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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: December 15, 2003
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Challenge, “All or Nothing” (Season 7, Episode 12). [Watch it on YouTube.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: There have been several turning points in the evolution of The Challenge. One was Battle of the Seasons, when the show went from being essentially an extended Road Rules special event (the RVs travel; the lack of eliminations) to a proper reality competition with players being voted off every week. But for the first two seasons of this, teams were scored on each competition, leady to tidy little scoreboards where you could clearly see who was doing better. This sapped a lot of potential drama from the show, since teams (especially the guys in Battle of the Sexes) just voted off the lowest scoring team member and nobody could really argue about it.
Then came season seven: The Gauntlet. No more scoreboard, so the teams had to vote based on squishier metrics like “strength” (i.e. “are you a girl?”) or “team unity” (i.e. “who are you friends with?). This was the season where Road Rules ostracized poor Sarah, sending her into the gauntlet week after week, where she kept winning, then returning to a team that clearly didn’t want her. A big part of that Road Rules team dynamic was the pairing of Veronica and Rachel, who teamed up to mean-girl many a contestant over the years. Sarah was the first.
When they weren’t tormenting Sarah, Veronica and Rachel also set their sights on Abram. He was a rookie, that season, along with his Road Rules: South Pacific castmates Cara and Dave (a.k.a. David Giuntoli of Grimm). Abe had gotten kicked off his original season for fighting, so he had an air of danger beneath what was otherwise a baby-faced, blond, twinky facade. He would eventually get voted into the gauntlet, as most rookies do, and dispatched by Mike (a.k.a. WWE’s own The Miz). But before it was time to go, Veronica and Rachel had a going-away present for him.
It wouldn’t be the first bathroom-set threesome in Real World franchise history. We all remember the Miami season where Mike, Melissa, and some waitress engaged in illicit acts behind closed doors while Flora and Sarah snooped outside. But this was the first time that a) all three participants were cast members, and b) the foreplay was engaged in right on camera. MTV and Bunim-Murray Productions: always making history.
[You can watch the “All or Nothing” episode of The Gauntlet on YouTube; other seasons of The Challenge are available on Amazon Video and Hulu.]
