The Challenge Double Agents Power Rankings — Week 8
What a week! Things are starting to get a little spicy in Iceland. Friends are turning on each other left and right, and fake news is permeating throughout the house. On this week’s Power Rankings Nany hits a new low, Marge Simpson’s sister makes an appearance, CT shows yet again why he’s one of America’s great athletes, and much much more!
30) Joseph (Eliminated)
29) Nicole (E)
28) Wes (E)
27) Liv (E)
26) Nelson (E)
25) Natalie (E)
24) Tori (E)
23) Lio (E)
22) Ashley (E)
21) Jay (Last Week: 10)
After a whole season without any hooking up somebody finally gets fucked.
Play him out boys…
20) Josh (LW: 21)
On Vendetta’s during a crucial end of season elimination, Leroy went head-to-head against Brad. It was a janky elimination where they both wore oversized gloves and had to punch through a couple of walls. In one of the first few punches, the bar that they held onto inside one of Brad’s gloves broke and it severely impacted his ability to compete. Leroy won and moved onto the Final and all was right in the world. While I don’t necessarily think the Challenge Gods sabotaged the equipment Brad was using, Leroy winning was just simply the better…ah yes, Josh. Well, maybe he can’t do eight times nine but Devin found out he can count down from three!
19) Mechie (LW: 19)
By this point in the season, Mechie probably looks a lot like the Leo on the couch meme every time he catches a glimpse of himself in the background of somebody else’s scene.
18) Amber M. (LW: 18)
17) Gabby (LW: 17)
“Amber, you wanna get outta here?”
“And go where, Gabby? Where are we gonna go?”
“Some place warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we’re allowed to do that.
16) Mature Nany (LW: 16)
We’ve hit a new low. Not only am I almost positive I saw her drinking a Diet Coke at the bar, but she was the one who came barging in and finally broke up the Devin vs. Josh fight.
What the hell is going on? This sucks.
15) Nam (LW: 15)
Just once I want Nam to not be taken aback by something. How is it possible everything that happens on The Challenge is surprising to him? Is he like this in real life? Going grocery shopping with him must take forever. “Wait, that’s the price of an avocado?”
14) Darrell (LW: 14)
Like we did last week with Nany, let’s take a minute and use Darrell’s space to suss out the men’s side of the game…
Gold Skulls
- Leroy
- Devin
- Kyle
- Fessy
Who’s Left
- Josh
- Mechie
- Nam
- Darrell
- Cory
- CT
Josh and Mechie are fish food swimming in a tank of sharks right now. Which leaves really only Nam, Darrell, Cory, and CT all battling it out for only one vacant ticket to TJ’s Final. Now here’s where it gets tricky. We still don’t know what happens when all ten skulls are accounted for.
I really hope it’s not a purge scenario, where some arbitrary number of women/men in whatever daily challenge go home automatically for finishing last. That twist has sucked every single time it’s happened. I’m hoping the Challenge God’s got it out of their system. It’ll hopefully be similar to Total Madness, where the eliminations just continue and the people with skulls have to duel it out.
Either way, we got some Main Event level match-ups ahead of us simply looking at the names left.
CT vs. Darrell (Couple of Hall of Famers. Last time they battled CT broke the rope elimination)
Darrell vs. Cory (Dirty 30 revenge)
Nam vs. Anyone (Seriously I just want to see him do something)
And then if and when Fessy, Leroy, etc. are forced to go back down there, the combination of headliners gets endless.
13) Amber B. (LW: 20)
Shout out Patty Bouvier.
12) Cory (LW: 12)
It shows a lot of character out of Cory taking a few minutes away from his job on a construction site to let Fessy fake apologize to him.
11) Big T (LW: 8)
That didn’t sound like the first time members of the male population have let down Big T.
10) Aneesa (LW: 7)
When you’ve been watching a show that’s been on for 36 (!) seasons, you pick up a lot of little things that happen over and over no matter what the season, no matter what the cast.
And one of my favorite’s is the “Inject yourself into the background of a fight while eating drunk food”. This week, being the savvy veteran that she is, Aneesa made herself some food and ensured she got camera time throughout.
It’s possibly Aneesa may have even invented this move, it’s hard to know for sure. But it’s good to see the old bird still knows how to spread her wings.
9) Fessy (LW: 2)
Let’s talk about Moneyball.
Historically, The Challenge never concerned itself with things like order and efficiency. Disorder and chaos always bubble to the surface in any truly great segment, episode, even season of this show.
(You might be thinking about Final Reckoning right about now. But that particular brand of nonsense has actually aged pretty well despite redefining the concepts of chaos and disorder while it was airing live.)
Moneyball is one of the greatest movies ever made. Full stop. There are more life lessons one can take from that film than I have time to list here or that you care to read.
It’s a movie about breaking the system, but at it’s core it’s a movie about being smart. About making decisions in an intelligent, data driven way rather than on mythical and arbitrary factors like the eye-test, or your gut, or worrying about what TJ is going to say when you get back to the beach.
Look, I get it. It really didn’t matter all that much for the guys to get after it up there. Two people have already had to leave due to injury, and fuck honestly it looked so freaking cold out there. If I can see how cold you are on my TV, then you gotta be so damn cold.
But just like Steph Curry ruined pick-up basketball and the Three True Outcomes are in the process of ruining baseball, if The Challenge starts getting played in a smart way all the time by everyone, the viewing experience is going to erode more rapidly than we may realize.
Or maybe it was just cold, what the fuck do I know.
8) Kaycee (LW: 9)
While she may have a point that her and a team of Kaycee’s would be much more successful than having to deal with her Big Brother Bozo’s, that would be really boring show to watch.
7) Lolo (LW: 5)
Maybe it’s not as difficult to be an Olympian as I thought?
6) Devin (LW: 6)
Devin’s accomplishments are beginning to stack up and he should be proud of himself, but none of it is more impressive than doing his part to make mooning people a thing again.
Until last week’s episode, I’m pretty sure Randy Moss performed the last great moon (would it be mooning? Is performed the right word? What’s the grammatically correct way to phrase showing someone your bare ass?), and it was only really a metaphorical moon. I thought it had unfortunately been eradicated from society. Sophomoric humor, while immature, is still important when done tastefully. Like Devin, when he rubbed his bare ass on the glass door that everyone uses.
5) CT (LW: 4)
ESPN just recently published a story about NBA Superstar Stephen Curry, really cutting it’s teeth into the nuances of what makes him special. One detail in particular, though, caught my eye.
Through specific training, Steph has taught himself the ability to lower his heart rate to 90 or even 80 BPM during a mid-game time out. This takes his already legendary conditioning up to a level his competition simply can not match.
This immediately brought me back to Inferno 2. On this particular challenge, the cast had to lower their heart rate BPM to a certain level before the floor below them fell out. Check out CT, his number is there on the left.
I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that CT is one of the great athletes of our time across any sport.
4) Toxic T (LW: 13)
I’m both ecstatic and disappointed that a mother of two who hasn’t been on The Challenge since 2015 is one of the only ones left who understands that getting messy is the whole point.
3) Kyle (LW: 4)
Kyle watching the Amber’s passing the Nipple Ring Queen title back and forth all season must have gotten him a bit jealous. The patriarchy that society has unfortunately ingrained in me led me to completely overlook the males in the Nipple Ring Hierarchy and for that I apologize.
All hail Kyle, the current Nipple Ring Champion. Long live the King.
2) Leroy (LW: 11)
After posting my Winners & Losers episode recap, a reader pointed out to me a detail I was hitting myself over the head with a cast iron skillet for overlooking. He mentioned that because Leroy was doing sports in front of a girl he liked, that he had an additional performance boost of at least six points.
Duh.
In college my roommate, let’s call him Steve, at the time was chasin a girlie named, let’s go with Colleen. We were out at a bar called The Pub II, that’s the real name, embroiled in a back-and-forth game of darts against two rando’s we met five minutes before. This game took on extra importance because the losers had to buy shots for the group. Well, I was broke as fuck, essentially leaving me no choice but to prevail.
Colleen walked in the door, saw Steve and I from across the room, and sauntered over to say hello. Simultaneously, Steve was up for his shot. Without hesitation, as Colleen approached, Steve tossed his dart towards the board.
Bullseye.
1) Kam (LW: 1)
I mean, if her grip on the game wasn’t tight enough, now that Leroy has his skull they can essentially just start picking off whoever they want one by one from here on out.
Thanks for reading! In case you missed it, I published Volume 3 in my Moments in Challenge History series. As well as you can find my Episode 7 Recap here. And be sure to check back Tuesday when I preview Episode 8. As always, happy Challenge Watching!
