The Challenge World Championship Episode 6 Recap: 10 Biggest Takeaways
--
The 6th episode of The Challenge World Championship 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 6th episode.
10 Darrell & Kiki make their move
I love big moves and was disappointed when Darrell didn’t pit Jordan against Wes, especially after we saw Wes pushing the house to get Jordan against Darrell on All-Stars 3.
However, I don’t hate the move by Darrell & Kiki because their goal is to play the middle, and this got the wheels in the house turning where I don’t think they have the biggest target. Plus, by throwing in Kaycee & Ben, if Wes & Zara came back, they wouldn’t be angry because they didn’t get put up against one of the stronger teams or one of the UK teams.
Part of me loves this move because it’s the first time Kaycee Clark has ever gotten voted into elimination in a season without Skulls. For once, she got caught off guard. Vacation is over, Kaycee; time to clock in for work.
9 Elimination Strategies
The elimination was a battle of muscular endurance, raw strength, and math skills. The way they portrayed the elimination, it seemed as though the man or woman could take on either role.
Ben opted out of the lifting portion because he has a bad shoulder, which made sense to me. What shocked me was Wes choosing not to lift. I understand Wes is good at math, and Zara has anxiety over math. Except, even if Zara isn’t great at math, Wes can lift much more than her for a longer amount of time. He has Instagram posts every other week where he’s doing pullups, lifts, and dips with weights attached to him.
8 My Heart Broke For Zara
Let me open by saying Kaycee is a beast. She is strong as hell and didn’t look like she was struggling at all in this elimination.
Zara should not have been the lifter. Don’t get me wrong, Zara is fit, scrappy, and is a massive threat in a Final. In this elimination, she does not have the raw size/build to lift massive amounts of weight. My heart broke watching her realize she couldn’t hold on for much longer. She began to cry and say Wes’s because she felt awful letting him down. To me, it is 100% Wes’s fault they are out of the game, he had them not drink the juice, and then he should have been the lifter in this elimination. Two massive strategic misfires by Wes ended their game, and everyone else has to be happy that one of the biggest final threats is out the door.
7 Ben & Kaycee come back
When Ben & Kaycee return from their elimination win, they become deadset on figuring out why Darrell & Kiki voted them in. Darrell & Kiki don’t give them much. Hilariously, while Ben & Kaycee are looking for answers, Sarah, Emily, Grant, and Danny are gearing up to take another shot at them. It’s crazy to see as Sarah and Ben were at one point each other’s #1 allies.
Then you have the other side house trying to counteract that alliance. Tori took a jab at Emily & Sarah’s friendship/alliance, saying they’ve only known each other for 8 days, which I find hysterical considering Tori once walked into a Challenge house with a boyfriend who was on the season with her and then was cuddled up with a new friend by the end of the season.
6 Blobbing
I recently had to rewatch the classic 90s film Heavyweights for my day job; one of the main attractions at the camp was the giant water apparatus known as the Blob. Less than 24 hours later, the daily challenge is them using the same device for the daily challenge. I wish I got to compete in this daily challenge; it looked like a lot of fun, other than the long-distance swim.
There were some highlights and lowlights.
Grant completely missing the X, setting him and Jonna completely back was brutal. Justine somehow killed it despite not knowing how to swim. Emily put on an absolute exhibition in the water. Jordan & Kaz once again proved to be massive threats. And then we had…
5 Winners and Losers
KellyAnne & Tristan win the daily challenge — a massive come-up from their incredibly rocky start to the season. Along with Nelson and Nia, many fans questioned the casting of KellyAnne for this season, and KellyAnne’s proven them wrong. As a physical competitor, Kellyanne is someone who is as good as former champions and deserves to be here; additionally, she served drama and chaos early on that brought a lot to the show.
Sidenote: This was Tristan’s first-ever daily challenge win! He won a Final before he ever won a daily!
Jonna & Grant came in last place; as we saw, it was the least of their troubles.
4 Unstoppable Mouth and The Immovable Annoyance
Watching Bananas and Sarah argue felt like a superhero movie when suddenly, two villains begin fighting against one another. Once again, I have to give credit to Sarah. Bananas does talk down to rookie competitors, often using vague and cliché terms when talking about the game, mostly to trick people into playing the game he wants to happen. Sarah’s not falling for his smokescreens — so when he talks in Bananas way, she shuts him down. When Bananas said if he went on Survivor, he’d be leaning on them to teach him the ropes, I couldn’t help laughing because there’s no way he would do that, and even if he did, that’s exactly how you give someone else a win (cough, Boston Rob).
I wouldn’t mind seeing these two fight more.
3 Australian Civil War
At the nominations, Amber & Troy were the swing vote this week, and they chose to vote against Sarah & Danny’s side, tossing in fellow Aussie team Yes & Emily. They decided that if an Australian team was going in, better them than us. As we saw with Kiki last week, Emily & Grant did a poor job of creating trust with their fellow Australians.
Benja & Jodi ended up being the other team nominated because they are the team everyone has been voting in without sweating since the first elimination as pair.
2 Danny vs. Theo
One of my favorite parts of the nomination ceremony was watching Danny and Theo get into it. Typically, Theo is an instigator who gets under people’s skin with ease. Part of what makes Theo so good at picking at people is the assurance he has, knowing that at the end of the day, he’s a 6’6 super-freak former pro sprinter who can take most people on. Theo meets his match when getting into it with Danny because Danny is supremely confident as well as a former Dallas Cowboy with a loving family, marriage, and a great life. Danny knows who he is and isn’t going to get disrespected by Theo. Theo is going to chirp back because that’s who he is. The funniest part about their squabble is Danny & Sarah are closely aligned.
Watching two elite athletes from entirely different realms bicker with one another is one of the beautiful parts of The Challenge.
1 An Arrow in the Knee
When we get to the elimination, we find out Grant’s knee injury is a medical DQ. Not only that, they send Jonna home too. It’s bullshit. Just have a female elimination between Jonna and either Jodi/Emily. If Jonna wins, she takes Benja or Yes as a partner; if she loses, she’s out. Removing Jonna from the game felt like a shitty move by production, especially to someone who is one of the female faces of the franchise. We didn’t get any resolution to the Jonna/KellyAnne beef, where this would’ve been KellyAnne’s moment to exact revenge. Jonna losing in elimination would have been a big moment. Instead, she goes home and we have to move on.
