[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for The Challenge Season 41 Episode 4.]
In last week’s episode of The Challenge, Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio declared himself the centerpiece of the show in front of the whole house, including some who’d been on for much longer. What he meant, he later clarified on Twitter, is that he “carried the show through the dark days when nobody else could keep the lights on.” Now we’ll get a chance to see if Season 41, Vets and New Threats, can keep the intensity (and the ratings bump he claimed credit for) going without the it factor of Johnny Bananas.
On Wednesday’s (August 20) new episode, Chris “C.T.” Tamburello finally weighed in on Johnny’s words and said, “We all love Bananas. We do. Love him. And we are playing a game, but you can sit there and act like you’re the mayor of Challenge-ville with the rookies, but with the vets, there’s a lot of bitterness and karma that you rub people the wrong way, especially some vets.” That was not a total condemnation, necessarily, but it showed he rubbed even some allies the wrong way.
Johnny did his best to soften the mood afterward, it seemed, by teaching Turabi “Turbo” Çamkıran a few naughty phrases to liven up the pool scene. However, that didn’t help him in the game itself.
In the daily challenge, “Amazed,” the contestant pairs had to make their way through a giant container maze filled with puzzles with various difficulty levels. Although CT and Adrienne Naylor won their heat, it was Michaela Bradshaw and Ben Davis who emerged victorious overall, while Johnny and Ayoleka “Leka” Sodade came in dead last, earning him an automatic trip to the arena.
With Gabe Wai as the resident “hangnail,” following Nia Moore‘s medical disqualification (and, she announced, subsequent retirement from the show), the question for the house was whether Gabe should be voted in, and the answer was ultimately yes.
In the elimination, “Hold ‘Em Back,” Johnny and Gabe had to take turns as offense and defense sides of a curved wall with tokens on the other side, with the goal of, while on offense, grabbing a seat of ropes, hooking them to a harness, and racing tokens to the goal. Although Bananas had a solid strategy, he was simply outmatched by Gabe, full stop.
“It’s one of the most frustrating things when you put in all the effort you’ve got. Even on your best day, it’s not enough. The best I could do was slow him down. There was no stopping the bleeding. There was just making death take longer than it otherwise would have,” he later admitted without an ounce of that tough talk that informed the episode before. “If I could predict the future, these new threats are about to take over this game and not look back.”
Johnny’s showmance partner Dee Valladares predicted his exit would have an immediate impact on the politics of the house. Without him around, Olivia Kaiser wouldn’t have a lightning rod for her U.K. alliance to target anymore. So will the ghost of Johnny Bananas haunt the house, or will the game continue apace and prove he isn’t the necessary component of an interesting Challenge season? We’ll see.
For now, the new teams are as follows: Ben and Olivia; Michael and Jake Cornish; C.T. and Sydney Segal; Adrienne and Turbo; Yeremi Hykel and Ashley Mitchell; Leroy Garrett and America Lopez; Tay Wilcoxson and Theo Campbell; Will Gagnon and Aviv Melmed; Aneesa Ferreira and Cedric Hodges; Derek Chavez and Dee; Izzy Fairthorne and Derrick Kosinski; Leo Dionicio and Cara Maria Sorbello; Justin Hinsley and Nany Gonzales; and the first rookie-rookie pairing of the season, Gabe and Leka.
The Challenge, Wednesdays, 8/7c, MTV
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