The Challenge: Vets & New Threats Episode 12 Review — Punch You in Your Face

Another great episode of The Challenge. Even with a pretty predictable outcome at pretty much every step of the way, it was entertaining throughout, and we had a new, unexpected cast member step into the role of political mastermind that was really cool to watch.

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.

Another Movie??

We already had the Him movie episode this season, but I guess we have room for one more. At this point let’s just keep it going and get a Wicked: For Good Challenge as well in a few weeks. This Challenge, based on the upcoming movie The Running Man, is creatively titled, Running Man. And for such a name, there was a serious lacking in the running department. In Glen Powell’s introduction of the Challenge, he says how The Running Man and The Challenge are similar in that they’re reality shows with millions of people watching. Now, Glen, unfortunately regardless of what you were told and how much MTV would love for that to be the case, I’ve seen this show’s ratings.

There’s a lot of steps to this Challenge. First, everyone fights to grab keys that TJ just throws on the ground for some reason, they then run up to big containers and eventually find the lock that their key goes to. Once they’ve found their container, they need to unravel the chains wrapped around it. Now inside that container, is a car. They need to drive that car to a place with power tools, use them to take the hood of the car off, and then find a tracking device, and run that over to a basket. Exhausting explanation. I honestly wasn’t exactly sure what was happening until they started doing the Challenge, and even then I was confused at certain points.

I was hoping someone would do an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression in their pre-Challenge confessional as a throwback to the original The Running Man movie, so I was very disappointed. I feel like a producer should’ve just asked Turbo to do one, I mean he already has his corny catchphrases and wants to be an action movie star so it was the perfect opportunity.

For most of the Challenge we’re kind of just watching people do things like pull ropes and chains or use power tools, and we have no idea if they’re doing it well until we either see them complete the tasks, or just not.

With the amount of random things happening in this Challenge, none of which seem to really include too much intelligence or athleticism, I figured this could be an opportunity for some really random results. Maybe Leroy and America could find themselves a win somehow, or Turbo and Sydney could somehow lose. I feel like that’s reasonable, they weren’t doing too much that involved actual skills. But, somehow, the placements of the pairs turned out to be a pretty good indicator of how good that team actually is. Yeremi and Aviv, Michaela and Cedric, Olivia and Will, and Turbo and Sydney finish as the top four from first to fourth respectively, and those are the four best teams.

Yeremi and Aviv seem to have gone through this Challenge very quickly and easily, and from beginning to end are in front, and then take home the win. Weirdly, Aviv didn’t have a single confessional all episode, and for someone who won the Challenge that is very strange. So Yeremi and Aviv prove that last week was the exception to their performances, and have a Challenge win immediately following their Elimination win last episode.

All the teams seem to do very well, except for Ashley and Leo and Dee and Derrick. The two of them don’t even get to their cars until almost all the other teams had already finished the whole Challenge. I think it’s possible their containers were just tied up in a much more complicated way, or maybe they were just bad. It was really funny when we hear Dee tell Derrick, “We’re not last, Ashley and Leo are last”, and then we immediately see Ashley and Leo finish. Leo missing his between the leg dunk of the tracking device was also very funny. So the top two teams from last week are the bottom two this week, with last week’s winners Dee and Derrick finishing last in this Challenge and being sent straight to Elimination.

As Theo and Adrienne finish, Theo is far ahead of Adrienne on the run, and while he crosses the line and waits for her to join him, Michaela is yelling at him, “Where is your partner? Go get your partner!” which is innocent enough. But then follows that up with, “Of course, cheating Theo.” This second line was very weird because just about approximately 0% of me believes she actually said that in that moment. The audio sounded completely different, we didn’t see her say it, and referring to Theo as a cheater makes no sense. But she must’ve said something, and maybe it was just the original yelling at him to get Adrienne, because Olivia jumps in and basically says, stop talking about him, and not in an aggressive way at all. For whatever reason, Michaela, in just as calm of a tone as you can say this in, says, “Don’t talk to me before I punch you in the face, get the fuck out of my face Olivia.” What??? What??? What the hell did I miss here?

Michaela saying he’s going to punch Olivia for literally no reason, with zero background information as to how this happened, was so random. I have no clue why she would say that, but it was weird. Michaela clearly must be a nice, fun person to be around as she has a lot of friends on this season, but honestly, anytime she’s talking in a confessional or on camera, it’s always either very negatively, or just without any emotion. To just say she’s going to punch Olivia out of nowhere is a really weird move. I suggest she refrains from saying similar things to Turbo, and by proxy, Sydney and Nany.

In these 90 minute episodes, the Challenges usually take a long time, but this one was over and there was still an hour left in the episode. So I’m thinking, oh we’re for sure getting someone Staking a Claim again, fantastic! Well…

Oh Turbo

At one point Derrick does a silly Turbo impression in front of Turbo in which he talks with an accent and says, “You can not call me pussy!”, to which, while he doesn’t freak out or really show it physically, Turbo immediately gets pissed off. You can just tell he hated that because he then says back to Derrick, “You never fight. I never see you fight.” And everyone’s like…uh, okay? It’s funny to watch Turbo as he is the most defensive and sensitive person of all time, and yet will just berate someone for nothing, but to live with someone like that, oh my god that must be tough.

The Inceptioner Gets Incepted

The whole house, including Theo, knows that Theo and Adrienne will be the pair nominated for Elimination. So Theo knows that his best chance of avoiding Elimination is to Stake a Claim, win the face-off, and then avoid getting voted in with his new partner. He seems pretty certain that this is the only option he has left, and there’s nothing to lose anyway. The only issue is: everyone else knows this too.

Leroy, who all of a sudden is a gamer this season, which is really fun to watch, devises the plan that his alliance must put on the front that they’re actually going to vote for Aneesa and Jake, so that Theo and Adrienne think they’re safe, and don’t Stake a Claim. It was very funny when Leroy joins a table with Dee and Derrick at the bar and Dee tells him how they have a “mega-plan” to tell him about, and then it’s literally just the plan that Leroy himself was the one to make.

Turbo talks about this plan, kind of. His version of explaining it, however, is a bit different, as he says, “Theo and Adrienne’s gonna feel safe, and then oops, Karma Sutra sixty-nineeee.” Turbo what? Half of what Turbo says is the same few repeated phrases over and over, and then the other half is things you’ve genuinely never heard another human say in your life, and that’s amazing. If I was the producer interviewing him as he said that with a perfectly straight face, I don’t know if I would burst out laughing, or be very scared and uncomfortable and be unable to look at him again.

So Leroy sets the plan in place, and does so beautifully. He genuinely executes this as well as it possibly could’ve been done. So he sits down with Aneesa in a private setting, but also in a room right next to where Theo, Olivia, and Adrienne were all sitting, and can hear their entire conversation. He tells Aneesa that while he doesn’t plan or want to say her name, that there has been a push for her and Jake to be nominated, rather than Theo and Adrienne, and that if that’s what the house wants to do, then he will follow. Aneesa surprisingly doesn’t get nearly as offended as I thought she would upon hearing this, and then tells her alliance, who though already heard it all, collectively remark their surprise as to the other alliance’s decision.

Though it’s not what ends up happening, Olivia’s joy over the fact that Aneesa would be the one nominated instead of Theo once again proves the point that Derek learned earlier this season, which is that you need to be the number one of the person who is your number one. Aneesa is looking out for Olivia more than anyone, but Olivia is not looking out for Aneesa more than anyone.

At Nominations, Theo and Adrienne feel safe enough to not Stake a Claim, much to the joy and relief of the rest of the house. As soon as Michaela, the first vote, votes for Theo and Adrienne rather than Aneesa and Jake, that alliance realizes exactly how they just got played, and the look on Theo’s face was fantastic. You can tell that he did respect it, and of course find the humor in it, considering he pulled off a similar move the week prior. Theo and Adrienne get five votes, and will be going against Derrick and Dee in the Elimination.

I want to take a second to analyze a confessional from Aneesa in which she states that, “Leroy and I have a similar track record of, like, not winning the show. And, I think if you’re not changing how you play, like, you’re not gonna get there. Wifey and two kids at home, probably pushes you a little bit more, and he’s doing whatever he has to do for his game, I just wish it wasn’t with me.” So let’s just summarize the points she makes here. 1. Leroy and Aneesa have both never won. 2. If you’re not winning (like them), you need to change the way you play. 3. Leroy has a family and is more motivated to win. 4. With this added motivation, he is doing things that he previously hasn’t done in order to have more success (aka, exactly what she said he should do in Point #2). 5. Leroy trying to win the game should not have an effect on her (aka, Leroy should try to win the show, and he should try to do different things in order to win, unless it effects me and then forget everything I just said, no he shouldn’t). Ugh.

Pillow Fight!

For this Elimination, the men and women compete against each other separately, but at the same time. The men and women each have their own long poles over muddy water that they must sit on, and with what are basically pillows, try to knock each other off of the log. If the man and woman from the same team both win in the same round, that team gets a point. After five rounds, whoever has won the most is the winner.

Prior to the Elimination, I thought the Derrick vs Theo matchup was super interesting because physically they are exact opposites. As we heard many times in this episode, Derrick has taken down people much larger than him many times in the past, and with this Elimination including an element of balance, I went in thinking he was the favorite. But, I failed to properly estimate the advantage that Theo had by being almost a foot taller, and therefore having a significantly longer wingspan.

Round One begins and Theo takes one swing at Derrick and Derrick immediately crashes straight down into the water, and basically every round after that was the exact same. Theo was able to swing that pillow with a lot of power and because of how much higher he was, he was swinging down onto Derrick’s head/face, which is just a perfect recipe for success. This is one of the most one-sided and dominant Eliminations of all time, and its unfortunate because there’s nothing that Derrick could’ve done. Even when he tried playing more defensively, there’s only so many shots you can take. It was almost impossible for Derrick to have gotten close enough to where he could swing at Theo’s face because of how far away Theo was sitting from him, and even if he could, he would be swinging up instead of down. Derrick just had no chance at this Elimination and Theo once again, as he has several times in the past with Hall Brawl, gets an Elimination that fits his strengths of, well, size and strength, and easily wins all five rounds.

But, Theo never actually gets any points, because Adrienne is unable to ever beat Dee. This was the much more even matchup, but Dee was just far better. Adrienne didn’t have great balance, kept letting go of her pillow, and never put a shot on Dee that made Dee close to falling. Even Dee was getting frustrated by Adrienne’s passive attempts yelling, “Harder! Good! Harder!” when she swung, leading to the phenomenal quote from Adrienne of, “Shut your fucking mouth saying harder, I’m not shagging ya!”, which is easily one of the best quotes from someone who is currently competing in an Elimination. So for every round where Theo won, so did Dee, until the fifth and final where neither Dee or Adrienne won as they timed out, and so no one got the point.

For a tiebreaker round, only either the men or the women would compete, and this time is would be standing on the pole rather than sitting. No matter which pair went home, it would be unjust for either Theo or Dee to go home with how well they did in the Elimination. TJ’s infamous Chilean coin makes another appearance this season and allows for Derrick to have one more chance at redemption. With the rules changing as they now have to stand instead of sit, I once again made the mistake of thinking Derrick had the advantage. Theo’s balance isn’t great, and I assumed this round would be much more dependent on balance rather than power.

From the beginning Derrick’s stance was wrong. As someone who would be swinging the pillow with their right hand, because he was standing with his right foot forward, that took away his ability to swing forehanded, whereas Theo positioned himself correctly. Derrick gave a little fake swing and when he was exposed, Theo just smacked him in the face and Derrick literally went soaring through the air. Derrick’s only hope in this was to jump into Theo, tackle him, and hope Theo hit the water first.

This is a very tough outcome for both Derrick and Dee. Derrick just got absolutely demolished in a game in which he could never win, whereas Dee put up a great performance, did literally everything she could to win, and is still going home. Instead of a tie-breaker round TJ should’ve just sent home Derrick and Adrienne and had Theo and Dee partner up. I kid when I say that, but…

I actually really liked this Elimination and think that we should definitely see it again in the future, but I’d like for them to scrap the initial sitting stage and just make it best of five standing on the pole. And hopefully a better matchup occurs than someone who’s 5’6″ vs someone who’s 6’6″.

Theo after winning the Elimination instantly starts calling the rest of the house pussies, clearly instigating Turbo, and of course it works instantly. Usually people just let Turbo yell at them, or just at least do not match his level in fights, so to see Theo really letting him have it was nice to see.

Moving Forward

It’s getting boring to say this every week, but, Theo and Adrienne will very likely be back in Elimination next episode. I know Theo’s psychic said he’d go into three Eliminations before he makes the Final, but I fear it’ll have to be a lot more than that. Even though politically, Theo and Adrienne getting voted in was predicted, the way in which it happened with Leroy’s plan made it very entertaining, so as long as we get more like this and Gabe’s goofy decisions, it’ll be alright. Aviv and Yeremi and Michaela and Cedric are looking to be in pretty comfortable positions right now to win the season, and I hope some of the worse teams pull a Frank from All Stars: Rivals and try to get them in Eliminations in the coming weeks.

Winner of the Episode: Theo and his representation for tall kings

Loser of the Episode: Derrick and his representation for short kings

-Beckett Hennessey