S02.E08: Independence Day

[AntFTW]

Quote

The game takes a dramatic turn when TJ announces that teams are no more, strategy shifts for several players, and a shocking draw from the hopper forces two ride-or-die allies to go head-to-head in one of the most grueling eliminations yet.

Air date: September 7, 2023

[AntFTW]

Who comes up with these torture chamber types of elimination games? 😂

I liked the daily challenge. It was good.

[erikaelvis]

Tori:  its not a dating show it the challenge.

Tyler: im gonna sacrifice my game for alyssa. 

hahahaha  Why come on the show?!

[Lamima]

And, yet again, Tori and Nanas come out roses. All the way around, even when her eyebrows BF gets loaded in thr hopper. Nope, it pulls Monte. 

I wish the show would have stop clocks running next to the finish so when he blows horn we see the times. I feel like they have liberty to fudge the numbers.

Edited September 8, 2023 by Lamima

[DEL901]

1 hour ago, erikaelvis said:

Tori:  its not a dating show it the challenge.

Tyler: im gonna sacrifice my game for alyssa. 

hahahaha  Why come on the show?!

But it worked out so well for Tyler last time.   2nd place to Kaycee and a 4 year engagement.

[luckyroll3]

I was laughing so hard at the BB and Survivor players during the daily. "Why won't [insert person's name here] share the answers?!?" 

What don't they get about this being an individual game? Also, to stay out of the hopper, you gotta actually win. This has been the only valuable lesson to come out of Johnny's mouth over his 1063 seasons.

And Tori's BF trying to "figure out the mystery" of how we got so many votes. Really dude? You can't piece that together? 

That elimination looked hard as hell though!

[aghst]

16 hours ago, AntFTW said:

Who comes up with these torture chamber types of elimination games? 😂

I liked the daily challenge. It was good.

Daily was good but it was a big advantage to have seen and done similar challenges before.

I don’t know if BB or Survivor has tasks requiring a lot of swimming and diving?  Bananas trained to dive in anticipation of challenges like this one and Wes has a competitive swimming background.  Monte couldn’t even submerge for a couple of seconds.

Then being good with puzzles, that is how Bananas and Tori won.  Wes could have beaten Johnny but he couldn’t figure out dances and he was beaten by Tori, who was also faster than Bananas, even though Wes got to the cave first.

The Elimination wasn’t physically demanding though it’s probably emotionally taxing.

Monte has a mechanical engineering degree.  Forget about reality TV, go start your career.  Also he not as cutthroat as others.

[DEL901]

15 hours ago, aghst said:

Daily was good but it was a big advantage to have seen and done similar challenges before.

I don’t know if BB or Survivor has tasks requiring a lot of swimming and diving?  Bananas trained to dive in anticipation of challenges like this one and Wes has a competitive swimming background.  Monte couldn’t even submerge for a couple of seconds.

Then being good with puzzles, that is how Bananas and Tori won.  Wes could have beaten Johnny but he couldn’t figure out dances and he was beaten by Tori, who was also faster than Bananas, even though Wes got to the cave first.

The Elimination wasn’t physically demanding though it’s probably emotionally taxing.

Monte has a mechanical engineering degree.  Forget about reality TV, go start your career.  Also he not as cutthroat as others.

BB is in a “house” so zero swimming or diving challenges.  Survivor usually has a couple of these types of challenges each season, but they are generally still competing in tribes at that point so everyone doesn’t have to do all phases of the challenge or else they are working together on something.  

Monte was competing with a bum shoulder that had popped out in the challenge where they were hanging over water.  https://ew.com/tv/the-challenge-usa-monte-taylor-exit-interview-dislocated-shoulder/

Edited September 9, 2023 by DEL901

[AntFTW]

Not gonna lie, I probably would have quit that elimination. TJ just would have had to be mad at me. I'm not that patient to do a 3-hour elimination. I probably would have helped Tyler win after the first hour.

[jsm1125]

Why did production bother bringing Sebastian onto this season? He didn’t really provide much of anything both on his season of Survivor and on this season to date.
 

Edited September 10, 2023 by jsm1125

[aghst]

8 hours ago, AntFTW said:

Not gonna lie, I probably would have quit that elimination. TJ just would have had to be mad at me. I'm not that patient to do a 3-hour elimination. I probably would have helped Tyler win after the first hour.

That's the kind of activity for which the expression "rage quit" was invented.

[Lantern7]

The guy behind Reality Blurred interviewed the showrunner for this season. Turns out that the spools were raising sand to the surface, forcing the balls off the spools. Basically, it was a cool idea undone by an unforeseen element, and it came down to which ex-BB player would notice the sand first. Surprisingly, it was Tyler, a guy who looks and acts like he's been on Big Brother.

(Tangent: this guy finished runner-up to Kaycee thanks to a bitter jury? That was what  I was hearing. I understand Monte had a similar story. It really can't be hard to win BB. Just put up with bullshit for three months and get a goat alongside you on the final day. Josh winning should discredit all past and future winners)

The mission was pretty cool. I'm wondering how many people needed to explain to Josh why he lost even though he had a bigger number than Johnny.

Johnny and Tori wearing matching turtleneck sweaters . . . . I'd like to believe they were making fun of Fessy.

[AntFTW]

1 hour ago, Lantern7 said:

The guy behind Reality Blurred interviewed the showrunner for this season. Turns out that the spools were raising sand to the surface, forcing the balls off the spools. Basically, it was a cool idea undone by an unforeseen element, and it came down to which ex-BB player would notice the sand first. Surprisingly, it was Tyler, a guy who looks and acts like he's been on Big Brother.

Monte somewhat mentions this on The Challenge podcast. He doesn't go into detail about the spools raising the sand to the surface, but he does mention that Tyler is the one that figures out that the sand is what was causing the balls to be "less sticky."

Monte also mentions that, at some point, he thought using the sand may have been an advantage to increase the friction of the balls so that they would stick more. However, the surface of the balls and the surface of the spools were "sticky enough" and he later learns from Tyler that the sand was the problem.

Edited September 11, 2023 by AntFTW

[peachmangosteen]

8 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

(Tangent: this guy finished runner-up to Kaycee thanks to a bitter jury? That was what  I was hearing. I understand Monte had a similar story. It really can't be hard to win BB. Just put up with bullshit for three months and get a goat alongside you on the final day. Josh winning should discredit all past and future winners)

A man loses to a woman and suddenly it's a 'bitter jury.' Sigh.

I was liking this season so much at first but now that it's all vets, all the time I'm kinda over it.

[RedbirdNelly]

Wes voting for Cassidy just cracked me up

 

[AntFTW]

25 minutes ago, RedbirdNelly said:

Wes voting for Cassidy just cracked me up

Me too, especially after Alyssa talked to Wes at the bar about Tyler wanting to put all the votes on a guy, and Wes still throws a vote at Cassidy. 😂

I really wished it was her that went into elimination and lost.

Maybe producers are giving her a bad edit, but I'm not finding her enjoyable to watch.

[Maverick]

 I don't care for her either.   They kept showing her in the commercials saying "The individual part of Survivor is where I shined."  Really?   Is that what you were barely given an edit throughout the season even though you made final 3? 

 I would seriously lose my shit over that elimination challenge.  After about the third time (being generous) my pyramid fell I'd be spewing so much foul language Paramount+ would have to bleep me.  3 hours of that bullshit is insane. 

[Jeanne222]

Is Cory still in the game?

[kassandra8286]

On 9/10/2023 at 10:34 PM, Lantern7 said:

this guy finished runner-up to Kaycee thanks to a bitter jury? That was what  I was hearing. I understand Monte had a similar story.

Uh, no. The only person who would claim that is Monte himself, lol.  Not to get too off topic but that couldn't be further from the truth, Taylor 100% earned her victory and the jury was genuinely thrilled for her, not "bitter"  towards Monte, who was pretty meh and kind of forgettable on BB just like he was on the Challenge.

Josh, yeah I'll give you that one, lol. Paul lost more than Josh won.

Edited September 16, 2023 by kassandra8286

[Halting Hex]

I think that Josh was one of the more-strategic BB winners, ever.

• He gained safety in Week 1 (at the cost of unpopularity) because he knew he might be targeted.

• He successfully concealed all season that he was actually a superfan, pretending not to know the rules of the game and deliberately asking questions like "who's Dan Gheesling?" when the other HGs were celebrating the visit of the past winner with the (justified) master-manipulator reputation.

•He convinced Paul (a returning veteran who was deliberately given advantages by production to gain early safety and recruit allies) that he was a big, emotional child, a "meatball" who would be loyal to him and terrorize the others while allowing Paul deniability.

• He completely leaned into this persona, obnoxiously screaming and picking fights that had other players running to their "friend", Paul, for safety, yet being willing to be seen as this giant baby who had tantrums but didn't mean it and was better when he calmed down.  (He once took a 24-hour isolation penalty that worked to his advantage here.)

• When the Thursday evictions came around and Paul (who had the various players isolated into pairs that were convinced he was Their Only Friend) was whipping the houseguests (who included some truly horrible people, some deeply stupid people…and Raven, who was a category all her own) against the designated Target of the Week, while telling the Target about how "I tried, bro, but [scapegoat] has them bamboozled, nothing I could do.", Josh would be The Big Weepy Meatball, apologizing for mistreating them and blaming himself (often getting them to give him sympathy) and mending fences at the last moment.

• Once the Target was evicted from the House, he or she would go to be interviewed by Julie Chen, often brave-facing about how they enjoyed the experience and at least Paul was loyal, while Julie just listened with her poker face on and then played the Goodbye Messages.

GBMs are pre-taped messages that the remaining houseguests prepare for the two nominees.  (You can't do this on Survivor, where anybody might get voted out, or here, where anybody might end up facing elimination, but the predetermined "A or B?" voting structure of Big Brother allows for this opportunity.)  Mostly they are sincere "I'll miss you" messages, with the occasional direct denunciation mixed in.  (Goddess Queen Rachel Reilly to Daniele Donato, S13: "I don't even care about your stupid Jury vote!" [which turned out to be true, as Rachel won the game, but only by 4-3 in the voting]) 

Paul would feed the evictees some more of the same old same old.  "This sucks, bro.  I did everything I could.  I'll keep fighting to protect [your ally]", with the occasional "If you have been evicted and you're seeing this message, I don't know how this happened!  I was sure we had the votes!  I'll get revenge for you!" and so on…

…only to be completely owned by Josh coming out with "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you this before, but me and Paul and Arbor Day* have been in an alliance from Day 1, Paul was lying to you the whole time, he lied about [this] and [that] and [the other thing], he told [those morons] that you had to go when they wanted to evict [someone else], and then he voted against you."  He buried Paul like the Department of Energy buries radioactive waste.

Now I grant you that Paul should have seen this coming, but Paul was a recruited player rather than a fan of the game and was so arrogant that he never watched a single episode of the show to prepare, not even rewatching his previous season to figure out how he lost that vote (against Nicole Franzel, Victor's wife.)  He left the goal wide open…but it was still Josh who teed up the ball and drove it home.

So yes, Paul's arrogance and stupidity and poor Jury management came back to haunt him, but Josh saw the opportunity and took it.  Josh navigated a far more difficult path to the finale.  And Josh held back the "actually, I know all about the game and I only played the buffoon to avoid being targeted" card for Finale Night, impressing the voters at the last minute.

IMO that's far more of an achievement than Nicole basically saying "you don't really want to vote for Paul, do you?" (to a Jury that included her showmance [Cory], her future husband [Victor] and James Huling [her fellow returning player with whom she maintained an alliance throughout the season]) the year before or Kaycee successfully managing a "stay at the back of the pack [to the point when even the producers call you boring], win comps down the stretch for safety, and reap the rewards when the Jury realizes Tyler lied to all of them" strategy the season after Josh.

I can't actually respect, much less support, what Josh did, since he was too willing to be too vile (particularly to My Girl, Jessica Graf [<--- check out my avatar] and her now-husband, Cody), but I acknowledge his success. 

To lump Josh in with Chris "I sat out 75% of the game, made ONE strategic decision and won $1,000,000" Lucky Joke is deeply unfair to Josh, I think.

JMO, obviously.

(*-"Arbor Day" is actually named "Christmas", we just mocked her in the BB forum by referring to her by every holiday in the calendar, from Ramadan to Yom Kippur.  At one point I even went to Wikipedia to look up what was being celebrated at that time and ended up calling her "International Beer Week" and the like.)

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Halting Hex

[jsm1125]

At one point during his BB season, when Michael was going on his comp run, Monte had complained about their not being enough ball competitions.

Well, Monte, you got your wish, and it was your demise this season.

[bunnyface]

On 9/21/2023 at 12:54 PM, Halting Hex said:

[Josh}...convinced Paul (a returning veteran who was deliberately given advantages by production to gain early safety and recruit allies) that he was a big, emotional child...

 

Never watched BB, but have watched all seasons of the Challenge with Josh, and as far as I can tell, that wasn't much of an acting job.  That's real life.

[millennium]

I don't get the Tyler attraction.   He looks like a fucking moron in that hat, his voice is grating as hell, he's a non-factor in this game ... and yet he somehow walks off with girls like Angela and Alyssa.   The only thing more mystifying than this guy is Pete Davidson.

Tori and Sebastian is icky.  But then she doesn't have the greatest taste in guys.  Jordan was okay, but the guy before him, Derek?  And Fessy?   And now Sebastian?  "Love the One You're With" is just a song, Tori Patricia.

Wes must have been thanking his lucky stars he didn't pull the balls/spool elimination.   I actually didn't feel sorry Monte or Tyler.  I found myself pitying the poor crew members who had to test the mechanism and fine-tune it until they were sure that someone would actually be able to complete the challenge

On 9/26/2023 at 11:38 AM, bunnyface said:

Never watched BB, but have watched all seasons of the Challenge with Josh, and as far as I can tell, that wasn't much of an acting job.  That's real life.

On the most recent "Mailbag" episode of Bananas' podcast, somebody asked him who among the Challengers gets the most hate that they don't deserve.  Bananas named two people: Tori, and Josh.  He said the Josh you see on the show is exactly who he is.  It's not an act.   He cries a lot.

(If you listen to only one episode of Bananas podcast, listen to that Mailbag episode.   He airs all of his grievances with the direction the show has taken and why it's not as "must-see" as it used to be.   It validated all of my own complaints about the current incarnation of the show.   He predicted he would be receiving an angry letter from the powers that be, but so be it.   His harshest criticisms were about the casting.)