Following the Era Invitational, we’re seeing all teams struggle with their decisions in The Chamber. Every team has three men and three women who are eligible to compete in elimination, but it feels like Era 1 is addressing their nominations with the most logic.
Mark and Katie — the two players who are definitely going into elimination — are trying to avoid drama. In fact, the men are so united that Derrick decided to step up and nominate himself. So, at the start, it seems like Era 1 is going to be fairly drama-free.
However, things get a bit dicier when we look at the female nominations.
Immediately, Tina suggest that the team send in the bottom two eligible nominees (which would translate to Katie vs. Aneesa and Mark vs. Darrell) because it’s “less messy.” While this does make sense, Aneesa claims that inevitably, someone is going to get hurt by the nomination.
On one side — it seems like Aneesa is choosing to be hurt. After all, she did finish in fourth place for the Era 1 girls. Objectively, that is the fairest way to pick the opponent.
But no one is stopping Derrick (third place male) from volunteering. And if this was a clean-cut decision, why is Rachel assigning responsibility to CT?
Beneath the surface, we can see some messiness brewing on Era 1. At the start of the nomination ceremony, Rachel declared that the team would pick between the players who finished in third and fourth, a process that saves Brad and Rachel’s BFF Tina. We don’t know how Era 1 came to this conclusion (though we did see CT saying he was impressed by Brad’s performance during the first Challenge), but Rachel was the mouth piece during the announcement.
It isn’t until the second half of the nomination ceremony, when the female nominees are discussed, that we hear Rachel say that CT would pick the female nominee to keep things unbiased. However, Rachel vocalized a decision that keeps her close friend safe, so it’s not like she had no hand in the female decision making process. (Keep in mind, this sequence could just be editing magic).
We can see Aneesa’s frustration throughout the episode, and it’s understandable that people would roll their eyes at this. Aneesa did come in fourth, and she’s not known for winning Challenge seasons. But, Aneesa also has reason to be frustrated.
Of course Aneesa won’t want to go into elimination, and she has good and bad history with Rachel. It kind of looks like Rachel is refusing to say Aneesa’s name, but she’s narrowing the nomination window until Aneesa is the default option.
We’ll find out next week if Aneesa goes into elimination, but if she does, this could fracture the trust on the Era 1 team — especially if Aneesa wins and returns to her team. While Aneesa might not be the strongest Era 1 female physically, she’s very connected socially, and that’s an asset that other people on her team don’t have.
Stop Being Polite 