‘The Challenge’ Fans Frustrated Over Editing In Episode 15 Which Hid Strategy

The Challenge: Total Madness Episode 15 has come and gone, but fans are still discussing the show’s last competition before the final. The Crash Course challenge required competitors to get behind the wheel of a car and drive toward stacks of barrels in the hopes of knocking them all down. Whichever man and woman knocked down the most barrels, which also had players standing on top of them, would be put in the tribunal. Johnny Bananas and Kaycee Clark took home the victory and pulled in Kyle Christie into the tribunal to keep him safe from elimination.

Fans expressed slight boredom over the challenge, which was one of the least intense competitions of the season. They were also frustrated with how the show edited the competition and the plotting they suspected happened beforehand. Several threads on The Challenge subreddit complained about last night’s episode, with one noting how blatantly obvious it was that competitors were jumping off their barrels before the car even hit them. By doing this, alliances could help one another rack up the most barrels to get some of their allies into the tribunal.

The show did not feature any talking head interviews, in which the cast discussed strategy going into the competition, and host T.J. Lavin never made any comments about “cheaters,” which he had done in previous episodes.

A different thread on Reddit discussed the fact that Kyle fell off of his barrel stack while Challenge veteran Johnny was driving his car towards the group. Before Johnny even got to the barrels, Kyle went down, and it didn’t appear to have anything to do with losing his balance, backed up by the fact that the bottom barrel from Kyle’s stack was still in place after Johnny’s car had gone through. Melissa Reeve’s bottom barrel was also still standing, meaning her tower had never gotten hit, but she still managed to fall.

Another viewer noted that when Fessy Shafaat drove towards the group, Nelson Thomas and Cory Wharton appeared to fall off their barrels without being hit, but it didn’t go as planned.

“Cory tries to do the same thing to boost Fessy and Bayleigh, but they didn’t count his barrels for either run. Granted, it was probably because he did it too late and made it obvious. Nelson was able to successfully knock his down for Fessy though,” an eagle-eyed fan noted.

Most of these viewers who have been commenting on Reddit are not upset about the gameplay, but that they were not let in on any of the strategizing. Competitors on The Challenge have been helping each other out since the show’s creation, and finding creative ways to influence the outcome of each competition is nothing new to the franchise.