Previously on Inferno III: Shut up, Papa Roach. Also: The GGs handled their log better than the BAs, and Susie and Jenn were voted into the Inferno. The opening credits manage to get dumber by the week. The show's only a half-hour, can we maybe not waste eight minutes watching Paula and Davis pretend to be scary? This week begins with the respective female factions from the BAs and GGs getting their scheme on. Jenn is all fired up to take Susie out, but Janelle interviews about maybe throwing Jenn the Life Shield so she could throw in "one of our girls," i.e. Ev. Susie, meanwhile, embarks upon an episode-long journey of self-preservation as she lobbies Colie and Paula to suck at the challenge (...more than they already would) so she can win the Life Shield and send in Rachel. The rest of the team (represented, as always, by Alton and Timmy) seems more-or-less okay with this, and they all kind of bulldoze Rachel with talk of how awesome she is and how she'll totally cream whoever she faces. Alton, the warrior-king, of course compares it to Iraq. Of course Alton would go there. Rachel, for her part, tells us it's all about honor, this game show where people drink 'til they're sick and have their pubes blurred out in post-production.
Side note, apropos of nothing: in these latest interviews, Danny looks like he's got herpes on his upper lip. Foreshadowing a Tonya hookup? Or is his face choosing to destroy itself rather than be a part of him for one more day? Stay tuned!
This week's challenge is typically convoluted and also apparently WAY too difficult. The challenge producers on this show are perhaps the laziest people in all of television, I swear to God. Every season it's like this. Either way too easy or way too hard; requiring no real skills on the part of the competitors; loopholes in the rules out to here, to the point where TJ Lavin has to make them up on the fly and then use his fists to maintain order in the aftermath...the only people I could imagine producing a competition this bush league are actually on the show now, which makes this something of a Möbius strip, does it not? Anyhoo...the challenge. There's a beam suspended high above Way The Fuck Down There Canyon, and one guy and one girl start off at opposite ends, connected by a length of rope. While keeping the rope taut enough that it doesn't touch the beam, the guy needs to cross over to where the girl is. The upshot is that the girl needs to do a hell of a lot of twirling, wrapping the rope around her, and then retreating with the guy in tow. See? Stupid. And nobody can do it! That's the best part. Either the rope ends up touching the beam or -- more often -- the teams run afoul of the ten-minute time limit. Or, in Aneesa and Kenny's case, they just flat-out give up.
So throughout the challenge, Susie keeps popping up in interviews, telling us all about how Colie and Paula and Cara are in on this plan to throw her the Life Shield, and she's very concerned and judgy and obnoxious about the level to which they are accomplishing this goal. I have liked her in every single show she's ever been on, back to the first time she ever told Piggy she looked like Scary Spice, but: shut up, Susie. So by the time she and Alton attempt their turn as the "last" team to compete (I'm on to you, dramatic editing!), she'd better fucking rock out at it. And...well, she finishes at least, which is more than can be said for anyone else. So Susie gets the Life Shield, Jenn does not, and the GGs win the challenge.
In other challenge developments that are neither here nor there: Kenny re-takes the lead in the Challenge Boyfriend derby, leaving Johnny Bananas and Ace behind for now; and Abram appears to be...kind of snarky and considerate to his partner? Did he go off his 'roid cycle this week?
Back in the BA van, Abe accuses the girls (Aneesa in particular) of throwing the mission to try and get Jenn the Life Shield. Aneesa's like, "...Maybe." So she and Ev get into another shouting match, and I do not know what is up Aneesa's ass about Ev, but I wish the show would explain it to us, even if it's something stupid and behind-the-scenes. Then, because people stopped paying attention to her for a whole minute, Jenn gets red-faced angry and says she doesn't need anyone to be throwing missions for her benefit. Because she knows what I know: the Inferno goes to the craziest. And ain't many crazier than Jenn.
Susie indeed casts Rachel into the Inferno, where she and Jenn have to compete in a tricked-out jousting contest. Okay, challenge producers, I'll give you this one. It's a nice spin on the classic joust. Basically, they're standing on platforms that will raise up on an angle when their opponent strikes a target with their jousting stick. The more hits, the steeper the angle, until someone falls off. Best three out of five. Rachel takes the first two falls easily, but Jenn quickly realizes that she can just knock Rachel off balance by knocking the stick out of her hands. Which is what she does as she wins the three falls, eliminating Rachel. It's actually a really good job by Jenn of feeling out a weakness and exploiting it.
Rachel, and this is being charitable, utterly loses her shit. It seems like she'd gotten it into her head that she was going to win because she was a better-conditioned soldier, and when she didn't win, all of a sudden it reflected upon her beyond simply losing at a dumb carnival game some MTV pothead intern cooked up. She cries like crazy and won't accept comfort and generally takes it more personally than anyone in the history of the Challenges, including all 85 times Coral accused Mike of destroying their friendship. Bottom line: buck the hell up, little camper. And stop calling Jenn "some chubby civilian girl," because that makes you look like an idiot. Also making Rachel look like an idiot: the fact that she runs out of the Inferno arena and into Challenge oblivion, holding her head and wailing in anguish. Meanwhile, Ace is picking his nose and Janelle is running lines in her head for her Garnier commercial audition. Stop taking this at all seriously!
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