Challenge 35: Total Madness

**Byrd** · 2020-07-09 01:34

Good news, everyone. Headspace's team of players is now ahead of the Undrafted Free Agents.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody this season went home due to injury or disqualification, so it was planned from the beginning to have 5 guys and 4 girls in the final? I find that hard to believe.

Standings:

Spoiler: show

Scoring Notes for this episode:

Spoiler: show

Notes this Episode:

Spoiler: show

Contestant Standings to Date:

Spoiler: show

**Moss** · 2020-07-09 02:08

Sorry about your friend man. Thanks for the continued efforts doing the scoring.

Nelson's exit hurts but I think I still have a chance to catch Vil - as always will depend on final results.

I don't expect Melissa to do much so will likely come down to Kaycee+Bananas vs. Cory+Jenny

I like my chances with the girls but the guys will be a total crapshoot, and I can see Fessy running away with it. He's just looked so strong in all of the stamina events to date

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

**Vil** · 2020-07-09 03:47

Damn, sorry to hear that, Byrd.

You guys mentioned it that Hall Brawl was an incident waiting to happen. There were some very bad hits in the guys' heats. Last season or the one before, they had it where they had to wind around a set of walls rather than just going CHOO CHOO, and I'd think that's probably a much better idea. That or at least give them some space... like the width of an actual hall.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody this season went home due to injury or disqualification, so it was planned from the beginning to have 5 guys and 4 girls in the final? I find that hard to believe.

Big T

I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't just throw in another guy's round somewhere along the way. There was a point when there were like 3-4 girls with red skulls and only Rogan with one, so I wondered if things were going to get too imbalanced. Turns out they just ran enough eliminations that it just mostly worked itself out. They've cut people along the way in finals in most of the recent seasons, so they'll probably do something at some point. When was the last time that they actually traveled to a final? Back in the 20s, I think.

**Byrd** · 2020-07-09 12:13

Originally Posted by Vil

Big T

Ah, forgot about her. I, too, am kind of surprised they didn't have one additional guys' elimination to even it out.

Guessing they'll just have two checkpoints in the final where the last place guy gets eliminated, and one where the last place girl gets eliminated. I really hope they have prizes for both guys and girls, a winner take all either makes for 1) a dull, easy final or 2) a complete blowout.

Prediction for girls finish: Jenny, Kaycee, Melissa, Bayleigh. I think the first two or the second two could swap, but there's likely a big gap between 2 & 3.
Prediction for guys' finish: Fessy, Bananas, Rogan, Cory, Kyle. This is much more up in the air; I think any of the first three could win it and I wouldn't be too surprised. Cory or Kyle winning would be pretty stunning, given the competition.

How can you not find yourself rooting for the pregnant Melissa? Would be truly amazing if she won, although that would be shocking, not just because she's pregnant, but because Jenny and Kaycee seem to both be much better competitors.
Among the guys, I will root against Rogan, and I don't care as much about the rest. Bananas hasn't won in a long while, Fessy seems fine but not amazing, Cory would make for a great story, and Kyle would be astonishing. This is a stacked guys' final; having five guys contributes to that, of course, but even then, there's not a bad competitor amongst them.

**Xno Kappa** · 2020-07-10 13:41

I feel like Cory’s been getting a winners edit this entire season. Wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out on top.

Also, god damn it Nelson. You had the elimination won on both rounds and you screwed it up phenomenally lol.

**Vil** · 2020-07-10 22:40

I don't feel that way about Cory. If anything, it seems like a "not giving up, but coming up short" edit. It's been almost entirely positive (outside of persisting with whining about Jenny a couple weeks ago), but there's nothing to this edit except "daughter daughter daughter".

This is a guy who has had such spectacular failures in past seasons and finals and they really haven't done much to show that he's changed, which I think would definitely be a big part if the guy were winning. Maybe it could happen, but I could also see all this "I have a daughter" stuff to be building up to Nelson's sacrifice more than Cory possibly winning.

They've given me no reason to think Kyle can win this, and frankly I just can't see him beating all 4 of those guys anyway. Rogan I think is out too. When Wes went, I figured maybe he would be a 2nd contender to Bananas, but the Dee situation absolutely crushed him. If this guy won 2 seasons in a row, they would find ways to get him screentime, even with confessionals that were completely out of context. I said a few weeks ago that Fessy seemed to be coming out of nowhere, and it could be just benefiting from stuff being cut, but he's really peaking at the right time and based on his own showings in challenges this season, I wouldn't be surprised.

All in all, I'd take Bananas vs. the field. He's been a frontrunner the whole way, and experience is a great intangible to have for what looks like a big final. If he gets a medevac during the final, then Fessy >> Cory.

**6souls** · 2020-07-10 23:25

https://twitter.com/APEntertainment/...679664130?s=20

**Byrd** · 2020-07-16 01:26

Well, a one episode final. That's refreshing. And overall, a pretty good season, IMHO. Too bad we're going to have to wait at least six months until we get season 36, most likely.

Congrats to Vil, who rode Bananas and Kaycee's final performances to a victory, staying just ahead of Moss. Vil had the #2 and #3 players, Moss had the #1 and #4. A pretty satisfying season overall, IMHO, although I would have loved a Cory win. Or a Kyle out of the blue win. A Bananas win isn't terrible. I'm curious how much of Melissa's final performance was affected by her pregnancy.

Final Standings:
Vil 755
Moss 675
Xno Kappa 485
Byrd 445
Headspace 380
UFA 370

Contestant Standings:

Spoiler: show

Scoring this Episode:

Spoiler: show

Episode Notes:

Spoiler: show

I'll post some more in depth conclusions soon.

Side note: with Cory and Bayleigh losing we haven't had a black contestant win the Challenge since season 15 - Nehemiah. 53 champions and counting. That's kind of ridiculous. Not saying there is some vast racist conspiracy, 0 for 53 is way outside the standard deviation if 10-20% of each season's contestants are black.

**Vil** · 2020-07-16 01:51

Speaking of those other shows, I know some of you watch it too, but CBS pulled Survivor from the Fall. I thought I'd seen rumors/speculation that they'd try to film a season somewhere in the country, but not happening at least for now.

What a strange finale. Did the conclusion of that seem really rushed? I'd prefer cumulative finals, but if they're going to basically treat the whole log/fire thing as "qualifying", then I think it should be a lot less time than the actual race. Cory "I've got Kyle right here, and I can see Bananas, so I can just push to the finish, I can get this". Bananas "I see those two and it's my worst nightmare". Then he just finishes like 10s later with Kyle soon after casually making 2nd. Huh? Just very strange. While Cory made a comment about how Fessy gassed a bit on the climb to the lodge, dude was way in the lead and then he's in last without making it even seem like he'd been struggling.

I think it's just hard to gauge because I don't think they did a good job really showing how much they had to do other than a couple images when they'd stop to look at finish lines and all that. Doing all that at altitude is tough, but other than that, it seemed really tame. They couldn't have a puzzle, or an eating station or something? idk

Melissa quitting probably made this very close between me and Moss.

All in all, my thought on this season was that it was kind of an experiment that didn't play out the way many may have thought it would. My expectations were kind of along the lines to what CT was thinking, that there'd be aggressive plays to block people from going in and all that. I think if this were run 4 times simultaneously, this would be the only one that would have played out so amicably for the most part, so I don't think it's a failure in the format, just an odd way that it worked out in this instance. Would it be better if there were actual urgency/scarcity of opportunity? Probably. But just a dullard of a season where actual gameplay in terms of votes and all that was really lacking. Maybe if Cory didn't decide to fall in line with Bananas when Ashley tried to rally the house, it would have been different.

My one problem with the format idea is now that they've introduced it, can they really go away from it? I liked the idea a lot as a one-off or something that would appear from time to time, but how are you going to go to a season after this where they don't have it when it was presented as a solution to a problem in the past? When they did similar things in the past it made sense for those specific things but I wish they laid this out differently.

Low points:
Handling of the Dee situation, especially the first episode or two. There were a couple where it seemed fine, but by and large they did a poor job.
Utter lack of interesting gameplay for most of the season.
Complete failure to give some people reasonable screentime. Weeks without Fessy/Kaycee/Melissa when they were FINALISTS? They at least deserved periodic reminders that they exist even if there's not the richest content.
Safety seemed optional with some things this season.
The bunker sucks. Don't do this again. This was bad on the viewers too.

Worst point:
Zach.

High points:
Music was fantastic
While I think it was one of the biggest contributions to killing the season's gameplay entirely, I thought that Ashley trying to rally the house against Bananas in episode 3 created some of the best scrambling/voting scenes they've had in recent memory.
Tanks, baby!

**Moss** · 2020-07-16 02:26

Originally Posted by Vil

Cory "I've got Kyle right here, and I can see Bananas, so I can just push to the finish, I can get this". Bananas "I see those two and it's my worst nightmare". Then he just finishes like 10s later with Kyle soon after casually making 2nd. Huh? Just very strange.

Seriously wtf was that? Is MTV just a team working on ridiculousness and a B team editing the challenge?

I like the long stamina challenges for the final. Having personal desire and drive (part of the reason Kyle almost won) as a key attribute is compelling. But only one checkpoint? What the fuck?

I'm assuming it had to do with the location and probably concerns around how long competitors could be out in that weather, but dump the crazy locale then and give us a smattering of challenges

In the spirit of fairness, the checkpoints should evaluate different abilities: math, puzzle, strength, hand-eye coordination, etc

Imagine being better than your opponent at everything except math and you lose because that's what the ONE checkpoint was. Lame and stupid.

I'll just about always enjoy these seasons but that's the main theme of this one for me - too much focus on style over substance. Tanks and explosions and mountain peaks... and a math problem... and a challenge where you drive a car into barrels

The producers have this dumb and immoral notion that making the cast suffer (like in the bunker) will make for good TV and drama. It doesn't. It also probably makes it harder to recruit for the next challenge.

Here are my ingredients to a perfect challenge season:
1. Interesting cast with no total layups
2. I want ALL badass girls. Too much chaff every season. We literally settled on TWO that could even finish. Tori would've been there too. No more slots wasted on the likes of Big T or Melissa (even if she's not the worst offender). Can you imagine Aneesa in that final lmao. She's lucky she got eliminated instead of getting embarrassed in the final.
3. Pick a nice, exotic, maybe tropical, locale. You can still go somewhere else for the final. But the challenge house should be dope and somewhere warm with a pool. More bikinis means more flirting and hookups and strained alliances ("you're just defending her because you like her!") and drama. The bunker gave us... cruel jokes played on Kailah and people having mental breakdowns. Great TV! /s
4. Make the dailies matter, always. Winning should be heavily incentivized for ALL participants. If you have it split into girl/guy days where the other sex doesn't even care, why the f should I care to watch it? And poor performers should be punished, otherwise they hang around because no one is worried enough to want them gone. It also keeps the top competitors in their toes even if they have a strong alliance, because a mistake, a DQ, and you're into the elimination
5. Put controls in place to prevent the same people getting thrown in over and over. We see it every year. Jay is the whipping boy. Why make someone else mad at you? Keep throwing in the same person. This is boring TV. Elim victory protecting for the next week is one decent option and there are plenty of others. Really all of MTV's strategizing should surround how to keep the votes interesting every week. It's the key to the drama on the show
6. Multi-stage final. Basically like this one but give us more variety and stages either in the first or last leg. The final was literally "trudge in snow a lot and do a math problem." RIVETING

Congrats on the win Vil. Thought I might finally have one but Cory can't math and CT managed to lose to Jay. On to the next season!

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

**Vil** · 2020-07-16 10:35

Yeah, I pretty much agree with those points.

Big thing out of those for me would be that I would like the dead last loser being brought back or at least something like it. How many seasons in a row have they done where there's a pick/vote for both people in elimination? I wonder if they stopped doing that because they started doing those purges that they love so much.

As for 1 and 2, they just do a bad job of recruiting females and in some cases keeping them. While there were some dubious choices as expected in such a bloated cast for Dirty 30, that was a good and robust cast before they started this recent power creep. WOTW2 had Laurel, Dee, Ashley, Ninja, Cara, Kam, Tori, Jenny, Nany, and Georgia. Besides Camila, that's like the top 10 females that had been on the show from the prior 5 seasons. Jenna/Kailah/Sylvia are maybe lateral moves at the lower end, and there's also Nicole Z and Amanda who are great at certain aspects but bad to terrible at others, so idk. Overall, besides Dee this season and Cara a couple seasons ago, they just don't feature as much, so producers are shuffling them out for good much easier than they are with guys.

**Moss** · 2020-07-16 10:53

Agree with you on the girls. And thinking back, part of it was a function of the red skull format this year: Melissa and Bayleigh just hung around without challenging for a skull until the very end. Dee got eliminated late whereas I legitimately think she could've won the final if she has any math skill.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

**Vil** · 2020-07-18 08:47

Not sure how many years it's been, but I was looking through my DVR schedule this morning and saw that a week after the reunion they're doing a "Behind the Madness" show with the "madness, hookups, and fails the fans didn't know they were missing".

Not related to this season, but I was watching Holey Moley last night (yeah, I'll watch most of those dumb summer game shows) and Noor from Fresh Meat was on there. I don't remember how he was around the house and all that, but as a competitor, it seemed a shame that he didn't even get a second season. Then again, The Challenge doesn't cast Asian people, so oh well.

**Byrd** · 2020-07-30 17:39

I watched the Behind The Scenes / Making Of ... / $#!T They Should Have Shown episode last night. Was worth it. Skipped the reunion last week.

Man, editors robbed Melissa of some serious coitus and makeout points this year. Why wouldn't they air that 4 girl makeout session or Nany and Melissa's bar kiss on the regular show? Too busy filling up time with Dee and Rogan? Or too busy ignoring Dee and Rogan, if it was after that switch got flipped? I do notice neither Dee nor Rogan got any air time whatsoever last night.

Would have liked to have seen more of Swaggy and Nelson's fight and make-up as well, although Swaggy is definitely a character I don't particularly need on my TV screen again. Bayleigh ... meh.

Was glad they showed Cory speaking for the viewer and actively wondering why Jenna got engaged to Zach.

BB All Stars is apparently have a live cast reveal as the show goes to air next Wednesday, will be interesting to see if any of the Challenge Vet BB cast members end up back on there. I'm hoping for Josh and Paulie just so they don't show up on the next season of The Challenge.

**Vil** · 2020-08-05 22:11

Originally Posted by Byrd

BB All Stars is apparently have a live cast reveal as the show goes to air next Wednesday, will be interesting to see if any of the Challenge Vet BB cast members end up back on there. I'm hoping for Josh and Paulie just so they don't show up on the next season of The Challenge.

Nah, BB went with the better Calafiore. People that had been on The Challenge that are on this season of BB - DaVonne and Bayleigh.

CBS All Access now has season 11 (Gauntlet 2) onward. S11 was TJ's 1st season and I gave it a watch. What an entirely different show. TJ has come a long way as a host, but if you thought the Natalie/Laurel elimination needed better judging or something, this season is hilarious with people arguing with TJ about rules and whatnot. One of them leading to the vid in the tweet below.

18 half hour episodes included the reunion and it was surprising that they could accomplish as much in 21 minutes after commercials cut as they seem to do in ~60 minutes now. There are many contributing factors, but getting rid of tribunals (and any dumb thing like that) could save 10 minutes easily. They're not entertaining or interesting enough to justify the amount of time they eat up.

TJ not liking quitters is established very early, but this season was rough. 1 quit overnight, 2 quit rather than doing an elimination, 1 basically didn't bother trying, and an entire team forfeited the final.

https://twitter.com/tjlavin/status/1082242603645468674

**Byrd** · 2020-08-06 11:49

Originally Posted by Vil

Nah, BB went with the better Calafiore. People that had been on The Challenge that are on this season of BB - DaVonne and Bayleigh.

I didn't know Paulie had a brother (?) that was on Big Brother. Still hoping Paulie doesn't come back on The Challenge unless it is without Cara Maria. Would be interesting to see him in that case. I do like Da'Vonne, but could care less about Bayleigh. I watched Big Brother pretty regularly from season 9 or so to 15 or so, but three nights a week, combined with over the top producer interference, turned me off to it.

I am looking forward to the Amazing Race 32 finally airing this fall - it was filmed in November of 2018. I have to imagine that whoever won that season has been hopping up and down for their victory check for the better part of two years now.

**Vil** · 2020-08-06 16:54

I'd be happy to see Paulie on a Challenge season without Cara. It seemed evident on the WOTWs that there was a difference between when she was in/not in the room. Bayleigh without Swaggy might be interesting. I'm willing to cut her some slack as that was her rookie season and with him, so idk. Agree on Day.

I guess Josh and Kaycee were both heavily expected/rumored to be on BB, but either were late drops, scratches, or had positive tests. (Being reported that Josh had a false-positive)

Big Brother has a lot of people back from the time you watched, but I fully expect most of those people to be screwed. If this goes down like Survivor last season, I wouldn't be shocked. "Oh wow, it's great to see x back after a dozen years!" and all those people are going to be gone pre-jury. At least on Survivor, Tony was an amazing silver lining. There's nobody like that here, and just like Survivor, it's probably going to be a massive pre-game "new school" alliance that is going to be in power. So at this point, I say bring on the production interference.

**Byrd** · 2020-09-01 16:01

Sequester has started for Season 36. Casting rumors (which are largely reliable) can be found here. Some of those people are probably alternates, but still, that's an interesting list.

Notable:

Spoiler: show

**Xno Kappa** · 2020-09-01 16:34

Spoiler: show

**Byrd** · 2020-09-01 18:41

Originally Posted by Xno Kappa

Spoiler: show

I could not stand the Twinnies The Amazing Race at all. Once she got away from her sister on Survivor, I found her much less annoying. Winners at War proved to me she was a hell of a challenge beast.

Speaking of The Amazing Race, it premieres season 32 (filmed in 2018) on October 14; definitely looking forward to that, as it has been way too long. Season 33 was suspended mid-race due to COVID-19, will be interested to see if they pick it up again where they left off, or scrap it and start over.

Thread: Challenge 35: Total Madness

Thread Tools

Challenge 35: Total Madness

Latest Threads

Up & Coming Threads

Hottest Threads