This week on The Challenge XXX: Dirty Thirty: The Redemption House must eat their way back into Challenge House, and all racial aspects of Camila’s tirade are erased.
Welcome boys and girls to yet another filler episode of The Challenge XXX. The breakdown of this episode is 50% gross eating challenge, 25% Tony being drunk and/or a dumbass, 25% of Nicole and Jemmye being awesome. So, essentially I only found a quarter of the episode entertaining.
Redemption House
Hunter and Nicole arrive at the Redemption house to a very warm welcome by the Three Amigos. Hunter is reunited with his one true love, Cory, and Nicole is ready to spill some tea and inform Aneesa that the girls in the house have declared her the devil.
Tori (in a flashback): “Do you think Aneesa is literally the spawn of the devil?”
Ugh, Tori, this pettiness isn’t a good look on you. Also, I literally don’t get all of the hate for Aneesa. Not liking her or finding her annoying is one thing, but calling her the literal devil seems a little harsh.
The Redemption House kids normal scheduled activities of Carriage Rides, and learning water bottle flipping techniques are cut short by a surprise appearance by Mr. TJ Lavin, who informs Redemption House it is time to be redeemed. First, though, TJ needs to know the person in the house each redeemer is gunning for. Cory and Hunter are gunning for Johnny and Jordan, respectively.
The girls are unanimous in who in the house they want to destroy: Camila. (Cara Maria is also on Marie’s list). Aneesa picks Camila because “She can’t be trusted” and she’s “shady”. Marie’s choice is influenced by the fact that Camila helped orchestrate her being sent in. Nicole says it best though:
Nicole: “I don’t think she deserves to be here. Camila’s a bitch. She started some shit with Leroy. Camila, I think you are a bad person. I think you even hate your own self. You need to take a break and figure out your issues and probably never come back.”
To celebrate, Marie pops open a bottle of champagne, and the cork hits Nicole straight in the face.
Redemption Challenge
In order to secure themselves a spot back in the Challenge House, they will have to compete in an incredibly disgusting eating challenge. I didn’t catch the name of this week’s challenge, and I have no interest of rewatching it to find it out.
Here’s how it works. There are five different Colombian Delicacies that the redeemers must eat: Giant Water Rat, Cockscomb Skweres, Slimy Pork Nose, Chicken Intestine Smoothie, and Hard Boiled Cow’s Eyes. After they finish a dish they have to run up a giant ant hill, jump into a mud pit, retrieve a totumo, and run back down the hill. If there is a gem inside your totumo you get to skip the dish of your choosing and run back up the hill. If it is an everyday rock, you are SOL. Repeat the previous steps and the first one to finish all of their dishes wins.
Does anyone actually enjoy watching these food challenges? I am asking in all seriousness, and if you do I would love for you to comment and explain why. To me, it has no appeal. I do not enjoy watching people throw up. Those slo-mo upchuck shots have zero appeal to me, especially when I have to watch them basically swallow the vomit and shove more food down their throats. For me, the most disturbing part of this challenge were those huge ass cow eyeballs. I am gagging just thinking about them right now. I would like to think that, unlike Marie, I would at least try to do this challenge, but I doubt I would get very far.
This challenge came down to luck, and who picked the totumos with the gem inside. While Hunter was ahead of Cory for the entirety of the challenge, it was his procurement of the gem that secured his win. On the girls’ side, Aneesa and Nicole were side-by-side the entire time. (Marie, on the other hand, was off to the side bribing the pair to let her win and offering some stray dogs her food.) Nicole fought hard on this challenge. She forced herself to down disgusting food that has been sitting god knows how long outside in the hot Colombian sun. She pushed through tears and even removed her fake eyelashes in an attempt to come out with the win. Luck though was on Aneesa’s side, and she grabbed the totumo with the gem inside on her last run up the ant hill, guaranteeing her the win.
The Challenge House
I hope you weren’t expecting there to be any follow-up this episode regarding Camila’s racial attack on Leroy, because you will not be getting one. Production somehow edited the episode to erase all racial aspects of Camila’s tirade, starting with the “Previously On” package. They presented Camila’s attack on Leroy as just another Camilinator emergence, instead of showing it for the disgusting racist hate speech that it was. The racial aspect of Camila’s attack is also erased from CT’s explanation for making Leroy’s birthday cake when he says “After all that happened with Camila, he deserves a good birthday.”
But, let’s focus on the positive: it is Leroy’s birthday and his buddy CT is making him a cake. Has CT ever baked before? Probably not because this is how he softens butter. While the cake was made out of love, from the heart, it was also apparently straight up just butter. There was so much heart in the cake that it made Leroy, the birthday boy, sick for the rest of the night.
Now that MTV showed people being nice to Leroy, they can get back to the storyline they want you to care about: Tony. That was the drama MTV wanted to capitalize on from Camila’s drunken antics, but unfortunately, her racism distracted from that narrative. Finally, we can get back to Tony’s baby mama drama.
The producers try to get Tony to open up about his drunken kiss with Camila, and his betrayal of his girlfriend, Alyssa. He shuts down, saying that he doesn’t want a stupid thing that he did while on The Challenge to impact his real-life family. But the producer advises Tony to prepare himself for the footage to be aired. Because it will be aired, because you did it on film, while taping a reality TV show.
Tony doesn’t even have to wait to go home to deal with his indiscretions because rumors of the Tony/Camila hookup were running rampant all over Twitter during production. I want so badly to know who snitched on them while the show was still taping. Alyssa asks Tony point blank if these rumors were true, or held any ounce of truth, and Tony says no. He condemns these false accusations and sings his song of innocence because Tony would never do anything to jeopardize his family. He straight up just lied to his girlfriend on national TV, AFTER making out with another woman on national TV. As if denying the accusations would somehow erase the footage. When production presses him on why he lied to Alyssa, he says that he didn’t want to give MTV/B&M any more footage to capitalize on his mistake.
Tony’s logic makes no sense here. Not wanting to air your dirty laundry on TV is understandable, and I would understand if Tony initially waited until he got home to tell Alyssa what happened. But the news did get out, and Tony straight up lied to his girlfriend about something that will air on national TV. You already betrayed her trust by kissing another woman, now to top that off you lie to her about it? Ugh.
Also, I guess I should mention that Johnny glued feathers onto Tony’s face after he drunkenly passed out one night (a la Derrick in The Ruins). Tony got mad, threw a fit, threatened Johnny, and just as quickly as it started, Tony forgives Johnny, and the lover’s quarrel is resolved.
Other Things
- Production sweeping Camila’s racist remarks under the rug is infuriating, and also disheartening. I know that this is because initially, MTV and B&M weren’t even planning on airing the racist part of Camila’s rant. They only chose to do so at the last minute after they saw the casts outrage of not airing the footage. That means that all of the following episodes are edited assuming we are unaware of the racial aspects of Camila’s attack. I just don’t understand production’s handling of this incident at all.
- I can’t get over Jemmye and her dream. According to her and Britni, she actually did have that dream the night before. I am not a huge believer in dreams as premonitions, but from a practical standpoint, it isn’t that weird for her to have this dream. The cast probably discussed whether or not there was still a redemption house and the people that got sent home. So the fact that Aneesa coming back to the house in a dream doesn’t seem that weird. It is just funny that it happened literally the night before Aneesa actually came back into the house. (Also the fact that Jemmye asked her friend about Beyonce and Ciara’s pregnancy was amazing).
