The Challenge: Australia Episodes 9 and 10 Recap — Winners & Losers

Welcome to the final Challenge Australia Winners & Losers Recap!!! We crowned two new champs, drank some Fosters, and overall had a blast with this group of Aussies. I’ll be sad to see them go, but hopefully, we’ll be seeing some of them soon enough. Inside this edition: The Room gets a sequel, trivia goes down unda, the Final continues to be miserable, and much much more…

Loser: That Room

So Troy, the one I was gushing over last week, finds himself as the odd man out with only four of men remaining. This is due to…well honestly I’m not sure. That part hasn’t really gotten fleshed out. I think it’s one of the arbitrary variables that occur in the final days of this game. Sometimes you’re just the bottom of the totem pole.

It also has to do with the fact that he’ll probably leave the other three, Ciarran the Hot Guy, Conor the Elimination Guru, and Konrad who wears black nail polish (honestly not a ton there), totally in the dust in a Final challenge situation. But let’s burn that bridge when we cross it, shall we?

What’s important to note here, is that Troy is living in the same bedroom as Amber and Michele were during their time together on Ride or Dies. And those two weren’t exactly homecoming queens. I’m wondering now whether maybe that room is isolated from the rest of the rooms in a way that secludes in inhabitants from forming strong social connections.

You’re right, they’re probably just afraid of him.

Winner: Australian Trivia

It’s Trivia day!

Rather than hang them over water in a precarious battle against gravity, this time they spin them around on a pinwheel for awhile, stop the wheel, and whomever is at the top gets a question. Answer wrong, get an x. First to three x’s loses.

I think one thing, and maybe the only thing, that the Challenge Gods can take away from this Aussie version, is that simple is a good thing. There’s not much too this game as far as the ups and downs go. Last place goes into elimination, winners pick their opponent. Even Aneesa’s Algorithm wasn’t an algorithm. On Challenge: USA it was presented as some complicated formula where nobody would ever be paired up until the math said they could again. Which led to anyone who ever took a math class beyond Algebra 2 scurrying front and center shouting that their math is wrong. Of course it was wrong. Aneesa was the one who came up with it. This time, though, Brihony just said you won’t be paired with the same person twice in a row. How easy would that have been?

Change is good, and on a show that changes constantly, it carries a fan base that is surprisingly reluctant to change as a principle. But simple is good too.

Winner: The Australian Education System

So not only are the questions being asked relatively difficult (‘where was the highest temperature ever recorded’, ‘what city has the highest population’, ‘what is the name of a male honey-bee’, etc.) but these Aussies are nailing almost all of them. The ones they’ve gotten primarily wrong were the pop culture ones!

Now, the minutia of Australian education is not exactly something I’m familiar with (and if you are, tweet us @fessyfitness if I’m saying anything incorrect), but it seems like at least the reality stars they’re pumping out are at minimum a thousand times more worldly and intelligent than their American counterparts.

In a twist of poetic justice, this was some pretty boring and fast-forward-able trivia. Brihony barely even cackled like a hyena. Maybe one time they broke her. By far the most endearing part was Ciarran proclaiming his love for getting high and watching Animal Planet. Which was then doubled down on when Konrad, answering an animal related question of his own, also claimed to having an affinity for getting high and watching Animal Planet. And you know what the worst part of it was? They didn’t even ask anyone what language was spoken in Australia.

Meanwhile, in America…

Winner: The Challenge

For the final elimination round of the season, with the Final being mere hours away, the losing paid Troy and Brittany find themselves going against Konrad and Brooke B. in a bit of a twist on a Challenge classic, pole wrestle.

The women are up first. Which means, if you’re scoring at home, that an Australian podcaster is going to do a pole wrestle against the former Australian Bachelorette. A sentence that both sounds ridiculous when read aloud and can only exist on this particular show.

How can you not be romantic about The Challenge?

Loser: Enzo and David (not my Dad)

The final elimination round of The Challenge: USA was also a physical challenge classic. Instead of pole wrestle, they did a variation on Balls In.

The two competitors clashed in a pathetic battle that threatened to put the franchise back a decade and more resembled a battle between two field mice than two men colliding in a physical confrontation.

It would pretty much be impossible to do, but I have no doubt in my mind that the Aussies won’t let me down.

Winner: The Australians

Not only these these two throw a few shrimps on the bar-b, but they put on one hell of a show.

The size difference between Konrad and his black nail polish and Troy the Chosen One was substantial. Konrad had at least thirty pounds and five inches on him. This bore out in the strategy as well. Konrad’s move was to basically punish Troy for the crime of being much smaller than him. Except Troy has that unattainable, unpredictable, unknowable, DAWG inside of him, and just wouldn’t budge an inch. He managed to use this strategy against Konrad and withstood the pounding to eventually wear him out.

Troy is part Spike Dudley, part Cohutta, and part Derrick Kosinski. He’s an animal, and won not just the elimination that night, and not only a ticket to the Final Challenge, but also the cold, cynical hearts of any Challenge fan savvy enough to find an illegal stream of Challenge: Australia on the internet.

Loser: Waking Up After Making The Mistake Of Having That 12th Margarita Last Night

Winner: Expectation Subversion

The Finalists are set, and to describe this bunch as a motley crew wouldn’t really be doing them justice.

Not that there were really any physical specimens cast on this Australian Challenge, but to see the Finalists come down to this bunch is actually both hilarious and perfect.

There’s Ciarran, who definitely has an STD, Conor, who probably has an STD, and Troy, who is likely too concussed to be able to spell STD at the moment, on the men’s side. For the women, there’s Brooke J, the Brooke that wasn’t the Bachelorette, there’s Kiki, who isn’t married to Danny, and then Brittany, who is a podcast host.

This group, if anything else, tells you exactly what The Challenge is about. And why it’s the single greatest show in the world.

Best part is? Brihony just told them that the Final starts……right now!

Winner: How Difficult This Puzzle Must Be

Task number one in the Final? Before they can lay in tiny tents and get some shut eye, they must complete this apparently impossible to complete puzzle.

This same one that none of them were able to complete during a daily challenge earlier on in the seasons, as well as the puzzle that Amber and Chauncey solved after four hours before grizzled vets Veronica and Darrell in their elimination round on Ride or Dies.

Many times, as I sit on my couch sipping cocktails, I marvel at just how silly these people look attempting to solve a puzzle that, at least from my side of the TV screen, looks simple and straightforward. This one is no difference. It seems to be fairly easy to figure out, and yet it had stumped Challenger after Challenger to attempt it.

So what’s the deal? What’s the trick? Why doesn’t Cracker Barrell have a version of this on every table rather than that peg game?

These are the important questions, folks. Don’t get it twisted. Does anyone else want biscuits and gravy right now?

Loser: Underwear

Part two of the Final, after getting collectively zero sleep, the group is tasked with biking a total of 100k between the partners before they can move on.

Now Kiki, pictured above attempting to rip her underwear off, was the winner of the previous daily challenge. This allowed her to dress in street clothes for the elimination that, unbeknownst to them, directly preceded the start to the Final. So, because of that, her choice of underwear reflected that wardrobe decision.

So she made the executive decision to not run the remainder of the Final in a “precariously thin G-String” as she so eloquently put it, and requested =a pair of scissors from production. This is definitely a Challenge first, cutting off your own underwear during a Final while riding 100 kilometers on an elliptical bike in the middle of an Argentinian forest.

How can you not be romantic about The Challenge?

Loser: The Final Challenge

I might be alone in this line of thinking, but if I had to guess I’d bet that I’m not, but there is no worse episode of any given season of The Challenge than the Final.

Run run run. Puzzle puzzle puzzle. Random miserable task random miserable task random miserable task. I wont give up I wont give up I wont give up. Everything hurts everything hurts everything hurts. I have a lot of heart I have a lot of heart I have a lot of heart. Run run run. Puzzle puzzle puzzle. Run run run.

My girlfriend is listening to a podcast about…I’m not sure but they’re saying TikTok a lot, while getting ready for work. I’m watching this episode under a microscope so that I can write bad jokes, useless observations, and hundreds of words in between. Even then, it’s hard for me to not drift off and focus on the podcast I can faintly hear from my bathroom rather than the Challenge episode playing on the laptop literally in my lap.

For years I’ve argued that we need fundamentally change the way we think about Finals. But that’s another podcast for another day. Let’s go back to watching these kangaroos run around the Argentinian wilderness, shall we?

Winner: Troy and Kiki

Our two Australian Champions. Troy and Kiki.

As far as Troy goes, you don’t get more deserving of a win than this guy. He won like a hundred dailies and capped the regular season off with an epic elimination round against a mountain of a man in a pole wrestle. There was little doubt as to who would end up victorious at the end of this. Get him to the big stage ASAP, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he’ll be able to do in the World Championship season.

For Kiki? I can’t say that she blew the doors off of the house this season athletically. Running is clearly her forte, as she smashed that part of it even through endless complaints of a bad back. But personality-wise, she’s all there. She’s like if Amber was likeable and had the ability to make friends. Will she do as well as Troy once they’re up against the big dogs on the World Championship show? Probably not.

Loser: The Challenge USA Cast

Best part of this Final? No one quit. Not a single person.

mehhh porduction mehhhh didnt even tell me how to do a sudoku mehhhhh this wasnt fair meehhhhh

Fuck America. I’m moving to Australia, immediately. Melbourne Cup, here I come!!!

LANG LEVE DE ECHTA WERELD!!!!

Thanks for reading! It was one hell of a fun season. I like Australia at least twelve percent more than I already did. See you all soon for Ride or Dies Winners and Losers! And until then, as always, Happy Challenge Watching!!!