10 Worst Challenge Castings of the last ten seasons
The worst Challenge cast members are not the ones who perform the most vile actions or are the most dramatic. It is the Challengers who add nothing to the show and often act as a detriment to it. For example, I do not enjoy Johnny Bananas, but I do think he adds so much to the show and gives me someone that I want to root against. Heroes and villains are necessary for story-telling.
For this article, I listed the ten cast members from recent seasons where I was bewildered why they were on the show, or how their actions ruined it. I am sorry to some of the people on the list as they seem like good people in real life. I often chose to avoid people who got eliminated first mostly because we don’t know what their potential is.
10 JP Andrade
It hurts to put my guy JP on this list. JP is a fit and beautiful man who I expected to make a splash in the challenges and in the bedroom. Instead, he was the definition of wallpaper. JP only had 4 confessionals through his first four episodes (all of which occurred during his final episode). Perhaps the language barrier kept him off our television screen, but it didn’t help that his partner Natalie also received no confessionals.
JP’s best moment was calling CT out into elimination. Then again, he is probably hated because he is the reason CT was eliminated so early!
9 Rianna Pollin
MTV showed no interest in Rianna whatsoever. So much so that we only found out at the reunion, that most of the house found her hilarious, and none of her jokes or sense of humor made it to air. Instead, she was made fun of in confessionals by Johnny Bananas. She only had 9 confessionals through her first eleven episodes, and only got 11 in the following two as the game was down to five teams. Even Aneesa did not pay much attention to Rianna. It’s sad to watch a regular person go on the Challenge because in the end, both the cast members and the audience will not care for them.
She has lost a considerable amount of weight since then and seems to be living a good life at least.
8 Anthony Cuomo
Anthony had 8 confessionals through his first seven episodes, and on his final one he received 7. The most confusing part about him being on Battle of the Bloodlines is that it is unclear whether KellyAnne and Anthony are even actually related. He did not speak much, but he rode the end of the Bananas boat, despite KellyAnne loathing Johnny. Anthony aligned with two guys who really could care less about him. We never got to see him truly compete as KellyAnne represented them in their two eliminations.
He was the definition of a stock character. He is the guy who does spartan races and thinks he would be amazing on the Challenge. However, the personality it was divides the actual stars of the show from most of the people at home. Anthony seems like a chill dude though. At least he got to make out with Nicole Ramos.
7 Simone Kelly
If MTV wanted to leave a bad impression of Are You The One? on Challenge Fans, they did so by putting Simone Kelly on the show. Despite her partner John showing no athletic ability, he was a hilarious character who added comedy to the house. Simone brought nothing to the house, and even more incredibly she was cast for three seasons of the show.
Simone is the only person in Challenge history who I think is a rookie everytime she appears. On top of that Simone is a camera whore who is not memorable whatsoever. I felt bad for her during on Dirty 30, but overall her personality and character did not hit the mark. During the Rivals 3 shit they should have shown, the cast revealed Simone was someone who would get louder and turn it up whenever the cameras are around.
Who was Simone’s target market? Especially with someone as hilarious as LaToya not being on Exes 2 or Rivals 3. .
6 Victor Arroyo
The worst part about Victor being on the list is that fans were incredibly hyped about his casting. Victor had won America’s favorite player on Big Brother, he was incredibly fit, good-looking, and had the charisma to make it far on the Challenge. Instead, he was an utter bore in the house. Victor did well in challenges, but he failed at the house aspect. He did not enjoy his experience on the show, so much so that he did not make a single social media post about it until he was chastised by Marie, fans, and other challengers.
At the very least, he could have put up a facade for a few weeks.
5 Jozea Flores
The fact that Jozea was cast on Final Reckoning was crazy. The fact that he was cast for a Champs vs Stars season is even more ridiculous. Jozea brings nothing to the table. He has no athletic ability despite his fit figure. Jozea is unintelligent and is unable to solve puzzles or figure out basic game strategy. Ironically, Jozea has made it far on both seasons he has been on mostly due to luck and because of the failures of others.
It is rumored right now that Jozea is not going to be on Season 35 because he was telling anyone who would listen to him, that he was going to be on. Amazing.
4 Shaleen Sutherland
One of the most important reasons MTV casts rookies is because they are cheaper. MTV has a pay scale and players who have done more seasons get paid more. There are exceptions because some players are hotter commodities than others. For example, Stephen Bear was a big star in the UK, and thus you expect MTV to have dropped the brinks trucks for him.
Then you have Shaleen. A girl who was on one episode of the Bachelor Canada, and likely got this show because of her agent. MTV wasted their budget on Bananas, Wes, CT, Cara and Nany, and then saw all they had was 3.50. From there they brought in Shaleen and she seemed like a nice person. Unfortunately, MTV had no desire to give her screen time as she only had five confessionals in six episodes. It is always a bad sign when there are no major rumors about what she did that wasn’t shown on camera.
3 Vince Gliatta
Imagine having Johnny Bananas twice on the same cast, except for the second version of him, you remove his sense of humor, the ability do confessionals, his endurance, and made him an even bigger chauvinist who also bullies women. I’m not a fan of Johnny Bananas, but he’s the face of the Challenge for a reason. Allowing his cousin to do not only Bloodlines, but Rivals 3 as well pushed the boundaries of how much Bananas we can tolerate. Overall, the answer is .75 Bananas. We already have too much with the Bananas we already have, and now MTV added a second one that’s already brown and not even usable for banana bread.
Watching him coast next to Bananas on Rivals 3 was infuriating. He bullied Cheyenne and was absolute douche-nozzle.
2 Nate Siebenmark
I think MTV casts people who are obvious first elimination losers in order to maintain the main cast members from whom they want multiple episodes. However, because Rivals 3 was a total shitshow with a luck based format of deciding elimination participants. Nate lasted an insanely long time on Rivals 3.
Generally, someone who had a showmance and broke out into tears multiple times seems like a great cast member, but Nate was simply… the worst. What was most frustrating about Nate was that he always quitting. He refused to jump out of the airplane to start the game, lost the trivia and simply gave up, refused to make the jump over water in the flag challenge despite Christina doing an incredible job, and got completely flustered in the elimination that sealed his fate.
I often think TJ goes too hard on quitters — except Nate is the worst type of quitter, someone who only does it because life did not go exactly his way and he’s too afraid to push his boundaries.
1 Brandon Tindel
Nate and Simone didn’t make a very good impression of AYTO on the ChallengeBrandon Tindel sealed the deal and forced people like Hunter, Tori, Kam, Amanda, and Nelson to work harder to shift people’s opinion of the show and its ability to produce strong competitors.
On Rivals 3, Brandon introduced himself as a lifelong Challenge fan who was not only smarter, but stronger than all of the other guys in the house. He did not perform well in any of the daily challenges, avoided elimination via skull picking, and then quit in less than two weeks because he missed his girlfriend. Newsflash: he did not marry that girl, they did not get engaged, and he is currently single. The dude branded himself the biggest quitter in Challenge history and did not even marry the girl.
Easy choice.
LAST MINUTE DISHONORABLE MENTION: EDDIE WILLIAMS
A bland wall-paper dude who was removed from the show due to physical assault allegations. He also was edited out of the show and we were not even given explanation as to why.
