Well, tonight’s episode of The Challenge: Rivals had a few surprises, but nothing particularly interesting. Actually, the team that lost the challenge was kind of surprising and that fact that a certain someone didn’t punch someone else and get sent home. Oh and I was surprised that one cast member wound up sticking up for themselves pretty hardcore. But that’s about it, except for a break-up of sorts. Okay, I guess it was kind of surprising. Hit the jump to find out the specifics. We start off with something of a relationship review. Everyone’s rooting for Mike and Paula to get together and facilitating their tomfoolery. Wes talks about Mandi’s virtues explaining that she’s not really down to earth, but she’s the most down to earth person in the house. Then there’s some more Laurel/CT flirting of which the rest of the house can’t seem to talk about. Johnny says that Laurel came into the house with an iron clad alliance with them, but is jeopardizing that by getting with CT. He also says that CT is more manipulative than anyone in the Boy Alliance (which they call The Mob) which is a real howler. Why don’t you ask Paula how well those boys play the game and take care of their friends.Somewhere around this point in the episode I realized that I had been thinking about the finale incorrectly. See, I thought that three  teams total were going to make it into the finale, when it’s actually three teams of each sex. I’ve been doing a lot of trash talking as far as how lame the contestants have been when it comes to strategy, but I guess barnacling themselves to the USS Boy Alliance worked out for some people.

The night before the challenge, Wes and Kenny sit down to figure out the order, knowing that it’s going to make some people mad. In a surprising move, they actually talked to the girls about who’s going to get put where in the order. During the discussion, Johnny points out that Laurel’s been fraternizing with the enemy to which Cara Maria very level headedly responds that she’s not the only one, that Jenn’s been hooking up with Adam (CT’s partner). This argument doesn’t gain much traction with anyone except Jenn who, of course, gets angry even though it’s true. As it turns out the order doesn’t matter for the game known as Sawed Off. Instead of picking the order, that last two winning teams were made captains. The larger teams wound up being Kenny and Wes, Paula and Ev, Tyler and Johnny and Jonna and Jasmine against Cara Maria and Laurel, Jenn and Mandi, Mike and Leroy and CT and Adam. The game itself involves one member of the pair being hung up in the air over the water and the other spraying them with a fire hose. They’re hanging by ropes and the point is to push them backwards into a blade, which cuts the ropes. The team that had the best time won. The slowest female pair on the losing team automatically gets sent to the Jungle while the best female team on the winning team is safe and automatically goes to the finale. Oh, all of this has to be done in 20 minutes.

The first team up has Mandi, Adam, Cara Maria and Mike getting sprayed by Jenn, CT, Laurel and Leroy. CT gets Adam quick because he’s wriggling back and forth over the blade. Mike’s not too far behind. Jenn eventually gets Mandi down which leave Laurel blasting away at Cara Maria who tells the camera it’s impossible for her to see or know what’s going on with all that water smashing her in the face and spinning around. CT tries to offer help, but Laurel doesn’t really seem to be listening, which makes him think that the Boys Alliance told her not to talk to him and she listened. I’m certain there’s a lot more to this that wasn’t shown on TV, but it came off as very strange and out-of-nowhere while watching. She probably should have listened because Laurel never knocked Cara Maria down and they got DQed. Then you’ve got Wes, Jasmine, Tyler and Paula are getting sprayed by Kenny, Jonna, Johnny and Ev. Basically, all they have to do is get everyone down and they automatically win. Johnny gets Tyler down with a quickness. Jasmine and Paula start swinging back and forth which winds up working much better for Paula as she’s not too far behind Tyler. After that, there was a few minutes where it looked like Wes and Kenny were going to fail again right alongside Jasmine and Jonna. There was so much spraying and spinning and grimacing worrying, but in the end, they both fell and that team won which meant that Laurel and Cara Maria were definitely going into The Jungle. Johnny and Tyler won their third challenge and Paula and Ev won all around, which made them safe. So, that meant it was between Jenn and Mandi and Jonna and Jasmine to also go into The Jungle.On the bus ride back to the house Cara Maria and Laurel start talking about trying to get other people to vote in Jenn and Mandi, who have never gone into The Jungle. Cara Maria points out that Jenn has this tendency to coast into the end without proving herself. I checked out the Wiki page and that may be true, but in five Challenges before this one, she’s never won. I’m guessing they keep her around because she’s fun and not really a contender. By talking about all this on the bus, they tipped their hand with Wes and Jenn getting wind of the plan. Of course, Jenn just talked smack, but didn’t do anything. I didn’t get why Wes got so mad about all this at first, but then remembered he’s hooking up with Mandi. Still, Wes hasn’t been nearly enough of a trouble maker this season.

Back at the house, Laurel explains to Jonna and Jasmine that it’s basically in their best interest to try and get other teams to vote for Jenn and Mandi and encourages them to talk to CT about it. That happens, but CT’s still pissed at Laurel who comes in and explains that no one told her not to talk to him and that if they did, she wouldn’t listen anyway. Again, I think something else must have happened because CT flipped on her like Two-Face’s coin. Mandi hears about this and goes to yell at Cara Maria because I guess they’re friends and she doesn’t want to go home right before the finale. I guess it sunk in because, after TJ comes and asks for the vote, Cara Maria tells the group that they don’t want to go against what they said before which means it’s Jonna and Jasmine going in.

We then immediately move to a club scene where Jenn is trying to dance sexy all up on Adam and talking about how she likes him, which is strange because two episodes back she told her friends that she only hooked up with him because she was plastered. Wes threatens to use his moves on Mandi which we don’t see. And then Cara Maria’s sitting off by herself sulking because she misses Abe (I’m really glad they’re still together). Johnny goes over to ask what’s up. I can’t tell if he’s being a dick or trying to throw her off her game or is genuinely concerned or just drunk and bored. Probably all of the above. Anyway, she once again points out the hypocrisy of wanting to throw Laurel in for being with CT when Jenn’s “sleeping with” Adam. Somehow (*coughproducerscough*) Jenn hears her say this across a somewhat crowded and definitely noisy club and gets all upset because she’s only been kissing Adam or whatever. Now, I know that “sleeping with” means “have dirty Challenge sex” to some, but it also quite literally means “sleeping in the same bed” which we’ve all seen her do on several occasions. There’s lots of yelling on Jenn’s part as she’s all up in Cara Maria’s grill. CM doesn’t necessarily back down, but she’s also not really getting into it with her. Eventually they’re separated with Adam calming Jenn down and then CT yelling at Cara Maria for some reason. I couldn’t hear what he was saying and have no idea why he got so nasty towards her (does he forget that NO ONE in this game likes him at this point?) but that’s what happened. I really thought Jenn’s hotheadedness would make her punch CM, which would have been perfect and interesting, but it didn’t happen. Back at the house Cara Maria and Laurel have a nice talk about having each others’ backs. Teamwork!

The next day, Jenn gets up, walks into the kitchen and immediately starts talking shit about Cara Maria. I know they don’t have a lot else going on, but really? This is what you talk about? I guess that’s what I did in college or my bar-going days, talk about the craziness that happened the night before. The difference being that if I did something stupid, I felt bad and apologized whereas Jenn must be perfect and infallible. Good for her. Feeling really down, Cara Maria calls Abe and gets all psyched, so she goes into the kitchen where Jenn is STILL talking shit and gets in her grill a little bit. Nothing physical, but she’s not backing down, gets a really good smirk on her face and gets a few good digs in while Jenn has nothing. What a chump, why do people like her, especially after she said that she has “status” and CM doesn’t. Does “just being around” give you status?Before The Jungle, everyone in the house puts on blue shirts to support Jonna and Jasmine. Laurel and CM are feeling pretty bummed about the whole thing. Actually Ev where black and after talking with Laurel and CM, Kenny changes into black, a surprising move I must say. There wasn’t a single moment where I thought that Jonna and Jasmine would beat Laurel and Cara Maria, they might have come back from a few Jungles, but they didn’t go against anyone as good or strong as those two.

For the first time this season, they reused a Jungle, going back to Blast Off, which wound up sending Davis and Tyrie home. Is it really so hard to come up with the same number of Jungle challenges as there are episodes? Survivor does this every year and you started before them. Anyway, Blast Off ties the two teammates together and tells them to smash into their opponents until they get pushed out of a ring sumo-style. I’m not going to dance around the obvious, Laurel and Cara Maria steamroll Jonna and Jasmine, sending them home. Even if the event was so obviously in favor of one team, I think all the people rooting for the other team just added fuel to Laurel’s fire and it would have been difficult for them to get beaten in any kind of challenge. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to the Boy Alliance who came back. They’ve already got their situation sewn up pretty well, especially if CT and Adam lose or at least don’t win. However, it will be interesting to see what happens if Johnny and Tyler or Kenny and Wes wind up losing. At that point, it would be in everyone’s best interest to get rid of them, right? I know they’ve been saving Mike and Leroy to use as cannon fodder, but if CT and Adam win, that will make for some interesting voting. I’d also be curious to see how Jenn would vote if CT and Adam were up for being thrown in. She gave Mandi shit for not wanting to put CT at the top of a rotation when they were still fooling around, but what would it be like if the tables were turned?

I guess we’ll see next episode as, at the end of this one, they got a message that they’re flying 3000 miles to Argentina. Everyone but Cara Maria is losing their shit with happiness about this. I’m with her because this just seems bad for everyone involved. Traveling all that time right before a finale won’t be good for anyone and it’s not like they’ll be sight seeing. But there’s no telling anyone that as they’re bouncing around and shouting. The “next time on” ad at the end looked pretty great and also included a lot of moments I remembered from the original trailer like CT yelling “Got off of me all of you!” and some stuff on a mountain. Should be fun.