Matt, a.k.a. Pinky, herds ducks like a champ on his way to a Round 2 win. (CBS)

The winners of a challenge in Vietnam were a classic-rock loving farmer and his son, a metal fan with pink hair and piercings.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for The Amazing Race once again.

The two-hour season opener had a huge twist right away.

After all of the teams are introduced (and I’ll give you a rundown of the remaining teams — and their new nicknames — in a little bit), host Phil Keoghan drops a bombshell: One of the teams isn’t even going to make it to the starting gate.

Nice jump, Team Downward Dog. I believe you know the way back to the airport. (CBS)

A challenge to find a license plate for a particular place in Japan among thousands of others leaves one team — a pair of yoga instructors who would’ve been nicknamed Team Downward Dog — in the dust. (Man, that’s tough. You arrange the passports, figure out who’s taking in your mail, get the time off work and turn around and go home. Good thing the team had some Zen in it or someone would’ve slugged Phil.)

So, off we go, and here are the 11 competing teams:

• Team Liars’ Poker: Maria and Tiffany are professional poker players, but to try and get help from other teams, they play as if they’re working for a non-profit for homeless people. We’ll see if that works out.

• Team Chemistry.com: Marcy and Ron are a couple who met on an online dating site, and clearly are the favorite team of AARP, as they’re closer to retirement age than any other duo.

• Team Blonde Ambition: Meghan and Cheyne met in elementary school, were friends, then began dating. Also, she’s apparently and athlete-and-a-half.

• Team Sweet Georgia Brown: Two members of the Harlem Globetrotters, Flight Time and The Big Easy are easy-going but competitive.

• Team Asperger’s: Zev has the disease, wants to prove it won’t stop him; Justin is Zev’s best friend, may be needed in more social situations.

• Pinky & The Brain: The aforementioned father/son farmer team, Gary and Matt would’ve had a different nickname, but someone else came up with the Warner Bros.-inspired moniker and I couldn’t pass it up.

• Team Brethren: Sam and Dan are Christian, brothers and gay. They’re also OK with not letting on that they’re gay if it means they get help from the females in the race, apparently.

• Team Barcelona: Garrett and Jessica met in the Catalan metropolis and have been dating off and on for years.

• Team There She Is!: Ericka was 2004 Miss America, and she and husband Brian are the show’s first married interracial team.

• Team Boston Rob II: Electric Bugaloo: Lance is a lawyer with muscles, an impenetrable Boston accent and attitude to match. Keri is his fiance, and her accent is thick as well.

• Team Promise Ring: Mika and Canaan are dating Christians who profess their sexual purity. They’re also in country music.

Since we spent a lot of time on the teams, let’s go over some of the highlights of the two-hour extravaganza:

As Brian looks for the strength to down a wasabi bomb, Miss America Ericka looks for the strength to continue with a giant wuss. (CBS)

• Japan’s challenge was, unsurprisingly, a game show. Each of the contestants had to suck down a “wasabi bomb”, which was made up of rice and the green horseradish death paste. And they had to finish in two minutes, which meant that some had to eat at least two. One — poker player Maria — ended up eating them in quick succession, which was pretty much one of the most painful sequences I’ve seen.

(It also led to an exchange which finished with Miss America telling husband Brian to “suck it up” after downing two of those wasabi bombs. If it isn’t so tough, why didn’t you take a run at it, beauty queen?!)

• This was followed by the teams leading a section of the studio audience through one of the world’s busiest intersections — Shibuya Junction. This turned into the great equalizer, and Team Liars’ Poker ended up losing two people in the process and finishing last. But it was a non-elimination leg, meaning they stayed in the race, just with a Speed Bump in the next round.

(By the way, Team Liars’ Poker’s gambit of playing like they weren’t poker players failed almost immediately. Tiffany was recognized at the Tokyo airport — she’s Tiffany Michelle, top-15 finisher in the World Series of Poker — and other teams began reacting … um… badly. I’m thinking of renaming Team Liars’ Poker. How about Team Busted Flush? How does that work for you?)

• Off to Vietnam, where it was apparently the rainy, floody season. The biggest challenge here? Duck herding. The skill range went from Pinky (Matt) leading the ducks on a march over a bridge as if he were in the military to Jessica and Miss America losing waterfowl left and right. Then there was Zev — or as we now know him, “The Duck Whisperer”. It was as if he had them under a spell.

Team Barcelona had the worst time herding the ducks, then struggled to find the boat where Phil and random town elder had stashed the finish line, and ended up in last and out.

Next up: Ho Chi Minh City!

And now: Elimination Theater with Bitter Garrett (and more mature Jessica):