The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras Recap: Who Let the Dogs Out?

Unless you’re the secretary of the WikiFeet Coalition, you could probably afford to miss this episode of The Challenge 40. Every scene is either the same circuitous argument between Michele and Bananas or a conversation about feet and Johnny’s Angels’ penchant for foot-related activities.

Yes, you read that right. Somewhere along the winding road of this historic 40th season, Bananas and his angels (Aviv, Jenny, and Rachel) decided to make foot content a core pillar of their business plan. From foot massages to feet high-fives to mocking rival Cara Maria’s boulder-sized bunions, they’re loud and proud about foot play. I’d say it’s disturbing, but Cara reminded us not to kink shame.

In the house elf kitchen, sweet Derek tries to give Michele a cooking lesson, but she unwittingly holds his spatula hostage while she lets Bananas provoke her for the umpteenth time. He calls her out for getting pissed at Josh when Josh cheered for Bananas during the evening’s elimination. Bananas is great at identifying potential cracks in alliances and exacerbating them, and Michele, a social strategy competition veteran, should be better at recognizing this when it’s happening. Instead, once again, she completely feeds into his antics, pushing Josh fully into the Banana camp. And more importantly, Derek’s tortillas have burnt to a crisp.

The cast lines up for the daily challenge, called “40 Yard Dash.” In front of them, there’s a massive number 40 carved deep into a field, creating a dirty, muddy obstacle course. The players need to make six trips into the course, retrieving six puzzle pieces that are obstructed by things like mesh nets and stalks of bamboo. Once they’ve finished, they have to assemble their pieces, which resemble candy grape kebabs, into a stable pyramid. Michele, who lost last week’s challenge, has a one-minute time penalty.

The mud is thicker than Josh’s head, and challengers are losing their shoes left and right. It would be yet another opportunity for foot content, but the mud is so viscous, it basically creates a pair of Prada loafers around their socks. Angels Jenny and Rachel make a big deal about the fact that they’re running the challenge side-by-side and how empowering it is when women work together, but neither of them wins — Cara Maria does. It’s her first major moment of the season, saving herself from facing elimination as one of this week’s targets.

Despite the penalty, by the time Michele collects all her puzzle pieces, it’s still anyone’s game. They’re so stumped, asking for checks on constructions that look like sad, drooping tee-pees. The boys take every opportunity to make tired jokes about balls and how no one has ever made their balls into pyramids before. Yeah, that’s because you have two balls. Maybe if you had seven, you would.

Jordan wins for the guys, blocking Kyland from a three-peat and protecting himself from target nomination. Michele and Aviv are the final two players, after Cory comes in last for the men, and Aviv gets it done, sending Michele straight into elimination against her best friend of six weeks, Olivia. Since they are the only possible matchup, there’s no need to hold a Chamber, and Jordan gets luckier than Nara Smith’s husband, enjoying immunity without having to show any of his own cards.

We get our second coach bus scene of the season, and a coach bus scene only means one thing: imminent and impending disaster. To set the scene, Bananas is sitting on the left side of the bus, reading a book of douchey poetry or something, with his feet stretched across the aisle. Aviv, sitting in the same row on the opposite side, has her feet outstretched as well, and their toes briefly intersect, like The Creation of Adam. Michele, pouting dejectedly in the back row after her loss, snarkily comments, “can my feet join the party?”

She admits in a confessional that she’s poking the bear, but I’m not sure to what desired effect. Bananas freaks out and acts like this is so out of line, even though this is the type of cheap shot that he takes multiple times a day. Also, where was this level of outrage when his apparent ride-or-die Laurel made the way more offensive claim that Darrell was favoring Emily because she was giving him extramarital massages? He goes on a tirade about how Michele is a terrible person who sucks at the game both physically and strategically, which ultimately proves Michele’s point from earlier in the season that Bananas never genuinely cared about their friendship to begin with. He accused Devin of using her for the game, but he’s not any different, and his words seem as though he’s taking their feud past the point of no return.

At club night, Cory works to lock in female alliances. He lobbies Michele, who is frequently in a target selection position, but she tells him she’s unsure of whether she’ll protect him or Derek. He then shifts focus to the apolitical Cara Maria, who has spent most of the game as a lone wolf. She’s so uninvolved that she maybe averages seventeen seconds of screen time an episode, despite this being such a hyped comeback season for her. Cara tells Cory that with Theo gone, he’s her new Kendall-Roy-Number-One-Boy.

As the night wears on, Michele spirals into a classic Micheltdown, crying to Tori about the guilt she feels for forcing Olivia into elimination, and the potential hurt she’ll cause her guy friends by having to pick targets if she wins. Tori gives a solid pep talk and tells her to take one thing at a time — she’s actually growing on me this season!

The elimination game is called “Stranded” and features two giant DNA strand ladder structures in the center of the arena. Each player will need to use 40 rods to build the rungs of the ladder, allowing them to climb to the top and retrieve a bag of letters that they’ll use to solve a simple, three-word phrase. My money was already on Michele for this, a take that’s reaffirmed by the cast, who calls Michele a “professional cross-worder.” That has got to be an incredibly low bar in a Challenge house. There’s no way she beats me on the mini.

When the game begins, the girls quickly learn that the rods are all different sizes, meaning it’s not as simple as it looks to slot them into their ladders. Michele opts to take a beat and organize all her rungs by size, while Olivia doesn’t want to waste any time and relies on trial and error. By the time Michele is ready to start testing rungs, Olivia has already successfully placed about four or five. Olivia seems to maintain this lead for the rest of the matchup, and she gets to her letters first with a healthy time buffer.

Olivia continues her no-strategy strategy for this next phase of the game, which this time is a lot less effective. Letters are strewn all across her board, and she says her dyslexia makes the whole ordeal feel like she’s dealing with hieroglyphics. Once Michele retrieves her letters, she quickly solves the phrase “Not Eliminated Tonight,” marking her third elimination win of the season. She’s going to come out of this season with a Killer Kam record, if not better!

The best friends forever hug it out, and Derek wipes his tears in the stands with a silk scarf, being the diva that he is. For targets, Michele picks Bananas, Josh, and Cory, making the excuse that she’s protecting Derek on behalf of Olivia. I don’t love this move — Cory has a better chance of seeing elimination and winning than Derek, and right now, Michele doesn’t really have any other guys in her corner other than Kyland after blowing things up with Josh. Plus, Cory has the time penalty next week, increasing his odds of entering the ring.

With so few competitors left, I’m starting to think of endgame predictions. My gut is telling me that Jordan wins. From what we’ve seen, no one is giving Bananas any karma points, including Laurel, who he’s been loyally defending all season long on his podcast while guest after guest makes valid points about her character, or lack thereof. Kyland is also no joke, but Jordan has the experience, and knowing how to think about puzzles and rules through the specific lens of The Challenge can give you a major edge.

I hate that I’m counting out the women, who are absolute legends this season, but if there’s only one winner as has been implied, we can’t know that the structure of the final is going to be fair. Of course, there’s been times in the past when women have come in first (e.g. Jenny beating Bananas’s time on Total Madness or Cara Maria as the solo winner of Vendettas), but there’s also been infuriating instances, like Ninja Natalie’s first-female finish on War of the Worlds, where the final leg was a five-mile foot race and she left with zero prize money. I hope production proves me wrong and they create an entertaining final that doesn’t have gender-bias, but when has having faith in corporations ever served us well?