The Challenge Theory III: Partner Challenge Domination

"The Challenge" or what was once the "Real World Road Rules Challenge" was at first a competition between alumni from "Real World" and "Road Rules". Out of the first nine challenges, six of them were exclusively competitions between Real World and Road Rules. These seasons included "The Real World Road Rules Challenge", "Challenge 2000", "The Extreme Challenge", "Battle of the Seasons", "The Gauntlet" and the "Inferno". In four of these challenges the Road Rules team usually won by a large margin, especially at the end, which caused Bunim/Murray Productions to scrap the whole idea of Real World versus Road Rules. The swapped it with themes like "Good Guys versus Bad A**es" or "Rookies versus Veterans" or "Champions versus Challengers" or "Red Team versus Blue Team versus Gray Team".

Usually in these challenges you would have one team vote a player from their team to go against a player from the other team or visa versa where one team would vote in a player from the other team to face one of their players that was voted in by the other team. The individual challenges (formerly called "missions") would allow the winning team to split the $10,000 or $20,000 winnings in their team bank account or their individual bank account. And finally, it would allow the remaining teammates at the end of the season to split the winnings from the final mission if their team happened to win. These were my favorite types of challenges to watch because I always liked seeing the challengers work as a team and always rooting for the underdogs on said teams. 

Bad A**es win Inferno 3 (top)
Road Rules team wins the first Inferno (bottom)

Now, while I always liked this approach to the show, it always carried with it many problems. The first of many problems was in every one of these team challenge seasons, there was always that one player who was always picked to go to eliminations. Whether it was because their team didn't like them or they thought they weren't as good, it always seemed to happen and it always made the rest of their team scared of go into eliminations. Also, when immunities and life shields were involved, teams would always try to make sure that a certain person got the life shield so they could throw in said "undesired" players or when it came to male and female elimination days, the men would always throw the mission so that they would get a chance to get rid of a female on their team. Probably the best example of this was the case of Sarah Greyson in "The Gauntlet". Sarah was seen as being weak because of her performance on "Road Rules: Campus Crawl" where she consistently quit in missions and was sent home because of it. The Road Rules team put her into the Gauntlet five times and each time she came back and eventually went on to split the "Handsome Reward" with the rest of her team that tried to get rid of her.

Sarah Greyson in the "Gauntlet"

Now it wouldn't be fair to also address the fact that there were pair and individual challenges during this time. They included two seasons of the "Battle of the Sexes", two seasons of "Fresh Meat", two seasons of "The Duel" and one season of "The Island". "Battle of the Sexes", while considered a team challenge was also an individual challenge because of how they voted players off their own team. "Fresh Meat" was a challenge where each "Real World" or "Road Rules" alumni could draft one fresh meat player based on statistics from a sort of combine trial. "The Duel" was a free for all challenge and "The Island" was a challenge where the contestants went to an island off the cost of Panama, didn't compete in any missions or eliminations, but rather eight different "Face-Offs" in order to earn a key and not get voted off the island.

Abram and Johnny "Bananas" in the 

voting ceremony on "The Island" (2008)

Now before I discuss my theory for why they made the change to partner challenges, let me talk about the current gripings that I have with pairing challenges. First and foremost, they have run it into the ground. Since 2011 they have had three "Rivals" seasons, three "Battle of the Exes" seasons, which are basically rehashes of "Rivals" with coed pairs, and "Bloodlines", which paired a challenge alumni up with a brother, sister, or a cousin of theirs. Basically it just laziness on the part of Bunim/Murray Productions to see something in the past that was received decently and replicating it five or six times. And while there have been minute rule changes to make "Rivals" different from "Rivals 2" and "Rivals 3" it still hasn't been enough to stop the fan griping. 

Not to mention the individual challenges are very repetitive and so are the eliminations. I swear, 90% of the challenges or "missions" are merely high up in the air where the contestants have to jump from one place to another or go across a beam that is high off the ground, or one partner has to help the other partner across. And don't even get me started with some of these eliminations. I think I can name four or five eliminations that have merely been reused because they have "run out of ideas". Likely because they cannot come up with something else that shows the physicality of the players instead of what was used before which was a lot of personal endurance and mental toughness.

Jessica performing phase 3 of "Out on a Ledge" in Free Agents (2014)

With that said, this is my theory. Back during the "Gauntlet" and "Inferno" era, one of the negative aspects was the fact that at the end, the team that won the final mission would win around $250,000, but they would have to split that amount with anywhere between four players and nine players. The main issue with this is the fact that instead of getting half of the amount of money they won, they would only end up getting anywhere between $25,000 to $55,000 so it wouldn't be nearly as much if you and a partner won $250,000 and got to split the amount right down the middle. This also added the ability to have the runners up and the second runners up win $35,000 a piece and $15,000 a piece. At the end of the day, it is more money gained per final and you don't have to worry about getting rid of people or worry about others attempting to sabotage you in a mission to make sure that you end up in the next elimination challenge. Not to mention, imagine splitting $230,000 with nine people, which is $25,000 rounded down and you end up with a lot of useless coinage in the wake of you winning. 

I actually liked the idea of having a challenge where at times players were partners, at times they were on a large team and at times they were on a small team like "Free Agents", which is a more modern version of "The Duel", but they really need to find a way to reinvent themselves. Even though "The Challenge" is getting a 29th season, the show has slowly regressed in viewers and the originality that made it so special in the beginning. The amount of drama in the show can only do so much until it discontinues and everyone needs to go ahead and watch a new reality show. I think we are all looking forward to that 29th season and hoping that they will do something different to keep the mouths of the fanboys watering.