The Challenge Spies, Lies & Allies Episode 11 Recap & 10 Biggest Takeaways
Episode 11 of Spies, Lies & Allies 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 the 11th episode. Above is our YouTube Podcast Video recap, and for those that prefer Audio Only, Spotify and Apple Below.
10 Phone Calls Home & Solid Editing
The editors have done an excellent job hiding its casts’ weaknesses and enhancing their strengths over the last few weeks. They saw the lack of messy drama in the game and decided they would tap into their players’ emotional side and show why they were playing it. We saw Kyle, Nelson, and Ed (and Big T) facetime/call their loved ones. As it is a male elimination day, the first thing you think is, “is one of or two of these three guys going into elimination?” With Logan’s injury and Cory’s boot camp also occurring throughout the episode, they made sure to keep viable elimination options in viewers’ minds to build some suspense.
9 Cory’s Boot Camp
Cory’s Boot Camp looked like a bunch of kids who got signed up to play a sport by their parents that they didn’t want to play. Kyle was out there making a fool of himself, Logan was sitting on the sidelines injured, Emy wanted to be on another team where her friends are, and Big T’s gripe was she does not work out while the mid-day sun is out. If Big T ever gets to a final, I hope it runs exclusively during the morning and night, so she has a shot at winning.
Nelson’s Boot Camp completely outsold Cory’s Boot Camp.
8 Sleep Paralysis Demons
Watching Kyle talk about his future baby and seeing him care about something more than himself was cute. Seeing him squirm in fear as Amanda explained to him childbirth brought it all back to remind us, he is still Kyle at the end of the day.
Tori and Emanuel advanced their showmance, with Emanuel throwing on a wig and some of Tori’s clothes as he flaunted himself across the house. Whatever he is doing is working because he is the only rookie in the game who has not seen an elimination.
7 Slippery Slope
There were some key notes I took from this epic daily challenge. Whoever went first in their team’s rotation had a better shot than whoever went last, as the structure would get more slippery as time went on due to how much water had gotten sprayed at the previous players. Second, most of the players who did well in this challenge were on the taller side. Having the height to wrap more of your body on the beams or even to turn a full-on jump into a hop made a massive difference for competitors. Let’s get into how the teams did.
6 Daily Challenge Performance Breakdown
Sapphire: CT killed it, and for the most part, he was walking/hopping between the beams, making use of his 6'2 size. Then 5'8 Nelson goes, and Nelson has to make actual jumps; he knocks himself out by overjumping and his momentum/body swinging the other way. Ed, who is even shorter than Nelson, promptly wipeouts after that. I don’t mind Ashley & Bettina opting out to avoid injury, considering the fall we saw from Big T later in the episode, and it is also a male elimination day.
Ruby: Cory and Logan (with a bad hamstring) killed this daily challenge for their team. Emy did pretty well before going down, and Big T took a fucking gnarly fall. I don’t know why TJ Lavin was laughing so hard at Big T’s fall; production must be telling him that fans love his laugh. When the players know they are taking safe falls in trivia, his laugh puts a smile on my face, but watching Big T get rag-dolled through the air was not fun. Even the players in the game were visibly afraid by the fall she took. Of course, Kyle completed 95% of the challenge with relative ease and then DQ’d with his leap of faith at the end. A total brainfart on his part, and then the tears he had after were real because he realized that going into elimination became a real option.
Emerald: Nany and Tori both put up mildly disappointing performances; at least they somewhat tried. Josh had an all-time Goof performance, where being 6'2, he should have been able to walk across half the beams, and instead, he jumps and falls immediately. Kaycee stepped up massively; not only was she the only female to complete the mission, but she was also the only person under 5'11 to do so as well. Devin killed this challenge as well; dating back to Vendettas, Devin has done well in these heights/balance challenges. Emanuel falling shocked me as he is a graceful guy, yet, he is a rookie, not the tallest, and went last, so I’ll cut him some slack.
5 Prizes Make Things Better
The Emerald Team wins due to Kyle’s error, and they all get 3k Dollars each plus P3 Protein Supply Kits. Very simply, prizes make daily challenges better. An extra incentive goes a long way for fans and players, especially when you know only one gender is going into elimination.
Luckily for the Emerald Team, they didn’t even need to overthink their next game move because someone volunteered for elimination.
4 Smug Kaycee Clark
Throughout the episode, we see a very arrogant Kaycee. She pokes fun at the Ruby Team’s Boot Camp, calling it cute, then brags about her calm demeanor in the daily challenge, and at the end of the episode, pokes fun of Ed in the elimination arena. The funniest part about her comments from the episode is Nany’s confessional calling her the humblest person. Kaycee is deservedly arrogant. She won Big Brother, has come on to this show, has never lost an elimination, politically and socially always carries a ton of power, and statistically has the BEST Daily Challenge Win Ratio of any player all-time. Not just among females, of all players in this show’s history who have competed in 30+ daily challenges. Before anyone says Kaycee benefited from great teams/teammates, Leroy won less solo/paired daily challenge his entire Challenge career than he did with Kaycee in one season. In today’s daily challenge, she proved to accomplish something no other woman even came close to doing.
When you compare Kaycee’s stats and resume to Emily Schromm, a player people regard as a Top 3 female in this show’s history, Kaycee’s stats are better in most regards, with the only difference currently being that Kaycee doesn’t have a championship win.
3 Ed‘s Idiotic Move
Knowing that he is a realistic option to get voted into elimination, Ed pitches that he should go in as Logan is injured, and he wants to give Logan a chance to heal up before he goes to battle. Ed doubles down, and his statement means he won’t be calling Logan out as his opponent either. The move is so idiotic that Amanda even speaks up in the deliberation to try and reel Ed back in from throwing himself in, despite them having little to no relationship.
Trying to look at the positives, if Ed goes in, wins, and stays loyal to the Blue Team, fans and potentially his teammate look at him a bit more heroically. It also indebts Logan to him, where if Logan gets voted in next week, Ed is guaranteed to be safe. At this point in the game, it is crucial to have people who won’t call you down.
The problem is, Ed looks down the barrel of who to face in elimination and talks about it with Logan. Ed won’t pick CT because that’s a death wish. Nelson and Cory have two of the best elimination records the show has ever seen, and Kyle, as everyone keeps mentioning, is a Pole Wrestle God. In the end, Ed picks Kyle as his opponent, which people were aghast at, except even with everyone hyping up Kyle, I would still much rather face Kyle than Nelson or CT in a headbanger. So really, it was between Kyle, who has a 4–6 elimination record, or Cory, whose record is 8–3. Ed probably made the right choice, and as we saw, the right choice was still a dumb one because he could have just not gone into elimination or just faced an injured Logan. Logan told Ed that Nelson was probably the easiest person to beat, which has me thinking that had Logan been the House Vote, Nelson would’ve turned Logan into lunch meat in a Pole Wrestle.
2 Agent Ed vs. Dad Kyle
Every season, you forget how big and tall Kyle is until he stands next to someone before an elimination. It becomes quickly evident that Kyle understands the strategy to a pole wrestle when it comes to leverage and how to use your entire body to be as efficient as possible. Once Ed realizes he wouldn’t win the elimination Kyle’s way, he decides to use brute force. He begins to powerbomb Kyle repeatedly, lifting a close to 200 lb. man in the air as they fight over a stick. While many will be quick to point out that Kyle’s game plan was to wear down Ed, Ed did throw some good knock-out punches; unfortunately, much like Rocky Balboa & Homer Simpson, Kyle’s greatest skill is his ability to get repeatedly punched in the face.
The moment Kyle felt Ed try to take a breath, he went for his counterpunch, took control, and then won Round 1.
In Round 2, Ed got creative, and instead of immediately going to the ground, he tried to keep them both on their feet as long as possible so that the Pole Wrestle would become a game of hamstring, quad, and grip strength. The strategy did not work; however, I have to give Ed credit because he tried to play the game Kyle’s way and knew it was a losing battle, so at least he got creative. Ed did a great job of explaining how Kyle’s length played a significant factor, where no matter what position Ed tried, Kyle was able to reach and maintain at least a decent grip on the pole. Kyle takes the win 2–0, and his career elimination record is now 5–6.
Ed takes the loss and has a lot of egg on his face as he throws himself in for a guy he didn’t have much of a relationship with. Regardless, he had a great showing as an alternate and won people over.
1 Kyle’s Choice
Kyle looks at the teams, and while he acknowledges the Emerald Team’s dominance to this point, he sees CT & Ashley as people who have won finals and decides to latch himself onto them. He must think the final is coming around the corner soon because Emerald would have given Kyle the best shot to make it to a final. If Kyle took Emanuel’s spot, and then Emerald was to lose a daily challenge, Kyle would know that his #1 Ally Devin would not call him out, and then he’d have a lay-up in Josh to potentially face. Kyle also pissed off Nelson in the process; making an enemy is suboptimal at this point in the game.
Next week we are getting a Rugby-type challenge, and Emerald has to be favored because they have six players, while the other two have five. If it is a female elimination day, Big T, Emy, and Bettina have to be on high-altert. Will Nelson’s Daily Challenge Loss Streak extend to 46?
