Real World/ Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins - Episode 1

Finally! Another season of Real World/Road Rules Challenges began last night. This year we’re in Thailand for The Ruins. There’s a huge cast in play this go around and it looks like we’ve got a great mix of OLD school veterans, veterans, and rookies. The teams are broken down into Champions (competitors who have successfully won previous challenges) vs. Challengers (everyone else). The rosters are as follows:

Champions:

• Wes Bergman, RW: Austin
• Johanna Botta, RW: Austin
• Tonya Cooley, RW: Chicago
• Johnny Devenanzio, RW: Key West
• Katie Doyle, RR: The Quest
• Derrick Kosinski, RR: X-Treme
• Susie Meister, RR: Down Under
• Ibis Nieves, RR: X-Treme
• Veronica Portillo, RR: Semester at Sea
• Kenny Santucci, Fresh Meat
• Evelyn Smith, Fresh Meat
• Evan Starkman, Fresh Meat
• Darrell Taylor, RR: Campus Crawl
• Syrus Yarbrough, RW: Boston

Challengers:

• Kimberly Alexander, RW: Hollywood
• Diem Brown, Fresh Meat
• Nick BrownNick Brown, RW: Hollywood
• Chet Cannon, RW: Brooklyn
• Casey Cooper, Fresh Meat
• Brad Fiorenze, RW: San Diego
• Dunbar Flinn, RW: Sidney
• Danny Jamieson, RW: Austin
• Kelly Anne Judd, RW: Sydney
• Adam King, RW: Paris
• Cohutta Lee, RW: Sydney
• Sarah Rice, RW: Brooklyn
• Brianna Taylor, RW: Hollywood
• Shauvon Torres, RW: Sydney

Like I said, they have a lot of players this year. This is great for me and you because this just translates to more drama than we can possibly track!

The big storyline MTV will be focusing on this season will be the spiderweb of hookups/relationships between Wes, Johanna, Kenny, Kelly Anne, and Cohutta. If you’re new to the show, here’s the abridged version: Wes was engaged to Johanna. Their relationship ended, then Johanna hooked up with Kenny on The Island. Wes is PO’d that Johanna would hook up with someone on the show and feels like she betrayed him.

(If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, “They were broken up. She can hook up with anyone she wants! The part you missed here is that it’s pretty obvious the only person Wes cares about is himself. This will become a recurring theme shortly.)

Luckily for Wes, he’s rebounded and is now madly in love with Kelly Anne. This is how she describes the two of them, “Wes is pretty cocky and I’m pretty cocky. So I guess by being with him, that makes me even more cocky.”

Cohutta is dragged into this because he used to go out with Kelly Anne and it's pretty obvious he’s still pining away for her.

And.. we’re back to what’s currently happening on the show. Host TJ Lavin explains the rules to the two teams and he killed it. This season, a list of three guys and three girls from each team will be decided by each team to be eligible for elimination. This list will be decided prior to the challenge. Then the team who won the challenge will determine which male and female player from each team will enter The Ruins, with the losing male and female going home.

Shortly after settling into the house, the Champions team have a meeting to discuss how they will decide who's eligible for elimination each challenge.

Evan and most of the team seem to agree that a simple majority vote to determine the three males and females for elimination. Wes disagrees and feels like the best way to determine the list would be to pull names from a hat. It’s obvious that a random draw would negate any advantage Evan and some of the other guys have, since they’re the most popular and have the most influence on the vote, so they’re strongly against it.

With his team not going for his idea of a random draw, Wes decides that he’s going to deliberately sabotage his team’s challenges until they agree to do things his way.

(On some level, there is a certain level of Machiavellian ingenuity to this strategy. I can appreciate that. But when you break it down, it’s basically the same as a child throwing his plate of food on the ground when you gave him a grilled cheese sandwich, instead of the tater tots he wanted, so he could stuff them in his pockets for later.)

Naturally, the Challengers are stoked with this development. Now they just need to kick back and let Wes gift wrap the challenge for them, right??

The teams deliberate and come up with their list of players for elimination. Wes is easily placed on the list by his team, along with Darrell and Kenny who volunteer. Tonya, Susie and Johanna volunteer for the girls on the Champions team. The Challengers submit Chet, Nick, and Cohutta for the guys, while Diem, Sarah, and Shauvon are the females up for elimination.

The challenge for this week is a basically a rope climb. Every member of the team is hanging onto the rope at the same time, while the person on the bottom of the rope has to climb up to the top and get onto a platform. The team with the most players at the top wins. The Challengers go first and are able to get 12 of their 14 team members up to the platform. They’re feeling pretty good about themselves, since Wes is going to sabotage the other team, so this one is in the bag.

But hold on there! This team is made up of players who won previous RW/RR challenges, so they’re pretty crafty themselves. The Champions figure out a way to DQ Wes, but they would need to sacrifice someone else for DQ. This means they need to get all 12 remaining team members up the rope and onto the platform. That's such a crazy thin margin of error, there's no way they could do it.. Guess what? That’s exactly what they do. Wes tries to sabotage the challenge by shaking the rope as much as he can, but it doesn’t really do much. The Champions sacrifice Ibis to DQ him and get everyone else up onto the platform.

Since both teams get 12 players onto the platform, the tiebreaker is the amount of time it takes for both teams to get their players onto the platform. The Challengers’ time is 30 minutes.. The Champions’ time is 23 minutes. Champions win!

After the challenge, everyone on the Champions team is upset with Wes and hate him more than before the challenge. Darrell starts to instigate Wes by saying that Kelly Anne slept with every guy in the house and calling her a b----. Wes interprets this as everyone on his team being intimidated of him and that the only way for them to eliminate him would be to instigate him into a fight. It can’t be because he deliberately tried to help the other team win!

This situation escalates to Darrell and Wes saying they’re going out to the street and fighting. Of course, everyone in the house gets involved and there’s lots of yelling and screaming, but nothing comes of it, when they both realize that they never intended to blow their chances at the prize money and they needed to save face.

In the deliberation room, the six members of the Champions team that was selected for elimination determine who’s going into The Ruins. Wes volunteers to go into the elimination challenge and wants to select his opponent, then gets called out by Susie, who astutely brings up the fact that it’s not like Wes is “volunteering”, since he would have been voted in anyway. They then vote to send in Chet, who was the person Wes wanted to face in The Ruins anyway.

For the females, Tonya volunteers to go in against Diem. Tonya feels like she needs to prove to her team that she’s an asset to the team, despite the fact that 2 of the 3 nights they’ve been there, she’s been stumbling down the stairs drunk. Also, I think she’s hoping this will get everyone to stop making fun of her and where she lives.

(She’s living in Walla Walla, Washington. Which is inherently funny to everyone, except Tonya. By the way, this exemplifies a huge reason why I love the show. One-third of the people on it have a psychological disorder that you could probably diagnose, like Tonya. The other two-thirds are self-absorbed and/or strapped for cash, in general. You stick cameras in their faces and most of them start to get this self important attitude which you love to hate. Lastly, throw in a limitless supply of alcohol and you have TV magic. Every problem gets amplified. Every emotion is played up. Everyone has their soapbox.)

So we’ve got Wes and his ego vs. Chet wearing his adorable purple bowtie and Tonya’s craziness vs. Diem’s maternal instincts. This is how the situation breaks down for Kelly Anne, in her words, “On one hand, I’d love for Wes to be here, so that I can spend this time with him. On the other hand, if Wes gets sent home, I’ll probably have more friends.” A profound, moment of self awareness that speaks volumes.

For Diem, she wants to set an example for her team, as she feels like all the females on the Challengers are looking to her for leadership.

Chet isn’t really trying to play up any special reason he’s trying to win the challenge, other than the fact that he really likes purple and wears purple bowties.

Wes wants to win money and screw his team over for not doing what he wanted.

Tonya just wants people to stop making her cry.

This week’s elimination challenge is each player must make a 20’ ladder and hit a gong at the top of the ladder to send their opponent home. There are two bamboo stakes in the ground with supports staggered up the length of it to place the loose bamboo poles stacked to the side for each player to build the steps for their ladder.

The guys are up first and each of them seems to be struggling to keep their bamboo poles secured for their steps. Chet actually seems to be keeping pace, but eventually he’s getting frustrated and fatigued and Wes rings the gong to send Chet home. No one on the team congratulates him.

During the women’s heat, it seems like a tight race between Tonya and Diem, but eventually Diem gets frustrated from her bamboo steps falling off their supports and Tonya comes up with a way to build the ladder without knocking the steps off the supports, so Diem gets sent home. Ever the optimist, Diem proclaims that she accomplished her goal of completing a RW/RR Challenge without crying. The entire house seems to have lost a little sanity with Chet and Diem being sent home.

Back at the house, Wes is going over what transpired with Danny. “Basically, they called my bluff and I called their bluff.” I play a little bit of poker and that doesn’t quite sound accurate. I don’t really think you can actually be bluffing, when you’re doing exactly what you said you were going to do. They pretty much just overcame your efforts to sabotage the team. Which I guess makes the teams even, since the Challengers roster is made up of significantly weaker players than the Champions team.

That’s what we’re left with, until next week. Sounds like this season has a strong foundation to keep the shows interesting.

Memorable Quotes:

“I’m going to kick every last freckle off his face.”

-Kenny, describing what he’s going to do to Wes during this season.

“You can’t turn a ho into a housewife.”

-Darrell, antagonizing Wes about his relationship with Kelly Anne, after Wes tried to throw the challenge.

Previews for the upcoming season:

The scenes they previewed for this season look unbelievable. I’m excited! Tonya slaps someone (it looked like Veronica). Veronica and Evan hookup. Wes gets in Johnny’s face and tells him he wants to fight. There’s a shot of lying Brad unconscious looking like his face got smashed into something. And of course, one of Shauvon’s implants pop..

Until next week!