The Challenge: Vets & New Threats Episode 11 Review — The King of Kamikaze

What. An. Episode. Right off the back of last week which I said was the worst of the season, we get was is in my opinion the best in recent memory. Obviously recency bias is playing a large role in me saying this but this was genuinely one of the best episodes of the Challenge I can remember, and I had so much fun watching it. Of course, there is so much to get into.

For this review, I’ll simply go through each section of the episode and comment on everything that stood out to me; the highlights, lowlights, comedic moments, stupid moments, and fantastic quotes.

Walk the Plank!

The Challenge for this episode is a pretty cool and unique one, and I like the fact that it’s one big race and everyone competes at once. One member of a pair at a time will run over to a large stash of “heavy items”, and bring them back to their plank. Each item has a resistance band, and they’ll use that band to tighten the plank and make it easier to walk across. The first team to capture a flag at the end of their plank wins.

Before the Challenge, Yeremi inspires a lot of confidence in he and Aviv’s winning potential, saying, “This is a perfect Challenge for us” due to their strength and endurance. He didn’t mention good balance as one of their attributes, but I doubt that it’s so bad that it’ll seriously hurt them…

In their pre-Challenge interview, Jonna is very optimistic and excited, and Gabe is not. I’ve realized that Gabe is like Dunbar 2.0. Dunbar had so many seasons putting up such high numbers in terms of grumpiness, and Gabe is honestly challenging his spot as #1 Most Grumpy Person in Challenge history. He still needs a few more seasons before he can truly be compared to Dunbar, as Dunbar’s longevity of grumpiness is too impressive in itself to be passed in a single season. When you combine Gabe’s overconfidence in himself, and dislike of working with others, the Dunbar comparisons really start to shine.

The first person we see attempt to walk across the plank and fall in the water is Nany. And I say “in the water” very lightly, because it looked to be like maybe a foot deep at most. She just falls straight on her back and I expected to her to, you know, go underneath the water, but no. She just falls basically onto hard ground with a slight cushion. We couldn’t have found a deeper part of this body of water??

Dee attempts to walk across the plank after her and Derrick get only like three barrels, but her balance is clearly fantastic, and she succeeds in retrieving the flag. Dee made it look so easy, and the pair used so little resistance bands, that I thought this Challenge would be over super quick, and not as hard as I originally thought. Meanwhile, this was just an exceptional performance. This win gives them safety from Elimination this week.

We then get the montage of some teams finishing, and some teams failing. My overall thoughts during this period was just questioning how they were cleaning the plank and themselves between attempts, because both were always completely dry. I imagine that must’ve taken a bit of time but obviously is necessary because if the plank or your body and especially shoes are even a little wet, that would make this almost impossible.

When Jonna falls off the plank, Gabe attributes it to a lack of leg muscle. Several things wrong here, first of all, yes leg muscle is important, but not nearly as important as balance is. And second, as soon as she falls and is soaking wet, he tells her to then go and get more resistance bands, similar to Olivia making Ben get all of his missed field goal kicks earlier this season. But if you want her to still have enough strength left in her leg muscles, don’t make her do the running and carrying! It was hilarious to then immediately watch Gabe attempt the plank in the next scene and just get launched off of it head first into the one foot deep water. I thought he was going straight to the ambulance with a concussion after that.

All of a sudden the last two teams are Gabe and Jonna, and Aviv and Yeremi, who for some reason are apparently really bad at this. For as small as Aviv is I expected her balance to be pretty good, but I guess not. In a final showdown to avoid Elimination, while Gabe’s plank was dipping so far that it was basically in the water, Yeremi was at the end of his plank and that thing was practically perfectly horizontal. They had so many resistance bands on it and yet just couldn’t balance for the life of them. Gabe is able to go all the way across the plank, get the flag, and extremely impressively walk back up the steepness of the plank to complete the Challenge.

In an outcome no one predicted, especially Yeremi, he and Aviv lose the Challenge and will be going directly into Elimination.

Theo’s Plan A: Get the Swing Votes

Immediately after the Challenge ends, Theo sees the writing on the wall that it’ll likely be him, or at the least someone from his alliance who is voted into Elimination, and so starts devising a plan to get the numbers on his side. Ashley and Leo, Nany and Justin, Michaela and Cedric, and Leroy and America are a voting block of four. Then Theo and Adrienne, Olivia and Will, and Aneesa and Jake are another of three. If Turbo and Sydney and Jonna and Gabe join sides with the Closet Alliance, that gives them the majority, so Theo takes action to swing them. Due to the chaos that instantly ensues, he never even makes it to talking with Turbo and Sydney as Jonna and Gabe foil the plan within minutes, but a quick pause on this.

Costume Party

Everyone dresses up in costumes with their partner, probably most notably Ashley and Leo who are an angel and the devil, and are very close throughout these scenes. During a game in which partners are asked questions about each other, when Leo is asked what he would do if he woke up in Ashley’s body, he responds, “I’m getting FUCKED!!!”

Jonna is asked what year she thinks Gabe graduated high school, and while she works it out based on his (correct) year of birth, leading to her (correct) answer, Gabe is so pissed off and it’s hilarious. At some points the faces he’s making looked like he was trying to figure out the answer as well, and for most of the time he just looked angry. When Jonna does say the right year, he’s like genuinely upset that she was correct, it was so, so funny. Poor Jonna.

Back to Theo’s Plan A

Theo has a conversation with Jonna in which he tells her that his alliance wants to vote for Ashley and Leo, which is a weird choice considering how close Leo is to the other rookie men. Jonna tells Gabe this information. Gabe then tells Jake about this plan, who apparently had no idea and is not on board with it at all. When Jake confronts Theo about it, Theo denies it and says Jonna was lying, which is what Jake tells Gabe. At the end of the day Jake is Gabe’s friend and he has reason to believe him, and that mixed with his preconceived dislike of Jonna means he no longer trusts her at all or wants anything to do with her. This is where the episode reallyyy gets juicy.

Theo’s Plan B: Inception

Instead of trying to get Jonna and Gabe on the same page and voting with him, Theo decides his only path to safety is for Gabe to Stake a Claim, lose, and then automatically be sent into Elimination. Theo and Adrienne grill Jonna over why she dared talk to her partner about who they’re voting into Elimination, which obviously makes no sense, and she correctly identifies that they’re trying to manipulate Gabe. Unfortunately she doesn’t stand up for herself or properly communicate this to Gabe and that bridge is burnt and destroyed.

What works so well about Theo’s plan is that he accidentally falls into having major support from Jake. While Theo is knowingly manipulating Gabe, Jake has no clue what’s even going on and yet is just as passionate. Theonardo DiCaprio says how he is planting the idea of Staking a Claim in Gabe’s head, but how it’s important to not be too obvious, as Gabe needs to think it’s his idea. Immediately cut to Olivia saying, “Gabe, I think you need to Stake a Claim.” That really had me laughing to be honest, clearly Olivia doesn’t do subtlety. Jake in this scene is also so funny because he’s just repeating everything Olivia is saying.

Olivia: Because at this point, everyone’s pushing me to say your guys’ name now because everyone’s saying she’s a liar.

Jake: She’s a liar!

Olivia: And that she’s playing both sides.

Jake: She’s playing both sides!

Absolute top-notch comedy with Jake continuing the pirate theme of this episode by becoming a parrot.

Staking a Claim…On Who???

If someone is in a position in which they’re going to be voted into Elimination, and they don’t like their partner, then it totally makes sense to Stake a Claim. This is the logic that Gabe was working with, and so based on what he knew and thought to be true, it is a reasonable decision. Unfortunately, his information was not accurate, and at the end of the day that is his fault.

To make everything even better, Gabe decides that the partner he wants to switch to is…Nany?! WHATTTT??? You can’t be serious right now. I was in disbelief! I get that Nany is in a position of power politically but she is probably one of the worst options you could pick if you actually want to win. You can take Michaela, you can take Olivia, even Ashley. All these women are much better than Nany and you could be just as politically connected as you would be with Nany. A truly baffling decision that makes this entire thing so much funnier. Like you really did all of this, got your mind incepted, created enemies, just to have a chance to be partners with Nany?? The best part of this all was how as soon as Gabe said he would be challenging Justin to partner with Nany, she immediately just starts repeating, “You motherfucker, you motherfucker.” Nany clearly wants nothing to do with Gabe, so that partnership would be even more toxic than his with Jonna. Absolutely incredible stuff here.

The Fight to Win Nany

Because Gabe has chosen to try to take Nany as his partner, he must now do a one on one competition against Justin. This was very Fresh Meat which I really liked. Gabe and Justin are led away by TJ and they must run up part of the mountain from the Episode 0 Challenge, do a puzzle, and run back down. The first person to complete this wins Nany. For whatever reason, they aren’t allowed to change their outfits into anything athletic, and they don’t even take off their sweatshirts which seems crazy for when you’re having to run. If Gabe used some strategy, knowing he was going to Stake a Claim and have to do a Challenge, he should have dressed athletically to Nomination, and then in this scenario would’ve had a bit of an advantage on his opponent. Their clothing worn on this run gave such obvious flashbacks to Nia completing the original Challenge in her jeans, which ultimately led to her injury, and the downfall of Gabe’s social relationships in the house, which led him to this exact point today. It was such a beautiful full circle moment that it brought a tear to my eye.

Back at the house as the rest of the cast awaited the results, Ashley and Michaela go back and forth with Theo arguing about something, to be honest I’m not exactly sure what about, but they were all mad. Theo exclaims that, “Everyone’s a fucking pussy!”, to which, of course, Turbo, who hasn’t spoken a single word, decides is directed at him specifically. Turbo is upset because he doesn’t want to be called a pussy, and he also thinks he is somehow defending Nany’s honor? Turbo just starts a feud with Theo for no reason as he has done with many of the male vets this season, and I’m sure Theo will be receiving a new nickname in an upcoming episode sooner rather than later. Based off CT’s “CT PP”, and Derek’s “FF”, I’ll assume Theo’s will have letters in it too.

Just like in the Fresh Meat seasons, we don’t see who actually wins the competition, and find out at the same time as the rest of the house when Justin walks in celebrating. We then get a flashback to see Justin completing the puzzle and finishing the run before Gabe has put one single puzzle piece in its correct spot. So Justin keeps Nany as his partner, and Gabe and Jonna are automatically sent into Elimination to go against Yeremi and Aviv. Not to toot my own horn too much, but last week at the end of my review I did say:

Winner of the Episode: Gabe, who now gets the opportunity to switch his partner and finally perform well

Loser of the Episode: Gabe, who now will prove when he tries switching partners that his poor performances are actually his own fault

Gabe walks back to the group the most depressed I’ve ever seen someone look. He realizes how big of a mistake he’s made, and now he’s embarrassed and going into Elimination against Yeremi. It was honestly kind of sad watching the entire house just clown him to his face.

Gabe getting manipulated into Staking a Claim and going into Elimination falls somewhere in between the famous scene from Battle of the Exes 2 where Wes gives Leroy “the gun”, and somehow gets him to do his bidding and pull the trigger, and Erik giving up his immunity idol on Survivor: Micronesia. This was very reminiscent of both those scenes, and was also amazing.

Jonna and Gabe vs. Aviv and Yeremi, Part Two

After their initial face-off to avoid Elimination at the Challenge earlier in the episode, the two pairs compete once again, this time in Elimination. Jonna and Gabe won the first battle, but will they win the war?

As soon as they walk into Elimination and see that there’s a massive climbing wall in the middle of the Arena, you have to imagine the despair that was going through Jonna and Gabe’s heads. Aviv and Jonna’s roles in this Elimination are to climb up a cargo net and remove climbing pegs. Yeremi and Gabe then collect those pegs and one at a time put all of them into another side of the wall. When all of the pegs are back in the climbing wall, they’ll go up to the top and press the buzzer.

Aviv and Jonna finish their portion at just about the exact same time, which means the Elimination will be decided by who can climb faster and keep that pace longer between Yeremi and Gabe. And in that scenario, Yeremi is always going to win. He has proven to be a fantastic climber already this season, and this was just about the most perfect Elimination that could’ve been designed for him.

When Gabe loses, you start to see some real humanity from him towards Jonna for the first time, as he realizes how much he screwed her over. It’s impossible to not feel bad for Jonna here, but she wasn’t really up to much this season, and wasn’t going to win. The real loss is Gabe. Bring him back! There’s no one else like Gabe on the Challenge right now, someone who is just pissed off all the time, getting in fights, and making stupid decisions. That is pretty much exactly what I want from someone on this show. He was a great source of drama throughout the season, and he is responsible for quite possibly one of the best episodes of all time. In the episode Ben was eliminated, I said it was one of the biggest displays of pure taking Ls in history, and this one significantly tops even that.

Moving Forward

Yeremi and Aviv re-enter the house, and the Closet Alliance has grown even weaker. Unless Theo can somehow pull off another mastermind move next week, it seems very likely he or someone in that alliance will be going into Elimination. I was fearful that the interesting political aspect of the season would end with the new format, and I still think that may be the case and that this episode was the exception, but if more people Stake a Claim going forward, we could easily have more incredible episodes to follow.

Winners of the Episode: Jonna’s kids. Jonna is not only a champion of The Challenge, but of patience, her kids are very lucky.

Loser of the Episode: Gabe, in a decision only comparable to Steph Curry’s unanimous MVP season in 2015–16.

-Beckett Hennessey