The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras Episode 4 Recap: 10 Biggest Takeaways
The 4th episode of The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras is in the books. You probably have some thoughts, so let’s compare. Instead of giving a simple summary, I decided to focus on the 10 Biggest moments/takeaways from Episode 4.
If you prefer audio/video, my podcast recap can be found above/below:
10 Jenny seems neat
Anyone who reads my blogs knows that I typically don’t go easy on Aneesa, especially when she says hypocritical stuff or is flat-out lying about her abilities. So, the beginning of this blog will be a tone shift because I need to give Aneesa credit as she’s in her 40’s and is rehabbing from significant injuries, so she can still compete on this show now. I loved Jenny complimenting and supporting Aneesa and her body type at the beginning of the episode.
When you see someone like Jenny, you assume that because they’re so hardcore about their fitness and diet, they want everyone to be that way. Nope. Jenny showed so much body positivity towards Aneesa, championing her and seeming accepting in a way that is healthy for viewers at home to hear.
So, to summarize:
1. Jenny seems cool.
2. Aneesa rehabbing to compete in her 40’s is admirable.
3. Aneesa still does not have the cardio to win a Final, which is still the main complaint that I and many others have.
9 Trivia Challenge
The trivia challenges have been underwhelming and nonsensical in recent seasons — in comparison, I thought this season’s trivia challenge was great. While I do love it when players get exposed for their lack of common knowledge, it being Challenge trivia for Season 40 makes sense, and seeing players not know basic Challenge knowledge had the superfan in me shaking my fist.
It made sense that Era 4 was the worst team in this daily challenge as the people on their team… aren’t Challenge fans. Horacio, Theo, and Jenny weren’t watching MTV growing up, and while people like Josh, Michele, and Kaycee were Reality TV fans, they weren’t Challenge fans. Josh missed that absolute lay-up question about who CT fought with on The Duel 2. Even worse, you had Kyland, who was touting himself as a Challenge expert and aggressively going for high-point value questions, then whiffing, leading to his team’s immediate demise. Kyland has mentioned that he’s studied The Challenge a lot , except he’s studied the daily challenge & elimination designs and the wikia’ of players winning seasons. He knows the Challenge on paper but doesn’t know the drama & moments that built this show. Additionally, I thought it was idiotic to go for a high-value Geography question before ever seeing any other Geography question so he could gauge the difficulty.
Era 1, not being the strongest at trivia, also wasn’t that shocking. Players like Darrell, Derrick, Brad, Rachel, and Tina all appeared on one or fewer seasons from 20–29, so there’s an entire stretch of the show they were not there for.
Era 3 & Era 2 being the best teams made sense as they consisted of people who grew up watching The Challenge and were there for most of the seasons where the trivia questions occurred. I will say that I was stunned by Emily Schromm pulling a tough Duel 1 geography question when she doesn’t seem like someone who watches The Challenge when she isn’t on. In the end, it came down to Era 2 & 3, with Laurel & Jordan repping their teams in the sudden death round.
8 Did Jordan Throw It?
While I don’t take Jordan as a Challenge superfan, his not remembering Cheyenne’s name was highly questionable. Actually, his demeanor in his confessionals was all we needed to know. I believe Jordan threw it because he knew Laurel would save him, and he didn’t want to get put in a position where his team members would be pushing for him to make a big move by voting Laurel & Bananas in. Nia would’ve been half the vote, and her inclination thus far has been to make the big move when you can. Jordan also would’ve had to deal with pressure from Tori & Devin to save Aneesa.
It was a calculated risk that paid off for Jordan.
7 Laurel vs. Darrell & Laurel vs. Emily
Laurel could have taken the win gifted to her by Jordan and celebrated in a normal fashion. Instead, she used the win as an opportunity to celebrate as if she won the Super Bowl and then cursed out Darrell for nominating her. Laurel’s stupefied demeanor over getting nominated by Darrell at the beginning of the episode didn’t make sense. While nobody should be happy to get nominated, Laurel acted as though it happened out of left field, when in reality, it was a 1-in-4 choice, and Darrell is closer to Cara & Aviv as his former partners. Which meant it was a coin flip between Laurel and Emily.
With Laurel being a sore winner and cursing him out, Darrell reflected her energy right back at her and called her a “Fake Ass Bully.” In the face of Laurel’s energy getting directed back at her, she sank low, first by acting like an annoying ten-year-old and then by going low as she painted Darrell as a bad husband for getting massages from Emily. Except as we’ve seen, Darrell’s back is completely fucked to the point where he’s struggling to sit down. It was shocking to see Laurel try to paint Darrell as this bad guy, and then to drag Emily into it was crazier.
Laurel vs. Emily is not a storyline that I expected. These two women are in the conversation for the greatest female competitor of all time, and yet, they typically stay away from one another — almost as a mutual fear/respect thing. If these two come to a head and one gets one over on the other, it might separate them in the GOAT conversation. I found it funny that Emily was not able to have a “normal” date with Brad after the interaction as she was so unaccustomed to being part of the messy drama.
6 CT Almost Died
It’s incredible that after two decades of competing in overtly physical challenges and headbangers, the thing to incapacitate CT is a trivia challenge. He got stretchered off, and Brad summarized best when he said CT is like the Terminator — you never see him hurt like this. Even worse, they sent him back home from the hospital with no shoes on. CT’s competed on this show for 20+ years, is a 5x Champ, and a pillar of the franchise, and yet production can’t bring him back with some shoes! This hit was harder than his divorce because at least CT got left with one shoe after that was done.
The scene with CT and Darrell physically being unable to move much while Derrick showed off his notes was comical and painful. It hurts to see these legends aging, yet they all took it in stride. ‘
5 Team Unity Meetings
The team meetings are always fascinating to watch because we and the players all know that this isn’t always going to be a team-based game. Era 2 pleaded to Laurel & Bananas to vote Jordan into elimination, partly because they don’t have to go against him in an individual game. Laurel wants to keep Jordan and Horacio around for the individual game as they’re strong players with whom she’s aligned.
While I’ve emotionally related to Ryan and his annoyance with Laurel this season, I did think he was in the wrong when he said Laurel was making a selfish choice. Although it is a team game, Laurel was the target who could’ve gone into elimination, so this power is ultimately hers and whatever she wants to do with it. In reality, the person who got the brunt of this daily challenge win was Johnny Bananas. He wasn’t allowed to have an opinion, as Laurel would steamroll any potential decision. It is amazing to watch Laurel play this game because there are moments when she completely detaches emotion and makes cutthroat strategic moves. Then, most of the time, she plays one of the most emotional and impulsive games I’ve ever seen.
Talking about emotions & strategy, we saw Josh pump his chest and tell his team he’ll be volunteering for the next elimination, which he obviously did at the end of the episode…
4 Derrick’s Homework
The scene of Derrick showing Laurel & Bananas his notes reminded me of the janitor from Billy Madison. It killed me that all the notes essentially summed up to was that Era 1 sucks, is on life support, and because of that, they should be saved. In all honesty, it was a good argument. Jordan is the biggest threat in the game, and Horacio has beaten him before, so let’s run it back.
Unfortunately for Derrick, Laurel is still a little bit in love with Jordan, and also she’s never liked Aneesa or him very much. There was something very funny about watching Bananas empathize with Derrick & Aneesa, and you could tell in his eyes that he didn’t want to vote them in. Sadly for them, there was no world where Bananas would fall on the sword like Tony, especially not when the sword is having to face Horacio in elimination.
Like Bananas, I give Derrick an A+ for effort.
3 Aneesa vs. Jenny
Credit to Aneesa, I don’t think anyone thought she’d be close to Jenny in this elimination that required endurance and speed. Despite the fact that Aneesa has won a handful of eliminations in the past few years, I thought this was her best performance in over a decade.
At the same time, this elimination weirdly lowered Jenny’s threat level in the house as we saw a lack of athleticism in her inability to throw/catch a ball, and she randomly gassed out with essentially only one throw left to complete the challenge. Jenny left a door open for Aneesa to get the win. Aneesa missed her shot, and in the end, Jenny stayed in the game.
It was jarring to see as on Total Madness; we saw Jenny routinely outrun the men, including blowing out all the men in the Final. Hopefully, this was Jenny’s attempt to make Aneesa look stronger than she is because if not, Jenny might be a pretender rather than a contender to win. That would bum me out, as she was my preseason pick to win.
With this elimination, Aneesa tacks on her 14th career elimination loss, which ties her with Johnny Bananas for the all-time loss record on the MTV flagship show.
2 Derrick vs. Horacio
I don’t know if any two players in the house were more suited for this specific elimination than Derrick & Horacio. Derrick is super agile, his hand-eye coordination is off the charts, and he’s got non-stop drive. Meanwhile, Horacio has done zillions of high-speed obstacle course challenges on his OG show Exatlon. These two men were zooming through the elimination and were often able to grab four Jacks at once. It was a much different elimination round from the women’s.
However, we must acknowledge the elephant in the room…which is the fact that the last shots we saw of the elimination included Derrick’s board without a 40th peg in it and Horacio nonchalantly placing his last peg as if he had an insurmountable lead. The editing of it all was so funky. Even when Horacio & Derrick dapped each other up in the middle after the horn was blown, there still wasn’t a 40th peg placed in Derrick’s board.
When TJ revealed that Derrick won, everyone looked shocked. According to the rumor mill, Horacio felt that production did him dirty in this elimination, so he announced that he would be retiring on social media. I don’t believe Horacio is legitimately retired because over 1/4 of the people on the show this season have “retired” before and come back to compete. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t blame Horacio for being angry because whatever happened in this elimination was weird.
It sucks for Derrick that he’s won two eliminations this season and has taken down an OG King in Mark and a New Hot Shot Horacio in eliminations that would favor them. Yet, he can’t fully celebrate them because there’s a sketchy scent over each.
I do want to note that I don’t think production would want to rig an elimination in Derrick’s favor over Horacio. While Derrick is a legend, Horacio is the new toy who drives up views and engagement. As someone who covers this show, it’s insane to see the amount of traffic that Horacio content gets. He’s a boring white bread dude, and yet, there’s a reason why white bread is the #1 seller in supermarkets.
1 New Targets
Eliminations are typically the highlight of most episodes, except this season; I am more excited by the targeting twist that caps off episodes. While there were players like CT, Tina, Emily, Tori, and Olivia willing to volunteer for their teams, the dynamics where players weren’t willing to be fascinating/fun to watch. Nehemiah got picked by Jenny as the only guy from her team who hadn’t seen elimination/been a target — he wasn’t going to volunteer himself, though. You had Devin waiting for Cory to step up when Cory didn’t, Jenny picked Devin — I assume we’ll get some drama between them next week.
And the big moment was Josh not volunteering after he proudly declared he would to his team before the elimination. Josh receded into his shell once he saw he could be facing CT in elimination. I’m not going to make fun of Josh because there’s no world where you should throw yourself into a situation where you have a 50% shot of going into elimination and a 33% chance said opponent in the elimination would be CT. The social game is part of the game, and if Josh can rely on it to keep him out of eliminations, good for him.
Next week, we are getting some variation of CT, Nehemiah, Devin, and Kyland in elimination. That is a stacked line-up. CT is CT, Nehemiah has essentially one clean elimination loss for his entire career, Kyland beat two mercenaries last season, and if Devin is in elimination, they’ll give him a puzzle. So what I’m saying is that we’re getting a good show next episode. Based on the trailer, we also might be seeing Laurel throwing the daily challenge to screw over Emily, which is messy and fun.
