Single mother and college student son.

She doesn't look that old. Might be fairly competitive.

"Dallas"? - I think Mama may have read a little too much S. E. Hinton when she was younger. Other than that, I think I'll like this team - he'd have to work overtime to be as insufferable and deserving of a whap in the jaw as Patrick was. Hopefully this line from his bio: "Dallas can be very persuasive and enjoys getting people to do what he wants." is a lot of hot air.

I don't see them lasting as long as Ron and Christina did, though. Predicting them to be the fourth or fifth team out.

I definitely think I'll like this team. Dennis & Andrew and Steve & Josh excepted, I've always rooted for the parent/child teams. Toni looks really nice and Dallas looks pretty friendly, too.

I just hope they're more likable than Susan & Patrick were (though I actually liked Susan & Patrick).

For someone who shares a name with a city, Dallas's geography skills seem to be a bit shaky. According to the LA Times blog article (link in the Media thread), "Dallas hopes to get to Africa or Egypt, and the only thing he wants to avoid is a challenge involving snakes."

Last time I checked, Egypt was in Africa.

To be fair though, it wasn't a direct quote...

Between Starr Spangler (of Nick and Starr), and the Imbimbos, this season looks to have some funny names (not to be disparaging, since I've got a pretty funny surname in some foreign languages too, heh.)

Was meh about them until I saw the video. Toni seems much cooler than the normal TAR parent. Too bad she had to leave behind her other children: Austin, Houston, Waco . . . and her daughter Texarkana.

I thought Dallas is Toni's only child.

I'm fairly certain it was a Texas city-name joke.

For some reason, I keep hearing Sean Connery in my head: "We named the dog Dallas."

I have never read the bios before the show has started before, this will definately make it more interesting. I'm rooting for these two.
Go Matt... I mean Dallas.

Oh, that was a great Sean Connery reference. And, as always, El Guapo, you rule.

I hope to like this team despite the obnoxious place name for the son. Go, Mom!

How many other mother/son teams have there been? I take it from the two Susan/Patrick references above that they were a mother/son team from another season (if so, which season? I dont remember them)?

Until Toni & Dallas's casting, Susan & Patrick from TAR7 were the only other mother/son team to be on the show.

It almost seems like with parent/child teams, having the child be a daughter is a better, more emotionally appealing casting choice for the producers than having the child be a son. Which is likely why we've had more mother/daughter (three -- Nancy & Emily, Deidre & Hillary, and Wanda & Desiree) and father/daughter (a whopping four -- Jim & Marsha, Gus & Hera, Duke & Lauren, and Ronald & Christina) than combos than those with sons. Heck, father/son teams have been especially scarce and unseen since TAR4. So it's nice to see the producers go for having another son on the show rather than a daughter.

I know it's not a great series, but I found a lot of the parent-son relationships (and the variants, like step-mother and step-son, father and son-in-law, even the widowed mother - son relationship of the Weavers) from Family Edition really interesting.

These two do seem like they might be a hoot though, and certainly look more active and competitive on first glance than Susan and Patrick did.

He seemed supportive, and she seemed excited to be working on a team with him. This bodes well. Go team Motherboy.

I like them so far, simply because they aren't showing any signs of another Susan/Patick. She seems supporative and caring, while he seems to respect her and doesn't treat her like a burden, which tends to happen when their a team, featuring an athletic partner, with someone who might be slowler. I hope they keep the good attitudes going.

They seem to have solid chemistry so far. I'm liking them at this point.

Does anyone know her age? My sister says 54. I say 47. The CBS official page doesn't have ages, which surprised me.

She's 51, he's 22.... according to wikipedia.

There seems to be no parent/child conflict between them, which is a nice change. There's also no "oh we love each other so much, we're a great family!" arc being set up yet, which means they may last for more than a few episodes.

I could do without the showmance between Dallas and Nick's sister, but it was nice to see Dallas sans shirt.

I like them a lot so far! But I think they didn't get much screentime because Nick & Starr, Ken & Tina, Terence & Sarah, and Andrew & Dan were hogging all the screen time in the premiere.

I love this team and hope they win it all. They are very supportive of each other and the mom, Toni, seems like she is having the time of her life. It's very refreshing.

Oh, and I found it really cute when Toni gave Dallas a quick peck on the cheek just before they left the starting line.

Are they the first parent-child team who don't have a relationship conflict as their main hook? While they did seem to be supportive of each other, so did Ron and Christina in last season's first episode. I sure hope they don't follow that story arc.

The father/daughter teams had relationship conflicts (mainly the fear of the daughters disappointing their father...or, in the sad case of Chris, actually disappointing her ass of a father) while the mother/daughter teams were more victims of "the generation gap" (now there's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time).

I was a little worried about this team at the beginning when Dallas left Toni for dead during the sprint up the stairs, but (so far) they're a huge improvement over the previous mother/son team, who were both completely unpleasant.

Plus Dallas is smokin' hot.

I think that happens a lot at the beginning of the race. One member of the team is faster than the other and they get so caught up in the excitement of starting the race that they forget that they are supposed to stay close to their partner. It's more "Woohoo, race! Go, go, go!" than anything else. After that most people tend to remember the rules and not stray too far from their partners.

Dallas is rather attractive isn't he? Toni seems like a lovely woman. She's been waiting for him to be old enough to apply for the race so they could apply as a team. I bet that no matter how they did this whole thing was a great experience and a real dream come true for her.

Well, it seems young Dallas hasn't learned the first rule of the internet - 1) thou shall not post pictures of thyself in the nude. Yep, full frontals have popped up on several sites on line today, and were quickly removed after lawyers were in touch to suggest that the shots where taken five years ago...when he was only 17...and therefore would qualify as child porn.

Love the patience and respect Dallas shows his mother. Hope they go all the way to the finish line.

I saw the pic of Dallas before every website took it down. I think the 17 thing could be a ploy so that websites will comply and take it down. My reasoning is that his appearance has not change at all in 5 years.

I would like to take a moment to thank Dallas for those photos personally. Dallas, honey, you brightened my day, for real-real, not for play-play.

Ahem! I like Motherboy. No majorly apparent dysfunctions in their relationship, which puts the in the top percentile of this motley crew of racers. They may do well.

After the nightmare that was Susan & Patrick in TAR 7 I was braced to dislike this team, but so far they're very likeable and seem to be decent racers.

So far.

I would have thought he asked for them to be taken down because his wang looks kind of obviously photoshopped.

I know this sounds really petty, but I can't like them very much now after they helped Terence and Sarah. Not only is helping another team get a cab a very questionable idea (unless you have a pre-set alliance with those people), but Terence and Sarah are unstable, nasty players who will cut the throats of any other team for any reason. Toni and Dallas should expect a knife in the back instead of a thank you.

They probably didn't expect to be eliminated tonight (and they were in a very good place to avoid it), so they had no problem helping them. I can see why they did.

They also aren't privy to all of the insanity that is Terrance and Sarah that viewers are. Most of the crap between T and S and other teams has taken place when Dallas and Toni were elsewhere. It's pretty hard to know that you just helped one of the more annoying and petty teams on the race when you have been busy doing your own thing. It's still early days in the race and helping out when you are doing well is no big hardship.

So far, I'm neutral leaning toward positive about these two. It's a mother/son but not a creepy mother/son. I think the mother is the saving grace in that she's pretty normal. She's rah-rah, and high-fivin', and superduper supportive of her kid, in that special way single-moms-who-raised-their-child-alone have patented. But she's not icky. Not yet, anyway.

My opinion of them went up when they helped Terrence & Sarah. Yeah, I'm not grooving on T&S either, but I always appreciate seeing good sportsmanship.

There was a leg of the Tour de France when I saw it most beautifully. The race was going through the hometown of one of the racers. Everybody knew this. The peloton (main group) slowed down to give him a few minutes to hug his mother and have a quick beer with his friends without losing any real time from the race. Better? There were two guys at the very front, running five or ten minutes ahead of everybody else. When they were notified about what was going on, they could well have legged it and gained their lead time, but they took the opportunity for a quick, um, nature break, thus ensuring that everyone had the same relative position when the hometown boy re-joined the group.

To me, giving the opposition a break is a sign of class.

steve91199 said:



I was watching that episode with my mom, who, upon spotting Shirtless Dallas!, said: “If I were his mother, I’d make him put his shirt back on.”

To which I, being the good daughter who nevertheless loves seeing good-looking men without their shirts on because although I’m insane, I’m not that insane, promptly replied: “Then it’s a good thing that you aren’t.”

Dear Toni, if you ever were to read this: Thank you so very much for giving birth to and raising your son so that he’d someday i.e. today be on my teevee.

However, please be advised that the name Dallas probably didn’t help him much in the chick-scoring department, though I wouldn’t know for sure – some girls do go for that sort of thing. Also, he’s hot, so the name probably didn’t pose that much of a problem, if at all. My point is: you rock, as do all single mothers.

In any case, if you ever want to name a kid with a city name, then go badass. Like Minnetonka. So we may call him Tonks.

Also, there's this thing that Toni admitted to immediately afterward: she's a mom. And it's a very "Mom" thing to not want to see someone (especially someone younger) in trouble like that, without offering help. I hope she learns to control it in future legs though!

I am also reminded of the college woman's softball team game in Washington State -- it was reported on for ESPN, and I'd include the link if I had it handy; maybe someone will help -- where the player for one team hit a ball that would have been a home run, but painfully twisted her ankle just as she passed first. She crawled back to First base and was stranded there, since her team was prohibited from helping her. The pitcher of the other team, with another player, CARRIED THE INJURED PLAYER around the bases, dipping her at each base so she could touch it with her uninjured foot.

Get back on topic, please.

With a team as emotionally driven as Terence & Sarah it's probably a good idea to keep them on your side with the U-Turn in play. They are strong, so it might have been an idea to try to knock them out whilst you had the chance, but they also seem prone to burn-out and catastrophising, so they might not be as dangerous as competitors as they first appear.

I dunno, there are up-sides and down-sides strategically, but they just seemed like they were playing to be "nice" anyway, which is fine as long as they're ready to take the possible consequences.

On a completely shallow note, boy did Dallas look smokin' in his superhero/wrestler outfit!

Yes, he did :-D
I kinda hoped he would keep his, like Ken did.

Now that the geeks are gone, this is my go to team. I always liked them just on the basis of the Mom and Son thing since I'm a Mom, with a son. And Toni yelling "That's my baby!" last night was so something I would have done - I hope they can keep up.

Oh yeah - and word on the Superhero outfit, Toni is right to be proud of her "baby"

I was watching the first episode with RaceBoyfriendRyan last week when it aired (though I "creatively" saw it beforehand) and we ended up spending the entire hour mocking contestant names. Strangely, even with my preparation for snarkage I didn't come up with this one:

Me: Dallas?! What kind of fucked up parent would give their kid that name?
RBR: I don't know. It's not that it's a sucky name that annoys me, it's that I'm gonna be thinking of him as an American Gladiator all season. A female one.

Of course, I haven't let him in on the wrestling uniform yet. Can't wait for that.

I have to love them now, simply because Toni compared the Kiwi detour to Lucy and Ethel's grape squishing. Don't hear too many "I Love Lucy" refrences on TV these days.

And yet, it's the second reference to the grape squishing episode on TAR.

Gosh, I hope they won't eliminated anytime soon! They're the only team I'm rooting for...what a difference compared to last season!