The Challenge 40 Recap: A Legend of the Game Faces an Early Exit — Plus, Another Round of Laurel vs. Cara

How’s that for a nail -biter?

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In Wednesday’s episode of The Challenge , Era 1 continued to struggle in the Daily challenges, leading to an explosive argument between targets Tina and CT. (They apologized to each other shortly after — aww, maturity!) But with that L came another trip to the Arena for the OGs, as Tina prepped to face champ Emily in the sand, while CT was matched up against someone he’s sent home before: Nehemiah.

Luckily for Nehemiah, the competition was not physical. (I mean, who wants to get down and dirty with that monster from Boston? Answer: No one!) Rather, contestants had to remove 100 nails from a giant board, then nail them back into an adjacent one. The first one to do so and hit their button stays in the game.

Emily and Tina are up first and while one would expect Emily to absolutely annihilate anything she tries (she’s never lost an elimination before!), no one — and I mean no one! — knew how much Tina loved The Home Depot. The Era 1 vet drops those nails within seconds and is able to destroy Challenge champ Emily. (Tina says she goes to the Home Depot more than the grocery store. Say what?!)

Next up is CT, who’s worked in construction for years and has a lot of brawn behind those brains. Yet despite being the favorite to win, Nehemiah remains competitive throughout the entire go, and slaps that button before CT can finish nailing. And out goes one of The Challenge’ s best players ever.

To be fair, none of the women are sad to see Emily go, nor are the guys fretting CT’s exit. They’re both huge competitors no one wants to see in a final. To be honest, it all kinda-sorta evens the playing field out a bit.

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The new targets for next week: Brad and Rachel, Laurel and Bananas, Cory and Jonna, and Jenny and Josh.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t touch on the drama between Cara Maria and Laurel, but I seesaw between rooting for Cara and being completely over this storyline. This week, Michele gets into it with Laurel, who is still mad that Michele threw her into elimination during Ride or Dies . Cara jumps to Michele’s defense, which turns into a huge blowout between Cara and Laurel.

First of all, did anyone notice the lack of physical space between the women once Laurel started popping off on Cara? Rude. Cara says Laurel’s “being an a–hole to everyone in the house,” while Laurel continues to degrade, scream and look down on her former friend. Sigh . (And word on the street is that a lot was cut out from the episode.)

So are you Team Laurel or Team Cara? And we know you have thoughts about CT’s early exit — drop some comments below!

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