A Few Thoughts on The Challenge
It occurred to me recently that I could be more productive at night. I don’t think I need to become a workaholic or anything like that, but I could do one or two quick little things that would allow me to take more time off the next day and complete projects quicker. Maybe fill in a point or two on an outline or take care of one of the millions of chores I do to distract myself from writing.
Instead of doing that, however, I got access to a friend’s Paramount+ account and I’ve been rewatching The Challenge, formerly known as Real World/Road Rules: TITLE OF SEASON! The show in which cast members from The Real World and The Road Rules (RIP), or increasingly just The Challenge in and of itself, compete in a series of challenges for money.
I watched The Challenge an awful lot in later middle school and early high school. It offered many vicarious thrills for a newly adolescent boy that I’d later learn to filter out or outright leave behind. Mainly the need to lust over attractive women, the romanticization of the effects of alcohol, and a desire for a certain kind of camaraderie I felt that I needed in my life.
Then at some point, I stopped watching the show and I didn’t think about it for many years. Now I see it for what it is: A show of drunken twentysomething douchebags competing for money. But hey, it’s still pretty decent reality TV!
I don’t have a grand point to make about the influence of The Challenge here. It’s just been interesting to revisit a show that was important to me for a brief window of my life, and I have some thoughts!
Also, I was too lazy to get screenshots, so instead, I’m just going to throw in songs I’ve been into lately.
Seasons I’ve (Re)Watched So Far, Based On What’s Available on Netflix and Paramount+ (In Chronological Order, Spelled as They’re Listed on Wikipedia)
The Inferno II
The Gauntlet 2
Fresh Meat
The Duel
The Gauntlet III
The Island
Why the Show Works
I’ve never found myself particularly attached to Real Housewives. Granted, I’ve never sat down and watched a whole season, nor have I really cared to. But I’ve seen a few episodes with friends, and it never really grabbed my attention.
There is, of course, the content. I don’t think I’m above reality TV, but I do think I’m above Real Housewives. However, even if that weren’t the case, I just don’t think I like the format or the structure.
Maybe this is an uninformed comment, but it’s always seemed shapeless. The episodes I’ve seen tend to putter about, jumping from character to character and stretching each plotline out as long as possible. Something happens, and then we cut away and wait for something else to happen. Maybe it comes, but most of the time, we have to wait until the next episode. (I started talking about Real Housewives, but really, I’m talking about all reality with this format.) The reality drama/bullshit is good, but that’s about it.
The brilliance of The Challenge is that it delivers on the reality drama/bullshit, but it also embraces structure.
Sure, it adds a little bit of predictability. But no matter what, something always happens. If there isn’t a massive argument or a hook-up or something in between, there’s always an elimination and there’s always a competition.
The Challenge is far from perfect. Far far far from perfect, for reasons we’ll be getting to shortly. (Hint: All reality TV famously ages well.) But it can be all things to just about all reality fans.
The Show Lives or Dies By Its Format and Teams
Let’s talk about format some more!
It should go without saying that the title of this section is true of any competition-based reality program. However, most reality competitions have simple and easy-to-follow rules that generally don’t change between seasons. The judges thought Contestant A sang better than Contestant B, so Contestant B gets eliminated while Contestant A advances. Swap out “sang” with “baked a cake” or “danced” and you have most reality competitions. The contestants and judges may change, but the general format stays the same.
The Challenge takes a different approach.
First of all, it’s important to state that there are constants. Generally speaking, you can expect the following from any given season of The Challenge:
The contestants will, more often than not, be divided into teams of various sizes and quantities. (There are occasional free-for-all seasons.)
These teams will compete in a series of physical and mental challenges. (Mostly physical.) The winning team will benefit in some way and win a prize courtesy of whatever brand or product is sponsoring the show that season. Said prize will assuredly fuck them come tax season. (I once listened to a podcast in which former Giant Bomb member/current host and producer of various podcasts Dan Ryckert explained that he and his wife winning a contest thrown by Taco Bell to be the first couple married in their new Vegas wedding chapel, that included other expensive amenities as well, ultimately cost them $20,000 the following April. Do not do contests.)
Two contestants will then compete in a smaller scale elimination challenge in an arena with a different name every season, and the loser will be eliminated from the show.
Between the competitions is where all the reality show stuff happens. Or if there’s no drama, the producers will contrive a scene where some cast members talk about strategy. Most of said strategizing doesn’t hold up under scrutiny or common sense, but they’re entertaining to listen to in their own way.
In the finale, the winning team or player will win a large cash prize, most of which will likely be given to the IRS.
That said, The Challenge switches the particulars of the rules every season, and the variables that change usually center around the composition of the teams, the benefits of winning the main challenge, and why the two people competing in the elimination challenges get sent there in the first place.
In The Inferno and its subsequent sequel seasons, for example, the winning team gets to bank money in a team bank account and each team picks a player from the opposite team to head into “the inferno” (the name of that season’s elimination challenge). However, in The Gauntlet and its subsequent sequels, the two people in the elimination challenge will be from the same team. (How each team decides who goes in depends on the season. I have seen two versions of “The Gauntlet,” both of which had substantially different rules. It’s almost like these terms don’t mean anything.)
It’s an effective approach because it keeps the show from getting stale and it keeps the players, who frequently return for multiple seasons, on their toes, forcing them to change strategies and accept different dynamics. And rest assured that if any of the above sounds complicated, in execution, it’s anything but. Even if the rules get needlessly complex, which rarely happens, there are plenty of talking heads to explain and re-explain anything you’re seeing.
The downside of this approach, however, is that the format might suck.
Season twelve of The Challenge is called Fresh Meat. The format is that there are twelve pairs of two teams. After the main competition, the winning team chooses one team to go into the elimination challenge (entitled “exile” that year), and everyone else votes in a second team to compete against them. They can vote for any team except the winning team, which of course led to an entire season of the same team (Wes and Casey, more on them later) being voted in over and over and over again to the point that it got exceptionally tedious and vaguely toxic.
Then there’s The Island. It’s, more or less, just Survivor but with The Challenge people. Three people get voted in or volunteer themselves to compete in a challenge, the winner gets a key to compete in the final competition, the two losers make a case for why they should stay, and everyone else votes one of the two out. New rules get introduced later and blah blah blah it guarantees that nothing happens for the first 2/3s of each episode and it sucks.
There is also, of course, the cast.
We’ll be getting into the specifics of that in a second. But so long as we’re on the topic of structure, a small but important aspect of the show is a proper balance of the teams. Fair competitions are more engaging, and as The Gauntlet 3 proves, it’s not fun to watch a team get clobbered over and over again. Especially when the other team is filled with toxic assholes. Speaking of which…
Unsurprisingly, Much About the Show Has Not Aged Gracefully
Did you know that if you get a bunch of mostly white twentysomethings from the Bush administration, put them up in a luxurious living situation free from any responsibility, and give them a seemingly endless supply of alcohol, they might make TV that doesn’t age well?
I know. You’re shocked.
Look. It’s reality TV from the frat douche era of American television. You don’t need me to tell you that a lot of the older seasons of The Challenge are hard to watch. Or if you’ve never seen the show before, take a few guesses at what you think the show might have as far as problematic early 2000s bullshit, and you’ll probably be correct. There were worse shows. But when quantifying this crap, it hardly matters.
I saw all this coming. What I did not see, however, is the trajectory. I was expecting the earlier seasons I watched to be the most toxic, and that once we sputtered into the Obama era, things would at least get a little better. Instead, every subsequent season gets worse. (No metaphors intended.)
Of course, there’s an occasional comment here and there from the earlier seasons available for streaming. An insensitive remake here and some casual homophobia there. And I should note that I cannot vouch for the earlier seasons.
But most of these incidents are interpersonal and context specific. An effort was made to isolate individual behavior from the general outlook of the show. For example, there was an incident where Robin said something homophobic to Aneesa, and the show correctly vilified her for doing so and she was eliminated (by Aneesa, no less) that very episode. Homophobia was confronted and handled.
Or maybe I’m talking out of my ass because in the previous season, Fresh Meat, we had to watch Wes routinely bully and humiliate his teammate Casey, frequently calling her a bitch and insulting her intelligence and physical ability. (It’s one thing to throw Wes and Casey into elimination challenge over and over again. But the more screentime they got, the more we had to watch Wes be a prick.) It got so bad that his own (now ex) girlfriend and fellow contestant Johanna had to confront him.
However, something about the shittiness in the later seasons feels more consistent and built into the fabric of the show. The Gauntlet III revolves around the men on the Veterans team intentionally throwing matches in an ill-fated and ill-thought-out scheme to get rid of all the women on their team. (The reason being that women would supposedly slow everyone down in the final challenge. They end up losing because of one guy.) On The Island, Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio has called multiple women on the island “crazy bitches” and I’m not even through the halfway point. (UPDATE: Last night, I finished the season. He apologized for his comments to one woman, but not the others, and one gets the sense that he wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the money.)
To borrow a term from professional wrestling, The Challenge is addicted to its heels. To the most obnoxious over-the-top assholes the show has to offer. This is, of course, nothing new for reality television and was very much the prevailing direction of its time. (It still is, as a matter of fact.) However, with each subsequent season, the show seems less and less interested in its good guys (or at least interesting good guys), and more interested in its douchebags. Not only that, but they keep having the same ones come back over and over again. Mainly, Johnny Bananas, Evan Starkman, Kenny Santucci, Wes Bergmann, CT Tamburello, and a few others. Before, they’d just get one or two. Now, at least on The Island, it’s most of the cast.
I’m aware of the incident involving Starkman and Santucci. I’m aware of the failures of many at MTV and Bunim/Murray Productions to stop it from happening. I wish I could say I was surprised.
I Very Much Enjoy Host T.J. Lavin’s Approach to Product Placement
BMX rider T.J. Lavin has been the host of The Challenge since The Gauntlet 2, which began airing in December of 2005. When it comes to the embarrassing product placement readings hosts of reality TV competitions are forced to read, his approach might be my favorite of all time.
Product placement in The Challenge usually comes in one of two forms. The first is the brand of the phone being used to receive notice of the next challenge. Usually, this comes in the form of a hilariously forced scene where everyone gathers around the phone as one of the cast members pretends to receive a text from T.J. informing everyone of the time of the next challenge, as well as a hint at what said challenge will entail. (They’ll mostly eschew this one in later seasons. Or at least in the season I’m on.)
The second kind is the prize the winner(s) of the main competition will receive, which comes courtesy of one of the show’s sponsors. These gifts have ranged from BMW motorcycles to Zune MP3 players.
(There’s also a third kind. In, at least, The Gauntlet III and The Island, the final challenge is sponsored by the US army, which is… great.)
When it comes to product placement, most hosts tend to overdo it on the enthusiasm. They treat the reciting of horribly written ad copy as if it’s worth enthusiasm or effort.
Lavin, on the other hand, treats it like a boring day job.
There isn’t a lot of enthusiasm in the way Lavin dictates the copy, but there isn’t a particular lack of it either. It’s more like a resigned contentedness. Reality show hosts read ad copy. This is the way it is, and he’s powerless to do anything about it. So he’ll say it, then he’ll move on.
I like it because it’s the most non-intrusive way of doing it and gives the audience permission to not care. There’s a shared acknowledgment that we have to do this, but we’ll get it done quickly and painlessly and there will be an attempt to not waste your time.
All of this may sound like conjecture and the scrambled thoughts of quarantine brain. However, one time, while reading the copy for a kiteboard or something like that, he said something to the effect “Come on guys, it’s a good prize!” when the contestants failed to show any enthusiasm for a reward that is essentially worthless if you live in a landlocked state.
In other words, he knows.
I Can’t Tell If I Want Actual Good Theme Songs Or The Cringiest Theme Songs Possible
This is “Anthem” by Superchick.
Out of context, maybe this song does it for you, and maybe it doesn’t. For me personally, it doesn’t, as despite its feminist bent, it has the quality of a song that was developed and bred in a lab in order to be chosen as a theme song.
But in the context of it being the theme song to Gauntlet 2, where it has, of course, been heavily edited and stripped of any possible political subtext, the cringe levels are strong.
This is “Devour” by Shinedown.
Out of context, maybe this song does it for you, and maybe it doesn’t. For me personally, it doesn’t, as toothless songs about generic and unspecified oppressive governments are a personal pet peeve of mine as they allow the artist to claim meaning without claiming meaning.
But in the context of it being the theme song to The Island, where it has, of course, been heavily edited and stripped of any possible political subtext, the cringe levels are strong.
I hate how the show uses these songs as their themes, and I also think they should do this every season and I never want them to stop.
Help.
Also, as a balm, here’s a good song.
Some Quick Closing Thoughts
From an interface/usability standpoint, Paramount+ is garbage. From a content standpoint, Paramount+, at this moment in time is… eh.
The show will often try to convince you that there are one or two people who are the “funny” ones. Rarely are they so.
In The Gauntlet III, the Veteran who costs the team their victory is Eric Banks, or “The Big Easy.” Eric’s a big guy, and after pushing himself to the limit, his body shut down and he passed out. Of all the members of the Veterans team, Brad Fiorenza was the only one who cared more about Easy’s health than the money. So if I have a favorite cast member, it’s Brad. Of course, he could do something shitty later or he did something I don’t know about. But for now, Brad.
