Former Big Brother alum and The Challenge: Final Reckoning cast member Paul Calafiore will be blogging exclusive with Us Weekly each week, sharing his opinion and what really went down.
Another week means another raw recap from your new favorite Challenger! This episode began with a poolside discussion with the Lavender Ladies plus Marie whose LL cards has been revoked for the time being. The reason for this is simple: Cara is her partner and is the only person attached to Bananas and Tony, a.k.a. public enemy No. 1. This is a perfect example where, in the game, you have to look at a conversation for exactly what it is rather than what you want it to be due to personal relationships.
Looking at a conversation for what it is: Shane, Ashley and Sylvia are telling you that you’re going in because all their teams are made up of not only the LL alliance, but also the TYB alliance.
Looking at a conversation for what you want it to be: Shane, Ashley and Sylvia will save you because of your relationships in past games and real life. Unfortunately for Marie, they want Johnny, but will settle for Cara if given the chance.
Challenge Time
This Challenge was one of those situations where everyone knew exactly what was about to go down. For Johnny and Tony, it was guaranteed that if they didn’t win this challenge they’d be going into elimination. For Cara and Marie, it was the same … unless Johnny and Tony also lost. At least in these types of scenarios you know exactly what the deal is when it’s all over, which gives a significant mental advantage going into eliminations.
Although Shane and Nelson were close on this one, Johnny and Tony yet again pulled through with a HUGE victory for themselves. Was there a lot of jeers and distractions going on? Yes, but for all you new people watching The Challenge, this is comparable to what the JEK (Led by Bananas) alliance used to do back in the day, only their victims usually didn’t pull through and win. Even though the LL/TYB alliance took a page out of Johnny’s book, it didn’t stop him and Tony from grabbing the W. Hats off to them. Marie and Cara definitely seemed to have their backs against the wall now because they were the last team attached to Johnny and Tony.
Heads Up
On to this head butting incident. For those of you who don’t know Marie, she has this excellent skill of being able to push people’s buttons. She even said herself that she doesn’t burn bridges, she drops bombs on them. It’s actually pretty amazing because even though you may know this about Marie, she’s still able to get the reaction she’s looking for out of you.
Now I’ll say this, Marie would definitely f—k someone up in a fight. However, Sylvia would not only f—k someone up in a fight, she’d snatch their souls while she was at it. It’s simple to see this just by looking at her eyes: the woman has no fear of anything or anyone. So Marie was either brave as hell or crazy as hell (probably a combo of the two) for looking to provoke her, unless it was her plan all along to try and get Sylvia and Joss sent home in order to perhaps skip the elimination. If that’s the case, I can also add that she has a touch of brilliance to her. Avoid a guaranteed elimination and send a strong team home? Seems like a win/win right there!
The episode ended with Cara and Marie calling out Shane and Nelson in elimination, which either means Johnny and Tony are losing another number or weakening their enemies’ numbers. Props to Cara and Marie with swinging for the fences here.
Redemption House Woes
Before we wrap, I just wanted to give a quick little peak into the Redemption House: I’m clearly upset that Jozea and Da’Vonne are here because this whole time we were been working a social game that could eventually allow us both to be in the Main House at the same time. Aside from that, it’s not bad to have at least one number. At this point Natalie and I had zero teams that wanted to pick us, so we needed to change our social strategy in order to have any chance of this happening. Finding out Cory and Devin came in as Mercenaries was an excellent piece of information to have considering the majority of the Redemption House is now made up of Johnny’s allies.
The Challenge: Final Reckoning airs on MTV Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
