What Will Be Different About MTV's 'Free Agents'?

Smell that in the air? It's the smell of sweat, self-tanner, and Malibu rum. That means it's time for another season of MTV's The Challenge, the show for every Real World cast member who didn't want to go back to their day jobs. This, apparently, is MTV Challenge's season of Free Agents , which means that unlike other seasons, there are no teams. The Challenge returns April 10, and this is by no means a novel development for the show, which already did the whole "every man for himself" thing in The Duel and The Duel II. What is interesting, though, is how the male and female contestants will be picked to compete in the elimination challenge: one male and one female will be chosen by that week's winners, and their competitors will be randomly chosen.

So what might this change about how the show works? Well...

Alliances

Alliances are a big deal in the world of The Challenge. They can win challenges, help eliminate contestants, and most importantly, start a lot of yelling matches. Having the elimination challenge contestants being chosen only by that week's winners means that alliances may have less of an impact than previous seasons. If you're someone who wants to see them play a "clean game," this is a good thing. However, if you watch The Challenge to see two people drunkenly slap at each other, yelling so close to the other person that you can see the spittle landing on their face, then this might be a bit disappointing.

No New Friends

Eliminating teams also ups the seriousness of the competition. Hell, it's what helped start the famous Wes-CT rivalry in The Duel. So expect that to add some more drama to the season: more paranoid contestants, more hearts broken, more drunken tirades. If someone actually utters the phrase "I'm not here to make friends" this season, feel free to drink all the booze in sight, even if you're not playing a drinking game.

The Veterans

The contestants for this season are interesting because most of them are relatively new to the whole Challenge scene, i.e. post-2010. There's fewer vets, but this season also has two of the fiercest Challenge veterans: CT and Aneesa. These people have spent over a decade in these competitions, and most likely hold the record for having the most televised fights a human being can have. Free Agents will let CT and Aneesa go their hardest, so it's hard to believe that most of the newbies will even have a chance (does this mean Aneesa will finally win a Challenge?).