Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Challenge: All Stars’ On Paramount+, Where Former Challenge Contestants Come Back To A Harder-Than-Ever Game

Paramount+ is continuing on its MTV nostalgia tour. First it was Real World: Homecoming, where the entire first season cast is back to annoy each other 30 years later. Now, it’s a new season of The Challenge, starring Real World and Road Rules cast members who haven’t gone through these physical challenges since at least the aughts. How will they fare during the new, much tougher, game?

THE CHALLENGE: ALL STARS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes from previous seasons of The Challenge, with host T.J. Levin’s voice saying, “The Challenge is the most thrilling competition series ever created.”

The Gist: The Challenge: All-Stars is just what you think it is: A new season of the MTV staple, completely populated with previous contestants. Eleven men and 11 women, most of whom participated in the show from its earliest days as the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. It’s not a team competition; each contestant is playing for him or herself. The winner gets a cool $500,000.

How old are these contestants? Mark Long from the first Road Rules in 1995 is back for the umpteenth time, as is Beth Stolarczyk from the 2nd Real World season way back in 1993 (Beth has been in so many Challenge seasons, we’ve lost count). Other favorites include Trishelle Cannatella, Syrus Yarborough, Ace Amerson, Teck Holmes, Ruthie Alcaide, Laterrian Wallace, Jisela Delgado, Yes Duffy and more. Levin is back as host.

Most of these contestants were on Challenge seasons in the ’90s and ’00s, when a) they were much younger and b) the challenges weren’t nearly as physically demanding. So not only do they have to get used to an everyone-for-themselves dynamic, but they also need to face a much physically rougher contest.

The first challenge has the 22 contestants splitting into two teams and naming a male and female captain. They have to solve math equations on a podium, then dive into a frigid lagoon in order to find chained-down blocks with the answer on them, corresponding to the copper or silver color of the team they’re on. If they have to tap in someone else to finish that round, the team gets a five-minute penalty. The first to solve the final equation wins.

Since the men are up for elimination in this round, the losing male captain is automatically up for elimination, with the rest of the group choosing who he goes against in the elimination challenge. The winning male coach gets immunity and the winning female coach gets the chance to save the eliminee chosen by the group, if she chooses to. The elimination challenge? Bar wrestling. Longtime fans of the show know how brutal that can be.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Challenge, of course, but the interpersonal dynamics certainly have their roots in the original Real World and Road Rules seasons where everyone came from. Also: Before the elimination challenge, they all have a ’90s party!

Our Take: If you’ve been a fan of The Challenge all along, there is nothing about this version that will make you long for the other seasons. This season, which Long pitched on social media last year and where he serves as one of the executive producers, has the same brutal challenges as the show has had through the ’10s, but the contestants are mostly old favorites from the ’90s and ’00s.

That dynamic makes it enjoyable for people like us, who haven’t really watched the show since its earliest days. How can these contestants, mostly in their 40s but some, like Beth, in their 50s, handle a contest that would wipe out people in their 20s?

Despite how convoluted the first challenge is — Math? Finding the right-colored number in a murky, freezing lagoon? — it’s entertaining from the perspective of watching these middle-aged contestants try and fail to navigate it. Most of the contestants had no idea how tough it would be, right from the outset, and seeing them struggle to even get 30 feet into the lagoon for some reason made our couch-anchored middle-aged asses feel better. Bunim-Murray Productions knows this, which is why the soundtrack is filled with “old people” music ranging from Foreigner to Bush.

Of course, it’s also good to see some of these people again. We get to see Beth, who loves herself some camera time, call Nehemiah Clark her “Tenderoni” once again, and laugh as Nehemiah ignores her. We see Latterian try to redeem himself after a defeat. We see Ace getting ganged up on and talking about how “evil” everyone’s going to get with money on the line. We see Jisela stumbling out of the transport shuttle when she first arrives but then kick ass during the challenge.

It’s going to be an interesting show when we get down to the last few contestants. How will this now-friendly dynamic between everyone break down?

Sex and Skin: None, at least not yet. We’re assuming some hook-ups might happen.

Parting Shot: A look at the upcoming season, which confirms a lot of what we said above. Even T.J. Lavin gets pissed at a contestant.

Sleeper Star: Let’s hope we see more of Ruthie and Trishelle, who weren’t exactly known for their maturity on their respective Real World seasons. But two decades of time might have changed them.

Most Pilot-y Line: Ace tells the camera “People used to kill each other for a scooter. What are they going to do for half a million?” Some interesting foreshadowing there.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Of course, the nostalgia is strong on The Challenge: All Stars. But that will fade away once the competition starts. And, despite some convoluted challenges, watching these fan favorites push themselves is pretty entertaining.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Challenge: All Stars On Paramount+