The episode begins with a POOOOL PARTY! Maybe it’s just gray and cold in Chicago, but this looks like an incredible idea even if it means getting gonorrhea from the water.They are mixing fruity drinks and I’m sobbing into the fleece I’m wearing. Obligatory Jasmine twerk! Though it’s not on a pole, make yourself a Mai Tai and DRINK.
It’s not an episode of The Challenge unless we see Jasmine booty poppin’. I wonder if Challenge Pool Gonorrhea is worse than Hottt Tubb Rash. I don’t want to find out the hard way.
I feel like the Venn diagram of CPG and HTR overlaps, like, 85%. I suspect there is a reason this house conspicuously DOESN’T have a Hottt Tubbb. If they can send Frank f home for being contagious, they can’t have a petri dish of STIs hanging round either.
Aneesa makes barfing faces at Laurel and Jordan’s PDA. “Two of the most overachieving, show-boating, I’m better-than-you…peas in a pod.” Yeah, you’re right, Aneesa: They ARE better than you. I am not sure that, in a game called The Challenge, winning challenges is technically “overachieving.” It’s just regular achieving.
My prediction for this episode is that Aneesa goes home. Bye, girl.
Though I will side with her on not wanting them to have sex in her room when she’s there. “It comes to one point where I’m like, is that Jordan on top or Laurel?” Hahaha, get it, Clarity? Because Laurel’s a MAN!
Oh- was that supposed to be a joke? I didn’t get it. When she said this, I was wondering what was wrong with the lady being on top.
Yeah, she makes this face after her bon mot, like, “Ahaha GET IT? Like, who’s the dude here?” I dunno, I’m sorry for you, Aneesa, if you think that missionary is the only hetero sex position.
Cheap tranny jokes aside, for this episode’s Challenge, as we saw from the previews last week, the competitors will be wearing giant bubble bumper suits. There will be two teams, which will then be divided into two subgroups. In each group, one person will be the “ball”– and the goal is to get the “ball” into the goal on the opposite side of the field. First team to three points wins, and that team will be safe from the draw and choose two people from the losing team to go into elimination.
I WANT TO BE IN ONE OF THOSE BUBBLES!
[Side note: Dustin and Zach were on Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday as the guest bartenders. Andy Cohen called Dustin out on breaking his “no hook-up” rule.]
It’s just a stupid rule! If you’re going to a cheese factory, why vow not to eat any cheese there? (In this analogy, Jessica is casu marzu. Look it up!) The season of “Couples’ Therapy” with Heather and Dustin is on my to-watch list.
Red Team:
Group A: Swift, Jonna, Jessica, Teresa, CT, and Bananas (captain) as the ball
Group B: Preston, Laurel, Nany, Johnny, and Jordan as the ball
Yellow Team:
Group A*: Cara Maria (captain), Camila, Aneesa, Jasmine and Zach as the ball.
(*there’s someone else on this team but who watches the Challenge for this exacting level of detail? The producers certainly don’t care about making it clear who’s on what team and neither should you.)
Group B: LaToya, Leroy, Brandon, Devyn, and Isaac as the ball.
In the first heat, Johnny scores. Camila goes off on Zach for underperforming.
Tornado Camilla, back in action.
Jessica: “My strategy in this game is just to not die!” Ugh, don’t get my hopes up, darling.
In the second heat, the Red Team surrounds Isaac the Ball and just really gives him an impressive beatdown. Jordan is trapped but…then Devyn says, “We’re holding Jordan and then all of a sudden I see, like, some kind of flailing crazy crane on the side coming over…it’s Preston’s ass!” YES CUE THE TRIUMPHANT MUSIC (No, really, triumphant music plays here). With Preston’s help, Jordan scores for the Red Team. 2-0 Red.
Finally, a little love for my Preston! Though the slo-mo of him running sort of played up his…well, gentle and delicate gait, YOU GUYS SEE, HE’S NOT USELESS.
Isaac: I’m gonna get in that hole either using brute strength or KY Jelly. Ha!
His lubricious plans aside, he was pretty disappointing in this challenge.
Third heat: Zach scores for the Yellow Team to keep them in the game.
Fourth heat: I find out the player I’ve forgotten on the Yellow Team is Cohutta. Now, I feel like this is a good time to inform our faithful readers (all three of them!) that I don’t just watch this show once but often BACK UP AND REWATCH segments of it to get the information you need. I’m not saying I deserve a medal, but cash or maybe packs of cigarettes are appreciated because I smoke a lot while writing this recap. Email me to find out where you can send tokens of your gratitude!
I will send you a gold star. (I, for one, am grateful that you take on the majority of the recapping duties.)
I don’t want your gold star unless it is on top of a delicious cupcake. I would be watching this first thing every Friday morning anyway, but I literally don’t put this much thought into anything else I do in life right now. And that is a sad, sad thing.
How weird that you say that as I’m currently eating a cupcake with some yellow icing on top. The squiggle design kinda looks like a star. I can FedEx you the other one.
YES PLEASE.
Anyway, Jordan scores and the Red Team wins the challenge.
When Swift is pantomiming Preston’s bravery in competition in the confessional, he flails so hard he falls off his chair and knocks the green screen. It is hilarious but unfortunately not as funny when I describe it.
I LOL’d loudly when he did that. Did you know Swift has his own show? I believe it’s a tv show. Alas, I could not find a clip of that on the internet. It’s definitely something everyone needs to watch.
Back at the house, the team begins to discuss who to vote into elimination. Laurel wants Aneesa in, which is no shock, and specifically instructs Jessica not to repeat her thoughts. So of course Jessica goes right to Aneesa and tells her about it, because Jessica’s brains reside in her (truly) lovely veneers, which means that, lacking neurons, she’s unable to process thought. Jessica is a dum dum.
Seriously, I hate Jessica so much. I hate that she’s even on this show, but I doubly hate that she’s getting so much screen time. I don’t know who Swift EVEN IS because he gets ten seconds of camera time and it’s only when he’s dudebro-ing out with other dudebros.
Unfortunately Jessica is all over the damn game and if she doesn’t get sent home soon you’re going to be recapping this ALONE.
She probably gone during the next episode. A newbie with a loud mouth and too many alliances? She’s putting a big ol’ target on her back.
Yes, but I remain angry at The Challenge editors and producers that made Jessica a thing. NOT FETCH. And I am angry at myself for falling into the trap their story editors so cleverly set.
My only hope is that, when Aneesa promises she won’t vote for Jessica in exchange for Jessica not voting for her, she betrays her in a spectacular and satisfying way. Aneesa has the loyalty of a burlap sack of feral cats, though, so I feel good about that happening.
During team deliberations, Jordan confronts Jessica about being a sad sack of shit. Jessica counters that with what I like to think of as Princess Fighting– lots of sarcastic “honey”s and “sweetheart”s, dramatic hand-waving and hair-swishing, and accusations of bullying. “I just don’t understand how a man can sit there and scream at a woman like that,” Jessica says. Gworl, you are motherfucking lucky you were screaming at a man, because try that with Camila sometime. NO REALLY PLEASE TRY THAT.
Jessica got lucky she didn’t fall on that log challenge, because that’s the only thing she’s calling him out for.
Also, the team deliberation thing continues to confuse me. This is FREE AGENTS! I mean, I guess they need to me so that we, the viewers, understand what’s happening in their heads, but ultimately, you’re not voting as a team.
Remember the one Challenge where they did a secret vote? They should have done that. But yes, I agree that having to tell someone TO THEIR FACE that they are voting them in creates far more Challenge Drama.
“You don’t do that, screaming at a girl at the top of your lungs,” says BANANAS OF ALL PEOPLE. All of these fuckers are hypocrites. I could find six clips of Johnny Bananas screaming insults at a woman on this show in less than five minutes. Didn’t he tell Cara Maria to kill herself once? Pretty sure.
During the elimination vote, Aneesa and LaToya tie, causing a re-vote between only those two. Since Jessica had previously promised not to send in LaToya, she changes her vote to Aneesa. God damn, girl, you’re seriously so, so stupid. In that case you pick Aneesa no matter WHO you told what because she will find a way to make you wish you were dead.
She’s trying to please too many masters in the house. This was bound to happen eventually.
LaToya is voted into the elimination along with Brandon. After the vote there is a screaming fight between Jordan and LaToya but I’m not sure exactly what it was about. LaToya implores Laurel to “check [her] man.”
Toya’s mad because she and Jordan bonded over some chips once. Obviously that means he should never vote for her to go into the elimination. I like Latoya though. She’s scrappy. I really didn’t expect her to come back after her first elimination challenge.
I think we are going to see more Toya in upcoming seasons. Her general disposition reminds me of Coral, who frankly should guest-star on at least one episode per Challenge as an example to the Dustins and Jessicas of the world.
At the elimination, Zach draws the kill card to go against Brandon, and Cara Maria draws it to face LaToya. This is Cara Maria’s second elimination round in a row, and that sucks. Especially because LaToya has already won an elimination in which she was assumed to be an easy mark. As fresh meat, no one is exactly sure what LaToya is capable of and she could easily beat Cara Maria because CM’s mental game ruins her despite her physical endurance. The devastation of having to compete twice in a row looks like it’s undoing her.
CM is athletic, but like I said a second ago, Latoya is scrappy. Tough call here on who I think will win.
The Challenge is called Oppenheimer, and if even one of the Challenge competitors knows who J. Robert Oppenheimer is I will eat my hat. It’s a circular hallway fenced in by chicken wire. The competitors will start back to back, and the goal is to race all the way around the circle and ring the bell first. Of course, meeting each other in the middle is what will pose the real challenge. The first person to win two rounds is the winner.
I didn’t know a) that this challege had a name besides “run around to the other side to ring the bell or b) that Oppenheimer was a thing. This challenge was BO-RING!
I just didn’t get what the elimination had to DO with Oppenheimer. CHALLENGE LEARNING MOMENT: (per Wikipedia) “Oppenheimer’s notable achievements in physics include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as toquantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays.”
Oh, right. The ol’ “molecular wavefunction” elimination. CLASSIC. now that I think about it it’s supposed to be some kind of atom allegory, but I think it went over fully 99.9% of the viewership’s heads.
LaToya and Cara Maria go first, and LaToya falls in the first round, allowing Cara Maria to win. In the second round, Cara Maria again easily get to the bell first and LaToya is sent home. Cara Maria mentions this was her twelfth elimination round and I am again reminded of how I, and everyone else, seems to consistently underestimate her mostly because she is a whiny little bitch.
When it’s Brandon and Zach’s turn, Bananas says this is basically Zach’s ideal challenge. Watching the two of them next to each other and seeing that Zach easily has half a foot in height and probably 100 pounds on Brandon, I have a feeling Brandon’s time in Uruguay is coming to an end.
This one is a lot more full-contact than the ladies’ game, and Zach wins the first round. He uses the same techniques to win the second round as well and Brandon goes.
Bye Brandon, I hardly knew thee. Seriously, did he get any other screen time this season other than getting eliminated?
Back at the house, CT and Aneesa discuss Laurel and Jordan’s attempts to control the game. Aneesa promises us that she’ll vote Laurel into elimination every time she has the power to do so. Okay! We’ll see! I agree with sending Laurel in– she’s basically the female to beat and if she’s sent home the field is wide open– but Aneesa’s writing checks her ass can’t cash. (This ain’t the first time.) Laurel’s strong enough to get thrown in multiple times. Aneesa is not.
Next week, it looks like the Challengers are going to be…SUSPENDED 100 FEET ABOVE WATER. We’ve never seen a challenge like this before except last week and the two weeks before that! DRINK!
My prediction for next week is that Laurel and/or Jordan end up in the elimination. Their love cannot last forever.
Hope it’s Laurel and Aneesa.
Two weeks in a row, EN and I are on time! See ya next week!
Image via MTV.
