Episode 9 : Viking Quest Part 1

Mixed bag of an episode for me as we wind down to crowning a champion.  The highlight of the episode and one of the highlights of the season was the X battle between Johnny and Mark.   But before we got to that battle of the titans, Camila was able to put away Robin in short order.  Robin with a pretty big size advantage displayed very little fight and even less veteran savvy in getting swept 2-0.   Credit needs to be given to Camila who is "absolutely fearless" and matches her partner Johnny in just having a knack for these things.  Also important to note that there is a 75% chance that Robin has some kind of mental deficiency.  I don't know a ton about Postpartum depression - but I feel like this is what it should look like.  Robin is just a mess of a human being and really needs to rethink her participation in the show.   I'm sure young Ethan will be overjoyed to watch re-runs of his mom in 20 years.

Then we got to the main entree - Johnny vs Mark.  A "David vs Goliath battle if we ever saw one" according to CT.   I really didn't understand that statement as I think Johnny had to go in as the prohibitive favorite.   But according to CT - Mark is 6'5", which if true would have to put Mark at something along the lines of 6'5" 240 with 1% body fat.   Personally I can't imagine, but I guess we can never truly know.   Johnny definitely was at a size deficit, but considering Mark had never been in a Challenge and Johnny is a multiple time champion and I liked Bananas chances.  I also think Robin put a tremendous amount of pressure on her teammate by not putting up much of a fight against Camila.  Not only did they go in already down 0-1, but he knew he needed to beat Johnny, win a coin toss and save enough energy to beat Johnny in the Tie Breaker.  

My favorite part of this Dome was the outside reaction.  Early in the game we see 15-20 people outside the Dome rooting on our heroes.   But being down to only 4 teams and having 2 of them in the Dome it was only 4 people's reactions we were gauging as each match roared on.   CT literally couldn't control his juices, bouncing back and forth and screaming non-sequiturs and sports cliches.   While Emily pulled out her hair muttering to herself, "I don't even know who I want to come back".    In the end, Johnny once again proved himself to be freakishly good at these things, getting the leverage on Mark 2 out of 3 times to bring home the win.  "If someone had to do it to him, I'm glad it was me" said Johnny as he vanquished his best friend in the game.

We got a very touching Mark montage as he once again announced this would be his last competition.  I'll believe it when I see it, but hopefully turning 40 does allow Mark to turn over a new leaf in his life.   Amazing to hear him talk about his journey on the 1995 Road Rules! That is insane.   And my personal favorite moment of the montage his punching the roof explosion on The Duel 2.

After our 6 finalists were named, TJ quickly announced that they would be heading to Iceland for the final challenge.   Johnny very cleverly decided to shower everyone in the room with ice.   If I was Ty I would have punched him in the face.  

Now the journey from the Dominican to Iceland is not a direct flight, so you have to assume there was at least a day of travel.  And then once they got to Iceland they were given 24 hours to enjoy the country.  It looked like that might have been creative editing and they may have actually given them 48 hours.  But needless to say between the jet lag, the travel and the temperature change this couldn't have been a terribly enjoyable journey.

We fast forward to the 6 teammates enjoying their time out in Iceland, followed by an unparalleled group dick ride.   Never in my life have I heard 6 people shower so much praise upon each other.  And of course we get the always necessary "these are the 3 teams that have grown the most in their relationship".... stop it.

Each team was given a massive amount of gear and you knew this was going to be an outrageous last competition.  When its -20 degrees out - you can barely breathe in the conditions let alone run in them.  So I was excited to see how the whole thing would play out.

As time wore down on our hour episode it was quite clear that this would not be the finale.   And when they showed there would be an overnight campout - we all had to know we were staring into the barrel of a to be continued.

So we begin to see the format of the Final Challenge, 2 challenges, an overnight campout, followed by 5 more challenges.  Each with a break in between and then we add up all the times and the team with the best time would be crowned our champions.  Look it makes sense on a variety of levels.  We couldn't have the competitors meandering far away from each other unsupervised on a ridiculous glacier.   And if they pushed themselves to hard for to long in those conditions, they could very likely die.  But lets be fair.  We can't feel the cold and it does seem like a very uninteresting challenge.   It doesn't seem terribly rigorous.   And so far it seems more like luck than anything else as to who is in first place.

The first challenge was a dog sled competition, where clearly the dogs were already trained and I don't think the competitors had too much impact.  Not to mention the fact that there was only a 9 second difference between first and last place, and it looked like Ty and Emily trailed by quite a margin.  And then the second challenge was a dip into what I'm sure was extremely cold water.   Yes its insane and it seemed like hypothermia was very much a real possibility.   But it was between 17 and 19 seconds of misery, followed by some time in a nice warm van.  I'd much rather do that then run 20 miles up a giant hill.  

The jury is still out as there are 5 challenge left to go, but when you break up the events and do a Tour De France esque timed deal - it takes some of the fun away for me.

The frozen dip was essentially a 3-way tie and it finished in the exact same order as the dog sled.  The dog sled, which appeared to be the easiest challenge in history had 25x more impact on the overall challenge then the frozen water dip.  A New York Jets / Tim Tebow esque stunt by The Challenge producers.

CT and Diem go into the overnight in first place and get to sleep on an air mattress and with a space heater. Ty and Emily (they must have some kind of heater, right?) go to bed with just a yoga mat separating them from the tundra.

Happy to have another episode, but the jury is still out for me on the Final.

What did everyone think? Are you disappointed with the format of the final?