The Challenge: Final Reckoning Episode 3 Recap and Power Rankings
We pick the episode up with the crew returning to the house. Tori and Derrick are recapping Derrick’s abysmal performance in the mission. Derrick defends himself saying after he got three rings he couldn’t find any left, while Tori says he needs to perform better under pressure. Derrick certainly is a strong athlete, he played college basketball and got a variety of awards at Citadel University. However, he hasn’t figured out The Challenge yet. People will often assume that being a great athlete means you’ll be great at the missions in The Challenge. However, a lot more goes into it than that. You need to be able to apply your athletic gifts to the mission in unique ways, being able to adapt to the games at hand. In the same way you can’t take a great Basketball player and just expect him to excel in Racquetball; you can’t take an athlete from another sport and just assume they’ll be good at the Challenge.
After this, we get a meeting of some of the veteran teams with Johnny explaining to Kyle that if Paulie gets thrown in he will take it as being done solely because Kyle doesn’t like that Cara was flirting with him. The boys decide it’s a good idea to clear this us, telegraphing they all intend to throw Paulie in. I’m not quite sure why this is necessary, but considering Bananas was the impetus for it the reason may have been just to get some good TV. Brad and Kyle go outside to talk to Paulie, and Kyle asks who Paulie would throw in if he was in their shoes. Paulie says there has only been one person Kyle has said he hated, and that was Shane.
We then move to Shane and Amanda talking in their room, with Amanda saying Shane is her best friend in the game but he can cause problems when he uses Twitter. Shane is now known for exploding on castmates in crazy twitter rants, and his most impactful rant was accosting Kyle for having hair implants. Shane says he is going to have to give an apology from the heart to avoid elimination. We then move on to Kam talking to Natalie about her issues with Kayleigh. Natalie says she wasn’t prepared to be open about her sexuality yet, but Kayleigh made that decision for her. Natalie says Kam and she are good friends, so she won’t target the pair, but she can’t make any long term promises.
Natalie then moves on to talking to Paulie and Cara Maria and says to Cara that her relationship with Paulie is going to get them sent in first. When Cara protests this, Natalie sarcastically talks about them putting her game in jeopardy by their relationship. It’s funny to me how differently Natalie treats The Challenge from other contestants. On the show, most people wouldn’t think of ending a relationship to affect someone else’s political standing. In this circumstance though, Natalie seems offended that Cara would even think of not doing so. One would have expected Natalie to adapt to The Challenge after her first appearance, but she seems focused on playing the game she came onto the show with; and also casts serious doubt about the legitimacy of her relationship with Bananas last season.
We then see Kyle go outside to talk to Cara. Kyle tells Cara she just got Paulie sent home. I’m not sure why everyone is acting like Kyle gets to buy a plane ticket for whichever pair he wants to send home, especially since TJ said the voting will be different this season. Kyle says he would want to put Cara into elimination just to see her squirm but also won’t because he cares about her. Cara asks if Paulie would even be on Kyle’s radar if he and Cara weren’t a thing, to which Kyle responds yes because they are a strong team and don’t have many political ties in the house. Cara then goes to talk to Brad, saying Kyle is thinking not with his head and needs to look at the bigger picture. Kyle then decides to go sleep with Faith seemingly just to make Cara jealous.
The next day, we open with Bananas talking to CT about Tony. Bananas says Tony has put on about 40 pounds over the last two seasons, which seems like an insult but considering Tony’s performance over that time frame I find it hard to say the weight is bringing him down. CT then says Veronica has turned them into “Team Layup” and they are going to need to perform and can’t rely on their experience to carry them.
We then move outside where Johnny Bananas is taking his now usual flirting position of by the pool with Angela. They talk about something relating to Marie and a set of bed sheets and Bananas clearly has identified a new target for this season. With Natalie, Kayleigh, and Melissa last season and now at least Angela this season it seems like every female from a new show is contractually obligated to at least feign a relationship with the Banana man.
TJ comes in to initiate nominations and discusses how they will work for this season. Each team will receive a vote for another team to go into elimination, while the winning team will receive two votes. The votes will be conducted in a secret nomination room, similar to Cutthroat. I like the shift in voting structure, it’s been a while since we had a season where the whole house votes (the first season of Rivals was the last one) and it gives everyone the opportunity to make a statement politically.
Some highlights from the nominations include CT saying he wants Veronica and Marie to get into a fight so he can be on Cara’s team, Tori saying “next” dismissively, Marie wanting to vote for herself, and Kyle saying he would put Angela and Faith in but doesn’t want to because he just slept with her. I honestly think Marie’s strategy of voting for herself was a brilliant idea, with the pair’s political ties they had no risk of going into elimination and doing so would ruffle zero feathers. With this season’s voting twist, I’m not sure it would even be allowed but teams in a similar position I think should give it more consideration. The end results for voting went:
Amanda and Zach: Natalie and Paulie
Angela and Faith: Nelson and Shane
Bananas and Tony: Nelson and Shane
Brad and Kyle: Natalie and Paulie x2
Cara Maria and Marie: Angela and Faith
CT and Veronica: N/A
Derrick and Tori: N/A
Joss and Sylvia: Natalie and Paulie
Kam and Kayleigh: Natalie and Paulie
Natalie and Paulie: Joss and Sylvia
Nelson and Shane: Angela and Faith
After the nominations, Cara goes to her room to talk to Natalie and Tori. Cara tells the girls that Marie was pushing for one of their two teams to be thrown in. Marie ends up walking by and catches wind of what is going on and is understandably upset by her partner throwing her under the bus. She asks to talk to Cara privately but Cara declines. I can see both sides of the partnership here; with Cara obviously not wanting to vote in her friends while Marie takes issue with how Cara continually disregard’s Marie’s role in their pair.
We then get a brief scene at the Redemption House. They decide to play Truth or Dare there, with everyone seemingly having a goal of getting Britni and Chuck into a confrontation. Things start off amicably enough but end with Chuck going outside for a cig and Britni yelling at him. After they argue a bit more in Britni’s bedroom Chuck leaves and we end our time at the Redemption House for the episode.
We finally get to the elimination for the episode where TJ gets to further explanation of the elimination structure. The team with the most votes will go in, which ends up being Natalie and Paulie. However, they also get to see who voted for them and select which of those pairs they would want to go against. Paulie wants to take on Zach or Joss; but Natalie overrules him and selects Kayleigh and Kam. The elimination is entitled Thinking Outside the Box, and entails the pairs having one person throwing their partner puzzle pieces while tethered to the ground. The player receiving the pieces has to assemble them and then escape out of top of the cage they are locked in. Kam and Paulie will retrieve the puzzle pieces for their respective teams while Kayleigh and Natalie build the puzzles.
The elimination starts, and it honestly is pretty difficult to keep track of what is going on. Paulie is having an exceptionally difficult time getting the pieces while Kam seems to have no problem. The elimination ends up going pretty quickly, with Kam easily getting Kayleigh all the pieces and they finish the puzzle well ahead of Paulie and Natalie; who are sent to the Redemption House.
Extra Notes
o This would normally go in the extra notes section, but it was a bit too lengthy to include there. Paulie struggled greatly during the elimination, but one of the reasons why was production gave Paulie two double thick bands which are shorter than the one band Kam has. I was wondering how they would approach the male vs. female elimination issue, but it looks like they will attempt to balance things by giving the females an advantage of some sort. I understand why this was
o Cara Maria and Marie are writing recaps for separate sites. Should be interesting to see how their viewpoints contrast each other throughout the season.
Redemption House
4) Jenna and Jemmye (-1): Falls down due to another team coming in.
3) Da’Vonne and Jozea (-1): Thought about moving them up because there is one team that really seems to be lacking chemistry, but Jozea is such a disaster I couldn’t do it.
2) Britni and Chuck (-1): These two seem like they have a meltdown every other hour, but I’d rather take the question of Chuck versus the known negative of Jozea.
1) Paulie and Natalie: I’m still a believer in this pair, if they can get back in the house I think they could surprise some people.
Power Rankings
10) CT/Veronica: CT keeps referring to them as team layup, but it still feels odd having them at the bottom.
9) Tori/Derrick: These two have one of the worst relationships in the house, but everyone seems to like Tori, so she could help them avoid elimination for a little bit.
8) Faith/Angela: They have locked in friendships with the top dogs in the house but being rookies, they’ll probably get thrown in at some point.
7) Kam/Kayleigh (+4): Big jump for the pair coming off the elimination win.
6) Cara Maria/Marie: While they are incredibly dysfunctional I just don’t see how they get thrown in and the only way they go in is if they are picked.
5) Nelson/Shane (-1): They got their name thrown a lot which makes me think they’ll get thrown in earlier rather than later.
4) Joss/Sylvia (+1): Move up based on Nelson and Shane moving down.
3) Zach/Amanda: Not enough happened to move them down.
2) Brad/Kyle: Kyle seems to be making a decent number of enemies which could cause some problems for them.
1) Bananas/Tony: Stay on top for now but it’ll be interesting to see how their political situation turns out.
