- MTV always airs at least a couple army recruitment ads during these The Challenge shows. It seems dangerous to pair them with this series, like some suggestible youth might start associating joining the military with extreme sports and fameballing.
- The opening moments seem like an Apocalypse Now reference, a disorienting haze of desperation, violence and shots from the jungle's perspective. There are jagged, blinking snippets of old scenes featuring old beefs (ew, right? Old beef could be a starting point for designing a challenge. In an MTV production office right now, a spry intern might be saying "So...there are these vats of old beef, you with me so far? And then we force them to...")
-I can't help but get the feeling that these Incident Flashbacks are supposed to feel like PTSD. (PTSD is sexy, kids, Yvan eht Nioj)
-There are zooming noises and haunted house feeling voice-overs that trail off into excessive echoes like how cartoon ghosts speak.
- The Rivals font appears to have been sculpted out of ancient stones and then beaten to a pulp. It looks like it needs crutches. If cavemen could have designed fonts, this is the font the most emotionally disturbed caveman would have designed.
- Laurel's bloodless personality frightens me. She's one of those carved of wood women you might find in a Steinbeck novel, out-stoic-ing everyone for decades.
- Cara Maria, a carnival of hair color and accessories notes that she feels judged a lot. Astute!
- If you take away Sarah's tattoo sleeve and aggressively asymmetrical hair, she's basically Mandy Moore, no? Her Incident Flashback is just her giving someone a pointed talking-to.
-Adam, originally from The Real World: Paris (8 (!) years ago), is in his thirties...just putting that out there. He was on The Real World so long ago that his season was part of what I like to think of as "old world" Real world, from an age when cast members would harbor shy crushes on each other for weeks and have, like, conversations about ideas. In Paris! Imagine two characters chatting over a mug of hot chocolate and a baguette juxtaposed with the non-stop shrieking game of grab ass the show is now.
-Evelyn seems like an anime character (I don't really know what I'm talking about with that). She's got a kind of shy/coy smile and almost looks bookish, like she might have gone to science camp most summers and read a lot about Greek mythology as a kid but you just know she would and will tear your f#@#$%^& head off.
-The Most Awkward Shill Award has always gone (and always will go) to The Smart Phone Shill. The cast members must proclaim the long, complicated names and models of their phones before reading challenge announcements. This has been distracting for years, but, of course, it's meant to be so it's also been successful for years.
-I can't think of anything more boring for you to read than an actual recap of the game portion of the show. Let's say it was sufficiently entertaining.
-On the van everything has a teen summer travel program vibe. Laurel is journaling, maybe writing a letter home. Ah, no, she's calculating strategies of destruction.
-Tyler: "If you feel that there's a bandwagon going on, you just jump right on and you go with it." Right? (no.)
- Ain't no party like a fame whore party 'cause a fame whore party is a savage, nightmarish catastrophe.
-The traditional first night binge drinking is capped off by the traditional drunken melee. Ty manically baits people and Adam dissociates when he's drunk and becomes a fightingbot. It's kind of hilarious/depressing that Adam cannot help himself but get kicked off these shows. When he says he was hoping to make it to the end, he doesn't mean to win the games, he means to win the battle against his own enormous need to self-destruct. And even though he knows he isn't capable of not acting out, he still "hoped" he would be, not by actively changing his behavior, or even considering his behavior, just by idly hoping. Isn't that the saddest?
-I find it fascinating how the different characters react when fights break out. Note who dives into the swirling torrent and involves themselves, who shies away, who tries to break it up. Wonder about their pasts as evidenced by these reactions.
[Image via mtv.com]
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