Tonight’s episode of The Challenge: Cutthroat actually got a rise out of me. By the time the first challenge started, I was pretty into what was going on. The challenge was pretty intense and basically came down to a matter of strategy, while the Gulag was completely crazy and out of nowhere. There were, of course, healthy doses of drama with TJ showing up at the house hours before the Gulag started, the usual voting shenanigans with a first ever occurrence and even a cross-team romance that has some of the players raising their eyebrows. Hit the jump for the full report.

 

The episode kicks off with Abram playing a piano at night with Cara Maria sitting on his lap, being loud and making out with a commentary by other players on their team calling them weird. Whatever. This is basically there to give you the idea that people aren’t completely cool with their relationship. In other boring “relationship” news, Luke admits to having a crush for Camila who in turn tells us that she has a thing for Johnny. Note that Camila’s on Red and Johnny’s on Blue, that’ll be important later, too. Blue team has lots of people trying to talk strategy but none making much sense. Katie thinks her and Easy will be thrown back in every time, which is probably true while Johnny tells Ty the best strategy is to pick off other teams’ better players and keep their worse ones around. That plan might have worked on previous Challenges, but here’s the problem. You have no control over who’s getting thrown in from the other team, while at the same time you don’t really have control over who you throw in. And, even if it was a solid plan, wouldn’t Johnny have to go on, as one of their better players to theoretically knock off the other teams’ good players? I worry that Derrick is playing it too cool once again and will get screwed over by Johnny. I would put money on him being the strongest guy on their team, he should be running things.

Enough drama for a paragraph. The challenge is called Bottleneck Stampede. It’s basically an obstacle course at a horse track that all 24 of them have to run at the same time. There are five mini-obstacles on this course that are supposed to cause a bottleneck. We’re talking things like a somewhat wide hall of hay, then hay bales you have to crawl under and over, a drawbridge which leads to a maze you have to crawl on your hands and knees, a super right hay hallway and then s series of vertically stacked tires that he have to squeeze between. The first team to get all their players across the finish line wins. Oh, you can also do whatever you can to slow down players from other teams. Red’s strategy is to just run and get across the finish line, but Gray and Blue have more physical, confrontational plans with Johnny actually assigning Derrick and Ty to keep one player from each team behind them, that way they know they’re not going to lose. The whole thing is a mess from front to back and the bottlenecks actually look pretty tough, though less so for the later runners. The Blue and Gray guys basically wrestle through the first few bottlenecks, which slows them down significantly. In the end, Red’s super simple strategy proves to be the best and they come away with the victory.

Of course, it’s not so simple as who crossed first and last and who gets voted in. Derrick was unimpressed with Ty because he didn’t keep anyone behind him and looked to be the last one to cross the line. Meanwhile, over on Gray, Abe didn’t like that Sarah and Ayiiia got a head start and then got caught up to by the Blue guys that Gray was trying to hold back. Seemed like the overall idea for Blue and Gray was to get the girls across first and then fight the guys, though I did see the guys holding ladies back roughly. I guess that’s part of the game though. When it came down to actually voting on who would go into the Gulag, Katie volunteers herself in as the Blue girl, which brings the Blue male vote down to Ty and Easy. Easy actually acted like a bounced letting his players through and trying to hold other players back on one of the bottlenecks and Ty clearly failed in his task. Ty’s argument was that they shouldn’t just think about this challenge, but who they’d want on their team making it to the very end which lead to some commentary by Johnny to the camera about him not trusting Eric and not wanting to carry him on his back again (like Johnny would ever do any extra work). Meanwhile, over on Gray, Luke volunteered himself, so it came down to the girls. Ayiiia threw Cara Maria under the bus for screaming at Easy to let her go when he was doing his bouncer routine, saying she was crying during the challenge. CM defends herself pretty well saying that she was also the first one to cross the finish line. Ayiiia was clearly just trying to throw focus away from her. Also, remember, CM went into the Gulag already and won, while Ayiiia has done nothing but bitch, moan and be slightly less annoying than Laurel. When it came down to final voting Luke got unanimous votes while CM, Ayiiia and Sarah all got votes (we saw Abe vote for Sarah, saying he just wanted to mess with his team a little, good work, she sucks). Thankfully Ayiiia went in. I don’t remember her being this awful on her season, but then again, it’s been so long that I don’t remember her season. For Blue, Katie got all the girl votes and something happened that’s never happened before: Blue had a tie between Ty and Easy. TJ told them that they need to go vote again and if they can’t change the votes, Luke gets to pick anyone from their team to go up against. We’re shown another voting montage that makes it seem like everyone’s keeping their same votes, but they don’t show Jenn or Derrick who both voted for Ty the first time around until after TJ reveals that Easy’s going in and then shows them voting for Easy instead. Hey Ty, you can feel happy now, but if you lose again, your next into the Gulag because there’s no way Johnny’s gonna let himself go in and I can’t imagine them voting for Derrick who, as I said, is probably their strongest player.

The drama continues with Red worrying about Camila’s relationship with Johnny. They, of course, think that this is Johnny’s way of playing a shady game. Brad and the Red team talk to Camila and tell her their concerns, she says she hasn’t told him anything and they haven’t even talked about Red. The next day Brad has a similar conversation with Johnny, telling him that him showing interest in Camila paints a target on her back. Johnny tells Brad that he said the same thing Camila, then Johnny tells the camera that an alliance like that would clearly benefit him, but what would it do for her? I’ve got two answers. She could be (for some ungodly reason) so dopesick in love with him that she’d start throwing challenges for him. The other is one that I’ve always wondered about in these games: payoffs later down the line. No one ever talks about it, but that has to have happened a time or two, right? You talk to someone who doesn’t look like they’ll make it far in the game, maybe a rookie, tell them that you’ll give them a few Gs if they take a fall and you win? Sure it’s risky, but most of these folks don’t get to the end, so it’s not a bad idea if you’re a not-so-good competitor.

The other pre-Gulag drama came about thanks to TJ showing up at the house hours before the main event. It’s funny because everyone comes to the door looking less-dressed than usual. Most of them look like they’re in their bathing suits, underwear or PJs. This was clearly a moment they didn’t expect to be filmed. So TJ calls Luke and Easy down and my mind starts racing. Why is it just the guys? Were they caught on tape making one of the deals I just mentioned? Nope, turns out they just both needed to shave their faces for the Gulag. This sends minds racing trying to figure out what the Gulag would be. They throw out everything from water and fire to bugs and leeches, but Dan had a pretty astute observation: “If it’s against the Geneva Convention, they’re probably not gonna makes us do it in a challenge.” That got a good laugh out of the missus and me.

Which, of course, brings us to the Gulag which looked like a pretty crazy torture device with platforms, pulleys, buckets and neck shackles (which looked a little too Amistad for my tastes). What’s with this season by the way? First a gas chamber now neck shackles? It’s just weird. Anyway, it turns out to be a three-round slapping fest called Swat. They start off with a thin yellow fly swatter and just slap each other for five minutes with each contestant being blindfolded. The second round was the same, but involved a heavier swatter. For the third, however, they were swatting each other with the same weapons from the previous round, but this time they have to hold up a bucket using a ring and the pulley system. Whoever lets the bucket fall first, loses. TJ didn’t reveal the final round until after the ladies–who went first–had gone through the first two. The girls took it a little easy on one another and it basically came down to the last round (duh) and Katie walked away with the win because Ayiiia is weak, sucks and deserved to get slapped for 15 minutes and then sent home. Kick rocks chick. The guys were a lot rougher on each other with Easy actually starting things off. They were swatting each other so hard that both walked away with beating red faces, but when it came down to the last round, Easy played it stupid and Luke played smart. Easy was still slapping hard and even told the camera that he had trouble focusing on both things, while Luke took it easy on the slapping and just focused on keeping the bucket up. Easy lost, which I should have realized earlier thanks to his face looking like he was getting over a sunburn throughout most of his interview sections this episode. With Blue and Gray both losing one player they stay about even as far as numbers are concerned while Red keeps a healthy lead. Red’s still got 9 players, which is so many that most of them didn’t even have screen time this episode. Their roster includes Brad, Tori, Chet, Dunbar, Brandon, Camila, Melinda and Paula (who looks pretty broke). Blue’s still got seven with Johnny, Jenn, Ty, Emily, Derrick, Theresa and Katie. Gray comes in with the fewest players (something they should have taken advantage of in today’s challenge, frankly) counting Abram, Cara Maria, Dan, Luke, Sarah and Laurel. My allegiance has definitely switched from Gray to Red (too many people to hate on that team), but I’d really be happy with anyone but Johnny winning.

The one thing that really surprised me about this episode was how entitled some of the newbies feel. I give Luke a lot of credit for volunteering himself again (he mentioned something like that last episode too). Laurel might have done well with Kenny last season coming in second, but that’s a completely different animal than this time around. If you’re an annoying pain in the ass who just sits in the middle performance-wise, then you’re painting a brighter target on your back. I get the feeling that Abe’s getting sick of Sarah’s laziness and her big mouth (I sure am). Theresa’s also bothering me, but I can’t think of a specific example why. I also think Ty needs to step up and prove himself OR get smart and get a few team members on his side to toss Johnny and make that dude prove himself. If Red keeps winning, that’s really going to winnow down Blue and Gray’s options.