The Challenge All Stars: Rivals continues this week with episode 2. Let’s get into what happened this week.
First, we lead off with everyone hanging around the house. Beth continues to not be able to shut up, which she is nowhere near a strong enough competitor to get away with. One of my favorite things about rivals type seasons is people getting stuck with partners that are going to cause them problems. Somehow, the only duo that seems to have figured out how lucky they are to be paired with someone strong is Leroy and Devin, but they only were rivals because they had issues with each other’s allies.
This week we’ve got a heights challenge, and some incredible insight from Leroy about how important it is to take a shit before heights challenges. The challenge here is to solve some math problems, and then one person will hold a rope attached to their partner who will reach for flags. Jonna should have found a way to send Beth over for this one, because telling someone’s husband through national tv that you think their wife is cheating is so fucked.
This was a pretty cool challenge in theory, but if no one is even going to try it becomes awful television. Shoutout to Dario and Ashley for finding a new way to get eliminated, but being terrible at math instead of afraid of heights. Amber and Faysal absolutely kill this.
We had from my memory an all time unprecedented moment in Challenge history here. A challenge has never been cancelled due to weather before, so Devin/Leroy, Melissa/Nicole, and Nany/Turbo get a choice to come back the next day or just sit out. I can’t say that they made a mistake to not come back, given how fast Amber and Faysal finished.
And finally we get an elimination. Adam and Steve get the house vote, and Faysal and Amber send in Beth and Jonna. A smart move to send in a very weak team this early, probably not combing back to haunt you. This elimination seems to be reusing the equipment from the Bananas and Theo elimination on Battle of the Eras. Each team has to continually add poles to a narrow tunnel and then find a way to both get into a specific section. This was about as unfavorable an elimination as possible for Adam and Steve given the size difference, but it still wasn’t close. They gotta stop inviting Beth, she’s toxic and also terrible at this game. It’s not even fun drama, it starts feeling incredibly personal.
Overall, not the most exciting episode, no one wanted to do the main challenge, and an uneventful elimination. The producers clearly knew this, because they added a 5 minute fight between Sylvia and KellyAnne. Sylvia picks a fight and then is upset there was a fight. We end with Sylvia wanting to throw themselves in, which I assume means it’s absolutely not happening. While this wasn’t a great episode, the format still seems good, with better luck and some bad teams weeded out I think we’ve got something here.
To Beth:
