So I've watched every episode of this season's Gauntlet III (Real World/ Road Rules Challenge) on MTV and gone from mildly amused to obsessively interested to patently disgusted to completely appalled. There are reportedly still 5 weeks left, and I guess I'll still watch it even though I'm embarrassed to say so, but it's pretty much over at this point. Coral -- the last holdout from the "original"/old school Challenge veterans -- voluntarily left the show this week, the first time she hasn't made it to a final episode in a Challenge other than the one year she left due to injury. For reasons that make no logical sense, her team of Veterans turned against her (and Beth and Katie) and actively plotted to get rid of them. The steroid-addled male team members have wanted to dump all the female "dead weight," as they called it, but that should not have included Coral, one of the strongest female contestants in Challenge history, up to and including this season. And the female team members beside Coral, Beth, Katie (and perhaps Robin), joined in line behind the despicable Evelyn in the efforts to dump the "old-timers" from the game (for reference sake, Coral is only 29, but these idiots running the game now are a few years younger). The first evidence of a crack in Coral's usual safety in these games was when her male "friends" on the team (namely, Brad, Evan, and Kenny) didn't defend her from going into the Gauntlet against Beth, but she won anyway.
Then this week, the men threw their second female competition, blatantly targeting Katie and Coral, and after the Rookies protected Katie and sent in Evelyn, it was obvious that her teammates were going to select Coral again -- this time as a sacrificial lamb to the almost male Ev -- and Coral said she had enough. She had a calm and rational goodbye moment with Evan and Katie, explaining that she didn't give a shit about anyone else on the team if they were so set against kicking her off, especially since she's one of the strongest females, and especially after Evan did nothing to support his supposed friend. In a tearful scene earlier in the episode, Coral admits to being deeply hurt that Evan turned his back on her friendship during the game (shades of her more hysterical betrayal at the hands of Mike the Miz a few years ago). Now, I've always like Coral, so I'm 100% on her side on this, but even if you don't like her, you have to admit she came off looking classy here. Her teammates actively screwed her over for no apparent reason other than a power play to take out a former leader in other challenges and she didn't let them have the satisfaction. She left on her own terms and forced the Vets to send in one of their own to get eaten alive by Ev in the Gauntlet (since Katie was safe). Casey volunteered/got pushed in, and got destroyed by the she-male (picture to the right), and the entire team put on a despicable display of a pity party over the fact that "Coral screwed them over." Um... no, idiots. You screwed her over first, and hard, and undeservedly. You have zero right to complain about her coming back at you. Bravo, Coral. Fuck the veterans. And yes, I am fully aware how sad it is that I've become emotionally invested in such a horrible program, but hey, there it is.








