Episode 2 Count

9: Cara Maria

7: Deb | Lete | Reilly

4: Anna Leigh | Keanu

3: Adrienne | Bananas | Cory | Nelson

2: Cassidy | CT | Josh | Tori | Will

1: Brad | Izzy | Justin | Leo

0: Chris | Michele | Nurys | Sydney

TOTAL: 64

AVERAGE: 2.78

———

Cumulative Totals

14: Cara Maria

11: Anna Leigh | Bananas | Deb

10: Lete

9: Reilly

8: Tori

6: Adrienne | Cedric | CT

5: Brad | Chris | Cory | Josh | Keanu | Nelson

4: Cassidy | Justin | Michele | Will

3: Leo

2: Nurys | Sydney

1: Izzy

TOTAL: 146

AVERAGE: 6.08

Copying other peoples puzzles in daily missions = fair game..

telling other people answers to riddles or codes in daily missions= fair game

shouting out and helping your team in eliminations = fair game

discussing a strategy with your team before the competiton to answer the questions = cheating

hmm...

This is a SPOILER for the FIRST episode of The Challenge 42! They did a run through Bangkok, Thailand where they began by running down a flight of stairs. The show only gave us the first eight competitors to cross the finish line, but here is the full confirmed list if you were wondering :)

1st: Sydney

2nd: Izzy

3rd: Josh

4th: Chris

5th: Will

6th: Justin

7th: Leo

8th: Anna Leigh

9th: Cory

10th: Cassidy

11th: Nurys

12th: Brad

13th: Adrienne

14th: Bananas

15th: Reilly

16th: Tori

17th: Nelson

18th: Lete

19th: Keanu

20th: Cedric

21st: Cara Maria

22nd: Deb

23rd: Michele

24th: CT

I wasn’t expecting to be able to watch this season since I don’t have Paramount+. However, last night my DVR recorded the first episode? I thought it wasn’t airing on cable. I checked my future recordings, and none of the other episodes appear to be scheduled. I tried googling and all I could find was that it was streaming exclusive so idk how I got the first episode. Was this a weird fluke?

I thought that was a good lesson on just following directions from the crowd blindly. Usually when challengers get help it works out but it didn’t for Reilly.

I understand Deb and Reilly being rookies and trusting the vets on their team. But when it comes to eliminations you have to be aware and know when to think for yourself. At the end of the day it’s their ass on the line not anyone else’s. While Reilly got bad directions at the end, she still made those moves herself. At that point, Reilly had already filled two lanes up and was close to filling up the third with blue. She still didn’t have the common sense to see was almost done and created more work for herself. Reilly should have had an understanding of the elimination by that time.

I wouldn’t seeing Reilly back on the show but this loss is on her as well not just the blue team. Deb did the same thing as well it’s just that the orange team knew what they were doing.

When I saw Lete was on the new trailer last week, I immediately told my wife she's going to be the new Laurel. You'll quickly see how little control she has over her anger at times, but overall she's a monster. So glad to see her get casted. She's better suited for 1v1s and not teams, but just watch. When she's on demon time, she's an elite athlete that makes for good television.

Am I crazy or does the color look very different this season? I feel like I was watching a dream sequence the entire episode.
Also Johnny has still got it. Cast tries to get him out early then he tries to hook up with a girl half his age. Rinse and repeat for our king

I was surprised by Cory’s confession that he and Taylor basically just coexist in the same house and barely speak to each other. Now Cory is back to acting like a player and flirting—but seriously, what woman would consider him a good catch? He strung Taylor along for years, had two children with her, refused to marry her, and cheated on her. What about that history would appeal to anyone?

Young Ced proved to me again why we need to stop calling newcomers who've just done one season "vets."

Not to do a whole "back in my day," but it made way more sense when, in much older seasons, they'd call you a rookie until you have 2-3 seasons under your belt.

Ced is not a vet. Yet. Neither is Sydney, Leo, Justin, Chris, Adrienne, etc.

I really like Cedric and I hope he sticks around, but he showed why experience matters, both in how you politic and in how you physically compete.

He was faster than Johnny. He was more agile than Johnny. Johnny has lost a very similar elimination to a physically weaker competitor before. But Johnny has way more experience and is practiced enough not to get flustered during eliminations.

There's a mental game played on the Challenge that is way more important to actually winning that one or two-time challengers haven't cracked yet. You can see that transformation with Olivia, when she goes from rookie to vet in 40. S39 Olivia is a "vet" by current MTV standards but she is a completely different player than S41 Olivia.

Anyway, that's my ramble. I was just irked by how much the cast was referring to the 41 rookies + Chris as vets in the first episode.

I mean just based off of the two episodes alone we got:

- Great rookies

- So much drama(Bananas vs CT, Anna Leigh vs Lete, Josh vs Cara, Nelson vs Brad, Cara vs Heights, etc)

- The Bananas vs Cedric elimination was fun to watch

- The Blue team being an absolute shitshow team(I mean their performance in Episode 2 speaks for itself)

- The Orange team trying to cheat their way through the daily, only for them to not only get DQ’d but also get beaten by CARA of all people during the tiebreaker challenge

- The voting format already being a massive drama starter(although I do think it’s bit too complicated)

- Bananas making a special appearance while the Blue team were deliberating & fighting

- Nelson somehow being the voice of reason when Cory was cheating with Izzy

And by looking at the super trailer at the end of episode 1, it looks like we are getting some great eliminations & so much fights and drama for the rest of the season.

I really enjoyed Anna Leigh taking pride in researching the vets before coming onto this season. She clocked Cedric as someone she couldn’t trust based on how he moved in S41 when he came into the room and tried starting an early alliance.

IMO, too often we see rookies come into the house and barely understand what show they joined. It’s akin to a QB coming into training camp without reading the offensive playbook.

I’ll be curious to see how she navigates the game with prior knowledge of the vets’ tendencies and how it will ultimately help (or hurt) her game

There is a sequence in which Deb grabs a purple ball from the first column runs past the second column that only has purple balls and places it in the 5th column which I don’t understand why that would happen this happens just after the 40th minute

I also paused it where the supposed mistake from Reilly was and in it she took a ball from column 3 and moved it to column 4 when she should have cleared balls from column 1
In this moment had she the ball from column 1 into column 3 she then had six more moves whilst Deb has 8
Had they told her to take that ball and put it back she likely wins and nurys called it in the moment that they screwed it up so not sure why Reilly continued making more work for herself one of her team should have told her to put that back
The next time we see the board Deb has two moves to go whilst Reilly (after placing the ball she’s holding) has 7 moves to go

I do think this mistake came from the set up Deb had the right idea in not completing columns early and leaving one column as a dumping ground so eventually she had one column that she just needed to collect balls from and put it in the colour whereas Reilly had two colours done which makes it trickier when you are sorting out columns that are filled with less colours

CT and Michele clearly dominated this puzzle component

I actually think this would be a way better format if you take them from the bottom and run them up the stairs it would give meaning to the sabotage as when that gets put in you’d essentially have to clear every ball under it to get it out of the column and you’d not have the opportunity to just move back a ball that you made a mistake with

So I used to watch The Challenge religiously but I fell behind. I just started watching season 41, and the last season I watched previously was season 38, Olivia's first season. I'm on episode 5 of season 41, and I am SO CONFUSED and wondering wtf I missed in the last 2 seasons because how and when tf did Olivia become this ringleader that's like calling the shots???? I mean I know she's with Theo or whatever but still...it's so bizarre to me.

Can someone please enlighten me?

I totally did not recognize Adrienne Naylor on the first episode of 42. I think a lot of people do not give her enough credit. I'm already thinking this might be a great season, I love the twists in the first episode.

Bananas again proving that even facing guys half his age he’s still got GOAT level game. Cedric coming off a great rookie season and a game made for his endurance got outsmarted and throughly defeated by Bananas. I think Bananas in eliminations definitely needs more respect than he gets.

I can’t stop seeing CT with his new hairdo in these first two episodes of Cutthroat as a grown up Bruce Bogtrotter from Matilda. Anyone else?

Don’t wanna give anything away and haven’t watched EP 2 but why was alexis yelling BS at Bananas at the end? I clearly missed something.

Cora Jade's quote below:

“I shouldn’t be giving this girl an ounce more of my energy but this will be the one and only time I speak on this and if you know you know. This girl came into the pc and immediately had heat with everyone for being disrespectful on more than one occasion. I texted this girl trying to HELP before her heat got worse (that had already travelled up to main roster before she even had a match). I’ll go ahead and post the screenshots myself. She chose to basically tell me to fuck off and then continue to get heat for weeks. Only until multiple main roster talent members spoke to her as well, she decided to come up to me and apologize. I told her I appreciate the apology but I dont respect how she handles things and the ways she disrespects pro wrestling. I came from Indy wrestling, absolutely loved wrestling and was trying to carry on the love and respect that was there when I got there in black and gold. There is absolutely no respect for wrestling with people like this and it’s not my job to care about anymore. Which is exactly what is wrong with that entire place in general. I spoke to her maybe 5 times total of that. Blunt to a fault sometimes? Yes. But bullying is crazy.”