Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons, Week 7 Power Rankings

Sarah: I guess I have a reputation for being good at puzzles. I don’t know how I got it…

Chet: Because you brag about it.

 

“Sam, you’re not Jesus carrying the cross.” —Frank

The Challenge is back, after a week off for MTV to celebrate Halloween. The layoff seemed to have reset the narrative—whereas I just declared Alton to be this season’s villain, this week’s episode brought a new one into focus: Frank.

Frank was the one who started fighting with Alton in the last episode, and this week he was pulling apart his own team. The problems started in the challenge: Logged Out was kind of a mini-final, consisting of checkpoints and a puzzle. The teams climbed a mountain and passed three checkpoints. The first showed the puzzle’s solution, the second contained the puzzle pieces, and the third was where the solution had to be reassembled.

Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Exes, The Grand Finale

“I know I don’t have a rocket scientist as a partner, so this is basically going to be the blind leading the blind.” —Johnny

 

 

“I just want to say: Johnny, you’re the worst person to motivate someone.” —Camila

Spreading the final challenge over two episodes has some obvious logic to it: It allows MTV to continue making them more and more difficult every season, and it led to a nice cliffhanger ending last week, with the shot of the three team’s sleeping on the mountain. The problem, though, is that it meant that last night’s episode was all one challenge. There was no foreshadowing or exposition or storylines being set up.

While I appreciate the leanness of an episode like that—as opposed to the filler included last week—it can diminish some of the payoff of the ending. So when Diem was trying to get C.T. motivated, or when Ty/Emily briefly took the lead, there wasn’t as much resonance as there should have been because the episode lacked any real personal moments in the house (like Abram declaring that he has “always been good at” final challenges before crapping out in Cutthroat, or Landon vowing to do whatever it takes before pushing his partner up a mountain in Fresh Meat II).

The finale began in the middle of a challenge, with TJ Lavin rousing our contestants at 5 AM to begin the second day of the final.