The Challenge: USA 2, Episode 2 picked up where the premiere left off, as The Arena’s first elimination was looming.
Big Brother’s Ameerah Jones and Amazing Race’s Luis Colon awaited their fates as one would battle with a competitor that host TJ Lavin drew randomly from The Hopper.
As it stood, the most votes went to Johnny Bananas and Monte Taylor, with four each, while Michele Fitzgerald had three. That gave those players the strongest chances of one of their balls being picked.
TJ ran The Hopper and soon informed Luis that he could return to join the other competitors, as Michele was the name randomly chosen.
Michele immediately called out Amanda, as she claimed she orchestrated her getting voted into elimination.
Amanda fired back, but Michele soon left the stands to face Ameerah in their event, Slam Dunked, a game involving two pools of water in The Arena.
First elimination: TJ reveals special power for the winner
In Slam Dunked, each pool had colored balls floating in the water, with the competitors suspended in harnesses on cranes above their pools.
They’d get dunked for a set amount of time. They had to get as many balls as possible out of their pool during each dunk. The one with the most balls out of their pool after 15 dunks would win.
It was a relatively close battle as both women came to compete, but when TJ revealed the final counts, Michele had 1,319 balls out of her pool, while Ameerah had just 1,301. With that, Ameerah bid farewell to her castmates and left The Arena.
TJ told Michele that as the elimination winner, she received some power. He said Michele could defect to either of the other teams, including the winning one, by taking another woman’s spot.
Michele said she liked the Red Team too much to not return to “Team Red Flag.”
At the house, Amanda called out Michele for trying to talk trash at The Arena. They got into an argument where Amanda said Michele was upset Fessy dumped her to get with Amanda again. Bananas yelled for Fessy to control his women.
Several players rise to the occasion in the daily challenge
In the daily challenge, competitors were up on a structure above the water, which featured many poles hanging from it. The object was for players to move across from one side to the other by going from pole to pole. The team to get the most players across would win the event.
Several players struggled and fell in the water, including MTV vets Cory Wharton, Jonna Mannion, Fessy Shafaat, and Tori Deal. However, Bananas, Amanda, and Wes all completed the task.
Green Team proved superior due to Amanda, Tyler Crispen, Desi Williams, and a few others completing the objective. Desi had to go twice and successfully did it as team captain.
With the win, Green Team could choose one man and one woman for elimination at their meeting later. Despite Wes’ attempt to talk them out of it, all his teammates voted for MTV vets Bananas and Tori to try to weaken another team.
There were also scenes featuring a flirty situation involving rookie Sebastian Noel and Tori. Sebastian admitted he was attracted to her but said in a confessional that it probably wasn’t the best idea for his game strategy.
In her confessional, Tori said she was officially single but cautious about getting involved with castmates in another Challenge showmance.
The second elimination featured MTV vets doing battle
The Red Team realized they had a traitor amongst them as someone had cast a vote for Michele at the previous elimination. With that, Michele and her allies, including Michaela Bradshaw, Tiffany Mitchell, Alyssa Lopez, and Desi, chose to target Jonna when they cast their secret votes.
Their plan worked, as Jonna was shocked when TJ revealed she had five votes, the most of anyone. She ended up going into elimination against Tori in Drop the Ball, a variation of Balls In.
The two competitors had to catch balls dropped from a large structure at The Arena. There were three different colors of balls, each worth different points. The objective was to catch a ball and then get it into the goal.
However, players could take down their opponents and try to stop them from scoring, similar to Balls In. While it was close for a while, Tori used her power and athleticism to overwhelm Jonna. She won 29-15 after TJ had sounded the horn.
That meant it was goodbye for the two-time All Stars champion. Tori got the option to defect to another team, but she said she didn’t like how the other teams seemed to treat women’s champions, so she returned to Blue Team.
She also said in her confessional that she would wreak havoc on other competitors for trying to take her out of the game.
The Challenge: USA 2 airs Thursdays at 10/9c and Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.