Well, this week's episode started off at the club with all our favorite couples: Jodi and Alton, Mark and Timmy, and Derrick and booze. While everyone partied and had a fantastic time on the island of Trinidad and Tobago, Ibis suddenly spoke to us, all fired up and ready to bust some ass. "We're a strong team!!" she insisted loudly. Okay, okay. Settle down. Why are you so worked up? And have you been here all season? Oh, that's right. You're the girl who quietly follows Kina around everywhere she goes. Total sidekick material.

Anyway, Ibis's assertive insistence that the Rookies were strong immediately led me to believe that they'd be failing miserably this week (and the MTV on-air promos didn't help either), but just in case I wasn't totally convinced, we then returned to La Casa Del Gaunlet where Jeremy was grumbling by the computer. You see, everyone had just returned from the club at 1:30 AM, and wouldn't you know it? They had woken up poor Jer-Dawg. Now he was complaining about it. Look dude, you should just be happy you're allowed on these shows. And what were you doing asleep so early anyway? You do realize you're on the Real World/ Road Rules Challenge, right? You're supposed to be getting shitfaced every night. Not sleeping. Whatever. Maybe you should take your act over to PAX.

Nevertheless, Jeremy had a lot on his mind. "No self-control!" he scoffed. "If you can't practice it when you're off the field, then you're not going to practice it when you're on the field." This is coming from the same kid who wound up getting wasted and booting before some pivotal Road Rules challenge, if I remember correctly. Oh well. All this bitching means one thing: he's going into the Gauntlet.

Later that night -- or morning, as it were -- we then saw MJ sitting around with his hair pulled back into a pony tail. And yes, obnoxious facial hair was still present and accounted for. Basically, he looked like some lame villain from Miami Vice. Anyway, after teams received their clue (something cheeky like "Don't get too TIRED!"), the Rookies gathered on the porch for a random pep talk. "I do not think I'll be seeing the inside of a Gauntlet, but if we do, it'll be a war," MJ said. Okay. I change my mind. Jeremy's out. MJ's in.

It just gets worse and worse with MJ.

"Do you guys think I should do some more crunches?"

The next morning, we finally learned about the next challenge (and no, Timmy was not dressed in his wig and bikini shirt). Teams had to crawl through a series of tires that were hanging from a rig over the ocean. Each time someone crawled through the twenty-four tires, that person would then have to drop a tire into the water. And then the last person had to drop two tires. Or something like that. Each team would get a point for every tire, but if someone were to fall, all the points would be erased (why not just give one point for every person who makes it through? Why assign points to each tire if it's all or nothing each round? Oh, I don't know. I don't care). Oh, and if someone falls, the next person going through would then have to drop two tires in the water. Basically, this was a really, really convoluted competition that essentially boiled down to people crawling through tires.

Well, the rookies decided to bench Randy because he was too big. I personally would have benched the shortest person on the team, but that's just me and that crazy "logic" concept I like to use every now and then. Over on the Vets, there was a lot of talk about Beth and whether or not she would do well and blah blah blah. Julie noted that Beth had talked like she could handle this challenge, but could she really? Probably not. But then again, as MTV had reminded us, this challenge was going to be about Alton screwing up; so I really wasn't too concerned about Beth's performance.

Posted by B-side on February 25, 2006 6:25 PM