With Friends Like Derrick, Who Needs Enemies?

On last week’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge Derrick did the unthinkable by selling out his friends for a larger payday. This was surprising because Derrick may be a lot of things, but he also has been fiercely loyal. Even as he was throwing his “allies” under the bus, you could tell that he was having a hard time with it. While some may see this as a sign that Derrick did have some difficulty with decision, I say that it is time for him to sack up. He had no problem watching Diem send all of her friends back home, so he should at least be able to look his friends in the eye when he throws them under the bus for the chance at some more money. That being said, I am glad that Derrick did something, because without Wes freaking out every other minute, the season has become a little slow.One of the great paradoxes of the Real World/Road Rules challenge is that the “tough” people rarely get tested individually. Although we have been voting people into Infernos and Gauntlets and now Exiles for a few years now, and for the most part, the people sent into to battle each other are usually considered weak teams. I’m not saying this is terrible because you do want the best of the best playing in the end, but I really do get tired of all of these people talking about how they are the best and tougher than everybody else when they never actually have to face elimination. I can’t really say that this year with Evan and Coral and their injuries, but you get the point.

I bring all of this up because Theo mentions that he has never beein in a Gauntlet, Inferno, or anything else. Aagain, maybe it is not all that surprising, but when you consider how many of these challenges that he has participated in, you kind of wonder how this is possible. That’s like saying you’ve been going to the Playboy mansion for ten years and never ran into Scott Baio. Theo isn’t that worried because he is convinced that being in Exile will bring out the best in him, and after seeing his performance on Last Comic Standing, I hope his best includes some new material that makes him sound less like an inbred third cousin of Jason Mewes.

The T-Mobile text message of the day told the remaining people that they should “look sharp for the next challenge”, and Chanda noted that SHARP was in all caps. I always like to speculate on how they will give the text message a double meaning, but could “sharp” mean? Would they be throwing knives? Eating cheese? Actually, they were going to spend that racing through an obstacle course while hauling around an aboriginal artifact. Ummm, yeah. They would be climbing walls and crawling underneath a rope ladder, so if they were really supposed to look sharp they would looked like dirty at the end of it. Not to worry because they all showed up dress like the dirty bastards that they are anyway. Of course, me making fun of them for not staying sharp means I probably missed an obvious point about sharpness and so feel free to make fun of me in the comments.

Like I said, it was an obstacle course. Jump over a few walls, crawl under a rope ladder, shoot a few targets with a paintball gun, and then bring back an aboriginal artifact (and by artifact I mean big piece of wood painted by a thrid grader) through the same obstacle course. The one really interesting thing about all of this is that there would finally be two teams capable of winning the challenge playing for their exile lives. We have rarely brought it up, but the person who wins these challenges on the day of exile have the opportunity to take themselves out of exile. The teams usually competing on this day are rarely in the conversation because let’s face it, if they were the best, they would have won the day before and have immunity. With Theo and Chanda and Darrell and Aviv playing for keeps, there was a good chance that the pardon may actually go into effect.

You may not have realized it, but you probably saw part of the obstacle course during the first episodes. Casey repeatedly tried to climb over one of the walls, but I use “climb” in the loosest sense of the word. But saying what she did is “climbing” is like calling what David Hasselhoff does on Baywatch “acting”. In other words, they should both leave it up to the professionals.

Wes and Casey went through the course at the same time as Theo and Chanda, and while Wes and Casey still had trouble with that damned wall, Theo and Chanda were rolling right through. It looked like they were going to easily take this challenge, but they didn’t count on that damned aboriginal artifact weighing so much (75 lbs). When Theo tried to lift it over one of the walls, he made himself look a lot like Casey. Even though he wasn’t having any success, he just kept on throwing it up against the wall. Theo and Chanda still easily beat Wes and Casey, but overall they might have lost their shot at winning the whole thing.

Next to go were Derrick and Diem and Darrell and Aviv. Darrell was so upset when he made it into Exile, because he felt like it was all Derrick’s fault and that his friend had betrayed some sort of code of honor by letting all of this t happen. Seriously Darrell, you make a living by spending two weeks at a time doing supervised stunts in semi-remote locations around the globe. It’s like being on the Ropes Course World Tour, except there aren’t any trust falls. Not only could we care less about your griping; it actually makes us laugh. But I will hand it to Darrell. For all of his griping, he did a good job of using it for motivation. He may bitch and moan, but he put up a strong performance in the end, easily beating Derrick and Diem and putting him and Aviv in the hunt for the pardon.

The last team to go were Tina and Kenny. People say that we are a little too harsh on Tina in these challenges. Well, if you don’t think Tina is a big girl, then you might want to take that up with her partner Kenny. When he was helping Tina up over the walls, he said he felt like Atlas trying to lift up the whole world, but it was worse, because he had to listen to Tina’s voice the whole time as well. Tina has learned to love her partner, and while he might not treat the game like a job, he does work hard, and even bloodied his nose diving under one of the obstacles. However, despite all of Kenny’s hard work, his team did now win, that honor went to Darrell and Aviv.

Darrell and Aviv got to pick the team to replace them in Exile, and I was really hoping they would pick Wes and Casey. While I don’t think anybody is going to say that they are “rooting” for Wes, you have to be impressed with the way that these two have fought each time they have won. Wes can complain about casey all he wants, but she had packed like some of the other girls in this challenge, they wouldn’t enjoy the huge advantage that the two of them have had in Exile. It didn’t matter anyway because Tina and Kenny were picked.

On paper, this challenge was no contest. Theo and Chanda, the superstar team, vs. Tina and Kenny, the team that Stephen Hawking would pick to go up against in an obstacle course? You can’t even call it a contest, Theo and Chanda would stroll through this easily, or so you would think. Tina and Kenny have won an Exile before and so they do have experience. They also had a slight weight advantage. OK, I should rephrase that. Not counting Tina, they had a slight weight advantage.

When the Challenge started, it looked like Theo and Chanda were going to be in big trouble. Tina and Kenny reached the first puzzle ahead of Theo and Chanda, and they were greeted with word games. We can make fun of Tina being dumb, but when she and Kenny beat out Eric and Katie a few weeks ago, she solved a couple of puzzles just like the ones they had this week pretty quickly. She once again finished quickly, and the two of them were able to drop their bags.

Although Theo and Chanda made it to the the first puzzle not long after Tina and Kenny, they had a lot of trouble on the word puzzles. I have to admit that these questions were a lot more difficult, and it took me almost 90 seconds to figure all of them out. We had

CHETONGUEEK

and

SSSS
BBBB
AAAA
RRRR
GGGG

and

From top to bottom, that is “Tongue in cheek”, “Up for (four) grabs”, and “Ready (Red “E”) for (four) anything”. Theo and Chanda had tongue in cheek, but were blanking on the rest. Theo was hoping some natural disaster would save him, but Tina was too far ahead to help them now. Chanda, who was as focused as anybody on this challenge, was of no help, and while they could move forward without finishing, knew that it might be enough to help them catch up.

Since Tina and Kenny already dropped their bags, it wasn’t going to help Theo and Chanda out very much. Luckily, Tina and Kenny were there to help them out. The second puzzle was on the beach, and although they could see the finish line, the two of them decided to work on the puzzle. But that’s not what was going to let Theo and Chanda back into the game. Eventually, Tina and Kenny got sick of all of the puzzle and decided to run, off, but about halfway to the finish line, they realized that they had forgotten their flag. When they returned, Tina decided that they should solve the puzzle, although Kenny was screaming at her not to be lazy and just head for the finish line. If I were him, I would just say that there was a double whopper with cheese at the finish line, and we’d probably see Tina get there in quicker than Christina Aguilera chasing after a pair of hot pants.

All of this arguing combined with forgetting their flag appeared to give Theo and Chanda a chance to win the whole thing. Tina was still insisting that they finish the puzzle just as Theo and Chanda made it to the beach. And then….we cut to the end of the episode! What? So, who won? Everybody came out to the truck, and Derrick and Diem were prepared to face Theo and Chanda, which would have made it very interesting next week with two of Derrick’s enemies in the house.

Luckily for Derrick and Diem, Tina and Kenny returned. The only way Theo and Chanda had a chance was through clever editing, because if the two teams were actually at the second puzzle at the same time, there is no way they would cut all of that out. After everybody welcomed the winners home, we had a flashback to the rest of the race, which featured both teams finishing the final puzzle, which was placing six numbers along the side of a triangle so each side of the triangle added to fifteen, but obviously Tina and Kenny won.

I have to say it was kind of sad to see Theo and Chanda go out like that. They were a fun team to watch and all of Theo’s prepared one-liners had me mildly chuckling, not unlike I was watching reruns of 227. Theo did get one, last insult in on Derrick for his treachery, saying that he hopes that Derrick uses the money to buy some lifts, because he’ll always be taller than him. OK, it was not that funny, especially after Tina said she wanted to win so her partner could get a nose job and she could get liposuction. Now THAT’s funny.

There’s only one more round of eliminations before the finale, and the final four is really nothing like we could have predicted. Wes aand Casey have managed to make themselves an underdog, and while it would be unbearable to watch Wes take all of that money and pour it into something unimaginable like a wedding to Johanna or an expansion of their T-shirt company, at least the looks on the faces of the other players would make it worth it. And who knows, after marrying Johanna and retiring on their t-shirt sales, maybe he would have enough left over for some sunscreen and a haircut. Hey, we can all hope!

What did you think of this episode? Who will make it to the final challenge?