DC ExtraTime: More Springtime Baby Announcements...

BY DC CUEVA                         

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

The past week we've just had to endure once again reminded us of how bad both this world and the last two years & a quarter have been. But those of you who get to visit my various social media platforms are reminded that whenever you come to this DCBLOG site, to my YouTube channel, Twitter, Instagram and everywhere else, that you have found "The Escape You Deserve." And one of the things that provides us a refresher from the madness has been of celebrating the arrival of new babies.

Instagram @bayydayy

Five years ago this spring, Bayleigh Dayton from the Kansas City area was competing in the Miss USA Pageant along with what turned out to be a slew of future reality stars: fellow contestants in her 2017 class would ultimately pop up later on The Voice, in Bachelor Nation and on Are You the One. Bay would also follow in the footsteps of DeAnna Johnson, Kelsey Weier and Lauren Roush into finding further fame elsewhere: a year later, she would find herself in the Big Brother 20 house, and she came out of the famed summer house sporting an engagement ring on her fingers when Chris "Swaggy C." Williams proposed to her on the final night when Kaycee Clark came away victorious.

The #SWAYLEIGH train has seen them head to courtside at many Lakers games, red carpets, and onto The Challenge: Total Madness two years ago where Bayleigh made it to the final. And almost right after when the pandemic hit, an All-Star Big Brother season would come calling as straight off of she was chosen to return to the big house. But had things gone their way a few years ago, then the total direction of this story would have changed: when she was living along in the BB20 house during the sixth week of that summer, Bay found out that she had gotten pregnant prior to Swaggy being evicted four weeks earlier. This was the first time that someone had gotten knocked up on the show... but it was after she went into the Jury house that she found that she miscarried that kid.

DC ExtraTime: Someone You Should Know - Big Brother's The Cookout

*** CAUTION: The following article contains spoilers for some readers. As the featured subjects are subjective to some, this post's comment section is disabled. ***

 FOLLOW-UP  to The Challenge

 Invades Big Brother All-Stars

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BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

   ESTIMATED READING TIME: 20 Mins.

While it is an internal policy of DCBLOG's to not make mention of anything on here at all in regards to what's known to those in the business of covering television & the media world as the game of numbers, it's safe to say that there's fewer people watching the current season of MTV's The Challenge than past seasons, and there's various reasons for it too complicated for us to elaborate on here. But one of those is that the timeslot that it is in -- 8 o'clock on a Wednesday night, 7PM in the central states and 9PM in the Rocky Mountains -- is jam-packed: some of the biggest buzz hits in a genre MTV has pioneered airs at the same time as Spies, Lies & Allies. So has a rival wrestling promotion that now has two former Challengers under their wing.... and the former includes a show that is the focus of this next story.

When the reality TV genre truly came of age in America back in the summer of 2000, it marked the game-changer for entertainment in this country for which non-scripted series are now firmly part of the schedules of every network & streaming service. It also helped chart a path for the next two decades of a network that was mired in last place in the ratings. but which had just reenergized by a recent change of ownership and the optimism that comes with new people taking over the steering wheel. That year, CBS placed its bets on U.S. versions of a pair of European reality phenomena that would become as big a juggernaut as the other reality franchises it and its ViacomCBS stablemates would nurture in their two times being under the same corporate umbrella, and for it has become a company cornerstone.

(L-R) Hannah, Azah, Xavier, Derek F., Tiffany
and Kyland, with host Julie Chen-Moonves
(center) on Big Brother 23 finale night
(IG/@juliechenmoonves)

Big Brother premiered on the Eye network more than a month after Survivor came onto our shores twenty-one years ago, but it experienced some humble beginnings as Season 1 did not match the immense, out of the box success as the ladder. But CBS' strong belief in the show and widespread changes to the format in all facets of it would ultimately turn the American version of Dutch TV executive John de Mol Jr.'s magnum opus into, far and away, the most successful of the over sixty local versions of the global franchise. And coupled with embracing the series' interactive, real-time nature and the digital age that came along afterwards, Big Brother has become part of American summertime and which dominate not only three nights of network television, but also streaming & social too.

Despite its immense success over its two decades, our iteration of Big Brother has also gone through its fair share of controversy and criticism during the past twenty-two regular seasons and the occasional spinoff. Of most troubling of these unwelcome pleasantries in recent years has been of discrimination and racism that has put the show and its houseguests under the kind of large microscope that only comes when there are over 100 cameras and just as many microphones to capture every move and word, and fans intently watching those on both television and the live feeds. And what happened the past two seasons with Season 21 getting put into the ringer for such behavior, and last year's All-Stars debuting while the Black Lives Matter protests pressed on just outside their door served as a reality check.

In the end, the events that put Big Brother U.S. in the headlines for the wrong reasons proved to be a blessing in disguise that the series most desperately needed. And it helped to set the table for the biggest story to come out of the first summer of reality normalcy in two years, and this latest edition of Someone You Should Know: the Big Brother alliance known simply as "The Cookout."

Summer of Sports '21: A Swaggy Weekend at the Fights

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

As a result of the unprecedented shutdown of all sporting activity last year, this 2021 Summer of Sports has seen plenty take place: Giannis Antetokounmpo taking his place as the NBA' new king by way of an epic Finals MVP performance, the Lightning denting the Stanley Cup in their celebrations of back-to-back NHL titles around Champa Bay, England getting stung again in penalties while Lionel Messi tasted his first major trophy for country with Argentina, and golf's new generation taking over in Jon Rahm and Colin Morikawa winning the U.S. and British Opens after Phil Mickelson's PGA Championship win. But the world's eyes are now on Tokyo as The Games of the XXXII Olympiad have taken over our attention a year later than scheduled due to the pandemic.

Two years ago, Giannis opened more than a few eyebrows in another aspect of our entertainment landscape: reality television. When asked by the media of what his plans were in getting set to lead a team of NBA All-Stars against LeBron James, the Greek Freak gave a namedrop to three MTV shows in the genre: Are You The One?, Ex On The Beach and The Challenge. And when he reported back to training camp before what would become a successful campaign to the NBA title, a face mask he wore bore the symbol of 7-time champion Johnny Bananas who won the season of the ladder that was the only game in town when much of Season 35 of the fifth major pro sport was the only sports event on primetime television in a COVID-stricken America.

The Challenge more than filled the void for both the MVP and athletic-hungry sports fans alike, who joined with reality viewers and those who've been with the show from day 1 for Total Madness. A person who competed with Bananas in that $1 million final a year ago this month was Bayleigh Dayton, who forms one-half of Big Brother showmance Swayleigh with husband Chris "Swaggy C" Williams, who she met on BB20 in 2018. Chris himself is a basketball fanatic who, along with Bay, met Lakers boss Jeannie Buss when Dwayne Wade & LeBron James played one more time on the court. And earlier this month, Swaggy got to pay it forward to the one member of his family he's known all his life as they experienced one of the summer's biggest sports events: the climax of a UFC trilogy in Sin City.

DC ExtraTime: Lolo's on Top of the World

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

   ESTIMATED READING TIME: 18 Mins. 

Whenever Super Bowl Weekend rolls along on the sporting calendar, it's as if it is the only thing that matters in the sports world on the first weekend in February. It's the most popular sport in the United States, this country's biggest one-day event, one of the world's biggest sports leagues, and the intersection of sports, pop culture and all that represents America all rolled into that first Sunday of the second month of the year. But those who are into the broader world at large in athletic competition know that the NFL Championship Game is just one event in a slew of those that take place around the wide world of sports.

Right now, the NBA and NHL are nearing the halfway points of their shortened seasons as well as European football as the Champions League's knockout stages kick off shortly, while the year's first Grand Slam tennis tournament is taking place down under in Australia - and today saw the biggest race in NASCAR, the Daytona 500, take place in Florida. Soon, NCAA March Madness will be upon us as college sports' biggest event returns, plus golf hitting its stride in the 2021 portion of its "Super Season," Major League Baseball starting up Spring Training, and a number of other big events - most of which didn't take place during last year's unprecedented sporting shutdown, which allowed MTV's The Challenge and Total Madness to take center stage during the quarantine period.

But on the horizon, the focus will turn to two of the world's most important sporting events, for which one member of the cast of the current season of Double Agents knows so very well. And while the focus was on Tom Brady's Buccaneers facing Patrick Mahomes' Chiefs in Tampa, over in Europe that agent achieved something so big that, had it not been for the GOAT winning his seventh Super Bowl, this would've been THE big sports story of last weekend. And if not for the link it has to what's called the fifth major pro sport, than this would not have made a blip on the radar, which channels the general interest outside of the fortnight of the events that make up the world's most famous five-ring circus.

DC ExtraTime: Mama Day Walks Into a Daytime Soap...

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

All Photos Courtesy CBS

As we ring in the new year this long weekend, we can all be relieved that 2020 is finally over at last, and that we can only hope and pray for good things to come in the next 52 weeks. But if there is something that you can remember about the year that's just gone by from an MTV sense, it's that the shows that we cover here are finally getting the attention they deserve from the mainstream media and from more of the fandom that are obsessed with these shows.

   This is most especially true of The Challenge, where last year's Total Madness was really the only sport that was going on during the shutdown of all sporting activity in this country during the pandemic, and where we are three episodes into Double Agents, which was safely filmed in Iceland. And judging by the two facts that it's led all of cable TV on Wednesday nights last year in the key demographics (including the duel of two rival wrestling promotions in the WWE's NXT developmental circuit and the upstart All-Elite Wrestling) and two seasons joining Netflix in addition to being on CBS All Access (the soon-to-rebranded Paramount+), more and more fans are joining in the fandom of Challenge Nation.

   Reflective of the increasing awareness of this The Challenge and all of MTV Reality getting this increased exposure is not just the merger of Viacom and CBS that was completed over a year ago, but also those who have been on these shows appearing on shows outside of their original series both within and outside the system. In the interest of the casual viewers who we target on this site in addition to the hardcore fans, we have made it a point to feature each and every appearance of personalities from this world on this site - and there was so many of them in 2020 alone.

   And that includes what went in between both last season and the current one airing right now: two of those Challengers who were on past seasons of this show of recent memory were chosen to return to their roots in a different game than what they got themselves into. And it's with one of those stars that brings us to our first DCBLOG post of the new year, and something that went down during this holiday week off in Challenge Nation when Double Agents didn't air a new episode on New Year's Eve Eve.

DC ExtraTime: Swayleigh Says Yes to the Dress

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

Screencaps Courtesy: TLC

As much as pretty much all of us can loathe this lost year of 2020, there are a few people who are, in fact, loving this year more than others - for good reasons, at least. They include the NFL's reigning king Patrick Mahomes, YouTube's notorious brothers of Jake & Logan Paul, sports fans in both Los Angeles and Tampa Bay, and two people who've been featured on this site a few times before. And those two are those who have continued to ride on Cloud 9 after being among the latest to cross from the most closely analyzed summer house to a reality house of a different kind in the reunited ViacomCBS umbrella.

We're talking about Bayleigh Dayton and Chris "Swaggy C" Williams -- better known to those in the reality TV community and the fandom that spends their summer watching Big Brother as Swayleigh. It was two years ago that they were riding a high after getting engaged on finale night of BB20 just after his early exit and her being the first member of the voting jury... and 48 hours later they and the cast of that show flew up to Las Vegas to celebrate their engagement with their fellow reality TV community. So began their amazing ride that's taken them to a number of places around the world and back including getting to know so many people along the way, including the boss lady of the NBA champs.

After stops at the 2017 Miss USA Pageant pre-BB and Family Feud post-BB, this year Swayleigh broadened their reach beyond just those who follow Big Brother to other places on the TV dial: they, along with BB20 winner Kaycee Clark and Fessy Shafaat, were rookies on The Challenge Total Madness. Three of them made it to the final but fell short of the top prize as the summer sensation continued its MTV takeover two years after it began on Vendettas... but we all remember the huge blowup in the bunker involving the two ladies.

Along the way - including having just hosted a large but COVID-safe housewarming last weekend at their new digs across the street from the Staples Center, there was another stop on the Swayleigh World Tour in 2020: a pit stop from the Total Madness final in the Czech Republic en route to the Big Brother All-Stars house brought them to the Big Apple, and another milestone towards becoming official in wedded bliss thanks to putting on a wedding dress.

Inside MTV Reality: The Challenge Invades Big Brother All-Stars

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

We've just had Halloween and THAT event last week, but for those of us who follow reality TV year-round, we've all finally have had a chance to take a breather in this unique time in our world after having a sense of normalcy being restored for most of this year. We witnessed Johnny Bananas conquer The Challenge once again as it provided us with much needed escapist programming to take our minds off of the world outside our windows, which made its way to Total Madness when controversy saw a recent champion get blacked out by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Season 35 of the fifth major pro sport was really the only big "sport" that was going on in the course of a spring and early summer of 2020 of this COVID world, and just shortly after came a rite of summer. After five seasons of having those who have stepped inside its famous house, CBS stalwart Big Brother took center stage among avid fans of the non-scripted space and those who watch the show every year. That includes those from Challenge Nation who joined the party watching the episodes with Julie Chen-Moonves and the live feeds if they're lucky to fork some money for CBS All Access, which added past Challenges, Real Worlds, other MTV shows and the UEFA Champions League to their lineup.

This was the first Big Brother season to take place in the new ViacomCBS, but the first since summer 2005 that the Eye network and MTV have been on the same team under the same corporate umbrella, and twenty years after that first season during the summer that helped put the Eye network back on the map. Of course, the seeds of the eventual integration of the two networks' parent companies can be traced back to when The Challenge needed to add some fresh blood to the competitor list, and they looked to former Big Brother houseguests to help pave the way for other reality shows outside the MTV fold to join in. Since then, seventeen of them have crossed over to doing not only the past four Challenges, but also three seasons of the U.S. version of global sensation Ex On The Beach.

Those of you who followed the fortunes of Josh, Natalie and the rest of those former houseguests from Vendettas to Total Madness joined with them and everyone else to watch BB All-Stars, the show's 22nd regular season but the second to cast an entire group of past alumni to take up residency in America's most heavily-watched summer house with over 100 high-def cameras to watch their every move 24/7. And you can tell from everyone buzzing about it on your social media feeds that, once again, things were back to normal in how your fellow followers got to analyze every move from their couches as once again, it took over our lives. And there were a couple familiar faces as after five seasons of it invading The Challenge, it was time for Big Brother to return the favor.

DC ExtraTime: Some Big Brother/Russian Double Trouble

BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

If you have been with us on these ventures to not strictly stick with just covering episodes of MTV Reality shows, then we have used our blog's platform to introduce you to fascinating people from all over the world - both well-known to everyone and others not-so well-known. Some of those who have been featured here come to us from the digital world: those who are stars on YouTube like that trio of pranksters we met in Texas, those who are social influencers like that girl who dressed up as a Disney princess, and those who have massive million-plus followings like the Paul brothers. But for this latest story, our latest subjects speak a different language.

These days, there seems to be a strange or awkward feeling that can go to your head whenever you mention both the United States and Russia in the same sentence. This year, after all, marks forty years since the two nations played a Friday evening hockey game in upstate New York that turned into the defining sporting event of the 20th Century: American college kids upsetting a team of Soviet pro hockey players en route to Winter Olympic gold in Lake Placid. And since the election of our President, there's been rumblings that those in the world's largest country played a role in kick-starting the demise of American democracy and dividing our people.

However, there are some instances where Americans and Russians can amicably co-exist in the same place without the tensions of a decades-long Cold War clouding over. An example is global pop music collective Now United, who have representatives from the U.S. and Russia on the same team, but it feels that they've known each other for all their lives. Moscow dancer Sofya Plotnikova and Orange County kid Noah Urrea are two members of the supergroup, which also have performers from fourteen other countries (including Russia's longtime hockey rival Canada, represented by Edmonton native Josh Beauchamp), formed by the creator of the Spice Girls and American Idol, Simon Fuller.

Facebook TwinsFromRussia

Another example is this post's focus: it was several years ago that a pair of twin brothers first discovered America on a trip from their homeland and their small Russian town of Abakan at the base of the Siberian Mountains. Identical twins Flipp & Kirill Revega had first followed in their dad's suggestion to pursue engineering after graduating high school, but it's when they launched a YouTube channel in their free time that would see their career plans take a 180 to something more lively than just doing machine building.

After their university sophomore year, Flipp & Kirill first discovered America while on a four months' summer exchange program... same went for their junior year where they first discovered the city of Los Angeles. The brothers stayed loyal to their family in completing their education back home before the allure of America brought the Revegas back to the City of Angels, this time on a permanent basis in spring 2017 to work on their entertainment careers in addition to social media. They've done acting and modeling gigs, and in the past year have explored a music career as well.

When it comes to social media, their YouTube channel might be relatively light in having only 2.5 million hits of their 300+ videos to just 12,000 followers -- same is true for their Instagram also with a small following there. But it's on TikTok that the TwinsFromRussia are much more well-known: over 1.8 million users follow Flipp & Kirill there, as they've been documenting their adventures in the Southland every day as well as giving us something to laugh. And two of their most recent videos posted over the weekend have some familiar faces -- make that, two faces to those of two shows.

As Big Brother All-Stars rolls along, the return for a third time to the series of Da'Vonne Rogers of The Challenge: Final Reckoning and War of the Worlds brings to mind the discovery she made when she was on the BB17 house back in 2015. She found that original houseguest Liz Nolan had been swapping places in the summer pad with her twin sister Julia Nolan... and if one was not evicted the first month in the house the other would join them in the house. Despite Mama Day's discovery, Liz survived the first month and Julia joined her for the rest of the summer with the former finishing runner-up, before both went onto WOTW for a short time two years later.

Over the weekend, the TwinsFromRussia and The Nolan Twins got together at The Grove in L.A. -- and when they locked eyes on each other... well, we'll let the videos below tell the story.

DC ExtraTime: Swayleigh Meets The Lakers Boss Lady

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

Instagram @SwaggyCTV

When MTV's The Challenge: Total Madness began on April Fool's Day night, it was in the midst of something not seen by our generation: a pandemic shutting down just about everything we had in our plans for the start of this decade of the 2020's. Concerts, weddings, graduations, trips, major events and just about everything else that was scheduled to take place this year have either been called off or pushed back by the COVID crisis, something that, unfortunately, is starting to pop up once again, as America is also facing the racial tensions spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Something that's been affected deeply by COVID has been of the sports world being put on hold everywhere from America to Europe to down under in Australia. A boatload of major events were nixed for the first time since World War II, and one event that was supposed to be going on right now, the Tokyo Olympics, have been postponed to next summer. And it's only now that sports is getting back to normal: UFC, NASCAR, soccer and golf started things out, and by this weekend three of the four major sports will be in action, with the fourth in the NFL to follow shortly after.

Of all that's happened at the intersection of sport and COVID, it can point to that March night in Salt Lake City where a player from the Utah Jazz was hospitalized before a game that ultimately was abandoned, sparking an unprecedented domino effect. It has been a key moment in what has been a rough season in the National Basketball Association, including the passing of a former lawyer who helped turn the league into a global powerhouse in former commissioner David Stern. And his successor, Adam Silver, has faced the tough task of restarting things, like all other sports, although he may an upper hand thanks to placing everyone inside the bubble of Walt Disney World.

But the passing of Commissioner Stern pales in comparison to what has to be one of those days that's burned in the memory bank of every sports fan the world over of that gloomy last Sunday in January, where the tragic death of one of the most iconic athletes of our time united this divided world. The untimely passing of Kobe Bryant has overshadowed everything else, other than the virus, of the NBA season... but thanks to two weeks of training camp and scrimmages at Mickey Mouse's house, things are finally set to get back in motion this week with all eyes set on crowning a champion.

And while NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo has been able to spend this lockdown watching The Challenge & other MTV Reality matters without missing a minute on the court for the Bucks, there's one other important link between the Association and the fifth major pro sport. And as hoops fans everywhere prepare for the NBA restart this Thursday night, you can thank a guy who's a basketball enthusiast through & through and his Big Brother wife to help us introduce you to one of sports' most powerful women: the Boss Lady of the Los Angeles Lakers.

DC ExtraTime: Before They Were MTV Stars - Big Brother Takes Over A Television Game Show

BY DC CUEVA                      

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

On a few occasions at this site, our ExtraTime lens have zoomed in on a staple of American life that has existed for as long as there's been television: the excitement and fun of game shows. They've been around since the medium's golden age of the '50s, and survived the ordeal of the quiz show scandal that brought about change and transparency in the entire TV industry. Us being quarantined and spending time at home in lockdown have seen us spend much more time at home with your family, and shows like this still delight people of all ages with hours of endless entertainment.

Here, we have featured those two times where Are You The One? alumni and a girl from an often-forgotten Real World season have donned a Disney outfit, Christmas dresses and got down on the dance floor on the modern-day revival of Let's Make A Deal. There was that time where we saw a guy who was there when I began following MTV Reality on a social basis go onto The Price is Right but used his original name instead of the name on the back of his two Challenge jerseys. And there was that time when a future Hurricane and a Brooklynite fell in love on a Voice-style dating show.

For the next two nights, MTV will take center stage on ABC when we get to see how it all started for Chad Johnson, Chase McNary, Daniel McGuire and Robby Hayes when they were on JoJo Fletcher's season of The Bachelorette before they invaded Ex On The Beach and Siesta Key. But before that trip down memory lane tomorrow night with plenty of roses & rosé on offer, tonight the casts of Jersey Shore and The Hills face off on one of TV's most enduring programs whose lineage dates back over five decades and before all but one of the contestants were even born.

And that brings us to this latest edition of Before They Were MTV Stars, where one notable member of this year's Challenge cast took her talents to after she was part of a Big Brother season that debuted two years ago this weekend. This story also involves someone who she was at war with on Total Madness the other night, who also had her own moment on a couple of the occasions of when Big Brother Takes Over a Television Game Show.