The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras Recap: Send Me an Angel

Each episode of The Challenge 40 plays homage to the show’s 26-year history with an intro clip of a famous moment from a past season. In some instances, they’ve foreshadowed a little too much about the upcoming episode, so this week, I wrongly believed we were getting teed up for an insane blindside when they showed Sarah betraying Bananas in Battle of The Exes II, a.k.a. Bananas’s villain origin story.

We’re deep into this milestone season, but it’s so far been largely unmemorable. The Bananas vs. Tori + Michele beef has felt overblown and performative, and Cara Maria’s face-off with Laurel was chopped up in a way that made it difficult to follow and was frankly too sad and ugly to be the type of The Challenge smackdown anyone would want to return to. “Congratulations, your dad owns a bakery!” on the other hand? Always hits.

When the challengers arrive at this week’s daily, deep in the Vietnam jungle, they’re surprised when trusty T.J. isn’t waiting in front of them to deliver his lines. As they wait, whispering amongst themselves, I’m half-expecting Cory to shout, “If T.J. doesn’t show up in the next fifteen minutes, we’re legally allowed to leave.” Then, the leaves rustle and T.J. pops out of a trap door in the ground, Night of the Living Dead style. The old T.J. would demand Michael Bay helicopter entrances to maintain his air of badassery, but the new Teej and his dad shirts have nothing to lose.

The challenge is called “Tight Quarters” and requires the players to shimmy underground into the historic Cu Chi Tunnels, which are claustrophobic, pitch black, and crawling with bats, rats, and fire ants. Navigating the tunnel system one at a time, they’ll find their way to a slide puzzle, collect a bag of blocks, and emerge back on the surface at the opposite end of the course, where they close things out with a block puzzle of T.J.’s handsome mug. Props to production for setting up a challenge that actually utilizes the host country in a creative way instead of just setting up shop in another generic field.

Tori is the first to brave the dark, shouting, “Think skinny thoughts!” on her way in. If you’ve got a Kim K. ass, there’s no hope for you — it’d be an automatic DQ. It’s so dark the players say you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, and the whole experience reminds me of playing Slenderman: The Eight Pages, where your flashlight slowly dies as a suited cryptid stalks you through the woods. The cast can hear Tori shrieking as bats dart in front of her, but she makes it back out into daylight without a scratch and dominates the block puzzle, starting the day off with a formidable time to beat.

If Tori is the current female face of The Challenge, her male counterpart, Bananas, fares far worse. He acknowledges that his puzzle incompetence has been his downfall this season, and while he makes it through the first one quickly — as most school children would — everything falls apart at the T.J. station. The Challenge gods have added a twist, making several of the block pieces double-sided. Bananas tries every possible combination, rants about how he has pieces for both a soft smile and a grin, and knocks the puzzle stand over when a delighted T.J. tells him he timed out. He was only in the tunnels for about eight minutes, so he can’t even use heat stroke or exhaustion as an excuse to mask his ineptitude.

Last place finisher Bananas is unable to protect his vulnerable angels, Jenny and Aviv, who are targets with Michele this week. That said, not even a Banana in shining armor could save Aviv from herself. After praying for a challenge that favors a Polly Pocket composition, luck is on her side, but her ability to race through the tunnels at warp speed like a roided-out rat ends up working to her detriment. She takes a wrong turn, pushing two sticks that formed an “X” out of the way and popping out more than a mile away from the course, disqualifying her and sending her straight into elimination.

Tori takes the win for the women, and for the men, at the top of the pyramid, once again, is Kyland. I like Kyland fine; he’s handsome and whatnot, but why is he on reality TV again? There’s no denying that this new guard of male challengers like Kyland and Horacio are exceptionally fit, great at challenges, and possess beautiful, Adonis-like abs, but unfortunately, they have limited star power. If you aren’t at least 25-percent toxic, your only televised competition appearances should be The Great British Baking Show or the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Kyland’s victory means Michele, the only person left in the game who’s made an effort to protect him, is safe, and Jenny will have to go against her fellow angel. Even better, Michele gets to celebrate her birthday unencumbered by the threat of getting pummeled to death by Jenny! Her friends Derek, Cara, and Tori throw her a surprise party that’s separate from the rest of the house, which is a wise move considering her animosity with the angels, who are pouting in their room and seeking solace in the fact that despite their ostracization, they still “have amazing feet.”

Since every birthday party on The Challenge has turned into an amateur drag show, Michele first enjoys a seductive private dance from Cara’s drag alter ego Karl, and is then escorted up to the bedroom, which is decked out in pink balloons and unicorn decorations. In a Challenge first, production has brought back her boyfriend, Devin, to surprise her! Just kidding, it’s Tori dressed as Devin, gyrating hypnotically on Michele’s bed. Living in a Challenge house would probably be insufferable 99.9 percent of the time, but I’m always charmed by the summer camp-style ways they finagle celebrations and for each other. So much more whimsical and memorable than a stilted 15-person sit-down dinner at one of those restaurants where a cheeseburger costs $27.

Once again, the Chamber meeting is brief and inconsequential, but Tori still takes the opportunity to make television. She asks Aviv and Jenny a hypothetical question: If it were up to Bananas, which of the two of them would they think he would save? Like the good cult member she is, Jenny leaps to Bananas’s defense, claiming that the three of them operate as a team, and she totally wouldn’t care at all if he chose Aviv over her. Just like in an open relationship, there’s always one person who’s unabashedly reaping the benefits and one person who’s in total dissociative denial.

Everyone files into the arena, where they’re met with a tall, triangular cage with a red ball sitting ominously in the middle (a.k.a. Cara’s typical Saturday night). If I were Aviv, I’d be promising Kyland the soul of my first-born child (or, I guess, maybe third or fourth-born, in her case) if he switched up on Michele. She and Jenny could not be less proportionally matched, but Jenny pretends that she’s not counting Aviv out in her pre-game interview to sound humble.

The players start on opposite ends of the triangle and must race for possession of the ten-pound ball. Once they have it, they’ll throw it outside of the cage, trying to land it in a slim rope circle that surrounds them to score a point — if it falls outside of that circle, it’s a dead ball, and they reset. The first person to two points wins.

Aviv knows that she’s not going to beat Jenny on defense, and will have to prioritize speed, but knowing something and executing something are two different beasts. Jenny is like the Demogorgon, and Aviv is regularly compared to a chihuahua, so it’s no surprise Aviv never even gets a chance to try to score.

It’s an obvious knockout for Jenny, winning 2-0. Tasked with picking targets, she chooses the three men available to her outside of beloved cult leader Bananas, selecting Jordan, Cory, and Derek. Aviv takes her loss in stride, having made an impressively deep run on her first Challenge in 18 years. Is FanDuel taking bets on who she left her Karma Points to?