Shane Discusses His Biggest Challenge Fear and a Flaw With the Show

Zach Nichols has continued his streak of burying the hatchet and bringing his enemies onto his podcast. This time, Shane showed up.

While I recommend that you listen to the whole episode, the discussion highlighted a big what if moment from All Stars: Rivals.

Zach asked Shane who his biggest allies were going into the season. As we know, Shane is a member of the infamous Lavender Ladies alliance, but the season mostly focused on his longstanding friendship with Veronica.

Shane immediately identified Veronica as his top ally, but he also intended to work with Ashley and Sylvia. As we know, Sylvia and Ashley left the season quite early, so the Lavender Lady dynamic really wasn’t a focal point that season.

If Ashley and Sylvia had stuck around longer, we likely would have seen Shane work with two separate alliances, but eventually, he would have had to make a decision and pick between his OG friends and the Lavender Ladies. He avoided this dilemma on All Stars: Rivals, but he claims he fears the day that he will need to decide between his two groups.

Shane also acknowledged that this is the type of decision that would make for good TV, and that’s what the Challenge needs. Fans like simple formats that are easy to follow but also force competitors to make tough decisions.

More recent seasons seem to have a lot of twists that create drama that amounts to nothing. Look at Battle for a New Champion: The house would argue about their vote, but their nominee would only have a one-third shot of actually competing in the elimination. Or the Hangnail twist on Vets & New Threats: The Hangnail was seldom voted into The Arena, let alone sent home.

Even if these twists worked as intended, they don’t create a lot of drama. The memorable moments are the ones that force people to be bold or make tough decisions.

When there are too many twists in the game, we get groups of people like the Vacation Alliance. They trust each other and fly under the radar, and their lowkey strategy circumnavigates the twists. They get to the end, and then we get a “boring” winner.

Good twists, like the Double Cross, make the season progressively more interesting. Losers need to call someone out, and early in the season, they can target rookies and enemies. As the season progresses, they will need to call out allies to ensure their safety.

Shane makes a solid point, and fans tend to love simple formats. While The Challenge has seen some twists that flopped, the over-saturation of twists is an issue that plagues many reality shows. To be honest, shows like Big Brother and Survivor have probably been more bloated by twists than The Challenge, but that doesn’t mean The Challenge needs to force more randomness for the sake of making the competition unpredictable.