Pluto Rewind: Duel II Episode 2 — Winners & Losers

8 min readJun 14, 2021

Welcome back to another Pluto Rewind!!! I was up early and at em to get ready for my move today, but I still found time to pump out an episode of The Challenge on Pluto. This morning’s feature was the second episode of The Duel II called “Duel Unto Others” Inside this edition: Mark is inconsiderate, The New Zealand youth hockey program is set back a week, we find out what’s underneath Buzz Lightyear’s helmet, and much much more…

Winner: New Zealand

The Haka is cool.

Watching Brad, Brooke, Landon, etc. do it is decidedly not cool.

I broke down the Duel II intro in great length and detail here, so I won’t pontificate too much. But this intro has absolutely no right to exist but I thank the great Lord every day that it does.

Loser: Cliffhangers

Here’s a scenario. It’s mid-April 2009. Your tax return just hit, it’s Wednesday, and you’re all done with your homework. You decide to head down the street to your friend Leanne’s house hoping her annoying younger brother Matt won’t be home. But yet, there’s a lingering feeling you just simply cannot shake that you’re forgetting something.

But what is it?

You get over to Leanne’s and lucky for you Matt left a few hours ago and he won’t be back until later. The two of you are just tooling around doing nothing notable wasting away. And then bam…it hits you…

THE CHALLENGE IS ON TONIGHT!!!

MTV barely markets this show but it’s your guilty pleasure and you rarely, if ever, miss an episode. It’s getting late and you apologize to Leanne and you have to run you forgot you have plans tonight. On your way out the door of course Matt is just walking in.

“Hi!” he excitedly says.

“Bye” he sadly states as you push right past him, ignoring him, entirely focused on the task at hand.

You get home just in time. You make some popcorn, crack open a Mountain Dew, and you’re ready for action. But what happened last week? CT tried to murder Adam, but I don’t really remember how it ends…

That’s right. Shauvon vs. Aneesa. Clash of the Titans. Can you believe you waited an entire week for this!?!?! How did you manage???

Loser: The Producers

How did they think that ending/starting an episode with a cliffhanger in between with an Aneesa vs. Shauvon duel is beyond me. 2009 was a wild time. Can you imagine the internet complaining that would be happening now?

Loser: Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player

I wonder if Aneesa still has that thing.

Winner: The Patches on TJ’s Jacket

“Hey Teej, we got you a jacket to wear at the elimination today.”

“Awesome how many patches does it have?”

“Two”

Loser: Mark

Dude, brush your teeth somewhere else. Are you kidding? Not at the table, Carlos.

Winner: Hard Work

TJ Lavin is the face of the Challenge. In a game that changes season to season (or even week to week) with a rotating cast that is consistently shaking itself up, TJ is the only constant we have left.

But with only this episode as evidence, that would be a hard idea to wrap your head around. He was genuinely robotic explaining the rules for the daily challenge today. It was like when the substitute teacher calls on the kid who struggles to read out loud. Everyone in the room knows it’s going to end poorly but there’s nothing we can do.

But from what I’ve read and seen in interviews with him over the years, he does take this seriously and has clearly worked really hard to get better at it. Hard work pays off boys and girls.

Loser: Big Easy

Come again?

Winner: Shuffleboard

Nothing says The Challenge like human shuffleboard with blocks of ice and speedos.

Loser: New Zealand Junior Hockey

Shout out to whichever youth hockey teams that lost out on a day of practice because MTV rented out the only ice arena in town.

Loser: Paula

When you try and make everyone happy, you end up making no one happy.

Immediately when the gang gets back to the house after the daily challenge, the politics ratchet up to about a million.

The Duel actually is a format I wish they would bring back. You don’t have to call it The Duel 3, but just bring back this specific voting style.

It went like this…There was a woman and man winner for each daily challenge. Those two were ultimately the only two people that were safe. They would begin by picking, for example, a woman player. That player would then pick a guy, who would then pick a girl, and so on down the line until there was one player left standing for each gender. Then those people would be able to call out whoever, besides the winner for that day, to go up against in elimination.

This led to some predictable, yet fun outcomes as far as political scrambling goes. And boy was there some scrambling. Mostly led by MJ who rather than wielding his politics like a Swiss army knife, wielded them like a rusty sledgehammer that was on fire.

He ran around the house basically stirring everybody into a frenzy just to assure he’s safe for the ten minutes it takes until somebody gets called out. But who really this all fell on was Paula.

Paula’s strategy of being every single person’s friend and saying yes to everything really backfired when every single person needed her to say yes to something she could only say yes to once. But it’s just like in life. You cannot please everyone. Eventually, you have to make a choice and stick with it.

Loser: That Door

Wait a minute, back up. Look at that thing. Jesus Christ. CT is an animal. Crazy part is the door ended up healthier than Adam did.

Does CT have to pay for the repairs or how does that work? I know if they like break a lamp or whatever they get fined but that’s gonna have to be a whole new door. Someone text me and explain it.

Winner: Buzz Lightyear

I didn’t know Buzz Lightyear was hiding a mohawk under that spacesuit. You learn something new every day.

Loser: Every Other Challenge House

Do they have a fucking tennis court? Jesus. Must be nice. They had to shit in a porta-potty on Total Madness.

Winner: Hats

Lets rank the Top Three Hats In This Room ranked from “I would need a handsome sum of money to wear that in public” all the way down to “I would have to be incredibly intoxicated to wear that in public”…

3) Kim’s Red Hat — Whoops

2) Katie’s Short Bill Cap — Equally as regretful, but in a different way. Shout out to John Cena.

1) Diem’s Purple Hat — I’m partially color blind, so as far as I know that might be blue.

Moral of the story is 2009 was a wild time.

Loser: Aneesa

Lmao Aneesa got a radio player. I would be so mad.

Also, quick Q, Do they have to pay taxes on these prizes?

That’s right. Tax questions. You clicked on the link don’t blame me.

Loser: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Working in retail sucks overall, but I bet the worst position as an hourly employee at Dick’s Sporting Goods is the “rock climbing wall supervisor”. Dealing with useless shitheads like me and Robin who have no idea what they’re doing must be a miserable way to spend 32 hours a week.

Winner: Former College Football Players Doing Football Drills

In the same way that Kyle had zero chance against Fessy in Hall Brawl on Double Agents, Ryan went up against MJ in a drill that pee wee football coaches do during the summer months you’re not allowed to hit.

Because like Fessy, MJ played college football. At a much higher level than Fessy in fact. Pitting normal people like Kyle and Ryan against college football players in eliminations that are almost literally football drills is so unfair it actually swings all the way around to funny. But not as funny as…