The Challenge Megathread - Flagship, USA, All-Stars & More?

**Byrd** · 2024-08-30 16:35

Originally Posted by Xno Kappa

But fuck man I hope CT doesn’t go out on a medical exit.

My gut feeling is that he doesn't, otherwise I don't think they would have been putting it in previews. It's just clickbait, if you will. Nany had a similar injury in previews a few seasons ago, but came back fine. Outside of maybe Diem's final departure, I don't recall an actual season-ending injury being prominently featured. And I'm not sure even that was highlighted, we just all knew it was coming.

**Vil** · 2024-09-04 22:48

I love when I just kind of zone out when TJ does the long voiceovers for challenge rules, because that inevitably means there'll be some real confusion when the challenge is set up to run in some awkward way. Like getting a question wrong and it's other people that get dropped. Super safe setup as usual, BMP. When the first person was kind of like "f this fall", I was wondering if they were going to expect a ladder or something, but yeah... most everyone else in the later stretches was like "this is stupid".

Still not sure if I like the Challenge related questions (some of those seemed wild, or at least for the point value) or the general knowledge ones for this. For a milestone season, Challenge trivia seems appropriate, so I'll take it even if that was a rough start to it.

Another decent new elimination challenge? Did they outsource the eliminations? That's the sort of style of thing you'd see on Survivor/BB and I like those things where you have to reset things/take a time penalty if you fail a seemingly menial task while trying to accomplish the goal of the challenge.

But... what happened in the guys' elimination? Looked like there was one missing on Derrick's board at the end. The show did something weird there either with the editing or with the ruling.

lol @ just asking for volunteers for the "targets" but at least it's some new faces on the board. That sort of rotation or w/e probably won't last much longer, but it beats just the old "well, x was already nominated, so it's easy to nominate them again" mantra.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-10-03 09:35

It sucks Era 1 got wiped out. Era 3 and 4 are easily the most annoying group of characters ever brought on the Challenge.

Random but I had no idea Tina was half asian! God damn it I was hoping she pulled through on that elimination.

**Byrd** · 2024-10-03 12:29

Originally Posted by Xno Kappa

It sucks Era 1 got wiped out. Era 3 and 4 are easily the most annoying group of characters ever brought on the Challenge.

I've been really disappointed to see Era 1 just getting effectively Pagonged. Seems like age really is catching up to them, at least to some extent. In some ways, it feels like the game isn't really going to start until Era 1 gets eliminated entirely. This feels like Act I of the season.

It will be curious to see what happens if just one of Derrick and Rachel gets eliminated. Do they stay on a team all by themselves? Or do they get absorbed into another Era?

**Vil** · 2024-10-09 19:02

This season is really a bit of a rut recently and I'm hoping that Byrd's right and this is effectively the pre-season or something when looking back after the fact. But then it's down to people who I'm long tired of this season and people that are invisible. It just is a point where it mostly looks like it'll feel like any late-30s season versus a milestone one. I'd say there's always AS for a break from the same faces but I think I saw a cast list for the upcoming one and it was similar distribution of the "eras".

At least there's the House of Villains premiere tonight (and an ep tomorrow).

**Vil** · 2024-10-11 09:15

What a great idea to have winner/loser based on the most/fewest remaining when the team sizes range from 2 to 7. Two ways to vastly improve that challenge outside of that problem - make it a smaller platform and have it on water so it's a shaky thing. It just seemed too easy to escape/hide/do nothing or be like Theo and just get trapped there. They did the flashback to Cuthroat or w/e with the riot shields, but I guess I'm thinking of one of the Gauntlet seasons where they picked male/female captains for the teams via being the last one on a floating platform.

I can't believe they did an elimination where they're basically told to go punch the other person. Sure, it's the less efficient way, but Byrd's girl out there just getting rocked. The way TJ did results... "You scored ALL of the targets... except for 6." If she missed 1-3, ok, but she missed like 40% of them, man.

Josh/Kaycee getting clowned on was great at least.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-10-11 12:10

Theo causing so much drama between Josh and Cory was absolutely hilarious lol.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-10-18 13:29

Just caught up to the most recent episode of Survivor and holy shit lmao

Spoiler: show

One of the funnest moves in recent seasons.

**Vil** · 2024-10-18 14:32

It was good, but I preferred the one the previous episode. I need that goof to have an embarrassing downfall, but at least I'm getting some laughs along the way.

This week's Challenge, I know they signal who's going (or at least who's probably in elimination) but the two boots felt obvious from the get-go here. I'm tired of the moaning about "math!" as half of those were super easy, especially if you have multiple ppl so you can maybe rotate through them. They really should have just set that up with 4 walls and go simultaneously. lol @ Josh trying to cheat.

idk what Josh's allies want from him. With Cory, I definitely believe he (and Kaycee) could have swung that "team vote" but this situation feels like knowing that Rachel was going to do that no matter what. Maybe Devin shouldn't have skipped his turn in the rotation, huh? Every season Josh is overextended and people get this shock when realizing it. He and all them are morons.

Meh @ the target thing continuing, but lmao @ Jenny being one of them.

Just in general, I hope that it's the end of the "vacation alliance" storyline here. It kind of reminds me of Survivor 40, when they openly talked about the "poker alliance". idk if it was actually a thing or if it was just a convenient thing to lump a bunch of ppl together in the moment as targets. I know that all these returnee seasons on shows are pre-gamed to hell, but to me it just feels weird when they are bringing it into the episodes explicitly.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-10-18 17:49

100%

And even then iirc the poker alliance in survivor 40 didn’t really do anything.

The fact the challenge is already pregamed to holy hell is pretty damn annoying when it’s directly brought into the show. And they do that shit constantly throughout the seasons.

**Vil** · 2024-10-19 11:05

It was about 5 seasons back when Wes had a confessional with like a Brady Bunch graphic of his pre-game deals and at the time it was like "haha, fitting for Wes". While that stuff had been going on other than him, it does feel like it's an arms race these past several seasons with this stuff. That's why All Stars (at least the first couple) felt so fresh. Besides the randos, even the people with many connections weren't really some gigantic perpetual blob of castmembers.

**Vil** · 2024-10-24 18:03

Lovely, going down to single eliminations. I know that they've done the shift from doubles to singles in most seasons in the last several years, but it always sucks.

Keeping the "last place finisher" for the whole cast is better than what I thought they'd do (and seemingly what some of the cast thought too). How the hell did Ryan not see a single piece with the painted side? Didn't someone on one of the All Stars show do something similar with a puzzle, like doing it sideways or something? idk how some of these people finished in the order they did. Josh in 3rd for the guys? Derek taking forever to get to the puzzle?

I've wanted more things that are kind of callbacks to early era weird eliminations, but I'm not sure that's what I was asking for. It seems like it'd be fun to do, but they probably were doing that for hours, which would be awful. The targets for next week are all boring and/or annoying, so I guess I don't mind it being like 3 of the 4 women least likely to have power.

Speaking of power, if it's the ladies vote breaking a stalemate on guys day, what's the point of having the guy's winner there at all? Give them a T Mobile Sidekick or Burger King for a year!

**Byrd** · 2024-10-30 10:51

Originally Posted by Vil

I know that they've done the shift from doubles to singles in most seasons in the last several years, but it always sucks.

I'm not a fan of having dailies where there's zero risk involved for half the players or more. I get they are trying to avoid that by having a penalty at the next challenge, but we'll see how severe that is. Everybody should potentially be at risk every episode. If you earn immunity through gameplay, so be it, but there should be some risk every week.

Originally Posted by Vil

Speaking of power, if it's the ladies vote breaking a stalemate on guys day, what's the point of having the guy's winner there at all?

I was wondering that myself. Make it top two and two and let the woman who finishes first break ties, or something. It's really one person who chooses now. Johnny was saying "It's not just her (Tori's decision), it's your as well!" to Jordan, and I was like ... No, no, it's really not.

**Vil** · 2024-10-30 12:15

I'd kind of forgotten about the penalty for the upcoming challenge. Taking us back to the days of the "grenades" from early on in Era 4. I don't really remember how those impacted things, but I figure it's either:
1. Barely making an impact
2. Making it virtually impossible

This show doesn't really do anything in-between those.

**Byrd** · 2024-10-30 12:59

Originally Posted by Vil

I figure it's either:
1. Barely making an impact
2. Making it virtually impossible

I would assume so, as well. This show is terrible at game balance.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-10-31 12:04

Should just have it last place is an automatic target.

**Vil** · 2024-11-07 21:07

Not surprised Ne got purged as he was barely shown this season other than when they kind of had to, but lmao @ Laurel. Please lose her contact info, casting! Cara's confessional calling her out was spot on.

Some people may not care for the luck/randomness in that elimination, but the plinko tunnels idea was dope in general. Maybe the time should have scaled down differently rather than 1min directly to 30s, but for all I know that may have been editing and it wasn't like that or wasn't the first round when cutting the time down. Nice to see Theo back, but bummed that he was kind of "just there" for the most part this season.

**Byrd** · 2024-11-08 13:42

Originally Posted by Vil

Some people may not care for the luck/randomness in that elimination, but the plinko tunnels idea was dope in general. Maybe the time should have scaled down differently rather than 1min directly to 30s, but for all I know that may have been editing and it wasn't like that or wasn't the first round when cutting the time down. Nice to see Theo back, but bummed that he was kind of "just there" for the most part this season.

I really liked the tunnel elimination with the poles, but the High/Low element wasn't a great aspect to it. I like your idea of scaling down from 1 minute instead of dropping straight to 30 seconds. Feels like there would be some more developing strategy at that point. I honestly had forgotten Nehemiah was still on the show. We're down to 13 out of 40 contestants left, but I'd be hard pressed to name them all if I wasn't looking at a list. Some of the contestants feel so under-edited. In the beginning, when there were 40 (!) contestants, that made sense, but now ... just seems unbalanced.

Over all, it's a pretty solid season, though, I'm not actually trying to complain. Just commenting.

Six guys left, I think there's three with a reasonable chance to win (Jordan, Bananas, Kyland), one slim chance (Cory) and two layups (Derek and Josh). The womens' side seems a lot more balanced as I think there are five that could win (Aviv, Cara Maria, Tori, Rachel, Jenny), one dark horse (Olivia) and only one that would truly surprise me (Michele). Maybe Aviv is a dark horse now with her injury.

If I'm one of the guys with a chance, I'm doing whatever I can to keep Derek and Josh while pitting the other contenders against each other. Jordan had a great point when he said that he is the type to go against the strongest guys in the final, where Bananas wants to make it as easy as possible.

**Vil** · 2024-11-08 21:12

Overall, we probably would have these people in similar orders. I wouldn't be surprised if Johnny/Cara won, but it definitely feels more like the season is about Rachel/Tori and Kyland/Jordan to me. Jenny and/or Aviv are two that I think would need very favorable conditions or many things to break their way to win and even then I'm not sure it's enough. Several times this season I thought "is this finally Cory's time?" and while he's improved in many aspects, it just seems to inconsistent a season for me to think he's winning this. Josh has improved, but he's still Josh. Derek has underperformed, but he's really just Kyland's personal hype man here, isn't he? You're more optimistic (even if minimal) to Michele and especially Olivia than I am.

**Xno Kappa** · 2024-12-05 21:05

Latest episode of Survivor was amazing. I also love Rachel and she’s definitely my favorite to win. I’m almost positive she had an idea some shenanigans were a foot with Andy so adamant about splitting the votes. But why waste an advantage if she already had individual immunity? Let Andy take out Caroline and feel Sue’s wrath instead lol. And the jury already seems like they don’t respect his game anyways.

She basically did the same with the Sol vote. “You helped me out. Cool. I’m still not sticking my neck out for you.”

Some fun old school Survivor gameplay this episode amongst everyone.

Thread: The Challenge Megathread - Flagship, USA, All-Stars & More?

Thread Tools