MTV’s “The Challenge: Rivals” is the best damn show on TV not starring Larry David.
Every self-respecting sports fan should watch this show. If you’re not, well then you’re an idiot.
Don’t pretend to be all Joe Cool and say,” That show is soooo high school,” because unlike the “Jersey Shore” or “Entourage,” The Challenge is actually good.
Last night, while many people were still celebrating the lockout ending and franticly masturbating to their team’s free agent feeding frenzy, I was gleefully tuning in to the best show on cable.
For a brief moment, I thanked the TV gods that this show was ever created.
The Challenge, formally the Real World/Road Rules Challenge, is a Molotov cocktail of sports and entertainment.
Mix über competitive people with a triple shot of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll and you’ll get an awesome explosion 90 percent of the time every time.
Just as in “traditional” sports, The Challenge’s gasoline is money.
The Challenge has figured out how to successfully have one foot in the door of sports and the other saddled onto entertainment, and it’s time for other sports, specifically the NFL, to follow suit.
You think Hard Knocks is good? With all the personalities, egos and constant oozing of swagger and debauchery, every episode of The Challenge has multiple Cromartie kid moments.
ESPN’s Bill Simmons has been arguing for years that the show should legally become our fifth major sport. I maintain it’s just ahead of the curve and the core four needs to catch up.
During its 13-year run, The Challenge has made an evolution similar to baseball’s transformation 80 years ago away from the dead-ball era. MTV made strategic and calculated changes to revolutionize the show.
In its origination, The Challenge was purely an entertainment program where people showed up fat and out of shape, strictly to party and possibly win some cash on cheap stunts.
But like Roberto Durán, MTV said no más.
Over a 10-year period, the network figured out who, what and how everything should work, formulating a compatible infusion of sport and entertainment. They sought fresh, young blood, emphasized a more competitive spirit and still maintained the extra curricular fun everyone enjoyed watching.
MTV made the challenges more strenuous, eliminations more badass and unlike other sports, accepted and even encouraged performance-enhancing usage. Like pro wrestling? The Challenge suplexes that trash because the entire show isn’t scripted and also includes nudity, booze and actual fighting.
In recent years, The Challenge’s cast of characters and personalities have been as athletic and entertaining as many of their sports equivalents.
C.T., perhaps the show’s mouthiest badass who never quite wins at the end, is Randy Moss’ long-lost brother from another mother, only he’s still relevant.
The dude’s a 6-foot-4 human gorilla with Boston street cred, and anyone who watches could imagine him saying in a Townie accent, “I’m gonna do what I wanna do. Play when I wanna play. I’m gonna say what I wanna say. … I don’t shine shoes. I don’t tape ankles. I don’t cash checks. Straight cash homie.”
We need more C.T. We need more Evan, Evelyn, Laurel and Johnny Bananas.
The show’s not perfect — simple improvements include making the show an hour longer, not having just two seasons per year and not making the challenges quite so complex — but other than Brooklyn Decker’s rocking bod, what is?
The Challenge has become a perfect niche of sport and entertainment, and it’s time for everyone to get on board and follow suit.
