Last week I went the live blog route when it came to the season premiere of The Challenge: Rivals II, but I think I’m going to go the play-by-play route tonight. The episode kicked off with a fun little maneuver by CT, Johnny, Theresa, Anastasia and someone else I missed all dressed ninjas throwing water balloons at the rest of the group who are sleeping in the air conditioned living room. This didn’t explode like you might have thought, but even more surprising was the fact that CT and Johnny did something together.

A big source of drama this episode came thanks to the Diem-CT-Anastasia love triangle. As we learn throughout the episode, CT basically wants Diem to tell the other girls like Anastasia to back off. He wants her to make it known that she wants to be with him. He’s basically playing games with her and using Anastasia to prove his point…and get his rocks off.

Actually, that leads to another point of conflict in the episode and one of two fights. CT’s in a room talking to a group of people including Derek, Trishelle, Frank and Knight. Frank and Trishelle tell him that Anastasia’s been telling people they slept together. CT says it’s hokum, but it doesn’t stop there. Frank starts getting in his face for some reason and a fight is pretty close to breaking out, though both CT and Frank tell the camera they know the game: punch someone, get sent home. Frank and CT start pushing back and forth and CT’s shirt gets ripped, but that’s about it because Knight decided to jump in and basically stop the whole thing by wrapping Frank up and bringing him to the floor. This tension ends with Johnny trying to talk his almost-in-tears partner down.

All of this brings us to the episode’s challenge, bawdily called The Triple X Games. But before getting into that, TJ Lavin reveals Cooke’s partner will be none other than Cara Maria. I figured it’d be Heather, the only other female she actually had problems with on her season. Instead, she got partnered with a person that apparently no one else on the cast likes. You guys, they didn’t even clap for her when she came out, it was crazy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a cavalcade of complaints about her thanks to a quick talking head montage.

The Triple X Games were broken up into two parts: Woody and Ball Gag. For the first, you and your partner are joined at the crotch with a saw and have to cut through a log. The winning team gets a five second head start with each subsequent team getting one. With the second part, one partner stands with the other one facing them, but upside down and attached to them. You’ve got to get up from a position on the ground, run through an obstacle course, pick a ball up off a stick, drop it down to the other play and pop that ball into an periscope-esque pipe sticking out of the ground.

Since it was a woman’s challenge day, the fellas went first. Right off the bat, Wes wound up quitting, so he and CT were disqualified. Wes and Preston wind up finishing first, but before the second round can begin, Preston says he doesn’t want to dangle in front of Knight’s junk and bails, so that’s one more team out. CT actually picks Knight up and runs a good deal of the course with the others until TJ tells them to bounce. Zach and Trey wind up winning and walking away with the money.

Then it was the ladies’ turn to see who would wind up avoiding elimination and who would be going straight to The Jungle. Nany and Jordan wind up finishing the Woody portion first, but the real treat here is watching Camila go at this thing like a cougar with her first stud and editing that with Jemmye talking about how ridiculous her partner is.

Even though they won a five second head start, Nany and Jonna can not get their poop together and actually stand up. This apparently wound up being a problem for Jessica and Anastasia AND Jemmye and Camila who wound up rolling over one another between obstacles in an effort to not come in last. It was basically a three-way battle for second to last with the rookies coming in last. Oh yeah, Emily and Paula won.

Before heading back to the house, CT drops a bombshell on the two teams of quitters: a penalty will be assessed at the beginning of the next challenge. BOOM. As far as I can remember, that’s never happened before. Back at the house, CT, Wes and Diem are talking about who the guys are going to vote in. Diem — who pretty much always plays safe/scared — wants to throw in newbies Cooke and Cara Maria because they’re new, but CT and Wes think it might make sense to ally themselves with a strong team like that who might stick around for a while and be able to help them with votes down the line.

Voting itself wound up being only slightly interesting, which tends to be the case in these early episodes when the rookies are still around. Most of the newer teams vote for newer teams, so Cooke and Cara Maria got sent in, but the surprise was that Trishelle and Sarah got two votes, mostly for popping off against CT earlier in the episode. So, that’s that, but afterwards Sarah tries to talk some sense into Trishelle, asking if she’s really there to compete, which apparently is the case.

At this point, the Anastasia-CT-Diem triable comes back into play when Theresa explains some of the history between CT and Diem to Anastasia who finally realizes she’s just a pawn. This plays out the next morning when CT comes into her room which sets her off. Anastasia slapped him several times, threw his glasses and kicked him in the butt. Once again Knight was there to stop someone from going after CT (does he think this will help him somehow? is he training for bodyguard school?). Ana lost it, but to be fair, CT just kept pushing her on purpose which isn’t cool.

With that, we’re at The Jungle which is called Hanging By A Thread. Both teams hang down from swings that are part of this large apparatus. While upside down they’ve got to cut through a super-thick rope with tiny hand saws, thus making the opposite team fall into the water. However, before getting to that, Anastasia has a minor medical freakout that sounds an awful lot like dehydration (shock upon shock considering how much wine flows in the house, right?). While waiting for her to get back in action Cooke actually pees into the water they’re supposed to fall into should they lose adding another reason for them to win.

Once the game actually starts, it seems like Cooke and Cara Maria have the lead because they’re attacking this thing from opposite sides. But, their intense movements have started them rocking which — if we believe the editing — allows Anastasia and Jessica to catch up a bit, but it winds up all being for naught. Team C cuts through the rope and we say goodbye to the ladies from Real World Portland. I don’t see these ladies as having anything close to a shot at these things down the line, but I bet we’ll see at least one of them again (a CT/Anastasia Battle Of The Exes team would be funny).

As one ill-conceived “love” dies by way of realization and poor sawing skills, another one between Sarah and Trey starts heating up back at the house. What starts as some couch flirting very quickly turns into shirt-off, straddling time in what they seem to think is a closet area without cameras, but are clearly mounted way up in the top corner.

All in all it was a pretty good episode, packed with all the kinds of craziness you expect from these things: fighting, “romance,” interpersonal drama, etc. The funny thing about this season is that I keep forgetting about some of the more fiery characters who don’t seem to be causing any trouble just yet. It’s still pretty early, but I expected Jasmine, Camila, Ty and Trey to get into it a little more by this point. Maybe next episode!