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 

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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 

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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.

DC FORUM: Here's to The Next Ten Years...

A Word from the Editor

BY DC CUEVA 

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It might be a little bit strange, but it has been a while since we got to speak to you on here. But more than a week ago marked something of a milestone around here: last weekend while I marked Mother's Day with the most important person in my life of my mom -- and having my sister, bro in law, their kids and two puppies at my house to mark this day with her, it also marked the ten-year anniversary of DCBLOG. But that milestone was marked a little bit low-key due to something else that has taken place off of this favorite hobby of mine.

The situation my family has been in for over a year now -- us having to go through the process of being one person short in our house -- has really given me a new appreciation of how precious life is, and of how my responsibilities as the family man have grown in the wake of the passing last summer of the most important man in our lives of my late dad. That is the reason for why I have decided to take a break from doing much blog work on here: necessary to do my part in helping out everyone in my life, but also in a way much deserved after having done a decade of doing posts like these... and for a change, I have been able to enjoy watching these MTV shows and my favorite content I love just as a viewer.

During this time, I have also been thinking about what the next ten years of this hobby will be like, and of how I would want to still fit in doing these posts and my supplemental YouTube work around my increased duties as man of the house... and it's also been necessitated by something I got in my inbox this week. As you might have noticed -- and having just spotted it with the notice I got from the folks who run this Blogger platform, some editions of the Pulse have now been tagged with a disclaimer... we always put one at the top of those as a precaution. That now will mean a change in how I will do things.

Starting with the summer and fall cycle of covering The Challenge and everything else Inside MTV Reality when that begins in short order, I will be shifting my weekly episode coverage to doing it in a traditional way -- that is, focusing on recapping the shows with the top moments of each week, and embedded Twitter highlights from them too. This is what I call the MTV WRAP and the format I have used with a few of the shows I've covered the past few years, and now it will become permanent when we begin to cover the weekly episodes again starting with Season 2 of The Challenge USA on CBS and Season 4 of The Challenge All-Stars on Paramount+.

Unfortunately -- and with this post taking place during season (and series) finale time in TV land, this will mean the end of the Pulse presentations as you have known it over the last decade. But with the lack of Twitter activity for the World Championship series that just wrapped up a few days ago, the growing sentiment among those who still use that platform in its new formation and everything else, it is a necessary change to make that evolution in the way we cover the episodes each week -- and also, it gives this site a safety net of sorts to prevent us from possibly going off the air too... and let's hope that doesn't happen to us as it may happen to your favorite show during the current work stoppage plaguing the TV industry as this post goes out on the last Friday of the regular season.

Hopefully this won't be a disservice to those of you who have visited this site for years, and we look forward to doing our weekly Challenge WRAP's during the summer and fall... and even starting with recapping the top moments of the World Championship coming before the summer Challenge seasons kick off -- we'll give you plenty of time to watch that before we offer our Things to Know season review coming up then. And even then, those will have to wait until after posting all three editions of our rookie primers... plus there's the many ExtraTime stories that we're doing also around all of that. That will all be coming up as we get into this summer of 2023... and it's hard to think we're a week away from the start of all that.

But most importantly -- and while we marked this anniversary several months back ago, the fact that DCBLOG is now officially ten years old is something this site and its blogger in chief is proud of. I have worked tremendously hard to make this site a place for all of you to come and indulge in my biggest passions through the power of the written word in this world dominated by TikTok, YouTube and all else. And to those who have made visiting this cherished site a regular habit in your life -- and those who have visited this page at some point in the last ten years, thank you... and here's to the next ten years.

- I AM DC

#DCBLOG

The Look: The Caucus Challenge - "Resurrection"

 CAUTION:  Videos Embedded Below Contain Adult Language and Content Intended for a Mature Audience. Viewer Discretion is Advised. 

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

NOTE: As my family and I continue to go about life without our patriarch, the increased duties this blogger has as man of the house has forced me to step back a little from blog work. But rest assured, DCBLOG has been working on what we got on offer as far as covering all the weekly action, the stories behind the story and everything else from in and outside the world of MTV Reality. So, stay tuned for all that coming up during this spring and summer just ahead... but for now, here's this.

The month of May that we are about to enter will mark exactly ten years since DCBLOG first came onto the blogosphere for the first time with a simple introductory post. During this decade, we have seen through countless numbers of shows, seasons, episodes and personalities covering the world of television's most-talked about reality programming of the MTV Reality scope. However, there is one thing that we have closely followed during the past several years that doesn't even come from that community we cover the most, but one inspired by the shows its creator watches religiously as I do.

Twitter @DreMediaa / IG @dre.media

Almost six years have now past since we first came across a then-high school student from Secaucus, New Jersey and his friends spending a summer day across the river in the Big Apple working out with the cast of the very first season of MTV's The Challenge that offered $1 million in prize money. But the one thing that intrigued us about Andres Rodriguez and co. was they not only got to meet up with Bananas, Tori and co. of that Dirty 30 season, but also for that they had done a made-for-YouTube version of the big show that they got to do for fun at the place he calls home in the same part of town sports fans know for its role in the media space.

This homemade version of the show is so one-of-a-kind, you'd think that The Caucus Challenge is just as good as any other iteration of the show we cover the most on here... and a lot of people who watch his show and spinoffs (including various MTV'ers) seem to agree with that sentiment -- not surprising considering how skilled the man at the heart of this is at, both on camera and coordinating things off of it. And since we first discovered Dre, DCBLOG has followed every step of the evolution of Dre.Media ever since: every season of Caucus that's emerged since, plus Real World-like spinoff The Life We Live, and a summer with his friend group... over twenty seasons worth of YouTube reality guilty pleasures.

And this spring, there's the fourteenth and latest chapter of The Caucus Challenge: players who have come to Dre's backyard with a chip on their shoulder, and a mission to finally win the big one.

DC FORUM: Back from My Spring Break...

A Word from the Editor

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Instagram @dc408dxtr

It's hard to comprehend... but it has been a while since we spoke to you here. We greet you once again during this Easter week at this outset of springtime, one that is always a time of renewal in our world... and one that is certainly needed in this manic world of ours. And for us in the Cueva circle, it's more than needed -- it's one that we've been wanting for some time after a year that has been unprecedented in our lives and in mine.

It has now been more than a year since the news that turned upside down this perfect of mine in our family inner circle when we found out of my father's cancer diagnosis... and it's been three-quarters of a year since that summer day that changed all of our lives. It's with that in mind that I have taken time away from the thing I do best of sitting behind this screen putting together both outstanding blog content and quality YouTube videos that so many of you have turned to for a much-needed escape from everything that has transpired in the thirty-seven months since this world totally lost our minds.

For a life update of sorts, this past month our family drove out to our sister's house out in the Central Valley to spend eight nights babysitting my niece & nephew when my sister & brother-in-law flew down to Mexico to mark wedding day for one of their friends. It marked the first time in a year & a half that I got to go to their house, which is always a nice place to go to when the summer weather heats up... but all of you know that we here in California have had quite a dreary winter & spring weather-wise, and I couldn't go out in the cold and wet weather to enjoy some quality time in their amazing backyard.

This vacation doubled as what I termed "#DCSpringBreak" as I got to do something I didn't get to do in over a year: utilize my secondary Twitter portal to live tweet a bunch of TV shows, sports and music every day during my stay. There, I watched a bunch of figure skating, the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, the iHeartRadio Music Awards, and that standard daily dose of live YouTube streams from that happy place known as Las Vegas... as well as that thing known as the MTV Challenge. This doesn't factor in a couple other movies that kept me entertained in rekindling that life in lockdown we had three years ago.

Perhaps the highlight of Spring Break was getting to do something I haven't done since my last stay in their pad: indulge in daily sessions of Netflix & Chill with the sister's account. By the time I checked out of their hotel, I watched three full seasons of the streamer's reality shows: Hype House (which we did a post on featuring Nikita and her SnapChat show date with MTV alum Corey Brooks), the much-hyped Real World sendoff Twenty Somethings Austin, and most important of all -- Perfect Match.

The ladder had to be added at last minute to take the place of Season 9 of Are You The One? after a season finale coming a week earlier than expected (we will cover all of that on here coming then), and even before that it was of interest to me for that an alum of the last season of that MTV show prior to its pandemic-forced hiatus, Kariselle Snow, was cast onto the streamer's big reality crossover mega-series thanks to extending her 15 minutes of fame as the panda on Sexy Beasts (which we also featured here previously) after being on the LGBTQ+ friendly season of AYTO. Obviously, there was a lot of buzz for Perfect Match... and I plan to do a blog review of that on here coming up this spring. In fact, I loved watching those shows so much that I will soon add a Netflix subscription to the trio of Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ which I currently subscribe to... with maybe more to come beyond that.

In addition to covering the Challenge World Championship with a series of "Who Are These Newbies?" on the international players and a bunch of other things in our MTV coverage, also forthcoming on this site is something I have never done before: do a movie review. My stay at sister's saw me watch three of those: the Filipino-themed Easter Sunday with Jo Koy, the film version of the play my niece took part at her middle school 13, and a film that also doubled as my very first purchase for a non-fungible token that starred one of the unsung heroes to me of these past three years.

Though I'm getting up there in age, Now United has become a favorite artist to me in that it blends my passion for music with a favorite aspect of mine from the Olympics and World Cup in bringing different nations together. The supergroup from eighteen different countries wrapped up the cycle of their first generation by doing a full-length musical along the lines of 13 and High School Musical... and with how tense the world is right now even as things have gone back to normal, the energy of the stars of that film, the positive message of its soundtrack and the film's underdog story is exactly what this world needs... just as the group burst on the scene when the world needed that pick-me-up. And if it's worth spending that $10 to buy a ticket on OP3N to watch it with your kids this coming Easter weekend, then you'll be entertained by The Musical: Welcome to the Night of Your Life. Perhaps, your young ones may even find your favorite new pop group just as I did.

But above all of that, the most important reason for Spring Break was based in one thing that’s very much still fresh in your memories, even as you try to get away from what we had to put up with in this decade. You do not need to be reminded of what we all had to put up with three years ago, but if there's something I've been able to better appreciate during this time, then it is the importance of family... and after a year things still do not feel normal just over 250 days since my dad left us. Had he beaten that opponent known as brain cancer, our trip would've been a few weeks earlier to watch the niece in her first play... or he & my mom would've added more stamps to their passports. Instead, we continue to press on in this time without him... and the days have pressed on as we continue to grapple with this reality, and my mom hasn’t visited his gravesite for the first time since that funeral weekend.

Family is something that ranks right up there among the things that mean to me the most - and you all have been reminded of how important that has become in the 1100-or-so days of this time in our world. We ourselves are not exempt from heartache and have learned that lesson quite a bit... and our week with those who loved being around has been one we needed the most to remind ourselves of important and precious quality time with those who we love truly is. That is why I took time away from here to better appreciate that very reality... but we are now ready to resume doing what this site does best: cover reality of a different kind and a few other things. See you on here this holiday weekend.

- I AM DC

#DCBLOG