As far as season openers go, there's Major League Baseball's opening day, NFL's Kickoff Weekend, and the season premiere of the latest Real World/Road Rules Challenge. That's the pecking order.
Now, you may have missed last night's debut of "The Ruins" on MTV. That's why I'm here. Here's a play-by-play recap of what went down.
10:00 p.m. - The episode kicks off with some dramatic shots of Thailand, as well as highlights from the upcoming season. Notable newcomers to this season are Chet and Sarah from Real World: Brooklyn, also known as the least interesting Real World season ever.
10:10 - If you picked 10 minutes for how long it took Tonya to get drunk and naked, congratulations, you win.
10:14 - One sentence from Kenny just contained three f-bombs and two "bro"s. And you wonder why I watch this show.
10:29 - Wes claims that he's going to "tackle his teammates" to throw challenges if his teammates don't agree with him. Dishonest play on The Challenge? Can we get a Congressional Committee on this?
10:46 - The first challenge involves climbing a rope over your teammates. I don't know. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. All I know is Wes tried to throw the challenge for his team but couldn't even do that right. Darrell says he wants to send Wes home so he doesn't continue to throw challenges. Good strategy, Darrell.
10:53 - We were so close to our first fight of the season, involving, you guessed it, Wes and Darrell.
10:56 - In the least surprising development of the season, Wes chooses to go into The Ruins against Chet, the skinny rookie Mormon guy. This has to be one of the biggest mismatches in Challenge history.
11:01 - It's so cute watching Chet try to be competitive and, well, manly. An actual quote: "I'm going to go in there and destroy Wes. From now on, I'm gonna be known as the bow-tie killa."
11:15 - Wes barely squeaks out the Ruins showdown over Chet, who kept it respectably close. It looked for a while like Chet might play the role of Appalachian State, but it wasn't to be, which is too bad, because every Challenge needs a skinny little Mormon.
11:25 - Another close Ruins for the women, with Tonya coming out on top. I'm glad Tonya will stay to provide her own style of drunken, naked debauchery.
In all, it was definitely an intriguing first episode. Obviously the biggest subplot is Wes trying to submarine his own team. It'll definitely be interesting to see how that plays out over the rest of the season. I'd like to thank James, Colin and Casey for giving me someone else to watch this with and not feel like a complete loser.
One of the scenes from next week shows Shauvon saying, "I think I popped my implant." This is going to be a good season.
