The Challenge Retrospective Part 1: The First Four Seasons

I wanted to do a retrospective where I talk about every season of The Challenge, every challenge, every cast member, notable moments, notable elims, and the like. So let's begin with Road Rules All Stars which is not a season I am particularly fond of. Honestly Road Rules All Stars was boring, the first challenge was fun conceptually but not terrible notable and all of the other challenges were pretty bland, plus with the cast just succeeding in every challenge, there was barely any suspense. The cast as well was a huge letdown; Eric Nies was never a character I cared much for, Cynthia is fine but a bit bland until her return many years down the line. Rachel was fine but nothing special. Sean Duffy is... Sean Duffy. Jon Brennan is slightly notable for the fact he's so bad at the show that he went home first twice aside from this run, with this run being the only one he won... Because there were no eliminations at all. This season sucks I'm sorry, even on rewatch I got nothing out of it. Cast: 1/10 Gameplay: 0/10 Challenges: 3/10 Drama: 0/10 Eliminations: N/A Score: 4/40 Season 2 is more of the same, the cast is more notable, but for 80% of the season it's just Road Rules beating Real World in everything except the talent show. Overall, though, the road rules team was some fun, and the real-world team was pretty fun too, so overall it's notable for like, the first season of Mark Long, Beth's first season, lots of stuff. It's alright but nothing too special as a season, better than Season 1 for sure, but we'll see if it stays #1 of the first few. Cast: 4/10 Gameplay: 0/10 Challenges: 3/10 Drama: 1/10 Eliminations: N/A Score: 8/40 Season 3 was boring, worse than Season 2 but better than season 1. The cast was slightly less notable and there's still no elims, nothing special happening aside from Veronica. The other big problem is that like, it's so long compared to the first 2 seasons. The first 2 are slow but they're also only like 6 episodes each, this is 11. Nearly double. Cast: 2/10 Gameplay: 1/10 for Yes's challenge strategy Drama: 2/10 Eliminations: N/A Score: 5/40 Season 4 is not terrible overall, aside from introducing Susie, Syrus and a couple other people it was so boring. At least they had mission MVP's this time. The cast was just bland, the challenges were fine but mostly unnotable, and still no eliminations aside from Ayanna, which barely counts, but is at least a notable moment. Cast: 2/10 Gameplay: 0/10 Drama: 3/10 Eliminations: N/A Score: 5/40 That's my coverage of the first 4 seasons, I really hope I like seasons 5-9 a bit more, because I know once we get to season 10 and beyond, it gets good, we just gotta wade through some god awful seasons to get there.