The Challenge: Vets & New Threats Episode 14 Review — We Have to Boogie!

Step aside Houdini, Theo and Adrienne have proved once again that they are the greatest escape artists the world has ever seen. Another really good episode of The Challenge is in the books, with some bad decisions that I have a lot to say about.

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.

Turbo the Psychology Doctor

“And I don’t wanna hear even one time, “my psychology is not good”. You’re just fucking sad.” Apparently sadness doesn’t fall under the category of needing psychological help according to Doctor Turbo as he tries to make his partner Sydney feel better. Sydney says she’s feeling horrible and it’s because of their performance in the last Challenge, which I don’t believe is the actual reason, especially considering what she has said online. It was a bit uncomfortable to watch this scene knowing that Sydney has been very open about how controlling Turbo tried to be in their partnership over her personal life. What he was saying in this conversation was an example of these claims, but without that context, it was a pretty funny scene with some fantastic Turbo quotes, such as, “Let’s talk about your childhood, who hurt you?” Turbo saying that if you didn’t fight for food or were homeless then you have nothing to be sad about and don’t need help from a psychologist is funny, but again…not great.

Puzzle Queens Step Up

The Challenge for this week is all about puzzles. The teams must memorize symbols and then find which numbers match up with each of them, then do a math equation based on those numbers. Once they solve that equation they’ll use their answer to unlock a box underwater that is holding puzzle pieces, which they will then bring back to shore to solve. One thing to make note of is just how I really like that all of these Challenges since that awful trivia one have been formatted as races and not heats, I really think that makes them significantly better.

Because of the numbers left in the house, what remains of the Closet Alliance realizes that if they don’t win or lose the Challenge, then they will have three of six votes at Nomination, giving them at least a chance to not see Elimination. I think the larger alliance must have realized this as well, but for whatever reason clearly didn’t care.

Michaela and Cedric do the entire process of memorizing their symbols and solving the math equation in about 30 seconds which really caught me off guard because I expected it to require much more time. Turbo and Sydney solve their equation quickly as well (or at least they think they do), and we see our first instance of Turbo being sensitive to coldness when they get in the water. All the talk about how cold he was this episode retroactively puts into perspective his actions of sleeping in the living room during All Stars: Rivals when he claimed it was because the bedroom was too cold. We finally have found Turbo’s weakness (beyond people copying his walk), luckily for him War of the Worlds was in Namibia and not the Swiss Alps.

Will says how, “Olivia decides to take over on the math” and how he shouldn’t have let that happen because she wasn’t solving the equation correctly. But this isn’t a tangram puzzle that they’re solving where only one person can really move pieces around, this is math, you can both do math at the same time. Will clearly has a big problem with just not being proactive and doing things himself and then getting retroactively upset at someone else for it.

Here’s what I don’t understand, Michaela and Cedric and Nany and Justin are at the final solving station at the same time, and they know Theo and Adrienne are in third place and about to start solving the puzzle too, so why are they actually trying to finish? They both 100% should have talked to each other and said how they can try solving the puzzle, but won’t actually officially finish it until after Theo and Adrienne do. They should have forced Theo and Adrienne to win the Challenge and guarentee that they can throw in someone from the opposing alliance. Winning the Challenge instead, as Michaela and Cedric do, means someone from their alliance could very easily be going into Elimination this week, and puts them in much more danger in the weeks ahead. Yes, winning the Challenge gives you safety, but they already have the numbers to where even if it was up to a vote they have no chance of actually getting voted in regardless. I think this could be a turning point of the season where we look back and see when this alliance threw away their chances of winning.

It’s not an indication of a super well thought out format when people are not incentivized to actually win, I think in this one week of the season it’s interesting, but moving forward the same plan should be put in place where you purposefully don’t win so you can be in the vote, and that is problematic.

In this Challenge we also see more examples of people not delivering on their promises of being good at puzzles. Self proclaimed puzzle queens and geniuses Sydney, Aneesa, and Ashley, all get the math equation wrong, with Aneesa and Ashley specifically really struggling. There have been so many instances this season where Aneesa, Ashley, and whoever they’re partnered with have hyped up their puzzle and math skills so much, and they have failed to live up to those claims every single time. At what point can I not have to listen to them talk about how good at puzzles and math they are when sure, maybe compared to Nicole Zanatta you are, but overall not really.

Olivia and Will continue to really struggle with the math, and Olivia asks Theo, “How do you minus something if there’s a zero? Do you cross the zero out?” To which Theo goes, “Wait, what?” He then tell her that that 2,027–68=1,960 (close, but wrong), and Will goes, “Omg he’s right”, all disappointed in himself like “how did I not think of that” which is just hilarious.

Turbo solves the puzzle easily, but does remark about how cold he is from being in the water, which sets up the theme of his sickness for the rest of the episode.

For some ungodly reason after Jake and Aneesa get their puzzle pieces she decides to back stroke in three foot water back to shore instead of walking. They do bad but not as bad as Olivia and Will and Ashley and Leo. I have no clue what Ashley and Leo were doing in the water, they had some of their puzzle pieces out of the box but not all, which leads me to believe that maybe their equipment was broken and it wasn’t opening up all the way. They never even make it back to shore with all their pieces as the other teams all finish making them this week’s losers and going straight into Elimination. So the Closet Alliance’s plan of not winning and not losing has succeeded, and now at Nomination it looks likely that there will be a 3–3 tie.

Making Threats Against the Vets

At the bar, the Closet Alliance is trying to figure out a way in which they can get numbers on their side and change the vote from a seemingly inevitable 3–3 to a 4–2 towards Turbo and Sydney. Adrienne takes it upon herself to try to convince Aviv and Yeremi to vote for Turbo and Sydney by saying that if they don’t vote for Turbo and Sydney, then the whole Closet Alliance will vote for Aviv and Yeremi, forcing them into the coin flip tiebreaker. This is a solid move by Adrienne and is definitely the right idea for what you want to be doing in this situation, unfortunately, due to the predetermined voting order, it’s impossible for it to work.

In an ideal world for the Closet Alliance, Aviv and Yeremi would be voting before Theo and Adrienne, and in that case you would tell them, hey, Nany and Justin are going to vote for Theo and Adrienne, and if you do too, then we will switch our plan of voting for Turbo and Sydney and instead vote for you. Because in this scenario Aviv and Yeremi would know that if they vote for Theo and Adrienne, then they are putting themselves in the hands of a coin flip. But because Theo and Adrienne have to vote before them, they need to just vote for Turbo and Sydney, at which point there is not any incentive for Yeremi and Aviv to switch sides as they aren’t at risk and have nothing to lose or gain.

While we do see that Aviv is paranoid about potentially being voted in, with the voting structure it really was never a possibility. But she does voice her concerns to Aneesa and I think gets her first taste of the experience that every Challenger has had, which is, wow, playing with Aneesa is really annoying. Aneesa is fine lying to her friends and playing the game to give herself an advantage (as she should be doing), but the second someone does it to her, whoop di doo it’s a huge personal attack.

At Nomination, Theo gives a speech before voting starts in which he tells Nany that she has the opportunity to save Turbo from being in a coin flip tiebreaker by just voting for Aviv and Yeremi. Nany is pissed about this and Turbo reassures her not to do it, so she doesn’t and Theo’s Hail Mary last ditch plan fails. But I absolutely love this move by Theo. I also really liked when Nany tried to retaliate against Theo and threaten him back, saying, “So then we can vote in your girl if you’d want!” And then realizes that would mean also voting in Will so very not smoothly changes to, “We can do that! (realizes)…We can vote in Aneesa, your number one girl here, besides from her (Olivia).” Wowww Nany, what a threat, “I’ll vote in your girlfriend! Or, actually, no I won’t, but I’ll vote in someone else you’re friends with!”

The vote ends up being 3–3 and it all comes down to a coin toss between Theo and Adrienne and Turbo and Sydney. TJ tosses the coin into the water, and once again, somehow is able to see what it landed on. At this point, I am completely convinced that these coin tosses are absolutely rigged. I mean every time there’s been a coin toss, it has landed on the option that is most entertaining, and once again, who is double checking that this coin actually landed on what they say it does?! The coin lands on Turbo and Sydney’s side and they will be going into Elimination vs Ashley and Leo.

Turbo getting sent into Elimination sends Nany into a spiral as I guess she somehow never contemplated that the scenario was possible in which Ashley would be going against Turbo and she’s guaranteed to lose one of them, even though it was extremely obvious. Theo calling her out for it and putting the blame on her was great entertainment. He’s willing to fight with people and not pretend to be best friends with everyone like most other people in the house which is fantastic, and he also is right in a sense that this was definitely an avoidable outcome. Nany victimizing herself and acting like how what Theo was saying was unfair was lame, I mean c’mon Nany. I honestly wish he rubbed it in even more! Nany clearly realized her part in Turbo going into Elimination and felt terrible, leading to her apologizing to Turbo.

This exact outcome is exactly why it was so stupid for Michaela and Cedric to win the Challenge. If they threw it and were able to be part of the vote instead of Theo and Adrienne, then they could send Aneesa and Jake into Elimination instead and all is well. Now, they‘re in a situation where their safety is no longer guaranteed at all.

Another Male Dominated Elimination

I think this Elimination was very close to being very good, but a weird single decision almost ruins it for me. To start, one player in each pair will run back and forth collecting 35 mini cannon balls, and while they bring them over, their partner will be slightly raised up a tower via a harness to collect puzzle pieces. After all the balls are gathered, they need to use the pieces to solve a puzzle. The first team to do this is the winner. My big problem with this is that the entire aspect of only one partner running back and forth while the other just literally hangs out doing nothing for 90% of the Elimination is ridiculous. Forget the whole tower part and just have them take turns running back and forth each getting an equal amount of balls, then just once they do that they solve a puzzle. Boom, easy, and much better. The majority of this Elimination was just Leo vs Turbo running back and forth and Ashley and Sydney couldn’t do anything. After the target Elimination that was basically just Theo vs CT, and then Theo and Adrienne vs Derrick and Dee in which the whole thing was decided by Theo vs Derrick, the type of Elimination where they’re competing in pairs yet it mostly comes down to individual performances isn’t good, especially when it’s been the men that are the ones to have the most impact.

What saves this Elimination is the fact that the puzzle was hard enough to where it didn’t fully come down to just which of the men were faster to collect the cannon balls. Leo is younger than Turbo, faster, and with Turbo’s sickness has better endurance. He doesn’t dust Turbo but he beats him handedly in the first part of collecting the balls. This gave him and Ashley a huge advantage with way more time to solve the puzzle.

Ashley says how she thinks she can already tell what the puzzle is going to be as she’s collecting the pieces, and before she is fully lowered to the ground, she is instructing Leo on where to put the pieces to solve the puzzle. I thought she knew what she was talking about and that they would win without Sydney being able to even begin to participate, which would’ve been impressive on their part, and really unfair for Sydney.

Ashley’s speculation was that the puzzle pieces that have numbers on them must be organized in a way in which the two horizontal and one vertical line will equal the same number. She had the right idea of what the puzzle was, but she had the wrong lines. Instead, it was the three lines on the outside of the triangle that needed to equal the same amount. And again, for a “Puzzle Queen”, you’d expect for her to adapt and realize this after her initial idea failed.

Ashley and Leo take long enough at the puzzle to allow for Turbo and Sydney to catch up and begin theirs, and both teams go back and forth asking for checks and being denied by TJ. No one seems to know what to do, especially Leo who is fully letting Ashley take full control as he has no clue what’s going on, which is funny because the single most impressive puzzle accomplishment that’s been on this show was Leo earlier this season! During the go-kart racing Challenge Leo was the only one to solve an extremely hard puzzle in the entire cast that led to him and Nany winning that Challenge, but I guess that was a fluke.

Eventually Turbo figures it out and gets the puzzle correct, and once again proves that he really is one of the best puzzle solvers in the history of this show. If anyone deserves the Puzzle Queen title, it’s him. Ashley gets Eliminated this season after finishing in last place in a puzzle Challenge, and losing a puzzle Elimination. She couldn’t have been set up better for success, at least based on her supposed strengths and reputation, her going out in this manner is pretty bad. After winning Invasion of the Champions and Final Reckoning in quick succession at the beginning of her career, as well as a strong performance making it to the Final of War of the Worlds 2, the second half of her Challenge career hasn’t come close to living up to her initial promise. In her last five seasons she has a 1–5 Elimination record, and hasn’t even won a daily Challenge.

I would love to see Leo back on the show, he was a good competitor and even more importantly, was willing to make moves and create rivals which is exactly what you’d want from a rookie.

Moving Forward

With seven teams left and the house divided 4–3, we’re in a really interesting part of the season in which the results of the Challenges are unpredictable and really important. The Closet Alliance’s strategy of not winning or losing the Challenge will continue to be the correct one, and it’ll be interesting to see if the other side adapts and tries to take a similar strategy, or if the desperation of making a Final blinds them. I really have no idea who will be in Elimination next week, and every pair left is capable of winning Challenges and Eliminations, maybe less so Aneesa and Jake, but the point remains that the rest of the season will be really good.

Winner of the Episode: That rigged ass coin

Loser of the Episode: Psychologists out of a job after their clients realize they didn’t have to fight for food as a child and therefore are okay

-Beckett Hennessey