The Challenge Theory VII: Did Susie and Cara Try to Sabotage the Rookie Team?

In late 2005, Murray/Bunim Productions aired "The Gauntlet 2" on MTV, which pitted the rookies against the veterans. A veteran was a challenge alumni who had previously participated in two or more "Real World Road Rules Challenges" and a rookie was a person who had either been to one or had never participated in a challenge. Probably the biggest controversy that occurred on the show was whether or not rookie girls Susie and Cara tried to sabotage the rookie team. Now I have never seen the reunion special for the show so I don't know exactly what was said on there that could have pertained to this theory, but I am going to try to tell it to the best of my ability.

Now, during the challenge, there were two male and female captains for both teams. If your team won then you and your team captain was safe, but if your team lost, then your team captain or your team would have to vote or pick a player from your team that matched their gender to compete in an elimination challenge. In theory, you could make a deal with members of the opposite gender on the other team in order to throw the missions on days where the opposite gender would compete in gauntlet eliminations. This came into play midway through the challenge when rookie captain, Kina was approached by Jillian with information that two of their teammates were going to throw missions.

According to Jillian, rookie girls Susie and Cara were approached by veteran guys, Timmy, Brad and David with a secret plan. If Jillian, Susie and Cara promised to throw men's gauntlet missions, then Timmy, Brad and David would throw female gauntlet missions. This would save all six members of this alliance and take them to the final mission on their respective teams. Now, this is merely what Jillian said to Kina, but was she being honest? Was she telling the truth? Your skepticism can come into play when after the mission "Team Races" where both teams had to push a manual transmission truck with bricks on it, and afterwards the rookie team held a meeting. Both Susie and Cara thought that the meeting was over why they were not allowed to participate in the mission as much as they wanted to and then it came out that the team thought they were trying to sabotage the game.

Immediately, Susie started crying and Cara started defending both of them, claiming they would never do something like that. Kina then told them that Jillian approached her about it and that was how the episode ended with the next episode beginning with Jillian admitting that Kina and Susie never agreed to a deal but merely just discussed it. Now why would Cara and Susie having an alliance be beneficial to them? On the rookie team, there were numerous members of "Road Rules: X-Treme" that included Kina, Jillian, Ibis, and Jodi with Cara and Susie being the odd players out that were not part of that specific season. This would cause Kina to throw either of the two of them in whenever she wanted to if the rookie team lost on a female gauntlet day.

Now Kina did eventually nominate Cara to go into a gauntlet elimination against her and Cara did lose, but do I think that Susie and Cara actually had an alliance with the veteran team? I personally don't think so. I think they were propositioned by Timmy, David and Brad, but I don't think anything concrete came of it. So the real question is what was the motivation by Jillian to lie about what actually happened? I mean, it is completely possible that because Jillian and Kina weren't on "Road Rules: X-Treme" at the same time as Jillian was actually a replacement for Ibis, who appeared two episodes after Kina was eliminated so maybe she wanted to gain an extra leg on Ibis and Jodi by telling her this information. However, I don't understand how Jillian could have been so idiotic to tell Kina a half-lie and not have the information get back to her team as her merely lying. Now it is possible that Jillian thought that Cara and Susie were in an alliance, but that they never agreed with the alliance in the first place. Either way, it lead to Cara getting eliminated and it really didn't save Jillian anyways because she was also eliminated by Kina in the final girl's gauntlet.

Susie and Cara