Inside MTV Reality: Welcome to The Challenge - Battle for a New Champion

BY DC CUEVA 

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Hello to all of you out there, and we welcome you back Inside MTV Reality on DCBLOG... and if you'll understand, a blogger in chief who's put his heart & soul into this site the last decade has put this hobby on the backburner for most of this tenth anniversary year, and not just for a much-needed break from the grind. If you don't know, my family continues to go about life without the most important man in our house some fifteen months after my dad's passing -- and I've spent most of this year tending to being man of the house. But his absence will be most prevalent when the one event I look forward to the most out of everything else takes place in a few days from now... more on that in just a brief moment.

Poster Courtesy: MTV

On the MTV front, this summer & early fall has seen the unlikely return of Sammi Sweetheart to Jersey Shore, while the Teen Mom franchise continues to offer those many twists and turns. This year the iconic Love & Hip Hop franchise came to the channel for the first time, while the party vibe of All-Star Shore is into its second season. But it isn't all just about just what happens on that cable channel that's kept all of us who follow TV's most-talked about reality programming talking: fans just like you have spent the last few months analyzing every move in the Big Brother house and now with the new season of Survivor. This has even stretched to a rival streamer as news has been abound of late of the addition of familiar faces to Peacock's U.S. adaptation of The Traitors and the just-launched House of Villains on E!.

And that brings us to the one thing we have covered the most on this site: MTV's The Challenge, which is marking a quarter-century this year as the first of its kind reality competition-based series. This past week, we crowned the second set of winners on the show's first spinoff to network television as The Challenge: USA on CBS played host to not only alumni of those two aforementioned Eye network shows above as well as their relatively lonely global comrades of The Amazing Race. The ones who garnered the most buzz of the entire cast were five previous Challenge champions who've won on MTV and a sixth who won the most on the All-Stars spinoff on Paramount+.

One of those who competed on that just-concluded second CBS season also doubles as one-half of the defending champions of the mainline MTV series, but that one will not have the chance to put on the line that first title she worked hard to win last spring on Ride or Dies. But Tori is, though, among the many veterans who will be taking part in the thirty-seventh MTV season of this show, but in a totally different capacity than usual: she will be out to take out those who have a chance to join her and those in the winners' circle -- and this fall's competitors will be composed entirely of those who have never ascended to the top step of the podium... and who are motivated to follow in her footsteps to becoming champion. All they have to do is to get over both them and their fellow competitors to get there.

In a moment, DCBLOG will bring you our first look at The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion... and premiere night this time around will take on added spice of sorts as, less than 24 hours after it kicks off -- and in some 60 hours from now as this post goes up on this late Monday night October 23rd -- this blogger will not be in front of this screen getting to do a new traditional recap of the premiere in the all-new Challenge WRAP, but will instead be doing something else. That would be of roaming the streets of that happy place that doubles as the hometown of the show's host... and if this one runs into TJ Lavin in Las Vegas, NV this pre-Halloween weekend, then this blogger & #DCVegas vlogger will have fulfilled an item on that sacred bucket list. Anyway, we're glad you're with us once again to get this all started.

DCBLOG Challenge WRAP: The Challenge USA Season 2 - Week One

BY DC CUEVA 

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Whether it's that hurricane that soaked L.A. and Vegas or living through all of that heat, then congratulations to you... you've survived those dog days of summer. But with that taste of fall in the air stretching from Not So Scary Nights with Mickey & co. in Florida to football about to kick off in Kansas City, it's also back to school season for those who follow the fifth major pro sport... as The MTV Challenge has just kicked off a new cycle. And we at DCBLOG are back to covering our primary beat.

When we last covered The Challenge back in March earlier this year, Ride or Dies saw a classic confrontation in the $1 million final that pitted four teams with two multiple champions, a worthy rookie team and a pair of all-out veterans who duked it out for 100 hours in the European wilderness. In the end, it was Tori & Devin that took their first title rings... and as for one of those six runners-up who fell to them in that marathon, her ex Jordan came back on the World Championship that followed on Paramount+ and added that honor to his three titles.

And after that long offseason of sorts, we begin anew again with Season 2 of the CBS version of this longstanding MTV staple... and we all know what happened last time out with that controversial final, but other than that, it was an eventful season. This time around, another all-star cast of alumni from Big Brother, Survivor and The Amazing Race have heard the call from TJ Lavin to suit up... but just as they think that this is just a season for themselves to prove themselves, an invasion of jet skis will tell otherwise. And that more than breaks the ice for an opening act that will set to the tone for this summer and fall, including a titanic battle off the bat in the elimination chamber.

After the break, DCBLOG kicks off not only a new cycle of covering The Challenge in Season 2 of The Challenge USA and its double-hour opening act... but also a brand new tradition of sorts on here as we relaunch our weekly MTV episode posts with the all-new Challenge WRAP. We hope you like it.

DC VEGAS: Countdown To The Dirty Dozen

BY DC CUEVA 

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This brief post here that's short but sweet on this Labor Day Sunday... and it has just been revealed on all of my social networks just a half-hour ago including a new YouTube teaser as seen below.

Anyone who knows me will be most interested to know that there is one thing that stimulates this one more than any other topic in my house: any talk within our entire inner circle of family, friends and relatives about the city that has grown from one that I first visited as a young kid, but which has grown in the past decade & a half to becoming the biggest single happening in my universe. Even a single mention of it while I am on this desktop that I do blog posts like this will garner a keen eye from me.

When I took that first ever trip to Las Vegas in the summer of 1994 as a young kid on his summer vacation, I had not much to do on that trip... and where kids like myself back then had just the arcades and the midway at Circus Circus to hang out in. But little did I know back then that it would become the preferred and favorite vacation spot for both myself and for our entire family -- both mine and in our circle. Eleven times in the course of twenty-seven years -- including ten of them in fourteen -- have I been able to set foot in Sin City... plus, there have been so many other trips that those in my family, my cousins and my relatives have taken place there that I wasn't a part of.

The last trip I took in 2021 turned out be meaningful in so many ways: the first I took in not only two years, but also one that took place during the pandemic... and like so many others, it was just as memorable -- first trip to Fremont Street in downtown, a Strip view for our hotel room in at the Wynn, and everything else. But most poignant of all, this Vegas trip turned out to be the very last big vacation that my dad ever took in his life... and eight months after celebrating his 71st birthday a few weeks earlier with me, brain cancer took him away from us much too soon than we all had expected -- though if he had wanted Vegas to be his last trip, he certainly made the most of that opportunity... and having just marked a year since his untimely death earlier this summer, we still feel that void in my house.

Twenty-two months after that last trip to that favorite happy place of all, here I am announcing that DC VEGAS XII is now set in stone. There is one reason why my blog work hasn't been as timely as I would have wanted: when my mom made those reservations earlier this summer, that's when the planning process began for this year's big trip. It's as if you have been waiting all summer for it, but yet I have been at work starting to plan out what I want to do for these extravaganzas... one that might take four days for it to unfold, but which take four months for me to ponder what I want to do once I step foot in the Harry Reid International Airport terminal after that hour & a half's flight from California and being full of anticipation just like the football season that's just begun in college and this week in the NFL.

The way things are for me, I've "accepted" that dream job of being a self-employed content creator in addition to being man of the house... and one of those duties is getting to be a part-time YouTuber. If you've seen my DC Vegas videos there, I have put a lot of work into creating those nearly 300 clips of various lengths spanning nine of my trips... and it will be no different when it comes to getting to capture most every minute of this fall's rendezvous. That is, except that I have just bought my very first GoPro action camera... and that will join a few other cameras in my arsenal -- two regular vlog cam's, a gimbal, a camcorder & my phone -- that will disobey that infamous "What Happens in Vegas" stigma.

To put it out there in the open here, I've let those in our circle know that I am ready to take a Vegas trip at any time and will be willing to tag along if they wanted to invite me. It hasn't panned out as much as I wanted so far this year... but now that we have our date set for the last weekend of October (and it will mean, likely sightings on the Strip and on Fremont Street of Halloween costumes) -- I am now officially in that mood of anticipating what is always, in my world at least, the biggest event of all... and one that I see as my very own Super Bowl. If we can speed ahead to Thursday, October 26th, it'll be fine... we will sure have a lot of fun once again in this Ultimate Escape.

- I AM DC

@DC408DXTR

Who Are These Newbies? - The Challenge USA Season 2: The Amazing Race

Due to the heavy presence of graphics and video, "Who Are These Newbies?" is best experienced on desktops and fast-performing mobile devices.

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

For as long as we've been posting on here over the course of the past decade, DCBLOG has maintained a longstanding tradition of introducing those unfamiliar faces you're getting to see for the first time with what we call, "Who Are These Newbies?" -- our primer on first-time entrants to MTV Reality shows. We have focused on around 200 personalities since this site began in 2013... and it's a result of our vision that viewers watching these shows like yourselves shouldn't get to meet newcomers to these shows without us giving them their deserved treatment and introduction.

DCBLOG has had an unblemished record of doing these posts for every Challenge season until last spring -- and it's with things going on outside of this site that caused me to miss doing introductory bits on the international players who competed on the World Championship spinoff or some of the notable castmates from the return Are You The One? season. Need not worry, we plan to take care of doing those posts at a later date for the sake of those who haven't seen those just yet on Paramount+ during this TV offseason... but now, we go into doing this first installment for this second USA Challenge.

All Photos Courtesy Paramount & CBS

When the field of this year's second Challenge season on network television gathered in Croatia to kick matters off back on Thursday night -- and just as it was a year earlier down in Argentina, the cast makeup was the same both when the CBS alumni came onto the port, and after the MTV veterans invaded their party. That is in the fact that one show was far & away the least-represented of the entire group of competitors who have come to this European paradise to chase the $500,000 that goes to whoever comes away victorious come mid-autumn: that would be The Amazing Race.

As noted in our introductory post on that lonely trio of three who came to Season 1 of The Challenge USA last year, TAR is the one CBS reality show that feels like the lonely little brother who can't get the huge notoriety that Survivor and Big Brother get as far as garnering social media buzz, viewership and a consistent timeslot. It does, though, have so many more Emmy Awards to its credit, including ten statues for Outstanding Reality Competition Series and the Critics Choice Award for Best Reality Show for its most recent season. And those who have stayed loyal through all of this to watching FX Breakfast Time road warrior Phil Keoghan guide the teams on their journeys around the world are lucky to still be here as Road Rules' spiritual and well-traveled successor.

After the break, Part 1 of "Who Are These Newbies?" of The Challenge USA 2 introduces you to the duo who traveled the world during the midst of a pandemic, and who lived through that challenging experience to make it onto this new Challenge -- Dusty and Luis of the past couple seasons. Then: a follow-up on one of the players who competed on last year's CBS Challenge, and flew straight from Argentina to joining the ladder in last year's race around the world. But first, their introduction...

Inside MTV Reality: Welcome Back to The Challenge USA - Part Deux

BY DC CUEVA 

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In the words of Jim Nantz, we say "Hello Friends" and welcome back to DCBLOG, and to our tenth anniversary year Inside MTV Reality... it has been a while since we've spoken to you in this manner of covering the thing that we have followed the most on here in this last decade. For an obvious reason, it's personal: last month, my inner circle marked a year since the passing of my late dad... that life-changing experience and the increased role I've inherited as man of the house (and also, today in us saying goodbye to my aunt as she flies back home to the Philippines) has forced me to step away from this passion project and focus to the one thing that takes precedent above all else in my life: family. But now, we're set to resume matters on here... and we're glad to be back to doing what this site does best.

Exactly ten years have passed since we started covering the world of the most talked about shows of a genre that's been practically owned in the latter years of a cable channel that began its existence with wall-to-wall music videos forty-two years & ten days ago. Well, here we are in the summer of '23... and a lot has evolved since we began since this site first flickered on the blogosphere back in the summer of 2013. We know that a lot has taken place in the several months since we last covered an MTV show earlier this spring when we crowned new Challenge champs -- and that includes a new spinoff... and we'll catch up on those matters of The Challenge World Championship and the 2nd half of Season 9 of Are You The One? just to come on here as we go deep into the coming fall season.

(Jonne Roriz/Paramount)

As for now, we are set to go back to covering all the dealings in and around the MTV Reality world: later this evening sees the return of the sweetest of all sweethearts to grace our screens in Sammi on Jersey Shore. We are well into a new season of the show that saw Cheyenne extend this MTV crossover into the Teen Mom sorority, and there's even a new dating show among other things in The Love Experiment which premieres next week. And then, there's Season 2 of The Challenge USA, which tonight kicks off a year after the fifth major pro sport came to unchartered waters of primetime broadcast network television for the first time. Then as now, alumni of the CBS network's reality programming took on a whole new game that might be one thing to watch and enjoy but certainly a different animal when playing it.

Last season down in Argentina saw familiar faces from Survivor, The Amazing Race and Big Brother adopt from surviving the elements, traveling the world and living in enforced lockdown to playing our own game -- one that a few who have been on the former and the ladder have been able to master to a degree... and capped off by a rather controversial final act. But this time around, Season 2 promises to be a bit different in many ways -- some familiar faces who have been in both parts of being on network television and in cable-ville will be at it again, and joining them for this odyssey are even more familiar faces who are making their network television debut, and an assortment of Challenge rookies. And if things turn out the way they're supposed to, we should be in for quite the next few months ahead.

After the break -- and with just hours before it begins, DCBLOG brings you our first look at Season 2 of The Challenge: USA... and we'll also reacquaint you with not only this year's crop of contestants, but also that chaotic first season too. Welcome back Challenge Nation... it's good to have you with us again.

DCBLOG ExtraTime: Some Gravy & A Rich Shore Kid Come Walking Into a Club...

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Instagram @YungGravy

Tomorrow night, the MTV Reality focus will turn to the show that became the most popular in the channel's history... and to something that's not happened in its second life since the last act of its original series a decade ago. When the Family Vacation relaunch of Jersey Shore took off back in the spring of 2018, one person was missing when the originals of Seaside Heights gathered back in Miami - and mostly out of fear that she might get into it again with her ex turned baby daddy... but that will change when Sammi "Sweetheart" Giancola will finally join in on the antics of the Sitch, Snooki & friends. And that leads us to this first installment of this fall 2023 cycle of ExtraTime, which has its roots in something a bit different from the land of fist pumps, but has a spiritual link to it of sorts.

In two of America's biggest pop culture events held fifty-one weeks apart in the month of February and in the same region, a homage was paid to the one musical genre that has influenced generations of fans and our modern American culture more than any other in hip-hop. In February 2022 in Inglewood, CA, Super Bowl LVI represented its biggest moment yet when Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and 50 Cent shared the stage with R&B queen Mary J. Blige at its halftime show, taking place in one of hip-hop's major hubs of Los Angeles. A year later up in downtown, the 2023 Grammys also gave an ode to the genre's 50th anniversary as LL Cool J, Run DMC and more legends took the stage... a long way from when it was shunned from the spotlight of "Music's Biggest Night."

Across the country is another hotbed of this world of Atlanta, Georgia, where the success of OutKast, Ludacris, Future, 21 Savage, T.I. and Lil' Jon led The New York Times to call the ATL "hip-hop's center of gravity." The city's hip-hop culture also serves as the basis of multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning FX series Atlanta, which chronicles the lives of a pair of cousins as they try to navigate their rise up the ranks in the music industry, similar to Empire on former sibling FOX. And mirroring what has been happening the past decade, a number of artists who call North Georgia home have become active in local and national political movements, from Black Lives Matter to voting rights.

What do these two worlds of hip-hop and the MTV Shore franchise have in common? Last year, they collided for one weekend when the man at the heart of its most-recent addition got to party it up with one of its biggest stars to break out into the mainstream to celebrate a birthday... and all that star got to do was to sample someone who first made a name for himself some three decades ago. That's all part of that time when Some Gravy and a Rich Shore Kid Came Walking Into a Club...

The Look - Now United's The Musical: Welcome to the Night of Your Life

 NOTES:  This Post Contains Spoilers for Some Readers; please read with caution if you haven't watched the film yet. For the interest of Now United's global fanbase outside of the United States, you can read this post in your own native language by using the "translate" feature in your browser, where available.

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 27 MINS.

All Photos Courtesy: XIX Entertainment, NU & members' socials

Music is no doubt among my biggest personal passions (one of the big four in fact -- alongside sports, MTV reality shows and Las Vegas)... and if you just glimpse into the many playlists of what's playing in my plugs offers a good idea of how diverse a music fan I am. Whether it's the album Meteora by a band I was lucky enough to meet two decades ago in Linkin Park, another artist I discovered before most Americans in first hearing about the Backstreet Boys while spending Christmas overseas, or those hundreds of songs that are topping the charts and even beyond that... music has helped me through both the good and bad times in my life, and through my each and every single day too.

The year that shall not be named of a few years back saw me discover what's become a current favorite of the DC Playlist during these times, and molded together music with something I know well as a sports fan who loves watching relatively obscure events happening outside this country as much as those here at home. That would be the idea of different nations coming together in one big music supergroup just as they do at the Olympics and the World Cup: different singers and dancers from the world's six continents into the global pop collective Now United. Though they're not as big as other acts in this country as they are in others -- and despite me being right up there in age and where its target audience is those the age of my niece & nephew, I can still have them as one of my favorites.

Two years ago, Now United were the subjects of an introductory post and a follow-up... it was caused by them calling home for a week the same house used in one of the many MTV shows I've blogged on here the past decade (I'd normally cover that world of trashy guilty pleasure entertainment on a regular basis on this site) to film one of their many music videos. But last fall saw the end of their first generation when the group in its original formation went on one final tour together and released a last set of songs & videos before most of them began pursuing solo endeavors after five unforgettable years traveling the globe and offering inspiration to a world that has been in need of some feel-good moments when we have had to go through so much during a tumultuous period we've just been through.

And to close it all out, there was something very special that brought this well-traveled group of artists from different nations of the world's six continents to a global melting pot in a concrete jungle in the American Northeast. There, they turned their attention to fulfilling one of the greatest dreams that there is in the world: the opportunity to grace the greatest stage of all -- center stage of a Broadway musical.

Summer of Sports '23: My Favorite Sport of All

BY DC CUEVA        

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

In the past several months, the blogger in chief of DCBLOG has taken a break from this site as my family is approaching the one-year anniversary of the passing of our patriarch, my late father... and the role I've inherited of being the man of the house has caused me to focus more of my attention on those duties. But this site will go on with our MTV Reality coverage which resumes this summer, as do posts on matters outside of this site's primary beat... including our seasonal sports series. That includes this latest post that's taken years to put together and to post during both its biggest time of year and that day of the year where we celebrate the #1 sports fans in our lives of dads everywhere -- but this year is most meaningful for a far different reason than it has been in the life of yours truly.

There have been a number of memorable days in my life -- that day in July last year and our final farewell to Papa a month later among those, but another summer date holds a special meaning to this blogger. It was on June 16th back in those relatively simple days of 2001 that I and 550 other teenagers graduated a local Bay Area high school down where I live in the Silicon Valley... just a glance at the video series I did on my twentieth anniversary high school reunion shows you how much times like those are so cherished. When I went to school back in those days, the end of the school year always coincided with the end of the season of what is my favorite sport of all.

Fourteen years later to the day of that graduation morning, that was joined by a very other special day that was celebrated by the broader part of the place we call home. Earlier on June 16, 2015, a tragedy took place where some Irish Americans died in a San Francisco balcony collapse, but later that would be bumped off the front page in this most dynamic of American metropolitan areas: on that Tuesday night in Northeast Ohio, the Golden State Warriors capped off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history with a six-game NBA Finals win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

With one of the best records in league history, a dynamic MVP in Stephen Curry, a team of great players and a rookie head coach with championship pedigree, they outlasted the NBA's best player in a stirring series. And finally, those rabid Bay Area fans who put up with many years of futility but stayed faithfully loyal finally had a chance to release 40 years of frustration with their 2nd NBA title since that 1975 triumph... and it was part of a glorious decade in Bay Area sports that saw the Dubs and the Giants relish in championship glory, and the 49ers return to being a force in the NFL.

What we didn't know that summer of 2015 that it would be the start of a glorious era in the NBA's 75-year history: four titles in the span of seven years coming after both they and their opponents endured long droughts of being on the losing end. It was also the first of what would become five postseason battles between two of the preeminent players of this generation in Curry and LeBron James -- the first four between the Warriors and the Cavs in consecutive years for the title, and the fifth most recently that was won out by the Northeast Ohioan who, a year later, would fulfill his promise to a region who he scolded to win for the Heat and then returned to give them their deserved title.

For two months, one thing would be on our TV's in both our living room and my room every night and weekend afternoon from mid-April until mid-June: the NBA Playoffs kicking off in mid-spring, and culminating with an NBA Finals series at the footsteps of summertime that has always been a special time to be in the Cueva household. It represents just a chapter in a long and great relationship that my family has had with a sport that is, far and away, a religion to us... and it begins before I was around.