Previously, the Rookies got an infusion of clown hair and Skoal when M.J. jogged his easily-sunburned ass across the beach and into their lives. Still couldn't help them win anything, which meant the Vets had to keep all those sucky loser girls on their team.
In the morning, at the pool, the vaunted brain trust of CT, Danny, and Evan discuss their most favorite of topics. "Superdelegates?" you say? No! How much their girls suck and how they need to throw as many missions as they can to get rid of them. Hey, Bunim-Murray, nice job changing the rules of the game so that nobody has an incentive to win anything until the final week. Evan and Danny take turns interviewing, finding different ways to insult their female teammates, while CT just wears that ridiculous hat and keeps from getting heat stroke, I guess. Not that it would affect his personality one bit, of course.
Elsewhere, in a really poorly synched-up sequence, Frank manages to be actually funny, saying he was up last night and saw "about six That Guys" talking about getting rid of the Vet women. He basically interviews that if the Vets want to throw them missions every other time, he's perfectly fine with that. Damn, Frank, complete the thought! They're throwing girl Gauntlets. They're still fixing to kick your tails during weeks when your ass is on the line.
Meanwhile, the Vet girls aren't stupid. At least, Coral, Katie, and Ev aren't. They suggest telling the guys that they'll throw guy Gauntlet missions if the guys fuck them over. Katie also interviews that you never know if the final mission may value more team members -- she says "fourteen brains are better than seven," but when the brains you're talking about include Beth's, Danny's, Robin's, and Brad's, I think the math may not work out. Because none of them know what math is. Later on, poolside, CT drunkenly pontificates and talks in circles about "trimming the fat" while his team sits around and silently resents him. "Silently," that is, until Katie gets fed up and tells him to shut the fuck up. She goes from zero to freakout in about half a second and starts screaming about how CT's a liar and nobody trusts him and everybody would rather he weren't there. But with a lot more "motherfuckers" and flippings of the bird. God help me, I love Katie so much. You deserve a cigarette after all that exertion, sweetie, let me light it for you. CT, meanwhile, sits back and laughs all, "What did I do?" because he's the kind of asshole who will poke and poke and poke until you flip out, and then he tells you to calm down because you're acting crazy. And then he will punch a policeman's horse.
After the break, the teams get the challenge text message, and Johanna duh-terviews that she's cool with the Vets throwing the mission because it means the Rookie women are sitting pretty. ...Metaphorically speaking. The Vets do some dorky line dance as they approach the playing area, and T.J. explains the competition: teams will have to dismantle, move, and rebuild replica pyraminds. T.J. explains that these represent some or other temple in Chichen Itza, at which point Danny looks at him like, "I think we did shots of Chichen Itza last night." Beth interviews that she thinks the guys are gonna throw the challenge and send her to the Gauntlet. GOD WE KNOW. The guys, meanwhile, huddle together and are totally not suspicious at all. They're throwing this bitch. Get fucking on with it.
As usual with this show, the competition itself is a total bore, though I'll note that the pieces of pyramid look seriously heavy. The Veteran guys have seemingly decided not only to throw the mission, but to make it look like the girls are at fault while they do -- the plan being to carry shit around and yell at the girls for failing to "guide" them correctly. Kenny, as the promos have promised all week, declares that they're "making a complete debauchery" of the mission. They sure are. Carrying. Sweating. Glistening torsos connected to empty heads. Lots of Vet guys yelling at each other because they TOTALLY CARE and are DOING A GREAT JOB PRETENDING THEY WANT TO WIN! Danny jogs around the pyramid "twenty times" if you believe him. He can't believe the girls are so stupid as to not realize they're throwing this. Beth interviews that it's obvious the guys are throwing this. Sigh. Rookies win. Evan interviews that shit's about to go down now,
Comercials. Stop-Loss trailer. Snow Patrol. Tears.
After the break, Evan gives his milestone 500th interview in which he says the Vets are happy at the idea of losing a girl. Evan could do with being a whole fuck of a lot less self-satisfied right now. I mean, so could all of them, but I still have some hope for Evan. T.J. tells the Rookie girls they're safe and Coral delivers a hall of fame "mmm hmm" eye-roll. The Rookies deliberate. Nehemiah says to throw Ev to the Gaunlet, because she's stronger than half the guys and you have to hope you can get her out. Tori wants to send in Coral to get rid of the Vets' mouthpiece. They flip a coin like the total pussies they are. They eventually keep Casey safe (over Beth? Ouch) and send in Coral, who calls them all fucking assholes for flipping a coin rather than making a damn decision. Also for flipping the coin wrong. Ryan disappoints me by taking pleasure in Coral's suffering. I thought we are a team, us three!
On the walk to the cabana, Coral threatens...someone (Evan?) to not even dare put her up against Beth. She interviews why: "She's got at least fifty pounds on me. Not to mention fifty years." It's like I don't even have to think of anything. Thanks, Coral! She goes on: "I am not trying to get fucking pushed into a wall. By my grandma. On steroids." Evan tries to make a case for feeding Coral someone she can beat. Diem, rather, says they should send someone who can beat Coral. Everyone eventually votes for Beth, who says she can't wait to break the news to Coral. She's seriously nuts, that one. If you offered her the choice between a million dollar check and the chance to antagonize another human being, you'd be left with a million dollar check in your hand. ...Hey, I like the sound of that. Coral curses out the guys on her team for not having her back.
The wheel spins to Ball Brawl, which has to be a little bit of a relief for Coral, since that's the one game where speed is valued over size. Coral then proceeds to freak out on her teammates for risking her in a Gauntlet against Beth. Coral's overestimating a few things all at once here, including her friendships with people like Kenny, the ability of people like Evan and Brad to stand up to the rest of the team, and the degree to which her team cares whether she sticks around or not. Hate to say it, babe, but they think you're just as expendable as the double-X. Ryan thinks this is fucking awesome, for TV purposes alone.
So: Ball Brawl. With the footballs and all. Coral does not want to be the girl that lost to Beth. Beth, meanwhile, interviews that she and Coral inexplicably get along (when Coral's not ranking her out in interviews), and right now they both hate their team. They shake hands and begin. Coral expectedly wins the race to the ball and then it's just inch-by-inch towards the goal line. Point: Coral. Beth wins the race to the second ball and wins that point. Coral wins the race to ball #3 and once again endures Beth long enough to cross the line. Her team really does want her to win. Coral wins the race to ball #4, and at this point Beth looks pretty assed out. She knocks Coral down a couple times, but Coral eventually prevails. Thank God. T.J. does his usual appraisal of the competitors' values as human beings, saying Coral proved she wasn't all talk and Beth put up a good fight. Beth leaves comforted in the knowledge that Coral will be a huge bitch in her absence. Unlike the huge bitch she always is? Post-game, Danny interviews that he will personally see to it that Coral doesn't make it to the final challenge. By...getting his face caved in by a beer bottle? What are his talents again?
As we transition from the first half-hour to the second half-hour (seriously, MTV, nobody's fooled by your mashing two episodes together and pretending like you expanded the show to an hour), we see Derek and Paula lounging around all lovey-dovey. So Derek's getting thrown in the Gauntlet, then? It seems these two have been making out during all the time they've been ignored on the show thus far. Meanwhile, Danny, CT, and Brad talk about having to win this competition possibly by themselves, if the girls smarten up and throw it. Seriously, look at Danny's arms sometimes. He's all bicep and no forearm. It's like he's wearing flesh-colored floaties. Nature doesn't do that to a body, Needles O'Bacne.
Danny and Evan tool around with the clue announcement, and while Nehemiah interviews about how much he needs to stick around, we see yet another segment with Derek talking about what he would do in the completely unlikely event that the Vets win and he's thrown into the Gauntlet. Seriously, the fact that we're focusing on Derek at all is as close to a dead giveaway as you can get. Darling Ryan tries to push Derek towards a mindset of choosing to go up against Frank, should the unthinkable happen, but Derek's assurances that he'd never want to go up against Ryan (they seem to be tight) nudge me closer and closer to this episode's conclusion already.
The challenge is a balance beam walk, suspended over the water, while the other team swings medicine balls at them. Sounds like a fun time. Adam gets knocked down, Eric's too fat to get knocked down, CT makes it across (of course), Kenny DQs himself for touching one of the ropes, Evan falls, Brad makes it, and Danny gets knocked but he's far enough along that he falls onto the platform. The Rookie men go: Derek absorbs a couple good shots before darting across, M.J. falls off, Frank and Nehemiah make it, and the it's Ryan...who gets SO CLOSE to making it across before he's knocked off.
Now the Vet girls who, if they were fucking smart, would all just allow themselves to get knocked off and teach their boys a lesson. Doesn't seem like that's the plan. This involves heights again, so Casey is taking this as her excuse to freak out and act like a baby. Coral tries to position her second in line, and Casey freaks out and acts like a baby. She seems to think that there's a position in the order that she could go that won't involve running across a high beam. That is not the case. Coral is finally like, "Is third okay with you, princess?" and Casey freaks out and acts like a baby. Brad interviews that they need five girls to make it across to win and four to tie. Robin makes it through untouched, Katie is petrified and inches across, Casey tries to let Katie shield her but gets knocked off, and Diem rushes up behind Katie and starts shaking her arms at her (the fuck?) until they both make it across. It becomes clear that the Rookie girls aren't strong enough to really whip the medicine balls. Evelyn makes it across. Veterans win. No need for the Rookie girls to even try.
So Ryan got saved last time and thus can't get saved this time. The Vets seem to want to game this so that Ryan won't get thrown into the Gauntlet anyway, because Sissy-Sissy Gaypants will apparently bring his team down at the final challenge. They think Derek won't send Ryan in if they choose him, so Paula (in order to keep Derek safe) has to pretend like she knows for a fact that Derek will defer to the team in that case, and the team will choose Ryan anyway. Got it? Meanwhile, Frank frets that his days are numbered. The Vets ultimately protect M.J. (because: who cares?) and send in Derek. Paula is distraught.
Back at the Rookie Cabana, Tori relays Derek's wishes not to send Ryan in, and Tori kind of backs the discussion right up to Frank's door. Frank attempts (once again) to make the "my arms are bigger thus I am more valuable" case for why they should send Ryan in. Ryan interviews that he hopes his alliance with the Austin girls (a-ha!) will help him. Unfortunately, the only girl who ever speaks up in these meetings is Tori, though she hates Frank anyway. Nehemiah says they can't really afford to lose anyone, so it's almost useless to argue anyone's respective worth. Out on the beach, it's revealed that Ryan is being sent in, and then we flashback to Tori voting for Frank while Melinda and Rachel show their true lowdown colors by voting for Ryan, who stops the rest of the voting because he can see where it's headed. Dude. Never trust an Austin cast member. They suck too hard.
The game wheel is spun to: Silders. The puzzle. Best possible option for Ryan, I'd think, even though they both interview that they suck at puzzles. Better than playing tug of war with the giant hoss, though. You can't recap solving a tile puzzle, so aside from noting that Ev assists Ryan while Paula helps Derek out, let's flash forward to the part where RYAN WINS! Nice! Suck it, Austin bitches! So the Rookies' biggest guy goes home and they're probably doomed to lose all their other missions. But Ryan won!
Derek gets a hero's exit, complete with tearful sendoff from his lady love Paula. They're both actual nice people, so I hope they can reconnect after the show. I don't think I've ever thought something like that watching this show before. Huh. How weird that Paula turned out to be a pretty cool human being. Of course, maybe not that surprising, since she didn't get cast (for Key West) because she was an asshole (like most of these people), she got cast because she was emotionally unstable. Sometimes, when the unstable people manage to get their shit together, they end up being decent people underneath. Like what happened to Ruthie. Don't ask me to explain how Derek made it through. I just finished learning his name. Predictably, Danny has to ruin my good mood and theorizing by giving a smug interview.