Taking on 'The Challenge: Battle of the Eras' | "A New Era"

Season 40 of the MTV staple The Challenge is past its midpoint and each Thursday evening, The Alabama Take continues coverage of Battle of the Eras in the form of recaps, analysis, thoughts, questions, and answers. Join us each week!

It’s “A New Era” this week on The Challenge, the tenth episode. With all the chatter from the cast about Devin, though he and Kaycee were eliminated last week, you’d think it was the same era as before. This is the sort of episode Challenge fans love, though. First up, some conversations about – you guessed it – the Vacation Alliance and its demise in the form of Tori and Josh. In another room, Bananas groups up some of the ladies without pledges to come to his side in a bit that the show ran as “Bananas’ Angels.” Michele, Nia, and Olivia also separate themselves from others to form the Ladies of Leisure or L.O.L., if you will. (I will not.) At the daily challenge, T.J. flips a coin to determine if it’ll be a guys’ elimination or a ladies’ elimination. It lands on guys, which means Ryan, Derek, and Bananas face danger. And the ladies? Those female targets can’t finish last lest they  suffer a penalty next week. The game involves T.J. catapults red tennis balls into a dry, dusty field, the players scoop two at a time, the runners rush to get the balls into a tube, and finally the players solve a puzzle after the tube is full. It is as hot as any challenge has been this season and perhaps ever – Michele even suffers from a heat exhaustion after coming in last. But the winner for the men’s side is Jordan; Tori gets the female win. They’re together again, at least in the capacity that they’ll hear arguments from Bananas and Derek on who of the two should face Ryan, this week’s loser, in elimination. Bananas puts on a master class of mental manipulation during the deliberation, yet Tori has Jordan build her confidence and she still picks Johnny B. In elimination, Bananas and Ryan get the joy of riding four-wheelers to chase one another and capture a flag hoisted on the back of the ATV. A lot of Mario Kart comparisons are made, the two guys seem to have fun, and Bananas gets the best of three by snatching Ryan’s flag two times in a row. Bananas gets to pick three females for targets, but Johnny is vocally frustrated when T.J. reminds him that winners are safe and he can’t pick Tori. Instead, he picks all of the L.O.L. (I said I wouldn’t): Michele, Nia, and Olivia since they are still “playing Devin’s game.”    

Throughout the episode, Bananas was building more and more to villain mode. After the elimination, he made his anger got intense and his intentions became clear to all, not just to Tori and Devin. But being a fan favorite, how much villainy does he have in him these days? And do his targets of Michele, Nia, and Olivia make sense for his goals or should he have shifted away from “playing Devin’s game”? 

Blaine: I like Josh for the show. I don’t want him to win anything, but when he’s on the show, you know you’re getting the drama of too many promises made, love dished out to friends, and some good ol’ Josh crying. It’s the same with Bananas as an antagonist. Not only do I think it’s good for TV when he’s in evil mode, I fuckin’ love it! He’s hilarious in that role! When he hid in the closet to avoid Jordan and Tori and subsequently yells for Derek to get the news, I laughed out loud! (Dare I say I did an “L.O.L.”? Okay, I’m done.) An angry Johnny is also entertainment at its best. He has a controlled indignation where he tries to use it for a win. His choices for targets make perfect sense. It’s a statement. He won’t be competing against the ladies in the final, so why not let Tori know that if that’s the game she wants to play, he will return in kind. This was a good episode, perhaps the best of the season so far. Oh, and Devin’s cardboard cutout popping up with quips? Also very funny. 

TD: I actually think his move makes a lot of sense. Tori was off the table, so he went after the rest of her alliance. With the cast number dwindling, he’s aligned with his “angels” Rachel, Laurel, Aviv, and Jenny (not a bad quartet to have your back), so he didn’t have a ton of options. I don’t think he’s playing Devin’s game; I think he’s smartly getting them riled up while working to eliminate the people who will go after him – with the added bonus of eliminating competition for his female compatriots. Bananas’ best quality is slight of hand – Tori may think he’s making decisions based off of emotion, but nothing he does is without thought. If he can keep himself out of elimination, Bananas might cake walk into the final.

We hate to harp on the fact we’re not the biggest fans of this season’s format, but how many weeks ago should eliminations have gone down to one per episode?

Blaine: They got it wrong in large portions this season. It should have been mind blowingly amazing with this cast and the season number. Alas, Battle of the Eras has not lived up to the hype. At this point, I’m like a football fan who has seen the results of the first half of the season and now knows that the team doesn’t have it in them to pull off the big wins coming later: the karma points are going to suck ass. I feel it. What could they possibly do with them that's not disappointing? They’ll be a sort of “lowest score will get two minutes deducted at the start of the final.” Lame. This is no blame to the cast, though. Bananas put on a helluva show this week as did Jordan and Tori. Seeing Bananas face Jordan and Tori with the additional Jordan commentary via confessionals is the equivalent of watching McEnroe and Connors play their best match while getting thoughts from one or both as the match ensues. Two legends going head-to-head in an intelligent, Challenge-specific way: avoiding anger, tossing threats, understanding their opponents. One elimination per episode opened up this sort of back-and-forth we love. The tension wasn’t scattered. The players honed in on a player they knew was scary good. The show improved because of it.

TD: From the very beginning. I don’t mind a good purge day, it’s necessary with a cast this size, but doing one right off the bat just isn’t a good move. Why assemble such a great cast to say goodbye to so many of them so early? I’m happy it’s here, though, and I really like that the day’s winner can’t be named as a target for the next challenge. Again, anything that incentivizes trying hard is best for business. 

Other than fudging some of the numbers, why isn’t the show more giving with specifics? Would it have hurt anything to let us know the actual temperature to complement all of the exhausted complaining from the cast? 

Blaine: There are times when this drives me insane. Putting up the time left in the daily only to take it away does make sense. Leave us in suspense on who won, yeah. And sure, it could very well be that they dock a second or two off this person or that one for ratings. I don’t blame them. Fan favorites are on the show for a reason. But I don’t get why we couldn’t see the temperature here. How hot was it!? It took a toil on everyone with the exceptions of maybe Jordan and Bananas, even though he messed up where to dunk his balls at first. (Yes. I know how it sounds.) Derek couldn’t think. Theo was a non-issue. Nia was no speedster. Cara Maria was slower than ever. Ryan lost his damn mind and tried to piece a completely blank puzzle together. Michele nearly died. It must’ve been 125 degrees. 

TD: This was my complaint for so long with WWE writing: they stopped doing the little things that made big impacts. Sometimes all it takes is a line or two, or a quick 30-second scene to set up a really big payoff down the line. With The Challenge, little things like showing the length in time of the event, or the temperature in this case, does a whole hell of a lot to hammer home to the viewer how grueling a challenge the cast is going through. Or maybe the temperature was actually 79 with a lot of humidity, and the producers didn’t want people in more humid climates to laugh their asses off at the yankees struggling with the heat.

Was the elimination appropriate for the moment in the season? Was it the most fun any elimination has ever been? And did the black four-wheeler perform noticeably worse no matter who was on it? 

Blaine: We’re past halfway and getting put in the sand should totally feel like shit’s crucial. I loved the elimination, don’t get it twisted. But it needed to be more intense for this moment in the game. I know it’s lacking some fear and ferocity when I watch and firmly believe I could win. The only time I’ve ever thought I’d stand a chance was the elimination Cara won in the most recent All Stars  where she was flinging throwing stars at a wall. 

Yeah, that black four-wheeler didn’t have the juice the red one did, almost like it was on purpose. You know, let Johnny on the red one to begin, then the black one for his second round so that Ryan would win, and end with the final round being tied at one. 

TD: I noticed the same thing about the quads. That’s the type of shit that makes viewers skeptical of the legitimacy of the competition. As for the elimination itself, it did have more of an early-season vibe to it. Like Blaine said, eliminations should feel more impactful at this time in the season. Now, that elimination was a solid “equalizer” contest, one where both competitors are pretty much on even ground – but we want to see physicality now, or a tough mental puzzle. I don’t want Mario Kart, I want Twisted Metal.

Confessionals:

• Last week I asked for the degree of difficulty to be turned up a notch, and I got my wish. I loved that daily challenge, it was simple, but taxing. Sounds like some of these folks – [cough, Michele, cough] – need not only to train harder, but in a harsher climate. - TD

• Y’all think that every cast member made the same balls joke as Ryan and Nia, but those two were the only ones that made it to air? - TD

• The Challenge sets itself apart by its edits and camerawork. I appreciate the slo-mo shots and lighting of players walking into deliberation in The Coliseum. It always has a nice brooding intensity. - Blaine

• Bananas proves why he’s a master at the game as he’s able to rattle Tori in deliberation enough to almost convince her not to send him into elimination. - Blaine