I had a reason.
I watch
The Challenge, MTV’s competitive soap opera. I’ve shared my opinions on
the show on forums for a few decades. When I watch episodes “live,” I post on a
Facebook group and have fun snarking with other fans. From 2003-2006, I
recapped six seasons of the series, and that might be the closest thing to a
legacy that I have to give. Putting aside the sadness of that sentence, the
point is that the series has its hooks deep into me.
For many years, Mark Long had been pushing for another version of The Challenge. Mark was one of the stars of the original Road Rules, and he had competed in five seasons of The Challenge. His idea was to bring in some of the legends of the series, the people fans loved and loved to hate. Basically, an “O.G.” season. Yeah, “Original Gangster” is cringeworthy and dated, but since that’s a term used in ads on Teen Mom, then why not? The bonus was the lack of people involved from other series, like Are You The One? and Big Brother. Also absent: John Devenanzio, better known as “Johnny Bananas.” It’s said familiarity breeds contempt, and there are few that I find as contemplable as Johnny. But that’s another post for some other time.
I had a plan.
The idea for me to recap this version of The Challenge appealed to me. When the cast list was officially announced, I saw that I had written about sixteen of the 22 people involved in my old recaps. Once again: those were my legacy. Once again: I know that’s sad. It did seem like an attractive idea: I’d get back into writing again and let myself get swept into some intense made-for-television bullshit. When it was announced that the series would be streaming exclusively on Paramount+, I wound up subscribing to it. Yeah, I hemmed and hawed about that for about a week, and I am currently on a month-long “free trial,” but I can’t kid anyone about that. Worse, not only is this the only show I’m watching on Paramount+ (I’m not feeling inclined to see the “reunion” season for the original cast of The Real World), but I have another service (HBO Max) which I’m also not really using, since I can never find the time for binging. But it would be worth it if I wrote the recaps, right?
Well, we’re four episodes into The Challenge: All Stars. Don’t ask me what why there’s no hyphen. I tried to recap the first episode. I went with the style which I used to recap with, where I’d pack in as much detail as possible. In those days, it would take me at least half of a week to write an essay on a 30-minute-long episode. Nowadays, MTV goes with ninety minutes per episode. All Stars has 45 with no commercials. I wrote the recap from the opening to the early part of the mission. I’ll have to check, but I believe it covered half of the episode at most. How much did I write?
Slightly over four thousand words.
To make matters worse (relatively speaking), I currently have two things that are counterproductive to writing recaps: a day job and poor sleep habits. I don’t give myself enough time to sleep, so I usually crash when I get home. And while I was trying to propel myself through writing about that first episode, more were released. The real kicker was that when I used to recap, I had been floating on a small boat on a lake. These days, it’s an ocean. Critiquing The Challenge has become an industry in of itself, and nobody seems to have time for long-winded recaps anymore.
I still intend to recap. My tentative plan will be to cover the first five episodes in one shot, then post once a week for the rest of the season. I’ll be less descriptive, but I feel that I can still get the jokes in. For instance: “Beth swimming back to shore reminds me of Lolo Joes trying to swim before she left Double Agents. Lolo reminded us she was an Olympic athlete in most of those episodes. And she swims like Beth. That is sad.” Okay, that’s still wordy, but I’ll work on it. I just want to share the nostalgia All Stars invokes . . . the flashbacks to past seasons, the house that could double as a museum, Darrell doing an interview where he says someone’s name three times and then asks “What is you doin’?” Talk about moments like Kendall doing yoga outside as she’s greeted by Derrick, who looks like he’s coming off an overnight Charlie Kelly lookalike contest. Hopefully, I can get a post out regarding Double Agents, another flawed season of The Challenge with lots of good bits.
Or maybe I’ll be too lazy to follow through. Who knows?
