The Challenge: All Stars 3 Episode 3 Recap — Winners & Losers

9 min readMay 18, 2022

Welcome to another edition of Winners & Losers! This week we lost the Challenges resident Drench God and two Confessional Queens. But don’t be sad, we have so much to celebrate! Inside this week: Wes and Yes take on their first case, Roni sends Nia into another dimension, Brad is going to crush it post-apocalypse, and much much more…

Loser: Doing Yoga

Apparently, if you do yoga, you cannot sit with the Treehouse in the lunch room.

Within the dynamics of any setting that resembles high school, popularity is completely fluid and entirely random. That being said, the Challenge House is essentially an enormous high school cafeteria with slightly better food. This is why I always say that any reason is the best reason to get voted into elimination. Any reason is the best reason to be unpopular in high school. Sometimes it can be as simple as the room someone chose the day they arrived.

Who had “ maintaining hip flexibility and core strength” on the bingo card as the reason to be unpopular this time around?

Loser: Cable TV

Remember when MTV used to have so much amazing television programming that they needed not one, but TWO whole ass networks to be able to show it all on any given day?

I even remember when MTV2 first started. It was in the top five days of my life up to that point. I clearly didn’t have a ton going on back then, but still. Having even more MTV wasn’t something I even knew was possible. Now there’s barely even regular MTV. Shout out to Chanel West Coast and the other guy who sits on the couch next to her. Keep on cashin them checks.

Winner: Poetry

Woah, man. *rips bong*

Winner: Sorority Houses

This is actually super surprising to me considering “Delta Zeta during pledge week” is the energy Derrick’s been giving off in his confessionals since All Stars began.

Winner: Poetry (Part 2)

Loser: Kellyanne

Just like Tyler and Jordan, Kellyanne really got the short end of the pole wrestle for her picture on that mosaic wall. The Challenge God’s interior decorating faction decided to go with the time she ate five pounds of Argentinian BBQ, staring at a foreign piece of meat with a camera six inches from her face.

Winner: Yes and Wes, 7e/6c Every Wesneday Night on NBC

INT. POLICE STATION BREAK ROOM. EARLY EVENING.

The creaky door opens gingerly and WES — — — red hair, dressed as if he were 26 again — — — enters the break room, pouring himself coffee into the mud he’s used for over thirty years. YES — — — short dark hair sitting above a face full of striking features, WES’s longtime partner — — — sits on the soddy leather sofa eagerly anticipating his partners arrival.

YES: Hear me out, Wes. We take this case, the biggest case of our careers, then we call it quits. One last job.

WES grabs a seat opposite of YES and takes a deep breathe in before exhaling into the top of his steaming coffee mug.

YES: Haven’t you ever thought about it? Giving it all up. Retiring and playing golf? Maybe finally writing that novel you’ve always been talking about?

Sitting up slowly, WES saunters towards the one window in the room, overlooking the highway. As he takes a sip of his coffee, YES notices a new billboard for 1–877-KARS-4-KIDS in the distance.

YES: Come on man! You don’t wanna spend of the rest of your life chasing the Banana Man around town do you? Give it up, you’re never going to solve that case.

A few beats pass, and just as the tension is going to roll to a boil, a blaring alarm sounds. WES instinctively sets his coffee down, fixes his tie, and turns towards his partner.

WES: I guess that novel will have to wait…

Defeated, YES follows his partner, as he begrudgingly has for over thirty years now…

Tune in next week to find out what happens next!

Winner: Jordan

People change. They really do. I’ve seen almost all of my long time friends evolve over the years. Some in bad ways, but mostly in good ways. And I’m sure they’d say the same about me.

But people don’t change that much. At the end of the day (shout out Nany), you are who you are.

Jordan is who is he is. I can’t think of a single other person to ever be on The Challenge who would willingly ask for a disadvantage other than Jordan. He’s singular in that sense. Every time Jordan leaves the house he’s at a disadvantage, and I’m obviously talking about that haircut, so I guess what’s one more weighted vest to throw onto the pile?

Loser: Guess Who

Is your person wearing glasses?

Yes.

Does your person have short hair?

Yes.

Is your person Tom?

Nope!

God damnit. Okay, one more round. Those first twenty seven didn’t count.

I don’t know Kendal, I kinda have some things to do.

Things?! What could be more important than playing Guess Who with me?

It’s my little brothers graduation.

He’s graduating first grade.

When I graduated first grade, all my dad did was tell me to get a job.

Loser: The English Language

No it isn’t. It is not literally like that. I do not see peanut butter literally anywhere.

I am literally gearing up for a presidential run in 2024 with literally my only campaign promise being that I will literally eliminate the word “literally” from the lexicon so that reality TV people are literally forced to use literally ANY OTHER word to denote emphasis.

Loser: Nia

Winner: The Oopty Oop

Okay, deadass serious, how many times did Kailah and Sylvia practice that play? That was Stockton to Malone levels of execution on that. Coach Kilmer would’ve absolutely hated that.

Winner: Experience

Go on The Challenge long enough, and through repetition you become incredibly good and some incredibly strange activities.

There aren’t too many people on this earth, thanks to this show, who have ran/swam/crawled through a mud pit with the goal being to carry a spherical object from one side to the other while other people are attempting to stop them more times in their lives than Brad and Derrick.

The only thing about this result that isn’t surprising is that Aneesa wasn’t in the background sulking about her 9th place finish the round before.

Winner: Lying On Our Resumes

In the same way we all put “Proficient in Power Point” on our resumes, I guarantee Kendal has “decision making” under ‘Strengths’ on hers.

Winner: Lloyd Christmas

Loser: The 70’s Outfit Tyler Would Have Worn

Three episodes in and Sylvia’s now 0–2 on the costume party circuit.

During last week’s jungle themed event, Sylvia went as ‘forgetful college girl on Halloween weekend’. And for 70s Night, she decided to go as glittery Statue of Liberty.

It’s time to step up to the plate Sylvia.

Maybe she never thought she’d make it very far? Maybe she had her brothers graduation to get to, and making it beyond week 2 wasn’t necessarily something she anticipated.

Which leads to the important question, which 70's night outfits did we miss out on? Tundra definitely would have rocked the house (duh), and Laterrian probably has that one swanky button-up he bought in 2005 that he was planning on breaking out. Cynthia and Melinda are both wild-cards but Cynthia had a sick tiger costume lined up for the jungle party, so I can’t imagine she would’ve punted on the grooviest night of the year.

Wanna make the Challenge Gods laugh? Tell them your plans for 70's night.

Loser: Silly Copyright Rules

It’s a good thing there’s a small piece of tape over the company name on that bottle of ketchup because now I have absolutely no idea at all which brand the production assistant got at the store.

Wouldn’t want Heinz, er, I mean whichever the hell brand of ketchup that is to get free advertising on Bunim-Murray’s dime.