The Challenge Season 39 Alliance Formations Make Absolutely No Sense
Contains spoilers for Week 2 of "The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion"
As Season 39 of "The Challenge" enters its second week, the player alliances are becoming clearer — and the divide between the two major groups seems to be the Atlantic Ocean. The show began with 12 players from the United States and 12 international players, all of whom hail from Europe or Australia, with the exception of Jujuy Jiménez, who played on "The Challenge: Argentina." (Asaf Goren hails from Israel, but has appeared on numerous U.S. reality TV shows.)
Geography would normally be a fine way to consolidate power, but this season of "The Challenge" is structured differently, and these alliances aren't doing the players any favors. At least so far in the season, the players are competing as one unified team, and the outcome of their challenges is directly tied to their take-home prize money. This season's prize pot starts at $300,000, and with each competition, the contenders have the opportunity to bank additional cash. The first challenge was worth $50,000, but since the contenders failed to complete it, they lost out on that cash. The second challenge was also worth $50,000, and for each challenger who completed it, they earned $2,000. The contenders only had three challengers finish the job, so of the $100,000 available between these two competitions, they only banked $6,000 total.
Common sense would dictate that the players should try to pick off the weak contenders who are causing them to lose. However, the two alliances have different ideas of who the weak players are, and this lack of team unity and communication is clearly already hindering their ability to bank prize money.
The contenders aren't true rookies, but they're sure playing like they are
All the contenders have played the game before, but thus far, this season has been a blueprint for how to play like a rookie. Viewers have witnessed some of the best examples of what players should not do while trying to sway votes during nominations and in the first two episodes, we've witnessed major unforced errors. Among the highlights: Horacio Gutiérrez being the only player to nominate Big T Fazakerley for the elimination that she won, and Ravyn Rochelle's ill-fated quest to save Chauncey Palmer, which will likely result in her being nominated next week.
All things considered, Hughie Maughan deserves a lot of credit. His physical game may have people questioning his ability to compete, but his social game has been so solid and his nomination speech so compelling that he somehow managed to dodge the elimination bullet that took out Chauncey.
Now that both Jessica Brody and Chauncey are gone, the alliance numbers have equalized. 11 USA competitors and 11 international players remain, but since Ravyn got caught playing both sides, it looks like the U.S. alliance wants her gone. The question is, who will she call into elimination to compete against her? She and Nurys Mateo have bad blood left over from their "Ride or Die" season, but after losing both her shoes and her spot in the game to Olivia Kaiser, she may opt for an easier competitor — or at least someone from the other alliance. Either way, for the sake of the contenders, we hope they realize that eventually, they will have to put their differences aside and focus on who among them can help bring in the most winnings.
To find out if this is the week the champions show up, tune into "Battle for a New Champion" on MTV on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST.