Season 31

[6.3/10] This season was weird. I don’t think production knew what they were doing.

First off, some of these vendettas were contrived. For instance, Brad made his return to the show after being absent after Cutthroat (season 20), so production had to really work hard to convince the viewers why he hated Tony. And I actually had to look up why Zach and Leroy were vendettas because the edit never explained it.

Also, production would just throw out random twists and alter the rules when they saw fit. For example, Nelson faced Darrell (a mercenary) and T.J. decided to call it a tie because neither would give up. That was anti-climatic.

This season first introduced Big Brother and UK players to The Challenge and they were a mixed bag. Victor (Big Brother 18) was a dud and Rogan was purged on the first episode.

Which made me think: Bananas was the second to last male in that challenge. If Rogan’s back doesn’t give out, Bananas is eliminated earlier which means we don’t get the Tony blindside that led to his demise versus Devin. Also, Joss probably makes it further with Rogan still in the game. The Final Reckoning pairs would’ve been much different.

Grenades were introduced to players who won in The Ring (the elimination round) as a way to sabotage any player not in the Troika (Inner Circle/Tribunal), but most of them were lackluster and didn’t change the gameplay as they were promised. Kam, infamously, always had her grenades backfire which was a source of comic relief during the season. The birth of Killa Kam began here on Kam’s rookie season.

This season had the first ever solo winner in Challenge history, but the final fell flat. Production decided to reveal the winner on the reunion to force viewers to watch it.

Vendettas was just a knock off Rivals season without the pairs.