The Challenge is back! MTV and CBS alumni collide again! Let’s run back through the premiere and gather our thoughts over what has happened this episode.
The Expository Dump Premiere
Much of this debut episode was spent introducing us to the challengers playing this season, which left little time for much else and made for a somewhat underwhelming but necessary premiere episode. Your CBS watchers needed to get familiar with who these MTV people are, and the longtime Challenge fans needed to get familiar with the CBS rookies. Even more than that, all the viewers needed to be refamiliarized with the past rivalries entering this season that could have been forgotten by fans or unknown to new viewers. It was cool to see all the flashback footage to past Challenge and CBS seasons, especially bringing in the original Real World footage for people like Johnny, Wes, and Jonna.
It was interesting to see who the editors were highlighting and giving the confessionals to this first episode to set the stage for the season. I found it a bit surprising how front and center Paulie was to start the season, though that might have also been because he was impossible to miss with his Ric Flair-esque fashion “choices”. Desi got a lot of time to give commentary beyond just being one of the captains. And Wes and Michele both gave great confessionals in the episode: giving testament both to how great MTV vets understand how to cut entertaining commentary. It’s crazy how much Michele slays this episode; she understands so much more how to be an entertaining narrator over her CBS counterparts who are still limited to just giving the generic game talk Big Brother and Survivor confessionals.
I guess now would also be a good time to discuss the schoolyard pick of teams. Captains were randomly chosen using the “Hopper”, which is basically a lottery ball picker. Josh, Cassidy, and Desi were captains and drafted teams, with each group needing two of the pure MTV vets. The draft played out like this:
Pretty even teams overall, it’s tough to pick a clear winner in the draft. There’s a ton of parity in this cast athletically from both the clearly athletic challengers and the “less gifted” challengers. One thing is for sure: Johnny Bananas must have had his ego bruised by having Cory and Wes both picked over him.
The Daily Challenge: Carrying the “Legends”
We dive directly into the first challenge of the season, which is a straightforward race. Teams must transport two statues (hilariously of the MTV crossover players dressed like medieval knights/crusaders) up a mountain to a castle, with two checkpoints for a memory portion. The memory portion involves remembering symbols found on the course and if you get the checkpoint correct, you get a boon which makes the race easier. The challenge is so straightforward that there really isn’t much to show for the episode. The highlight of the challenge was the Red team losing control of their cart and spilling the statues, which could have literally killed someone. I mean, those statues were heavy and rolling down that mountain… getting hit by one of those would break someone in half, right?
Anyway, there isn’t much to discuss here. The Green team had the lead going into checkpoint two, but they failed the memory portion and ended in a distant last. Amanda was the one that was blamed for dropping the ball on the memory. The Blue team wins the challenge just ahead of the Red team.
The Secret Vote — Will This be One of the Most Unpredictable Political Seasons Ever?
After the challenge, we get better clarity on how the format of the season will play out. Each episode will play out like this:
- Team challenge, the winning team is safe from elimination.
- The winning team chooses one man and one woman (for now) from any of the other teams (not limited to just choosing people from one team) to be at risk for elimination.
- The two losing teams engage in an individual SECRET vote. Each challenger votes one person, male or female (for now) from either of the losing teams to go into elimination. You can vote for someone on your own team.
- At the elimination arena, TJ will use the “Hopper” to randomly select who will go up against the man or woman chosen by the winning team in elimination.
- Challengers will know how many people voted for them in the secret vote but will not know specifically who the votes came from
- Typical elimination ensues, the winner stays and loser goes home. We don’t know if there will be some sort of twist for the challenger who wins the elimination (like the choice to change teams)
- And of course, while the season will play out in teams…only one man and one woman can win the final, the title of champion, and the money that goes with it.
Right now, we can only speculate on how the politics on the season will play out given there’s only been one episode. One thing that’s clear is that having your team win the daily challenge is huge for your own survival. The secret vote is going to give challengers more agency to be selfish and vote against who they think is a threat over going along with the groupthink of a public vote. With the randomness of the Hopper, you are perpetually risking your game every week you don’t win the daily.
The challengers who benefit the most from this format are well-connected, low threat competitors. Somehow this format gives a player like Josh Martinez a great chance at a final. He is a challenger with plenty of alliances who he can work alongside to stack the Hopper in his favor, and I don’t think people will vote against Josh anyway because he is not a threat to win in the long run. The secret vote and the team first format incentivizes sending strong players on other teams into elimination so your team can try to maintain power for multiple weeks. Once closer to the final, it could make more sense to turn against your own teammates if you think they beat you in a final… that’s a strategic concept that a lot of these CBS alums may look to do as it is more common in Survivor or Big Brother to take out winner threats, where The Challenge is historically a game where frontrunners protect each other. But the most important thing to remember with the format is that if you want a specific person to be in the elimination, the only way to do that is to win the challenge with your team and nominate them. The Hopper is too random to ensure that a specific person is sent into elimination, unless the house is able to come to a near-unanimous majority.
There are still a few format questions waiting to be answered. Will the gender of the elimination always be up in the air like this episode, or will some weeks be specifically men only or women only to keep balance in the house? Will there be any option for swapping teams, maybe if you win an elimination? And will there be some sort of midseason twist? All things we will have to wait and see.
Stroking MTV Veteran Egos, For Now
The Blue team won the challenge so they got to nominate one man and one woman for possible elimination. The nomination quickly becomes the Tori and Cory show, and the MTV veterans get their way and play it safe by nominating two perceived less-connected and weaker challengers in Ameerah and Luis. A lot of this is already predicated on an agreement that has been cooked up between the Red team and the Blue team to gang up against the Green team this week. In the most predictable move ever, it is Tori spearheading the charge to keep all the veterans safe (even Amanda, whom she hates so much she will get lawyers involved) and at least for this week it works in her favor. The nomination rubbed the two Alyssas the wrong way and CBS alumni complained amongst each other about how they didn’t nominate a big MTV name… just something to keep an eye on. I don’t expect the CBS rookies to continue to do what the MTV vets want.
The secret vote turned out to be a case of Red team voting against Green team, and Green team voting against Red team… except for Jonna. Jonna throws a rogue vote towards her own teammate Michele for the hell of it based on warnings she got from Wes. Par for the course for Wes, who is always getting his political fingers involved, and Jonna, who is always going to play her own game instead of going with whatever the majority wants. Is Michele going to figure out who voted for her or is this going to be the guinea pig example that if you are in the secret vote, you can vote for whoever you want without consequences?
And normally I would talk about the elimination, but this was a cliffhanger episode. The premiere as a whole would have felt way more satisfying if we had a 90 minute episode that fit in the first boot, but at least we only have to wait until Sunday to get this resolved. Overall, it was a mediocre premiere, but I still feel the season has a ton of potential.