It also gives the captain of the team the ability to send more people to the “map room,” which is a section of the bus where the contestants have to guess where they are.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Destination X is basically The Amazing Race, but with blindfold goggles.
Our Take: There are some good parts of Destination X, but a lot of stupid parts, as well. The good parts start with Morgan, whose smirking charm never ceases to be engaging, no matter what he’s doing. The second good part are the visuals of each place the contestants stop, where we see them looking up and around at some impressive locales, like an 8-story-deep well in the middle of the town where the main challenge is located in the first episode.
The mix of contestants is also pretty good. There is only one contestant, Big Brother winner Josh Martinez, who has reality TV experience, and it’s interesting how much or how little that experience helps him here. Another contestant, Mack Fitzgerald, openly says she thinks she’s smarter than everyone else on the show and purposely aligns herself with the contestant she thinks is the dumbest, Ally Bross. There seems to be inherent distrust among the contestants from the jump, which is always more interesting than seeing people make friends first, somehow naive to how reality competitions work 25 years after the premieres of BB and Survivor.
The stupid part is the game play, at least in the first episode. It’s way, way too complicated in some respects and too easy in others. In the tarmac challenge, for instance, the contestants find suitcases with pictures or clues on them and are supposed to toss the suitcase in a bin corresponding to the country in the clue. We didn’t see all of the clues, but we saw some of them, and the idea that any of these people missed any clues blew our minds. During the main challenge, the clues were again easy to figure out.
Your enjoyment of Destination X will really depend on if you can resist throwing up your hands at how many mental bricks the contestants throw as they try to figure out these challenges. We do wonder if there are some contestants who will purposely throw the more gullible of the group off the trail right before they go to the map room, which is what we saw in the first episode. That seems to be the easiest way to gain any sort of advantage, but it might get tiresome after awhile.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: The person who is kicked off the bus after being furthest away from the right location sees where they are, then goes off with Morgan to get something to eat.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Biggy Bailey, who seems to say “dadgum” a whole lot.
Most Pilot-y Line: Rick Szabo, one of the oldest contestants, says in an interview that he may have a leg up because he used to be a negotiator. But what kind of negotiator? One who negotiated contracts in a conference room, or one that negotiated with terrorists and kidnappers? That’s a big difference.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The scenery, Morgan’s charm, and the good casting will keep you watching Destination X, even though the gameplay is too complicated and frustrating.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.