What To Know
- Episode 2 of The Challenge Season 42 featured intense drama, including a heated argument on Team Blue.
- Strategic maneuvering and shifting alliances led to Reilly Smedley and Deb Chubb facing off in the elimination round.
The second episode of The Challenge Season 42, “Crying Won’t Get You Off the Roof,” was a doozy, filled with fights, unexpected showmance starts, and, of course, another grueling elimination battle. TV Insider caught up with the cast to break down the episode’s highlights. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for The Challenge Season 42 Episode 2.
The episode began with Big Brother alum-turned-Challenge rookie Keanu Soto trying to make a very early play for which women should be put into elimination. This decision would be his duty as cocaptain if Team Grey won the next daily. His goal was to protect his friends outside of the games, Anna Leigh Wilson and Reilly Smedley, but things went off the rails pretty quickly with that plan…
Meanwhile, Cory Wharton also got an earful from Nelson “Nelly” Thomas over his flirtation with Izzy Fairthorne, despite having three little girls back home whose mothers might not like seeing this. Looking back, Cory appreciates Nelly’s interjection.
“I think that just shows the dynamic of our friendship. He was just being a good friend to me and making jokes,” Cory said. “This season, for me, was all about Nelson.”
Nelson joked of the situation, “We all get lost in The Challenge house sometimes, and Cory’s my best friend. He’s my brother. I’m always gonna do what’s best for him, and sometimes you gotta put belt to ass.”
(For her part, Izzy said of the flirtmance, “When you’re in that environment, things are intense, and you’re with people every day, so there are relationships that develop… but afterwards, everything is always good, and we’re a family at the end of the day, so no harsh feelings anywhere with the relationships in there.”)
The daily challenge was a blindfolded teammate personality trivia test called “If You Know You Know.” The players were challenged to guess which of their teammates was silently answering the yes or no questions posed to them by host T.J. Lavin. No one was to make any noise whatsoever, and the player being questioned couldn’t lie in their answers. The biggest hitch? They were suspended 50 stories above the streets of Bangkok and would be dropped through a platform on a bungee if they got it wrong — and if they all got it right, the subject of the quiz would drop instead.
Team Orange devised a strategy for the answering player to tip off the others about their gender with their answer selections, leaving Chris “C.T.” Tamburello answering “no” on a question about whether he is good at math. So although the team did manage to outscore the others, they were disqualified after the fact for breaking the rules.
Team Blue had a miserable showing on both heats. In the first, Cara Maria Sorbello, who was petrified of heights, couldn’t quiet her cries, so they were DQ-ed. Then, Anna Leigh coughed and got the team DQ-ed a second time, leaving them with a score of zero.
This erupted into a massive argument between Team Blue members Nelly and Brad Fiorenza as the team huddled to find out who was responsible for the second flub.
Of that argument, Brad explained, “As much as we get along, it was a very frustrating time for us because of the DQs that had taken place on our team. And after the challenge, I was very frustrated because I was standing out there for what I believe was 40 or 45 minutes, and we’re blindfolded, so you can’t really see what’s going on. You can only hear, and when he started to raise his voice with the females on our team, I felt like it wasn’t really productive, and I felt like that it wasn’t the word choice wasn’t productive, the tone wasn’t productive, and with my frustrated position from how everything played out for us, it just turned into a heated argument.”
He continued, “I think he told me not to cuss, and I was thinking, ‘That’s not your choice, that’s my choice.’ So we got into a little bit of a heated argument, but apologized right afterwards… We shook up shortly after that. But I was heated in the moment because I guess I raised my voice trying to get him to stop raising his voice. I felt like I was trying to stick up for the women on our team, and then before I knew it, I just added to the problem. So I immediately apologized to him, and in the heat of the moment, it just kind of hit that level. But I was on tilt, I will be honest with you. I was on full tilt when he started yelling at me, telling me not to cuss, and I’m just glad I didn’t slap that helmet out of his hand.”
Ultimately, Team Grey handily won for the second time in a row, and T.J. announced a second-place tiebreaker that saw Cara Maria returning to the platform — this time, much less fearful — alongside Tori Deal for a sudden-death round, which Cara won.
Back at the house, it was time to choose the elimination contenders. Of the Team Orange women, Keanu wanted Alexis Lete to go in, alongside Izzy, but needed to send in Anna Leigh as a decoy. Anna Leigh then talked to Adrienne, and she flipped out, threatening to throw the next male elimination day challenge if that happened. Instead, he decided to send in Reilly Smedley.
Meanwhile, Deb Chubb was sent in alongside her, but she got a major pep talk from Tori and Michele Fitzgerald.
Jonne Roriz / Paramount+
“I had no idea what I was getting into. So if it weren’t for them, I think I would have been like a chicken with my head getting cut off,” Deb said of the morale boost. “They were hyping me up, but also being like, ‘It’s just a game, have fun, do your best,’ and I think that helped me stay in a positive mindset and not get too in my head about it.”
In the elimination round, “Line ‘Em Up,” Reilly and Deb had to arrange five lanes of giant balls into color order, and whoever did so the fastest would win. Though Reilly seemed to have a major edge in the event, she fell behind, and some of her teammates thought it was Cara Maria’s bad advice that did her in.
Reilly, who’d been none-too-thrilled about being sent in in the first place, said she holds no grudge for being the first woman to be eliminated.
“I understand how quickly things can change. I went from being HOH week one in Big Brother to being on the blog and sent my ass home week two,” she explained. “I knew that I was in trouble when we got disqualified from that challenge because I was one of very few options to go in. I get how it goes. It sucks. I don’t hold a grudge.”
Plus, she doesn’t blame Cara for steering her wrong in the elimination. “No, I do not think she sabotaged me… For my five seconds in there, I had a great relationship with Cara. I think she was trying to help me.”
As for how it all went wrong for her, Reilly said, “Being in that elimination, first of all, I don’t have my glasses on. I can’t even see it. I’m so scrambled in my brain. I’m trying not to get eliminated. I’m trying to run up a ramp the size of the house. I am trying to solve a puzzle. I feel sick. I’m like, gonna die on the scene… There’s so many parts to it… T.J. asked me a question after, like, ‘Why did you do this?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know, T.J. I don’t remember the last 40 minutes of my life, truly.’”
It was then time to choose new captains, like so:
Team Grey: Cory and Nurys Mateo
Team Blue: Brad and Alexis Lete
Team Orange: Deb and Bananas
The Challenge, Wednesdays, Paramount+