It’s week two of The Challenge Australia and so far whatsy and whosit have gone home! Thingy and whats-her-name still here! We’re definitely not at the point where I remember anyone’s names once they’re off my screen, but I will absolutely remember the exact minute I saw a pash occur. Let’s recap episode three.
We open with everyone coming back to the house talking about Jess Brody behind her back, because apparently the fact she and Troy picked Emily and David to go up against Jack and Audrey means she is the BITCHIEST BITCH OF ALL BITCH-LAND. Idk how a) Troy is getting out of all this hate (ahem it’s coz he’s a man ohohoho misogyny alive and well!!!) and b) what these people wanted them to do otherwise. Not pick anyone? Sacrifice themselves into the pit of elimination shame just to be nice?
David is telling us about how evil Jess is. Emily is telling her new, sudden BFF we’ve never seen her speak to, Consumption Cyrell.
Cyrell tells us they’re going to team up to destroy Jess because… no reason.
Over to Jess, who has formed an alliance (let’s see how long this lasts) with Eggsy, Grant and Johnny. She’s telling them she’s got the dud partner (David, who also wants to rip her hair extensions out) and she’s worried she’s going to lose a challenge because of it.
The next day everyone hits the gym/runs tiny circles around the 1m x 1m garden, while Cyrell munches on a bread roll because, like me, she is not taking this very seriously.
Brooke Blurton, meanwhile, has decided to fuck royally with producer’s heads and become besties with Brooke Jowett. They must be like “PLEASE for the love of GOD talk to ANYONE ELSE on this show”.
Anyway the Brookes have a conversation about Konrad – Brooke B says he’s been avoiding her because he’s weird about how they used to date (well, reality tv-date) and she’s convinced his awkwardness is going to bring them down. The best the producers could do for “Konrad being weird on camera” was this shot of him sitting next to some potatoes.
Off to the first game and oh my god, how will they top this for sadistic challenges that have no point whatsoever!! It’s incredible. It’s called ‘Bolas For Blood’, and involved everyone rolling around in a giant mud slush like little piglets searching for these balls that have numbers on them.
But that’s not it! They also have to do a MATHS EQUATION and find the corresponding numbers on balls that make the answer. This would honestly be the challenge that ruined me. I’d just quit on the spot, I can barely add up single digits.
Anyway, it continues to be unhinged. When they find the numbers, they have to clip them to a rope and lasso them around a pole. Why is this so complicated? There are so many moving parts I’m exhausted just from the mental process of it.
Brihony explains all these rules and everyone stands there looking like this:
Everyone’s finding the maths part the hardest. Ciarran‘s like “Emily and I dropped out of school at 16” and then I thought he said “we’re both ungood at maths” but he actually said AREN’T good at maths, which I realised coz I had closed captions on, and I didn’t even question “ungood at maths” so I think this proves that even if you go through university and end up a writer, you can still be a true dumbass Ciarran.
It’s a lot of just people burrowing into mud and standing in front of equations looking confused. Then!!! I told you she was a dark horse – Cyrell and Conor win the challenge, meaning they’ll be choosing who is up for elimination alongside whoever loses. This doesn’t bode well for Jess, who Cyrell HATES for no reason remember, or really anyone because Conor has already told us he is a sociopath who uses people.
David and Jess lose, and honestly they may as well have purposely lost bc Cyrell was always going to throw her into the elimination pit regardless.
Cyrell has now decided, seemingly without even talking to Conor, that she’s going to throw Grant in the pit because that one time 450 days ago he put tokens on her Connect Four pad in the first challenge (along with everyone else but that’s an aside to Cyrell) to make her lose. It’s incredible petty grudge-holding from Cyrell.
David and Jess go in to chat with Cyrell and Conor about who they want to go up against. David seems like he’s being a kind soul and says Brooke Blurton, because she’s the only person he’s seen cry in the house and he feels like she doesn’t want to be there. That’s prob because she doesn’t want to be there.
Cyrell, meanwhile, is still hell-bent on throwing Grant to the wolves, ofc. Jess tells Cyrell she sees that she’s making decisions in the house “based on love” and I’m like, has she met this woman?
Turns out David wasn’t being a kind soul (shock! dismay!) because when he brings up Brooke’s cry to Brooke, in front of cameras and also two other people, she’s like, well fuck you very much, that was a personal conversation.
David, who might have less of a soul than Conor, is like:
Off to party! This one actually looked lit though. Like this happened, for example:
There’s a lot of snipey little side chats about elimination and not nearly enough fucking for my liking, but there was one INCREDIBLE convo where a bunch of people sat around telling each other why they deserve to be there more than others. Apparently Grant having chosen to have two children makes him more worthy of the cash prize, while Kiki feels that she deserves it more than Brooke B because she’s “reidentifying herself” in the house or something.
She starts welling up, saying being there is “reaffirming she’s capable” and like, I think she genuinely feels it and I’m happy she’s gaining confidence from the challenges, I quite like Kiki.
BUT. Also, as I say with ALL of these shows, NO ONE NEEDS TO GO ON REALITY TV TO ACHIEVE THESE PERSONAL GOALS. This isn’t Celebrity Rehab!! It’s also not Squid Game!! It’s literally just a show where ex reality stars roll in mud like tiny piglets.
Also I think Grant’s doing okay judging by the #sponcon all over his Instagram account!
It’s just a biiiiiiit rich to be like “I deserve this more than that person” with this show since you all really went on to get a bit more famous/win some cash.
Anyway Cyrell is like, well fuck, you had to come in here with the tears and the mention of kids, now I’m torn about who to hurl into the elimination pit, except not rly because she still throws them in ohohoho. This woman is the Taylor Swift of this season.
The game is called “Spelling Eeb”, and it’s basically a backwards spelling bee – they have to spell words backwards correctly, and if they get it wrong then six (!!) giant tyres are added to some pile they’ll then have to lug them off to some other pile. Normal stuff.
In the end it’s Kiki who trips up on “algorithm”, honestly same. I can barely spell that correctly under pressure NORMALLY.
Grant’s builder background is really handy right now because he’s realised that you’ve got to stack the tyres a particular way so the tower doesn’t topple. BIG ASSET ENERGY HERE.
In the end it’s his genius that scores them a win! David and Jess’ tower topples right at the last second. Brooke B is like, that’s what you get for being a PIECE OF SHIT SNAKE. Well, not really she says something about karma but you know, poetic licence.
Off go Jess and David, over to the very-real-n0t-at-all-fake algorithm machine, which spits out a bunch of partners, most notably Ciarran and Kiki, which was always going to happen.
They seem like they’re on okay terms, but Kiki does tell us that Ciarran thinks he’s always right so fireworks? Tomorrow? I fkn hope so because we didn’t get ONE SEXY TIME this entire episode. What is the point of watching if we’re not given drunk hook ups? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?
Melissa Mason is a freelance writer, you can find her on Insta and TikTok.
