The Challenge is back! I didn’t have time to watch episode three and write the recap before episode four, so I opted for the supersized post for the week. Let’s run back through the two episodes and gather our thoughts over what has happened.
Episode 3
The Daily Challenge: I Love Swimming!
Yeah, this daily challenge was not it. It’s a well designed challenge: it measures the team’s ability to coordinate flipping the boat while also challenging the swimming skills of each individual. The problem with the challenge is that it was just plain boring and there was nothing interesting to show off for the camera. Nothing really stood out because we didn’t really see much of either the team or individual performances. Blue team ends up winning the challenge as they are able to cleanly flip the boat and memorize the flags without any issues. The Red team struggled with memorization and the Green team struggled with swimming.
Vets Reckon With Having Zero Power in the Game
It’s already been documented in the first two episodes, but episode three truly established the dire position the MTV veterans find themselves in, and everyone is coping in different ways. Tori is just in denial and is just putting in the legwork to maintain her alliances for next season. Tori even went after Amanda for not having her back, but no one in the history of backs would have Tori’s back less than Amanda. Wes has just accepted his fate at this point and is just working on getting out some charming one-liners in confessionals. Amanda is fueling herself with hatred of everyone so she’s doing just fine. Cory made the decision to try to play with the CBS rookies in hopes that they will spare him, let him in the group, or self-destruct before they can vote him into elimination. It’s fair for Cory to attempt to let the rookies play and join them if it means delaying the inevitable nomination for as long as he can, but I’m sure in a future MTV season Cory will have to deal with the blowback of throwing Bananas and Tori under the bus.
The Johnny Bananas Pity Party
No vet was more butthurt about losing power in the game than Johnny Bananas, and he spent basically all episode trying to pick fights with Josh and Fessy and loudly complaining to the house how everyone is stupid and no one understand how COMPLEX the game is and how if you don’t listen to Johnny’s sage wisdom about the game then you are doomed for failure. It’s hilarious in a sad way to see Johnny this pressed over having what has been his game for years taken over by… smarter people. I find it laughable how Bananas believes that these Survivor and Big Brother players don’t have the ability to understand how the Challenge works… I’d argue the Challenge is the easiest game of the three because just being physically strong makes your strategy easier and alliances are simple to stick to, where Survivor and Big Brother are way more socially complex and much more susceptible to betrayal.
In past Challenge seasons, Johnny had plenty of loyal allies like Leroy, Zach, Nany, Tony, his cousin, etc. who gave Bananas a level of power on top of his reputation which kept him very safe. That era has been long over but even in recent seasons like Ride or Dies, the allure of the banana man got him in the door for alliances with longtime vets, and Johnny himself got a little smarter navigating those politics. Johnny has never really played a season filled with smart rookies like the Big Brother and Survivor alums who are happy enough to be nice to his face but have no intention of working with him in the long run.
The Elimination: Iced Out
While I found the daily challenge to be quite boring, the elimination actually was good television. The elimination is a more extreme twist on a classic Survivor challenge: holding your hand up so you don’t drop a bucket of crap on you and lose. Because this is The Challenge, you stand on a block of ice and flamethrowers melt the ice over time. On top of that, challengers throw bean bags at a target to turn on and off the fire, which means that if you can make it so the other challenger can’t turn off the flames because they ran out of beanbags to throw, you are set to win if you don’t give up to the pain.
Bananas and Paulie opt to immediately throw bags which makes the elimination tense from the start. If you are stuck with the fire jets on to melt your ice, you are set to lose the elimination. It ends with Paulie missing the target on his final beanbag, and Bananas holds out for over an hour to outlast Paulie as his melting ice causes the bucket to tip.
This episode was presented as a condensed Paulie redemption arc, pretty much because he goes home this week. While his stay was short, Paulie came into the season dialing up the outfits but dialing down the chaos, saying that he has matured and is more comfortable in his own skin than he used to be. Does this mean Paulie is #reformed as a good guy now? Who knows. Three episodes he was barely involved in really isn’t enough of a sample size to know if the man behind the fur coats has changed for the better. I think Paulie was just happy to be back on a show he loves and not be the house punching bag at the end of his stay. Now we wait patiently for All-Stars 4 to see what happens when his girlfriend makes her long-awaited return to the show.
Also, Bananas ends up defecting to the Blue team because the Red team is dysfunctional and ain’t winning nothing right now. He takes Cory’s spot just to spite him.
Episode 4
Desi and the “Secret Garden” Alliance
A lot went on in this episode, from the double elimination twist to the daily challenge throw to the chaotic deliberation to the pole wrestles. But I want to make clear that this episode was the episode that made Desi the protagonist of the season. This episode was about Desi going from respected fringe character in USA 1 to power player in USA 2. Desi is the head of the strongest alliance so far in the season, dubbed the “Secret Garden”, consisting of: Desi, Chanelle, Tiffany, Michaela (the inner circle), Michele, Alyssa Lopez, and Alyssa Snider. This group of seven has rallied the rookie takeover in the house and have dictated a lot of the nominations so far this season. While being successful isn’t something new to Desi, having the weight of the expectations in the pressure cooker of the Challenge is new to her. She confides in her inner circle and they assure her that they will prop her up and support her in the face of those evil vets, who are openly targeting her as the leader of the rookies. By the end of this episode, Desi will have overcome her first roadblock of the season and is well prepared to get to the end. But first, a lot of chaos needs to happen to get to that point.
The Daily Challenge: A Calculated Throw
Unlike the swimming challenge, this daily was quite entertaining. Challengers start hanging off the side of one of two parallel semi trucks and must swing to the other side to place dots on a board. Two challengers from two teams will be up there at the same time as the challenge is run in heats. The team with the most points at the end wins.
This is a challenge that requires body coordination and athleticism. The challenge is fun to watch because of how active the task is (certainly more exciting than swimming and memorizing).The action ramped up even more once people realized that playing defense is a strategy, which gives us moments to see certain challengers posterize others. like Cory did to Chris. The Red and Green teams pull away from the Blue team early as those two teams are simply more athletic. Because the Blue team falls out of the challenge, the team starts considering how they will benefit the most from who wins. Chris Underwood comes out of left field to propose a plan in which Bananas and Tori forego trying to score points in their heat against Green team and focus purely on defense. That way, the Red team can pull away on points, win the challenge, and weaken the Green team by nominating their strongest players for elimination. The plan works to perfection: we get a showdown between the vet duo of Tori and Bananas and the physical powerhouse duo of Monte and Michaela, Blue team limits Green team’s points, and Red team wins the challenge because of it.
Josh Sends the Nominations into Calculated Chaos
Red team wins the nomination, and you would expect that they follow the trend of nominating MTV veterans to go to elimination. Because it is a double elimination, they have an opportunity to knock out both Amanda and Wes in one fell swoop. That’s certainly the plan for the Secret Garden alliance, who have three core members of the alliance situated in the Red team. But Josh has other plans. He sees how the vets are being picked off one by one and knows that every vet who goes home is one less ally he has in the game. So Josh rounds up the guys on the Red team and tells them that they need to force a stalemate in the elimination so the Red girls can't get their way in the nominations. It makes sense for Cory to go along with the plan because even though he broke rank from the vets last episode, any plan that helps the vets helps him too. And Dusty apparently worships the ground that Johnny Bananas stands on (sidenote: I can’t accept that Dusty wrote Bananas a farewell note/fan mail when Johnny switched teams… who is this man?), so of course he would be down for the plan too.
Because Josh is leading the plan, it means that chaos is about to unfold. Josh historically channels his emotions into outbursts that hurt his game, but this is Josh 2.0. He has evolved and learned to channel his emotions into outbursts that help his game now! That’s growth, and quite possibly Josh’s first ever W in the Challenge! I don’t think the Secret Garden alliance was ready for how Josh was going to act in nominations. Michele understood what was happening and committed to the back and forth with Josh. Chanelle got into the action and was heated in the nomination too, valiantly defending Desi and her alliance and ready to stalemate. Tiffany, however, ended up burning her vote on the female nomination which sent her top ally Desi into elimination. It’s a bad look when you fold on your alliance, but we have to be realistic here with Tiffany. If a stalemate means Red team goes into the Hopper for elimination, then Tiffany has a 1 in 3 chance of a date in the arena. And if Tiffany is in the arena, she probably loses the matchup to every female challenger and goes home sad. Tiffany couldn’t afford a stalemate.
The Secret Garden alliance didn’t even get their male nomination in what was a total L for the group. They wanted veteran Wes in the arena, but Luis gets sent to elimination instead. This loss falls more on Michele, who ended up voting against Luis, but it also doesn’t really affect Michele’s game that she diverges from her CBS alliance. Michele can continue to parlay her connections with both the CBS alums and the MTV alums for safety and protecting someone as disconnected as Amazing Race player Luis, who couldn’t even count on his show buddy Dusty to help him out, isn’t worth it.
But the most badass power move of them all wasn’t even in the nomination. Even though Desi was nominated for elimination and her alliance failed to protect her, she is so well connected in the house that Desi was able to campaign enough to stack the secret vote against Amanda. Amanda was not only Desi’s target this week, but also the person Desi is most confident she can beat in the arena. What a comfy safety blanket for Desi that she can control the secret vote like that.
A Good Ol’ Fashioned Pole Wrestle… Sorry, I Meant “Evil Eye” Wrestle
Because it is a double elimination episode, the show pulled out a classic elimination. Challengers must partake in a version of pole wrestling called “Evil Eye”, where the pole is instead a large disk. It is a best-of-one wrestle where you win by gaining sole possession of the disk and taking it outside of the arena ring.
The first matchup is Luis against Chris, who was unanimously voted for by the Green team for concocting the plan to throw the daily challenge for the Red team to win. This was a great elimination for Chris, who looked strong and handled the physicality of the pole wrestle really well. Chris has a dad bod and I think the house assumed he would be an easy opponent in a headbanger elimination such as this, so he put the house on notice by taking out Luis. People underestimated dad strength, and it turns out having a college football pedigree helps in situations like this. Luis leaves the Challenge without making much of an impact on the season. He does seem like a nice guy at least.
The second matchup is Desi against Amanda, who had nine balls in the Hopper which was essentially a death sentence (but I’m sure Amanda took that as a compliment). Everyone assumed that Desi would wipe the floor with the much smaller Amanda who has been bad in all the daily challenges except the heights over water one, but Amanda put up a really good fight. Anyone who has watched the Challenge in the past knows that while Amanda is super small, she is feisty in these super physical challenges and punches above her weight in eliminations. Just being feisty isn’t enough however, and Desi eventually wins. I thank Amanda for her time injecting a little chaos and setting the tone at the start of this season. Desi chooses to defect to the Blue team and take Alyssa Snider’s spot, reading the signs that the Green team is falling apart and improving the Blue team’s chances to win daily challenges.
Challenger Power Rankings
I think I will finish the article by power ranking the remaining challengers from here. I do this for the Survivor episode recaps, and it’s a nice way to get some thoughts out on people who aren’t at the center of the season stories. The rankings are mainly based on current power in the game, looking at strength in challenges so far, political strength, chances to make it to the end, and chance to win the whole thing.
Women
- Desi
- Tori — Despite being a vet and having an active target, she is such a force physically that she might just win all the eliminations she finds herself in anyway.
- Michaela
- Chanelle
- Alyssa Lopez — Staying quiet and out of the crosshairs has benefitted her greatly. She has a strong balance of alliances with both Big Brother and Desi’s “Secret Garden”.
- Michele — She can play both sides of the vets and rookies… but when one side wants to target the other she might become an easy name to throw out there.
- Tiffany
- Alyssa Snider
- Cassidy — Sorry Cassidy stans. She has not factored into the politics of the season and I think the other girls see her as a layup right now. Cassidy just hasn’t been impressive in the challenges so far.
Men
- Faysal — There hasn’t been much movement strategically on the guy’s side so it’s hard to rank who’s at the top… My assumption is that the Big Brother guys are in the best position to go far right now, followed by the Survivor guys.
- Monte
- Josh
- Tyler
- Chris Underwood
- Sebastian (Loves Big, Bold, Dangerous Women)
- Cory
- Bananas
- Wes — I love Wes and he’s stayed under the radar so far… but the way the game is going is setting up for Wes in elimination next week and he’s vulnerable in the arena.
- Dusty — He’s not with the rookies and he’s a disposable number for the vets. His undying love for his hero Bananas is throwing me off too.