Tampa's Tina Hunter Greene survives Week 1 on CBS's Amazing Race

When we met in Tampa, businesswoman Tina Hunter Greene came off as energetic and personable -- though her eye for detail was revealed when she noticed a dying plant in her office boardroom during our photo shoot.

But another side of Greene was shown during tonight's debut episode of the 13th cycle of CBS's hit unscripted global competition, The Amazing Race.

During an hourlong episode documenting her and once-estranged husband Ken Greene competing against 10 other two-person teams to travel from Los Angeles to a pit stop in Salvador, Brazil, Tina Greene was revealed as a hard-nosed competitor with a bit of a barbed tongue.

Her husband Ken may have been a former pro football player and college football coach, but it was Tina Greene who was shown barking orders for much of the episode, pushing Ken to use any language skills he might have to communicate with the local cab drivers, and egging him into driving past competing teams in the initial race to drive to Los Angeles International Airport from the race's starting point in the city.

But tonight's episode showed her mostly pushing Ken to move faster -- with hints during the preview for next week's episode that their alliance with another team may cause some friction with their fellow racers.

"Sometimes I may come off like the Wicked Witch of the West, sometimes I may come off like Mother Teresa," Tina Greene told me last week, noting that she gave away some of her clothing to people she met during the race.

I wrote a feature on Tina Greene for today's Floridian, documenting her idea of competing in the race as a way of determining once and for all whether she will stay married to Ken -- who admitted during the show that he cheated on Tina in the past, fracturing their marriage.

Ken was expected to be in Tampa today for a private viewing party the couple arranged at the Westshore Yacht club tonight. In this week's episode, Ken and Tina are shown placing second in the scramble to reach the first pit stop, leading viewers to believe they might be around for some time to come.   

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Comments

[torque]

She is a disgrace to Tampa. Couldnt they have found someone a little more normal to represent the area.

[Sharon]

Did you see how Entertainment Weekly recapped this couple? Hilarous!!

KEN AND TINA Now these two have promise. They're like the older version of last season's MVP bickerers, Nate and Jen. Like Nate, former NFL player Ken cheated on his partner, and was hoping she would forgive him. Like Jen, Tina devotes every waking hour to wishing Ken's private parts would be run over by a truck. And since he's penitent and desperate for her absolution, this means that their entire race will consist of her emasculating him on national TV while he is unable to fight back. She's a backseat driver, and yells at him for everything, including not learning Spanish before the trip (although in Brazil they speak Portuguese): Stay tuned for upcoming episodes in which he will be upbraided for not: learning to fly; mastering teleportation; and KEEPING YOUR G-DAMN PECKER IN YOUR PANTS, YOU DISGUSTING PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A MAN. The interesting thing about Tina is that her eyebrows seem to be drawn on, and she appears to have gone to great trouble to draw them on at the angriest angles possible: / This ensures that even if she momentarily forgets herself and feels happy about him, he will never know it because she will always look pissed. I wonder if one day she will skip drawing eyebrows altogether, and just write "HATE" over her right eye and "YOU" over the left.