Things Heat Up On the Inferno II

Please forgive me for opening my post on this week’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge with such a lame title. I try to be slightly funny in my titles, but don’t try and go for the obvious and lame puns. This time, however, I couldn’t help it. There really is no more apt description for this week’s episode. Well, I guess I could have got it “Bitches Lie, Bitches Fight, Bitches Throw Other Bitch’s Clothes in the Water”, but that was a little too long. It’s only a few weeks in, but the Inferno II looks like it is going to make up for the suckiness of the last Batlle of the Sexes and may even make us forget the awful Philadelphia season. If the rest of the challenge turns out half as great as this episode, we’ll have no problem with that.The Inferno II may pit the Bad Asses against the Good Guys, but there are some things that will never change. Tonya will still be a slutty bitch (their words, not mine), Tina will still be an ugly bitch, and Rachel and Veronica will try and cause some trouble. We got to see a little bit of all the parts that makes the world of Bunim/Murray so special.

If you didn’t watch the Battle of the Sexes, you may have missed out on the budding romance between Robin and Mark. Mark is a little older and a little wiser, and perhaps a big cheater? Well, that’s how the story goes according to Tonya. She has been not so shy about telling people how she went to the Movies with Mark, spent a weekend with Mark, sucked his balls, you know that kind of stuff. Beth, one of the Bad Asses and someone who always finds herself on the wrong end of any argument, relays some of these things to Robin. Robin may have an interest because, from her vantage point, Mark is still her boyfriend.

I didn’t watch too much of San Diego (read: any of it), but I do know enough about Robin to understand she is not going to let something like that go unpunished. She calls Mark, let’s him deny anything happened, and begins one of the greatest arguments in the history of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Robin tries to get the truth out of Tonya, but you know that Tonya really has nothing to say to defend herself. In fact, she tried to do her patented “I was misunderstood” type of reasoning, but Robin wasn’t going to let her do that. Eventually, Robin just lets it all hang out “You are a whore and I don’t trust you towards anybody”.

Truth hurts, don’t it?

The argument builds and builds as everybody is eating dinner. I always thought it was awkward when you had to be in the middle of one of those dinner fights. Granted, it’s not like they were dining on some gourmet meal (they were eating some sort of reality show MREs), but you just don’t like having to hear shit like that. Well, maybe some of us don’t like to hear it, but others do. Tina, Rachel, and Veronica were enjoying the verbal insult match that included such gems as:

• Tonya “You better re-evaluate your relationship because obviously he’s f*cking both of us”
• Robin “If I was a guy and some girl put a vagina in my face, I would f*ck her too”
• Tonya “Call me a whore, call me a slut, just don’t call me a liar

That’s some good shit, no?

So, that argument was over, but what to do about Beth? She is a Bad Ass because of her reputation, but she really doesn’t have a lot in common with her team. And if you don’t conform to what the group thinks you should be, then Rachel and Veronica will come after you. They don’t do it in a direct way by confronting Beth, they just get Tonya upset at what Beth did.

And what did Beth do? Apparently, she betrayed some sort of teammate non-disclosure agreement. Tonya gets upset because Beth not only humiliated her, but she embarrasses two people who really are in love. Wha? Yes, that’s right. Apparently, the person to blame here is not the one that is cheating/lying about cheating, it is the person who informs the other person somebody is cheating on her. And honestly Tonya, in a race to see who is going to humiliate you first, don’t you think you win that race every single time? But if Veronica and Rachel say that somebody is causing unnecessary friction, it must be true. Time to assault Beth.

Beth is in her room sleeping. She is also kind of old (like Jon old, I think), so you know she needs her rest to keep up. Tonya starts yelling at her, trying to get her to explain herself. “How dare you ruin a relationship by exposing my lies! Bitch!” Beth is not really that into the argument, but she suggests a good enough resolution. Bring Robin over here, everybody can say what they need to, and they can take care of it.

That’s not good enough for Tonya though. She wants answers, and wants them now! Beth said something that sort of set Tonya off. ["Tonya] you’re being really crazy right now.” With that, Tonya took Beth’s bag and threw it into the pool. You think this would be enough to let anybody get the picture, and you think that most people would have realized what they did and calmed down a little. But no, that would not be the case, especially with Veronica and Rachel on the case. As soon as they saw that Beth’s things were not submerged, they let Tonya know, who proceeded to throw Beth’s things in the water one by one.

But Tonya has not had enough. She goes back up to Beth, and then threatens her some more. When the threats don’t work, Tonya takes it out on Beth’s clothes. This time, she didn’t wait for the bag to float in the water, she just threw the things off of the balcony.

By this time word started getting around. Nobody really wanted to help Beth, instead, they were taking pictures with her clothes like one of those cutouts at the zoo. The Miz was simply ecstatic. He praised the Bunim/Murray gods for choosing him for the greatest challenge ever. Veronica and Rachel were very happy with what they did. As Veronica said “We’re mean. We’re like the mean girls.” Rachel and Veronica, they got the brains and the attitude.

I guess I have to talk about the rest of the episode, since these competitions are really what we watch the show for (HA!). Tonya had to sleep in a hotel because Beth felt scared. And although nobody really likes Beth, you would think that some of her teammates would have at least been a little more understanding about what went on. It’s not like Tonya just yelled at her, she damaged her property. Maybe Beth is being a little paranoid, but if Tonya was ready to damage her stuff, and that hadn’t worked out, what would have stopped Tonya from taking a swing at Beth? Not much I say. I don’t like Beth, but it is quite obvious that she is an outcast among her teammates. As goes with these productions, as long as you are not the one that is getting singled out, you are fine with whatever goes on, and you really don’t care how bad they feel.

Beth pouted a little bit the next day about the competition. She didn’t really want to go until Tonya left and she was compensated. I actually don’t think it was that big of a request, but her teammate’s thought she was selfish. I think Beth realized that her teammates didn’t like her, so she wanted to do something to get some money out of this thing. Beth eventually decided to go to the challenge, which was called “Ring Toss”.

The Inferno II ring toss is kind of extreme. Well, sort of extreme. The players didn’t throw rings, they just swung from a cord attached to a crane, and released their partner in a way so they would fall through a set of targets in the water. The closer to the middle you got, the more points your team would score. The team with the most points would win the money. With so much time spent with the Tonya/Beth thing, they really didn’t try and make any suspense with the competition, and it really wasn’t hard. The only team to have anybody score any points was the Bad Asses. Another $10,000 in the bank, another group of pissed off good guys.

Per usual, the teams got together and decided who they should send to the Inferno. The conventional wisdom said that it would be Robin vs. Beth or Tonya. But it ended up being Robin vs. Tina. Yes, in a move that will surely go down in history, the Good Guys actually used strategy instead of emotion guide their thinking. I am not sure what the logic was, but it may have something to do with keeping Tonya and Beth together as long as possible to sabotage the team. As for the Bad Asses, they assumed that Tonya or Beth was going, so they decided to send Robin.

You can imagine how pissed Tina was. Beth had said that her name wasn’t even mentioned, so I am sure that Tina will get pissed at her next week for something. I say it should be a good match. I hope Robin wins because I would love to see Tina go early. The best development was with Beth. She hates her team, she hates her teammates, why not play a little sabotage while she’s still there? I am not sure how long it would last, because not everybody on the Bad Asses is an idiot, but I hope she gets some weeks of subterfuge in, it would certainly add to the pointless melodrama, and have me tuning in each week.