Most of us watch some form of reality TV. Many of us watch entirely too much of it. But the one thing said shows mostly have in common are their tasks/challenges/assignments/missions/competitions/events. So, what do you think are the best and worst tasks you've ever seen, on any version of any show?

For me, though the Teach It/Learn It detour from TAR12 is one high point, my actual favourite was an Immunity Challenge from the South African version of Survivor. Basically, you had one person strapped into a giant metal hamster ball, with the ball's escape door shut with four locks. The rest of the tribe rolls the ball (and person inside) around an obstacle course with sliding gates, a key on a platform above the ball (with one person having to climb up and reach down through the hole in the platform to unlock it), a small vertical-coffin shaped hole (with one person having to climb in before rolling the ball over the top of the hole so the door can be unlocked, and an uneven ramp. The first tribe to get all four keys, unlock all four locks, release their person, and cross the finish line wins. It's such a simple variation on the "get this heavy item here" task so common to early episodes in each season of Survivor, and yet it worked so brilliantly that I want to see the American version try it. It would certainly be a change from the sheer number of "gather puzzle pieces, solve the puzzle" tasks we've been getting since Cook Islands.

So, thoughts? Other good (and not-so-good) tasks?

I am still haunted by the worse one I ever saw. It was on Road Rules: Campus Crawl, the season where they took their Winnebago to a bunch of college campuses. At one campus, their task was to collectively gain the Freshman 15 in one night by eating whatever food they could get from people living in the dorm. They were pigging out on all the high fat food they could find, then at the end of the night they were each weighed in their underwear. As soon as they found out they won the challenge, they got rid of the food the way you would expect them to--by puking their guts out, which the camera caught in loving detail.

I have a phobia of vomiting and I think I stopped watching Road Rules completely after this episode. But what really bothers me about this challenge is that it might as well have been called Bulimia 101. It's one thing for a contestant on Survivor or TAR to throw up because they are eating a food they aren't used to and the ingredients or the texture isn't agreeing with them. It's quite another for a challenge to encourage binging and purging. It sickened me that the producers would make the contestants do something so blatantly unhealthy.

Any challenge on The Amazing Race that involves camels automatically shoots up to the top of my list because, to me, TAR plus camels equals comedy gold. In general, I love most TAR challenges because they're generally woven from the culture the Racers are visiting. Even if it's just a question of picking out a particular tango dancer in a Buenos Aires dance hall, it usually makes me smile. However, I have gotten tired of the grotesque eating challenges [eg, eat an entire side of beef, complete with maggots, eat a large bowl of insanely overspiced soup that will make you vomit, etc], because they are A)grotesque, B)wasteful and C)hazardous to one's intestinal health - both the Racer and the viewer. Happily, TAR seems to be getting away from these challenges.

IMO, whoever designed the challenges for "Survivor: Fans vs Favorites" should have been fired, given the high number of injuries suffered during those challenges. I realize that the Survivors take their chances when they sign up - it's not meant to be a relaxing competition - but that particular season the injuries piled up alarmingly.

US Mole 1, Final 3 task. Not the survey to find the missing member, but the one where they're all in separate rooms with information that the OTHER two rooms need. One room was in darkness and required the room with the bike to pedal revealing hidden clues on the wall and a xylophone. One room had a newspaper with music notes and a note to pick up a package. It was really involved and was probably the reason they weren't able to solve it in time (even though the mole was trying to win the money), it was seriously an awesome challenge.

In fact I remember Celeb Mole 1 had a long task involving running around to find items with numbers to open a safe, and needing to use a dark light that required two people to lay back on the bed to light it up. Long story short, most of the clues ended up being on their clothes but they wouldn't have known that until they did most of the clues (and it wasn't until they noticed two numbers on their bodies that they all stripped down to check all the suits)

Totally agree on the suckiness of volume eating tasks. It's like volume eating is over here, tasks that are at least tolerable are over there, and ne'er the twain shall meet.



I linked to it over in the Comparing Foreign Versions thread, so won't link again, but the Australian version of this task is even better.

(Thanks to whoever moved the thread. Having two TWoP windows open at the same time is not a good idea when starting a new thread.)

Ditto this, but adding another episode from Campus Crawl:

It was the episode that they were on some Texas campus (I want to say University of Texas), in which they had to eat leftover, but cooked, bits of the male cow. It's one of the most gross stunts of the reality world, the eating of the male genitalia of the animal, having been used on Fear Factor, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, Road Rules, and several of those survivor-man type shows.

Best? I think the psychological test of putting contestants in what I call the "yummy room" (filled with cakes, cookies, candies, etc.) on The Biggest Loser. Sure the contestants are given carte blanche to break their diets, but by the time they get around to this challenge, they're so programmed to avoid the stuff it's not even fun. I think it's genius, because it's not outwardly that difficult, but is an indication of how seriously people on the show are taking their training.

I think overall, the best challenges have come from Solitary. They won't work on any other shows, but they are also the truest challenges to individuals because they are essentially competing against themselves. I love how many ways they come up with to combine puzzles and endurance to take away the lopsided advantages a lot of the other shows have.

My favorite challenges all revolve around the combined endurance/strength & logic - holding their breath long enough to see a clue or riding a bike to earn habitrail pieces to let their mouse escape. The strong players may get a head start, but they lose it if they aren't smart enough to finish. The weaker ones may start slow, but they can easily blow the competition away if they solve the puzzle in fewer tries. Since there's no way to know how anyone else is doing, they ultimately are racing against their own endurance, which overrides both their strength and their intelligence.

The worst are the ones that games like Survivor is based on - each challenge focuses primarily on a single skill - strength, endurance, intelligence, etc. Even if it combines more than one of those elements, one will have more impact than the rest - like chopping through a rope before you get to carry something to finally get to a puzzle segment that also requires lifting. All those challenges do is allow the strong to carry the mediocre through until the mediocre vote the strong out and then go on to suck equally at any strength element challenges.

Solitary, huh? I may have to check it out.

ETA: I like this variation of a mental challenge from Australian Survivor. (Starts about halfway through the first part and continues into the second.)

I hate anything that has nothing to do with any sort of skill. The Amazing Race is the show I'm thinking of right now, with their "finding a needle in a haystack" sort of challenges that rely heavily on luck.

I also hate their food-gorging challenges for the same reason, and the "eating gross shit" Survivor challenges. Suppressing your gag reflex does not count as a skill.

The ones from TAR that bug me are the ones that take place at a venue that's only open at a certain time during the day, which pretty much guarantees that all the teams are gonna bunch together, wiping out any lead that a team might've built up.

One that I will never forgive the Survivor people for is from Fans vs. Favorites, where people had to be dragged around a course full of pointy sticks jutting out everywhere. This led to the wonderful Jonathan getting a life-threatening injury and having to leave, but even if no one had gotten hurt that was just an insanely stupid thing for the show to do.