Challenge Episode 5: “Underdog Eat Underdog World” Recap

The episode opens up with where we left off from last week’s episode, the Champs have arrived and they look mighty fierce and beautiful. The underdogs proceed to give their spiel about how they are terrified of the Champs and a bit scared that their chances of winning is now going down the drain.

We find out the Champs and Underdogs are in fact separating into two different teams, where winning daily challenges will put money into their team bank account just like the olden days. This unfortunately is the only thing like the old days, as they will be splitting elimination days. So the Underdogs are really not beating the Champs, and what they do not realize, is that they are not a team in actuality. Only 4 underdogs will make it to the final, and only 2 champs will make it, and from there it will be an individual game. This is essentially similar to Bloodlines, except we get to see the Underdogs kind of coast, but also have to earn their way to the final. The best part is that we get real champion eliminations that everyone wants. We are forcing Bananas, CT, Zach, and Darrell to face each other in eliminations, no intimidating others, and no skating through or weaseling your way to the end. In over 30 seasons of the show, CT-Bananas-Darrell have only seen 24 eliminations between them(13 for Bananas). That’s less than 1 elimination a season on average for the 3 of those guys!! Jesus, we love these guys, but we never get to see them compete in the most primal 1 on 1 fashion, and we have that this season.

The daily challenge is about to begin, and the Champs are hyped about annihilating down the Underdogs. Laurel is one of the best, Cara is one of the strongest girls in the house, and Camila is just scary. For the male champs, seeing 6'4 and 6'2, Zach and CT is scary, Darrell is a monster, and Bananas is incredibly quick and perfect for a rugby-like game. Somehow, I fully convinced myself that the Champs were going to the win, and that the guys would have a tough match, but ultimately prevail.

Then the actual challenge began and it was obvious that 6 against 4 is a real advantage. The girls on this season are very tall, the average being 5'6 and higher. This is insane as most seasons, the girls are below 5'5, and thus the Underdog girls actually sized up well. Ashley M played it smart by staying away from any of the hits and being near the basket so she could score points easily. With the Underdogs only having four people on their team, they were stretched too thin, and they couldn’t have some protecting the goal if they wanted to actually score. Laurel dragged people through the mud, but during daily challenges she usually doesn’t get cutthroat, and saves it for eliminations. Cara’s focus was only hitting people, and does a good a solid job at that, but nothing for them to actually win.

For the guy round, it was better to watch out of the simple value that the men are more accustomed to tackling and hitting each other. There were a lot of good 1 on 1 take-downs for the underdogs on Champs, Nelson on Darrell, Hunter on CT, Tony on Bananas, and then a lot of more hits on Bananas by a few of the guys. Shout-out to Hunter, he may be the next Derrick Kosinski. Hunter is a short dude, but he physically dominated Bananas and held him down for a good 4–10 seconds by himself like nothing. Even though the Champs got 2 points, it was a bad showing by the Champs, and a bad one by the Underdogs as well. They played sloppily after going up 2–0 and let two easy scores in, one where they essentially just handed it to Darrell.

Before the Challenge begun, TJ announced to the Underdogs that it was their elimination day and the first guy and girl to score a point would get the opportunity to thrown in a person of the opposite sex. The two to do this for the Underdogs was Dario and Ashley. TJ asks Ashley to on the spot pick the guy to go into the elimination. Although they are a new team, Ashley sticks to her former alliance and throws Tony under the bus for the first elimination. Dario then gets to choose anyone and he picks Sylvia, with his reasoning being that she was the last one to make it into the Oasis. Smart choice as picking someone who is not in the alliance like Jenna and Kailah would put a target on his back for a couple solid competitors, while Sylvia has given up on a couple occasions in her current debut season. Even though she is part of the alliance, she is the bottom of the totem pole, and he knows that they will be sending in Kailah to the elimination already, so for the alliance-sake it is better that he send in Sylvia and get her mad at him instead of the entire group for future votes.

The Champs proceed to move into the Oasis after the daily challenge. In order to preserve their space, the Underdogs close them out, forcing the guy and girl champs to co-exist in the same rooms. This created a few sexist comments from Zach — no surprise there. We get a reunion of Shane and Darrell who did Road Rules Campus Crawl together back in the year of 2002. This is Shane’s first Challenge in over 10 years, and Darrel’s first challenge in 7 years, the reunion feels good, and the clip they showed of them from the old days was cute.

Then we get rookie Nicole going hard after Cara Maria, wanting to get the hot hook-up as soon as she can. I’ve introduced a few of my friends to the Challenge, and with Cara they are either indifferent or completely drawn to her and the look she has.

Once everyone was moved in, the bottles came out and the bathing suits were on. The surprise of the night was probably that Ashley Kelsey has a better booty than Jenna. She is a beautiful girl, but MTV needs to understand that nobody knows who she is, and that they need to introduce her better.

From there the Underdogs are squabbling about who to throw into the next elimination. Cory wants Shane to go into the elimination as he believes that Shane is the weakest guy in the house. However, Shane is good friends with Ashley M, Sylvia, and Amanda, who would never vote for him. The house will target Kailah for the girl vote, as nobody likes Kailah. Shane also gets into it with Cory, and he explains that he is just trying to get as far in the game as he can, as only the people in the final actually win money. His understanding of the game and the format is ten steps ahead of Cory, and Cory views himself as an alpha, thus Shane’s actual logic goes over his head and makes him feel small. Intelligence scares people.

During Underdog team discussions, Dario ends up being the voice of reason and flat out states that they need to understand that it is a game at the end of the day and they are all chess-pieces. Dario’s commentary and strategy has been shocking this season. He is figuring out the game, and has been the only one not acting like a rookie. On the romantic side, he is smoothing his way into Ashley Kelsey’s lap, and considering they have been dating since the show ended, he did pretty well. Nelson-Tony-Cory all desperately want to be team leaders and captains, but maybe it should be Dario?

Kailah, knowing that she will most likely be voted in tomorrow begins to get very drunk and hooks up with Cory in the Bathroom. She continues to drink more and gets to the point where Nicole has to help her change and put her in bed. As the night goes on, Tony wakes up Cory to alert her that Kailah has pee’d the bed. After seeing the stream, Cory leaves in disgust and dumps Kailah for this action.

Here is what I will say about Cory leaving her: I think he was trying to separate himself from Kailah as he wants to join the other alliance as they have the bigger numbers, and he wants to avoid eliminations. However, what he did to Kailah is incredibly wrong, and if you stop talking to someone and start trashing them for peeing the bed, then you are a bad person. I have had friends who accidentally pee’d themselves sober, some who do it after nightmares, and so for someone to piss themselves after being black out drunk, it’s completely understandable. It should not be rewarded or championed, but you also should not get mad at someone for doing it, unless maybe you were in the same bed.

The episode ends with tears from Kailah.