The Challenge is back! We got everything we wanted with this episode: a fun daily challenge, fights, hookups, drama, strategy, and two eliminations. Let’s run back through the episode and gather our thoughts over what has happened.
The First Elimination: Water Torture
We pick up from the cliffhanger in the last episode with Michele’s ball being drawn from the Hopper, which means that she will be going against Ameerah in the opening elimination. The elimination involved being repeatedly dunked into a pool of water filled with 1500 balls, and the challengers must try to get as many balls out of the pool as they can.
It’s a close elimination and there wasn’t a definitive strategy that gave Ameerah or Michele an advantage, which means winning and returning to the house comes down to endurance and the grit to give the elimination maximum effort and energy. Michele edges out Ameerah by eighteen balls and returns to the house as the entire Challenge fandom breathes a sigh of relief. Michele is an important character coming into this season while Ameerah comes into The Challenge with almost no resume, so losing Michele so early would have been a blow to the entertainment value of the season.
Amanda vs. Michele (and Tori) Heats Up
Speaking of entertainment value, drama ensues from this first elimination and sets the stage for what will likely be this season’s big rivalry. Michele upon learning of her presence in the elimination immediately blames and takes shots at Amanda for getting people to vote for her, and of course Amanda wants to continue that conversation back in the house where they get into a shouting match over big dogs and their shared ex-fling Fessy (with Faysal just chilling in the other room trying not to get involved). It’s the typical challenge peacocking and mind games as everyone else gets their popcorn and watches from the sidelines. It’s reassuring to know that being on CBS will not mean that we don’t get big fights over petty drama.
This ends up being a vintage Amanda episode as she takes center stage for much of the hour. She gets a cool down conversation with Paulie and a confessional to talk about her son as the reason she puts in the work to be on the Challenge. More importantly, she backs up her talk with a huge performance in the upcoming daily challenge and rubs it in the face of the two people who are praying for her downfall (literally): Michele and Tori.
Tori chimes in this episode too with plenty of insults towards Amanda in the confessional booth, when she was not cuddling with Sebastain (who is very very very very very very very very very very attracted to her personality). The fact that Tori is so toxic towards Amanda in confessionals is made even funnier when after the green team wins the challenge, Tori makes an effort to be fake nice to Amanda to avoid being nominated, which plays exactly into why Amanda loathes Tori in the first place.
The Daily Challenge: Green Team Clutches Up
The daily challenge this episode is a Challenge staple: heights over water. Teams must go from one platform to the other by swinging from poles hanging over the water. These types of challenges are great for team seasons as they test both the teamwork of the challengers while highlighting people’s individual strengths. In the end, the green team wins with a dominant performance. The surprising part of the green team’s victory was that Amanda led the way in the first heat, and she and Desi helped Tyler get on the platform in impressive fashion. The three points gained in the first heat set the tone for the green team in the second heat to run away with it.
Other individuals stood out on other teams, but the challenge seemed to confirm that from top to bottom, the green team has the most physical strength. Three of the four girls who finished the course were on green (Amanda, Michaela, Desi twice impressively), and the other girl who finished was Chanelle who got a lot of good coaching from Bananas. Bananas individually was very impressive and dominated the heights course, but his coaching didn’t translate into team-wide success. It’s clear that Bananas is trying to stay safe in this game as a high-profile veteran by proving his worth as a team player, but right now (albeit early in the game) it hasn’t turned into success. The Survivor duo Sebastian and Chris also put together an impressive performance on the heights course: worth a shoutout.
A CBS Women’s Alliance Makes Their Move
In the premiere episode the MTV veterans got their way. This episode proves that their reign is short-lived. CBS players are very motivated to target MTV veterans much to the dismay of Wes, who gets steamrolled in the nominations as Tori and Bananas become at risk for elimination. I’m interested to see how these Challenge legends adjust to the fact that they can’t call the shots like they are used to: will they succumb to the CBS majority and play as a number or go out fighting?
The nominations play into a secret vote strategy of a women’s alliance consisting of CBS challengers Michele, Chanelle, Desi, Tiffany, Alyssa L, etc. Their plan was to put two MTV women against each other, and they backed it up in the secret vote (despite Tiffany going rogue) by stacking the Hopper against Jonna as much as they could. It pays off this week but the randomness of the lottery style elimination decision process adds risks to these coordinated plans.
The Second Elimination: Physical Dominance
The second elimination of the episode is a physical one: challengers must catch balls falling out of a Plinko board. There are sixty balls in total and some are worth more points than others. The challenger with the most points wins. Wrestling and contact is allowed but if the ball hits the ground, it is declared dead and no points are issued.
While Jonna is a smart and well-rounded challenger, she simply did not have the physical strength to match up with Tori in this elimination. Tori took every opportunity to lay hits on Jonna and she physically dominated her in the elimination arena. It’s the exact reason why I saw Tori as the number one Challenger on the female side this season, she’s at peak physical fitness at this point in her challenge career. I wonder how the CBS alliance will respond to the threat she poses after this performance: will they try to send her in repeatedly or will they back off for now out of fear for their own possible exit?
After a somewhat lackluster premiere episode, this hour of television delivered. I’m excited to see what happens next!