The cast arrived back at the house with Desi Williams and Chris Underwood celebrating their recent elimination wins over Amanda Garcia and Luis Colon.
Alyssa Snider was surprised that Desi took her spot on the Blue Team but said she had good connections with Monte Taylor and Tyler Crispen, so she was looking forward to being on the Green Team.
Chris tried to talk trash to some of the Big Brother players, but his words got jumbled a bit as he tried to call them “b***hes.”
MTV vet Wes Bergmann was upset with how his teammates from Green Team played him and made him vote for Cassidy Clark, while others voted in Amanda as a blindside.
Cassidy opened up to Cory Wharton and Faysal Shafaat about losing her sister to drugs. In confessional, she said winning The Challenge would help her take care of her family.
At night, Johnny Bananas yelled for everyone that Wes was about to jump into the pool. He was shown jumping into the pool completely naked. As a side note, this may have been because Wes lost a bet to Bananas ahead of the season’s filming.
In a confessional after his pool segment, Wes said he needed to use “smoke and mirrors” to distract others from going after him in this game.
Teams compete in the Unboxed daily challenge
Each competitor had a giant box with a puzzle inside proportional to their body weight. They had to carry it through the forest and could solve a puzzle at four different stations. If they solved the station’s puzzle, they could leave someone’s box behind.
The team that got their boxes transported first would win the daily challenge. Wes spoke about it being an advantage to Green Team having fewer members. He said their strategy would be to ignore most of the puzzles and just transport their boxes despite the weight.
However, they stopped to solve a puzzle to allow Monte to get rid of his box. Blue Team was in the lead but stopped at the second puzzle stop, which allowed Green Team to rush past them for the lead.
Blue eventually completed the second puzzle. However, the Green Team kept hustling, and their five team members crossed the finish line with their remaining boxes first. That made Green Team safe from elimination and gave them the power to determine who got sent in at The Arena.
During their nomination meeting, Cassidy and Chris’ names were mentioned early. Michaela Bradshaw tried to argue against putting two Survivor people into the elimination. Wes defended Tori Deal, saying he didn’t want to put someone into elimination with a lot of connections that could come back.
Michaela said in confessional she could tell there was an “attack” on Survivor people, and she wasn’t sure where it was coming from.
Josh, Fessy, and Cory looked to see which two players’ yellow balls were placed in the nomination spots. It was the two Survivor players: Cassidy and Chris. Cassidy wasn’t happy about it and looked for the guys from the Green Team who voted her in.
Showmances teased, and vets devise a ‘chaotic’ voting strategy
The cast went out to a club that night, and the single women held a mock Bachelorette or Bachelor game where each of the men came over to present reasons they were the best choice. Cassidy became a bit irritated when some women said Wes won the silly bachelor game they were playing.
Later, at the house, Josh and Cassidy seemed to be having flirty fun in the hot tub. Josh admitted in confessional he liked her energy and didn’t want to see her sent home yet.
At the club and the following day, there were hints of Tyler and Alyssa S. becoming more interested in each other.
Bananas, Tori, and Josh discussed their “organized chaos” plan. They said they’d protect Cory, Wes, and Fessy too. Tori said they’d put five names in a hat and each pick one, then vote without the others knowing who they chose.
The objective was for them to all vote in different directions so it didn’t look like they were aligned and would help their teammates believe they weren’t going against them.
Tori put in Alyssa Lopez, and Bananas voted for Fessy to cause further confusion when they did their secret voting.
Who went home in Episode 5 elimination at The Arena?
At The Arena, TJ revealed the votes, and Tiffany had four votes. Fessy, Alyssa L., Sebastian, and Desi had one vote each. Chanelle had two votes, and Dusty had four votes.
It was a single-elimination event. TJ fired up The Hopper and pulled out a woman’s name. Chris got to rejoin the Blue Team. TJ announced that Cassidy would go against Alyssa L., who had just one ball in The Hopper.
They competed in an event called Blockhead. Each woman was locked inside a rolling cage with small windows. They had to roll their cage over to each of the four flag poles in The Arena and collect each flag one by one.
Once they had all the flags, they had to get to a finish spot with a lightbox to place their flags properly to figure out a code. That code allowed them to open a combination lock on their cage door so they could get out and run to a red buzzer to press it to win the event.
At first, they were having trouble getting their cages to move. Cassidy finally got hers rolling and grabbed her first flag. Alyssa eventually got one but seemed stuck after that. Cassidy got her second and third flag to build a lead.
Alyssa got her second flag, but then Cassidy got her fourth. Alyssa caught up, eventually getting to her fourth flag as Cassidy rolled toward the finish spot.
Based on the footage, it seemed to be anyone’s game in a furious finish. However, Cassidy was able to get her code at the lightbox first. She opened her cage door, got out, and ran to press the buzzer, sending Big Brother’s Alyssa L. home for the season.
TJ asked Cassidy if she wanted to stay with the Blue Team or defect to another team. She chose to remain loyal to the team that she built. In confessional, Cassidy said she wanted to get rid of Wes by putting Monte against him.
The Challenge: USA 2 airs Thursdays at 10/9c and Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.