Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins is bringing together fourteen of the regularly seen cast members from past Real World and Road Rules seasons and challenges past that have won a previous season of Real World/Road Rules and fourteen challengers  that have never won in a challenge before.

Host T.J. Lavin is back for another season. For the first time ever, each person will have his own individual bank account that will be added to at the end of every challenge and those people will forfeit their money to the winning player if they are sent into the ruins and lose. This should be an interesting season.

Of course, everyone seems to know each other’s personal lives and everyone has something to say about someone else.

Nobody likes Wes except for Kelly Anne, who he is dating. Tonya is already trashed and flashing her boobs at anyone who will look. Wes and Johanna are having a serious conversation about their relationship. Everybody is getting drunk and having a grand party like only these people can.

MTV focuses so much on the drama between the castmates that the viewer is left wondering if they will ever even get to the challenge.

Finally! The cast mates are actually going to compete for some money. There is a platform suspended above the water and a rope to which everyone is tethered. Everyone must climb over their teammates and up the rope to ring a gong before the next person can go. It is truly brutal to have them climbing over one another in this fashion and people are getting stepped on and kicked in the face. But whatever works to win the challenge. The champions win the challenge and get to choose who will participate in the ruins challenge.

It’s Tonya from the champions versus Diem from the challengers and Wes from the champions versus Chet from the challengers. Each person must build a bamboo ladder and climb it to the top before the other person in order to win the challenge. The men go first and Wes wins thus holding onto the money in his personal bank account and sending Chet home. The girls compete and Tonya wins which means she gets to keep her money and sends Diem home.

Some people think that The Real World/Road Rules Challenge is overdone and sometimes I am inclined to agree. However, this episode, being the very first episode of the season, brought the drama that I have grown to love. I want to know who hates each other. I want to see fighting. I want to see the cast get drunk and make fools of themselves. And yes, I want to know who is hooking up. I don’t care if we are eighteen seasons into the series. I watched the first season and I will watch the one hundredth season.