Wow, you guys. I’ve watched more seasons of The Challenge than I can count and I’ve never seen one with such wildly stupid voting as this one. Of course, it’s far too early to get into that just yet, so let’s hop right in. The top of the show featured two interesting bits of news. First off, Leroy and Theresa are hooking up. Not a big deal in and of itself, but they do it right over Wes who hooked up with Theresa on Fresh Meat II. Because of this, Wes changes rooms, so Johnny creates a Wes effigy and people write silly things on it like “Low Self Esteem,” a hilarious statement when you think about it. Still, this causes some tension between Wes and Leroy, Leroy thinks Wes needs to be a man and talk things out, but Wes has the best line. “Leroy’s a trash man, he’s used to picking up another man’s garbage.”

Later, Zach talked to his mom and found out that his sister had a baby. Everyone was good and healthy, but he was getting weird and angry. He was also feeling sick which lead to a bit of a tantrum on Zach’s part where he yelled at people and slammed the door on one of the camera man. In a strange move, Knight sidled up to him and instigated him into doing stupid crap like breaking things instead of doing what Frank suggested and going inside to wait for the doctors (who didn’t really find anything wrong with him, by the way).

With the shenanigans over, it was time for the challenge. It was a pretty good one called Frog Smash where one team has to try and run across a beam 30 feet over the water while all the others are in these large swings trying to knock them off. You’ve also got to stay within two swings of your partner during the process.

It was a men’s day, so the ladies go first. Cooke and Cara Maria go up first with the former making it and the latter falling. There’s some kind of alliance between Cooke and Cara Maria, Nany and Jonna and Jasmine and Theresa, so they talk about not swinging on each other. Diem and Aneesa doesn’t know this and also decide to let them run across. So, absolutely no one swings on Jasmine and Theresa so they make it across with a quickness. When Paula and Emily go, Paula falls and Emily winds up running right off the end which doesn’t count as making it. Diem also falls pretty quickly, but Aneesa makes it and holds on. Camila books across followed by Jemmye, but not close enough. Finally, Nany falls off just from looking at someone swinging in her general direction.

For the guys, Trey and Zach are up first. Zach falls up a few steps from the starting line, Zach does better but still falls about two swings from the end. Leroy does an amazing save, slipping at one point, grabbing onto a nearby rope and pulling himself back up…only to fall off the other side. Ty does his own gymnastics moves to get to the end only to run right off at the very end. Marlon and Jordan both make it, but Jordan was way out in front. There’s talk of letting Knight and Preston through. Zach and Trey make a deal with Johnny and Frank to swing on Knight and Preston in an effort to make them have a worse time than Zach and Trey. Preston falls and Knight makes his way across only to fall off at the very end. This is more important because Zach’s pissed at Johnny for not keeping their deal. No one swings on CT and Wes, so they have a nice stroll. At the end it’s Frank and Johnny who only get swung at by a few teams and both make it.

TJ explains after the festivities that  Camila and Jemmye would have won, but Camila went way out ahead of her partner, so the win actually went to Theresa and Jasmine. For the guys, Trey and Zach were the clear losers while Wes and CT had the obvious best time. Once again, I’m a little bummed that the set up of this game means that the winners actually play no role in the rest of the episode. It’s like getting the most excited about the Bronze Metal basketball game at the Olympics instead of the Gold/Silver match.

As far as vote talk goes, Zach tells Frank point blank that he doesn’t trust Johnny and wants him gone. When Frank points out to him that that means he’d go too, Zach tells him that he doesn’t care. Oddly, later when he’s talking to one of the women, Zach says he doesn’t want Knight and Preston thrown in because Knight’s his pal. Huh?

Earlier in the episode, before the challenge, Diem and Wes had a little chat about voting Leroy and Ty into the Jungle. Wes had his reasons while Diem understood that there were basically four teams ahead of hers that they had relationships with.

All of which brings us to the stupidest round of voting I’ve ever seen in the history of The Challenge. Seriously, you guys. This is bonkers. Theresa and Jasmine vote first. Theresa explains to the camera that she’s going to vote for Leroy and Ty. Yes, the chick votes for the dude she’s sleeping with. So then Cooke and Cara Maria are up and they vote for Frank and Johnny because that’s what Zach said he wants. Camila and Jemmye then vote for Marlon and Jordan because they’re rookies (and a safe vote at this point). Nany and Jonna go for Leroy and Ty because they think the next two teams are going to vote differently. They apparently don’t know that Diem already talked to Wes, so she votes for Leroy and Ty, seemingly against Aneesa’s wishes. At this point, it’s over because Leroy and Ty have three votes to every other teams’ one. Emily and Paula vote for Knight and Preston and completely avoid being the bad girls.

Bang. So, because Theresa doesn’t understand the nature of this kind of voting (it’s like dominos many times, one vote leading into another) and because she comes off as a generally foolish person, she winds up helping to send in her bang buddy. Of course, she can’t take responsibility for any of this and starts going around telling others that they screwed up, including Diem. Diem says she stuck to her plan and isn’t there to fix others’ mistakes. True that, Diem. Meanwhile, Wes and CT are practically falling all over themselves laughing at this. I’m with them, it’s hilarious.

The Jungle is called Break On Through. There’s two three-story towers each with a section you can break through using a particular tool. You’ve got to take turns breaking through the barrier, get down to the ground, smash through a door and then ring a bell. Ty and Trey are assigned to go first, but as my wife pointed out, Zach smashes through the first thing and then cuts through a barbed wire barrier before Trey can smash through a glass one. Leroy has a lot of trouble getting through the wire, but they both wind up on the ground floor going at the door at the same time. It looks pretty close, but then, BAMMO, Zach and Trey ring the bell.

In a fit of crazy-person rage, Zach yells things and throws his helmet at the crowd, nearly hitting Jordan in the face. When TJ gets everyone calmed down, he lines the contestants up and says that Zach and Trey clearly got through first, but…commercial. When we come back, he points out what my wife noted about Zach. Essentially he broke the rules and that’s that, they’re actually getting sent home. Zach tells him he’s wrong, but the leave anyway. It still happened, though, we saw it on the tape.

So that’s what happened, gang. It was a wild episode packed with craziness. Leroy hooked up with Theresa again before the end of the episode and already said he forgave everyone, but there’s still got to be some bad blood between them and Diem. Theresa’s still pissed at her for sure, so now she and Aneesa have at least one male team looking to take them out. There’s also going to be some more beef between Wes and Leroy potentially.

There are three things that surprise me about this season. First, the rivals don’t seem to dislike each other very much at this point. Aside from comments made to camera, the actual title of the show doesn’t seem to be coming into play very often. Second, some of the biggest powder kegs on the season haven’t blown up. Wes is generally keeping his cool. CT is too. So is Paula. What’s happening?! Looks like things are set to go up later in the season — I’m particularly interested in what looks like CT jumping in to defend Wes after Johnny pushes him — but at this point, things are relatively tame. Lastly, there is still an obscene amount of fat to cut when it comes to these teams. Guys, Knight and Preston are still there. So are Jonna and Nany. What is happening?!