The Challenge USA Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: 10 Biggest Takeaways
The 5th episode of The Challenge USA 2 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 fifth episode.
10 Chris has a healthy chip on his shoulder
Getting thrown into elimination might have been the best thing for Chris Underwood. Last week, we began to see a bit of personality from Chris; coming back from elimination this week, he had a new energy and immediately began to chirp Monte & Tyler. My favorite part of Chris’s rant was how hesitant and stumbling he was into calling Tyler & Monte “little bitches,” a true Rookie to Reality TV confrontation, a bad one, but he still did it regardless!
Chris then went into a confessional and openly discussed his famously controversial Survivor win. If you weren’t aware, Chris’s season had a redemption twist called the Edge of Extinction, in which players lived on a separate barren island after getting voted out where, later in the game, they could win their way back into the main game via a challenge. Chris won the challenge to get back in and made all the perfect moves from there to get to the Final Tribal Council, took a massive risk to take out his biggest threat in the game, and then won the jury’s votes. In total, Chris spent only 13 full days playing the traditional game of Survivor — a stat many call out as to why he is the most “underserving” winner.
Now, I am someone who hates the concept of Edge of Extinction, and I hate the idea of voting for a winner who didn’t play the full game. Still, the criticism of Chris as an individual has always been ridiculous to me as he simply took advantage of a twist and played the game perfectly as to what got put in front of him. It was production’s fault, not Chris’s, and honestly, probably less than 2% of Survivor players could have played as well as he did after coming back.
After dealing with years of articles and YouTube videos taking strays at his Survivor win, Chris is on The Challenge now, not only to prove himself as a competitor but also in part to vindicate his status as a Sole Survivor.
9 Aunt Cassidy
Personal note: I was raised by my Uncle because my Mom had issues, and my biological Dad was never in the picture. Watching Cassidy talk about the love and care she has for her niece and nephew, especially following the passing of her sister, 1000% put me in Cassidy’s corner for the rest of the season. It was an authentic moment that I and many people out there can empathize with on a serious level. After watching, I swiped through Cassidy’s Instagram and almost began to tear up once I found out she and I were the same age. Going through her profile, I could see she was going to the same type of High School and College parties I was; she was going through the same fads and styles of clothes.
As much as I love Messy Reality TV, there is something unique about when you can see yourself/connect to a Challenger. I didn’t expect to see myself in Cassidy Clark, but here I am.
8 Class Clown Wes
Wes tried to lower his target level by being the “goofy” party guy in the house, repeatedly jumping naked into the pool. Instead of a bunch of people gathering, it looked like Bananas was the only person enjoying the joke. The editing team threw up a shot of Monte and Michaela smiling, but there was no indication they were even watching Wes, and it felt like it got edited in during post-production.
Watching Wes throw himself into the pool for muted reactions felt like when someone gets ratioed online for a bad tweet, and then they start spamming memes to distract people from their pain/embarassment.
7 Wes and his Fresh Meat
First off, I loved that this daily challenge had weighted boxes proportionate to all the players’ weights — that should be standard in most daily challenges. Watching who could lift their boxes over their head while others had to drag theirs was very telling. Seeing Michaela put her box over her head and basically speed walk was highly impressive; and not only that, she went back and helped White Alyssa with hers!
The daily challenge had an interesting design that Wes immediately took advantage of in true veteran fashion. In my previous recap, I made fun of Wes for claiming he invented the concept of throwing/sabotaging in daily challenges. This week, I want to give him credit because he brought back the strategy he used on Fresh Meat 1 to win 5 Eliminations! And that is, if a puzzle takes too much time, don’t even attempt it — keep moving because all you have to do is cross the finish line.
Michaela convinced Wes that they should try to solve a puzzle to get rid of Monte’s box first, as he had the heaviest box. It was a fantastic tweak that allowed Wes’s strategy to work to perfection as the Green Team turned their number deficit into a strength and won the daily challenge. By the time the Red and Blue Team tried to replicate Green’s strategy, they were too behind. It was a big win for Wes and his brain; he proved to be a significant asset to his team, and it was likely his ass in elimination if they had lost.
6 Big Brother vs. Survivor
When Desi switched spots with White Alyssa, I thought it was a move that made the Green Team worse to where I wouldn’t expect them to win any dailies, and it would have no giant consequences in terms of the political landscape of the game. In reality, I’m an idiot because not only did the Green Team win the first daily after the move, but I never considered how White Alyssa changed the numbers dynamic of the Green Team. Also, I have been referring to Alyssa Snider as White Alyssa all season because when I was rushedly writing my first recap of this season, I realized I didn’t know what her last name was. So, rather than looking it up, I just called her White Alyssa. I never changed it because, in all honesty, I didn’t think
White Alyssa would ever play an important part in the season. Congratulations to Alyssa S. because that changed today.
With Alyssa S. on the Green Team, their team now holds a Big Brother majority (3/5). Due to this, Wes was able to stir the pot and broker a deal with Tyler & Monte where The Challenge people will have a ceasefire towards the Big Brother people if they go after Survivor. It’s been CBS vs. OG Challengers all season, and now it’s evolving into Survivor vs. Big Brother vs. The Challengers.
5 Oh How The Turn Tables
A couple of weeks after Wes had to submit to Michaela as the Green Team threw in Bananas & Tori, he got to hit the Uno Reverse card on her as now Monte & Tyler were on his side as they voted for Cassidy & Chris.
Michaela did her best to remain calm. While she repeated multiple times that she could not let it be a Double Survivor vote, Michaela didn’t suggest any other names because she still has the Secret Garden to protect (which Cassidy is not a part of).
4 Bachelor Night
Club nights on The Challenge USA are nowhere near as fun as on the MTV/All-Stars seasons. There aren’t messy fights, the music isn’t as good, and no drinks get thrown. However, we did get a cute montage of the women/men having a Bachelor night where all the men made their pitch for why they’d be the best to date. Two interesting things came from the Bachelor night, the first being that Fessy apparently has 6-figures in his bank account and an 800 credit score.
And the other is that the person who won the women over was the married man, Wes, who said he didn’t deserve any of the women there! They all ate that right up except Cassidy, who was still angry that Wes manipulated the votes to get her into elimination. I thought it was hysterical that Cassidy is such an emotional player that she couldn’t even let Wes win the silly game because she now hates him so much! That’s Reality TV right there.
We also saw some showmance bonds form from this night as Cassidy got in the hot tub with Josh, and Tyler/Alyssa S. got closer.
3 Hat Trick
Following their night at the club, Bananas regaled a story to Tori & Josh of how Tiffany told him it’s now clearly Big Brother vs. Survivor after the most recent vote. Seeing this as an opportunity for the OG Challengers to hide in plain sight, they devise a Secret Hat strategy. The strategy was they (Bananas, Tori, Josh, Fessy, Cory) would put a bunch of names in a hat, and each would place one vote on that person. They did so to get fewer fingers pointed back at them and to fuel more of the Big Brother vs. Survivor dissent.
While the strategy could have easily backfired, I must credit the OGs for their creativity. It’s funny that in those first few weeks, the CBS players used an MTV vet style of gameplay as they used their overwhelming numbers to treat the MTV OG’s like Rookies. Now, we are seeing the MTV folk play a Big Brother/Survivor style of gameplay where they are pitting alliances against one another to pull off blindsides and throwing hinky votes to create chaos.
The CBS players got a little too cute in how they strategized and went about the game politically. If they had kept their foot on the necks of the MTV vets regardless of who was going into elimination, they would’ve had a lot of room to coast. Now, it feels like it’s anyone’s game.
2 A 1-in-14 Chance
We saw the Hopper go completely rogue for the first time this season as Alyssa Lopez’s ball got plucked out despite being 1 of only 14.
The votes got scattered across seven people receiving votes — Dusty and Tiffany received the most with 4 each. People who wanted Cassidy to stay put in Tiffany as the lay-up, whereas those who wanted Chris to come back voted for Dusty as the easiest guy to beat. Chanelle was the only other person to get more than one vote. From there, Desi, Alyssa L, Sebastian, and Faysal all got one vote.
Tori put the one vote on Alyssa, and her shocked face was genuine for once because she didn’t think Alyssa would actually go in. Though, after Alyssa’s comments to her the previous week, Tori was probably grinning big on the inside.
1 Cassidy vs. Alyssa
I didn’t have many thoughts about the elimination other than it looked difficult, and I laughed seeing the sand/dirt hit the players in the face every time they tried to roll. There is a strategic element of how you should move your body in the metal boxes to create momentum, place yourself, etc. But honestly, these were two rookie competitors trying their best and hoping to get lucky that their window opening would be in the right spot to grab the flags.
Alyssa had the lead, then Cassidy took a big lead, Alyssa tied it up, and ultimately Cassidy got the win.
Cassidy winning is good as it advances the storyline rivalry brewing with Wes, and she has a showmance now with Josh. Alyssa’s loss hurts the season as she felt like a big personality politically in the game, and she did make it far into USA 1 as well. Although, it is exciting because just last week, it felt like Alyssa was in total control of the game, and now, due to one vote and a semi-random elimination, she’s out. It is fun to think that anyone can get taken out that way.
