MTV
MTV’s The Challenge started its 35th season off with a bang last week when the contestants were put through a grueling challenge, then two men were voted into the elimination battle by their fellow houseguests or the Tribunal. It was a battle between newbies Jay Starrett of Survivor and Asaf Goren of So You Think You Can Dance, with Starrett emerging victorious.
After Starrett’s win, host T.J. Lavin informed the cast members that there’s a new twist this year — when you win an elimination battle, you get a red skull on your helmet. You can’t run the final if you don’t have a red skull. So everyone has to win at least one elimination battle in order to be eligible for the money at the end.
On Wednesday, April 8, in an episode titled “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Dee,” the description teases, “Players compete in the Airdrop Extraction challenge; Rogan falls for a new player; Dee seeks to stand in the way.”
Follow along here with our live recap but be warned of spoilers. All times Eastern.
8:05 — After returning to the bunker, all anyone can talk about is the new elimination battle twist. Chris “CT” Tamburello is particularly dismayed because his whole strategy has always been to intimidate people into not voting him into elimination, so now he’ll have to be nice to people to get them to give him a chance in an elimination battle. LOL. That’s kind of hilarious. There is also a distinct split between people who are pumped to prove themselves in the arena and those who are less than thrilled that they have to do an elimination battle.
There’s also the added strategy of wanting to go up against someone in an elimination battle who you think you can beat, as opposed to voting someone in who you don’t want to face in the final.
You’re in the house right now, what would your strategy be? #TheChallenge35
8:08 — Rogan O’Connor and Jenn Lee are hitting it off and Dee Nguyen is not super excited about it because they used to date. Jenn is worried about making a veteran player mad. That feels like a fast-track to elimination. But, as Rogan says, “Sometimes I like to think with my penis.” Meanwhile, Dee cries to Tori Deal about how hard it is to see Rogan talking with another girl. Tori is kind of over it — “Move the f*ck on. Get over him, he’s not even that great!”
Send to your friend who’s still not over their ex. 👋 #TheChallenge35
8:10 — Challenge time. It’s called “Air Drop Extraction” and it’s a challenge for a team of three. Each team will transfer heavy military crates from one missile platform to another that are one mile apart as fast as possible. The top three teams move on to round two, where each team gets on a helicopter and makes nine passes to bomb a target on the missile launch platform. The most accurate team wins. Hmmm. So, how do they make the teams even men/women? It seems like a team of three men or two men and one woman would have such an advantage carrying those heavy boxes just by virtue of men generally having more upper-body strength.
The teams are as follows:
Team 1: Dee, Cory Wharton, and Chris “Swaggy C” Williams
Team 2: Jordan Wiseley, Jenny West, and Wes Bergmann
Team 3: Stephen Bear, Jenna Compono, and Ashley Mitchell
Team 4: Jenn, Josh Martinez, and Bayleigh Dayton
Team 5: Rogan, Mattie Breaux, and Tula “Big T” Fazakerley
Team 6: Jay, CT, and Kaycee Clark
Team 7: Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, Aneesa Ferreira, and Nany Gonzalez
Team 8: Tori, Nelson Thomas, and Kailah Casillas
Team 9: Faysal “Fessy” Shafaat, Kyle Christie, and Melissa Reeves
Yeah, it definitely feels like teams 1, 2, 6, and 9 are going to have a huge advantage in round one. Guess we’ll see how that plays out.
8:25 — Lo and behold, the three teams that advance to round two are teams 2, 9, and 1. Team 5, which had two women, made a really good run at it, but still — all three teams were two men, one woman. That seems so unfair. They should have saved this challenge for when they had an even number of total contestants and then done man-woman pairings. Anyway, the bomb-dropping portion definitely has a learning curve.
Team 2 goes first and it takes them until their sixth bomb to get a hit. They end up with only two hits total. But the helicopter pilot apparently keeps going to one side or the other instead of flying directly over the target.
🗣 IN CASE YOU FORGOT #TheChallenge35
8:40 — Team 9 goes second and they get a hit on their third crate, ending up with seven hits total. But then Team 1 gets a hit right out of the gate and they end up getting all nine hits. Whoa. That means the Tribunal this week is Dee, Swaggy C, and Cory. And everyone is irritated at how much of a sore loser Jordan is.
8:45 — The girls are going to vote Jenn into the elimination battle because she’s so weak at challenges and she’s a newbie. This means that the strong women are gunning for going up against Jenn because they think she’ll be an easy win. Jenny wants to go up against her and so do Tori and Big T. Meanwhile, Wes and Bananas are coaching Jenn on how to advocate for herself so that people don’t vote for her. She literally writes down what they tell her to say. It’s kind of mean. They are messing with her so hard.
A face says a thousand words. #TheChallenge35
8:50 — At nominations, Bananas suggests they let Wes run the meeting. Wes immediately turns it over to Jenn and it completely goes off the rails. But this was kind of a foregone conclusion anyway, so it’s no surprise that she is voted in almost unanimously. Rogan, Bananas and CT vote for Big T. Later, Jenn confronts Dee about campaigning against her and it turns into this stupid fight that’s really about who gets to flirt with Rogan. It’s so dumb. At one point, Jenn accused Dee of watching her sleep and Dee said it was her panda eye mask. Um, what?!
There are bear-y many things going on right now… 🐨 #TheChallenge35
9:00 — Tori puts some major pressure on Dee to vote her into elimination to face off with Jenn. She thinks Dee owes her and Jordan for helping her win last season. But Dee has promised Jenny and seems pretty firm that she’s going to keep that promise, despite her locker room confessional meeting with Tori.
Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious. don’t be suspicious. #TheChallenge35
9:10 — The Tribunal chooses to interrogate Jenny, Tori, and Big T and going in, they think they’re probably going to vote for Jenny to face elimination. However, Tori reminds the Tribunal of how much she and Jordan helped Dee win the show last season. She’s not mean about it, she’s just reminding them and says that if they don’t put her in against a weak player like Jenn, Jordan will be gunning for them. The Tribunal reacts… about how you would expect them to react to being threatened.
Interestingly, when Wes and Dee discuss it later privately, they consider voting in Big T because that would be the least amount of drama right now. But they also talk about how if they get to the arena and see that the challenge is a puzzle, they should vote in Tori because she’s terrible at puzzles. Oooh, that is devious. That makes it look like they’re going along with what Jordan and Tori want but should also keep Jenny happy because it’s actually designed to get Tori eliminated!
9:20 — When they arrive at Purgatory, there’s a new twist! The Tribunal can either vote in one of the people they interrogated… or they can volunteer themselves! And since it’s a girls’ elimination week, Dee is the only one available. Ooooh, that’s juicy. But in kind of a crazy move, Dee decides to keep her word to Jenny and votes her in. Hmm. Well, it’s nice that Jenny now owes her. Also, Dee is nervous about getting eliminated by Jenn because that would be so embarrassing. Haha! But now everybody thinks she’s weak because that was such a squandered opportunity.
In case you’re wondering why the Tribunal wasn’t given this choice last week, we’re assuming it’s because if Lavin had given the guys the opportunity to go to elimination, he would have had to reveal the Red Skull twist before the battle — or else why would they ever choose to enter the elimination arena?
9:28 — The elimination battle is called “Flip the Switch.” It involves flipping barrels on poles into their opponent’s area. The first to flip all 10 is the winner. Jenny makes quick work of this because she’s a total beast. When she finishes, Jenn has only flipped one barrel. Wow. Meanwhile, Dee is irritated that she didn’t choose to do this challenge. Yeah, lady. That was dumb. As Ashley says, “She gave the strongest girl in the house the easiest ride to the final and now she’s going to have to compete against her in a final. Good luck, honey.”
The second red skull is locked in! ☠☠☠ #TheChallenge35
The Challenge airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.
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