Officially aboard their new home, the Sinister, our eight finalists explore the, erm, bowels of their crib, including a sleeping dungeon that reminds me a little too much of the basement from Barbarian. Let me just tell you, the lighting down there is awful. Everyone looks either ashen or seasick — where’s the Alix Earle ring light when you need it? Carboloading ahead of tomorrow’s Jigsaw torture funhouse, the players stuff their faces with some sad Stouffer’s meal from the Divorced Dad collection.
After lots of whining from Jenny and a dust incident that has Jordan hamming it up like a soccer player flopping for a foul, the players tuck in for a few hours of sleep. At 6 a.m., they’re awoken by T.J., who must have had to get up when? At 4 a.m. for glam and transportation? He’s the real hero.
Before the Final begins, T.J. finally explains the breakdown of the million-dollar prize pot. The male and female who place in spots one through three will each win cash — $400,000, $75,000, and $25,000, respectively. I appreciate that they are making an effort to reward the majority of finalists just for completing the course, but I’m still shook that they couldn’t pony up a little extra for a celebration season. After taxes the winners are walking away with around $200,000 for three months of filming and a grueling Final — the winner of Survivor 47 scooped up more than double that just for lounging on the beach in Fiji for 26 days munching on french fries. Jenny’s boasting about how when she wins, she’s going to “spoil” this person and that person with her vast riches and I’m like, girl, all that money is going to get you is a couple group dinners at Nobu and maybe some new tires for your car. IN THIS ECONOMY?!
Then there’s the matter of the Karma Vote. T.J. does a shit job explaining how exactly these votes will factor in, but it seems to be that the total points that each finalist received (between 1 and 5 from each of the 32 eliminated contestants) will be added to their final score. So, let’s say Derek gets all fives for being a likable mensch; that’s 160 extra points. Because it’s unclear how many points are at stake in the Final itself, we have no way of knowing to what degree this could impact the results, except that the Karma Winner is playing with some sort of handicap while the Karma Loser is taking a good old fashioned Tonya Harding to the knees.
The whole concept is utterly confounding and completely anathema to the ethos of the show. Even in the intro to the episode, T.J. lauds 40 as “the most cutthroat season ever” (sure, Chris Harrison). Part of what differentiates The Challenge from Survivor and Big Brother is you don’t have to curry favor with a jury, so you can be as obnoxious as you want to your rivals as long as you can put your money where your mouth is in the arena. Plus, these players have known each other for decades and aren’t basing their votes on how much integrity each finalist played with during this particular season of the game — it’s all informed by long standing friendships, grudges, and irrelevant feelings; KellyAnne gives Tori fewer points because she already makes good money on OnlyFans, and even Bananas’s number one boy, Leroy, docks him a few since he’s already won seven times.
Okay, enough opining from moi. The Final is played via multiple checkpoints. Each checkpoint starts and ends in the middle of the ocean on the Sinister, which means an ungodly amount of swimming. Remember when I said Kyland would be right up there with Jordan as long as the Final wasn’t set in Seaworld? Whoops. Players are awarded points after each checkpoint based on where they place, but we don’t know how many points are associated with each rank, and no standings will be revealed until the very end.
The first checkpoint is called “Sandblast,” and the players need to swim out to an island, run five one-mile-long laps across the beach to collect puzzle pieces, assemble said puzzle and swim back to the Sinister. Jordan is the most dominant swimmer, so his strategy is to take an early lead at every checkpoint, putting as much distance between himself and the next guy, so he’ll have a decent time advantage for whatever puzzle bullshit awaits.
Bananas lags behind a bit, acknowledging that his advanced age is finally making it harder to keep up with these spry whippersnappers. He rationalizes that he’ll be able to withstand the physical and mental pain of the Final for longer, theorizing that the less experienced guys will burn out. Even though he gets to his puzzle last, Kyland’s swimming is so atrocious that Bananas overtakes him in the water for a third-place finish.
Meanwhile, Derek, who has been full of surprises this season, manages to lock up second place to Jordan even with a three-minute time penalty from losing last week’s daily. Similarly, Michele is a confident swimmer and runner and starts off the Final on a high with a first-place win. This is huge for her confidence, which has been flagging during much of the season, especially as the only female first-time finalist/non-champion in the group.
Checkpoint I Results: 1st Place, Jordan and Michele; 2nd Place, Derek and Jenny; 3rd Place, Bananas and Tori; 4th Place, Kyland and Rachel.
For the next checkpoint, “Ghost Ship,” the challengers swim to an abandoned ship where they must dive underneath to memorize a symbol board, then climb back onto the boat and replicate it at their solving station. Small differences mean it requires attention to detail, and Michele blows her lead after misidentifying a barrel, demoting herself from puzzle queen to puzzle peasant.
Checkpoint II Results: 1st Place, Jordan and Jenny; 2nd Place, Bananas and Tori; 3rd Place, Derek and Rachel; 4th Place, Kyland and Michele.
At this rate, it seems like Jordan has this completely locked up, with two first-place finishes in a row whilst barely breaking a sweat. The puzzles are too simple to give anyone a chance at catching him. Bananas and Derek are battling it out for the second spot, but with the Karma Points wrinkle, there’s probably no world where Bananas places above third.
The last checkpoint of the day is called “A Thousand Steps,” because once the players swim to their beach, they must climb a thousand stone steps before swimming 500 meters to a raft. On the raft, they’ll have a vantage point to view an image of a skull depicted on coconut trees, which they’ll then recreate at their puzzle board. However, if you get the puzzle wrong, you have to swim back to the raft before trying again, so the stakes of each guess are high.
Rachel and Tori are falling behind, running the course side-by-side as Jenny and Michele push ahead. Rachel says something to the effect of, “we should run together for moral support,” and Tori is like, “uh, okay?” They vomit up salt water and keep it moving.
When Kyland finds out that even more swimming awaits him to complete his puzzle, he takes a piss on the instruction sign — negative Karma Points for poor sportsmanship? He gets an excruciating quad cramp in the water, and accepts the fact that his goal has shifted from winning the Final to completing the Final.
Checkpoint III Results: 1st Place, Jordan and Jenny; 2nd Place, Bananas and Michele; 3rd Place, Derek and Rachel; 4th Place, Kyland and Tori).
Darkness falls, and it’s time for the infamous overnight challenge. Every muscle is in pure agony, but the show must go on. I have to hand it to production for creating a simultaneously hilarious and brutal concoction. For several hours, the players will alternate between two thirty-minute tasks: below deck, they’ll count a massive bag of coins, like the comically large kind you see in a cartoon about bank robbers. Then, on the main deck, they’re forced to sing a six-line sea shanty non-stop. That’s some twisted, prisoner-of-war music torture shit. At the end of the night, their placement in the challenge is determined by their coin count accuracy. Kyland, this is your moment!
The singing is probably worse than the counting. Even though it’s “easier,” at least the counting carries an objective that keeps your mind alert. The singing is just cruelty for the sake of cruelty. They should have given Bananas his guitar.
The one person who can’t keep it together is Jenny. As the full moon rises, she transforms from bubbly bodybuilder into a cantankerous blob, like Demi Moore at the end of The Substance. She won’t stop whining about how much pain and misery she’s experiencing, interfering with everyone else trying to count their coins in relative peace. There’s nothing worse than having to suffer through someone else’s annoying voice when you’re at that level of exhaustion where you’re simultaneously drained and wired at the same time. It’s like riding a midnight bus after a full day of traveling while the person behind you yammers away on their phone.
Up until this point, Jenny has been dominating — she’s the only woman who doesn’t have a last-place finish, and her lowest placement was second. A meltdown from Jenny is a huge opening for the rest of the girls if they can keep her insufferable moaning from undermining their concentration. It’s so bad that it prompts a freakout from Jordan, who screams at her to shut up. Maybe instead, he should just remind her to visualize her white blood cells regenerating to heal her ailing body.