Well, it was bound to happen. Enough of the fat has been cut away from The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons — possibly the fattiest cast in years if you really think about it — for things to start falling apart with the super alliance that was bound to fail from the beginning. I was actually surprised at who exactly got into fights, though.

Even more interesting to me, though, was the challenge itself. It was basically a mini version of a final challenge that combined memorization, strength, endurance, teamwork and composure. It’s no real surprise who did well when you take all that into account and it really showed the cracks that one particular team had been hiding, ignoring and avoiding. The pressure gets to you though. Anyway, I liked this episode, I like who won and I like who go thrown in. At this point, I’m rooting for Brooklyn as the underdogs and think they’ve got a pretty good shot. Good luck to them. Hit the jump for my live blog!They’re doing their own insane games. Looks like they’re actually having fun. Good call on Brooklyn’s part trying to get people to like them. Tricky.

CJ and Ashley are flirting. Interesting. Wonder if this will piss Zach off even though he’s with Jasmine.

Logged Out. Mountain trail with three checkpoints. First has an answer key, the second the log puzzle pieces and the third is where you put the puzzle together. Whole team has to stick together at all times.

Harder for two person teams because they can only carry one log at a time. But you also have fewer people to screw things up.

They all get to checkpoint one at the same time. The pieces are along the trail. Jeeze, it’s nine squares with lines and dots and all kinds of craziness.

San Diego splits it all up amongst themselves. Sarah tells Brooklyn to think of it like a clock, I thicken that’s a great call.

The logs have the whole pattern on them. There are more than 9 logs with pieces on them to chose from.

Sarah’s assembling the puzzle at checkpoint number 2 so they’ll save some time and effort going up and down.

They really do have to lug these things way up the hill. Everyone’s having a rough time with this.

San Diego an St. Thomas are going faster than Brooklyn.

Sam has trouble on the way up the second time. This does not sit well with Frank and Zach. Now they’re on their third round. Zach’s just yelling at her. What Frank and Zach doesn’t seem to understand is that if she fails, one of them is going home too.

Sam stops and says they’re not going to degrade them for a challenge. Good on her.

Cancun’s on their third set of logs too. New Orleans just seems to be powering through, which is impressive. Knight’s mostly worried about St. Thomas who’s also trucking.

“I’m just encouraging you, stop whining.” – Zach to Sam.

It’s between San Diego, Brooklyn and Cancun at this point for first. CJ didn’t realize there were three extra pieces. Now Cancun has to go back down and get the other three logs.

San Diego’s all yelling at Sam again for trying to remember the pieces.

Brooklyn got it! Boom! Good on ya Sarah.

I agree with Chet, this is the hardest challenge so far this season.

Vegas doesn’t have it, neither does San Diego. They’re all going back down to the first part.

CJ says he found the last piece they need it and will carry the log. Jasmine’s struggling hard, but Derek helps her up. They’re second.

Vegas gets back up from the first checkpoint, rearranges and gets it!

Now it’s San Diego and the two two person teams, right? Any time Ashley or Sam says anything to Frank or Zach, they get yelled at. They still get it so it’s down to St. Thomas and New Orleans. Marie’s throwing up.

Ooh, suspense. St. Thomas gets theirs together and TJ delays. We are then treated with a commercial. They got it! New Orleans is last. Let’s cut that cancer out already.

Let’s see how Brooklyn plays the game now. It’d be rad if they threw in San Diego. That would be huge, but I don’t think they’d get taken out by New Orleans and that has to be taken into account.

TJ makes a speech about how you treat people on your team while under pressure is important. True that my man.

Wow, they quickly decide to throw San Diego in. Easy peasy.

Now Frank’s yelling at Zach for not backing him up when he was trying to get Sam up the hill. Zach tells him he needs to chill. “I’ve been catering to your ego this entire Challenge.” – Zach to Frank.

At the throwing in ceremony Devyn gets up and says they’re throwing in San Diego because they’ve thrown them in so many times. Brooklyn gives them a Mental game. This might actually work for them. Or paint a bigger target on Brooklyn’s backs. Who knows.

Frank says he and Ashley are going in because they said they were going to. More fighting between Zach and Frank, I’m not even sure what they’re actually arguing about at this point. Sam says she doesn’t know what’s going on. Ashley said nothing (that we saw).

Frank’s crying saying it’s become a very personal game. A huge part of that is because of you dude!

Haha, CJ wrote Ashley a note. Jemmye and Marie found it and read it to Knight and some other people. Ashley just left it in the bathroom. Haha, Marie and Knight write him one back saying its from her. That is awesome.

Another San Diego meeting. Sam now says she thinks she should go in because they performed poorly. Now Frank doesn’t want to go in because Ashley’s not going in. Frank says that neither of the guys wants to go in because they don’t have faith in Sam. Apparently they agreed to tackle certain categories and now Frank’s weaseling out.

Zach says he’ll go in, but gives Frank shit for not living up to his word. They get in each others faces and we get a dramatic cut to commercial. I wonder if one of them hit the other, would there still be an Arena? There couldn’t be, right because then you’d have an uneven number of people and how would you decide which girl to send home if one of the guys did something stupid like that? Hmm. I’m sure they have an algorithm all figured out for this stuff.

Okay, so they didn’t decide who’s going in. Zach says he’s going to punch Frank if Brooklyn sends him in. Frank’s now talking to Sam trying to butter her up. She says her confidence is shot because of the fight. Sam says she can see through it. Yes, that’s because Frank is super freaking obvious.

Haha, it comes out that Ashley didn’t write the note. Marie and Jemmye are sitting right there when Derek reads it out loud. CJ doesn’t seem to mind. Good on him.

Arena time! We’ve got Jemmye and Sam, Knight and…awkward silence followed by a commercial break. We come back and they don’t make a decision so Brooklyn throws Zach in. I’m pretty surprised by this, it seems smarter to send Frank in as he’s not as strong.

Water Torture. This is the pulley system one where the girls have to do a puzzle while the dudes pull themselves into vats of water, then come out so the girls can recreate the puzzle.

I think I’ve seen clips of Zach in the “this season on The Challenge” thing, so this one won’t be too surprising. But, it seems like it might have driven a wedge between these team members.

Frank’s really cold about them not coming back.

Zach might actually be too tall to do this, of course Knight’s a joke, so this won’t matter.

Actually, Knight and Jemmye seem to be doing pretty well. Sam and Zach are arguing a lot. Sam gets Zach fired up and they start working well together.

They edited this so it’s really hard to tell where they’re each at. Both teams need the guys to go all the way down so the girls can get up to the top.

Sam gets it first. Zach comes out of the water saying he loves Sam and eff you to Frank. Peace out New Orleans, you had a free ride long enough. Still more fat to cut, but it’s getting down to the wire.

Zach tells the camera he’s going to go back to the house and make Frank’s life a living hell. This is interesting because Zach had nothing but praise for Frank on a recent episode of Ultimate Challenge Radio.

Cool, we need absolutely no more Knight anymore, we can all agree on this right?

Five teams left: Vegas, San Diego, Cancun, Brooklyn and St. Thomas.

Back at the house San Diego is together. Still tense. Frank’s saying whatever he thinks will help get Zach back on his side.

The next episode looks to have Frank seriously freaking out and everyone eating gross stuff. That’s one thing I knew would happen paired with something I never need to see on TV again. Interesting mix.