TV PG L open

Previously: Jamie isn't good because she has a lot of self doubt. Jonah says the ribs are escalating and doesn't seem happy 'bout it (bout it). Al decides not to just get Jonah and get everyone.

Trax - first day back from Iceland. Jonah says it's very serious now. Ivory notes that Jamie is the last girl, and Jamie tells us that she's competition against the guys, which sucks. Time to spray paint Kelly's name out. Al talks about Game Faces. What's a game face? Cut tension blah blah blah.

Leapfrogs. Watch Jamie almost ram her head into an inappropriate spot! Al demonstrates how it's supposed to look - they're barely escaping with their heads at this point. Jonah had to dive because Justin has no hops. Jonah doesn't really have any vertical leap either - actually, Al says: "You've got the vertical leap of the Barbarian", okay. Montage. Al's all happy about John screwing up and not ducking (though Jamie didn't really get up at all so it's not like it would've happy) for reasons that aren't clear. A bit more of the montage, then John and Jamie trying again - Jamie jumps (not high enough), John tries to duck under but clips Jamie's left knee with his shoulder, totally spinning her out in mid-air. That looked vicious, though it was accidental. John blames Jamie not getting high enough. Jamie gets the wind knocked out of her, but not the self-doubt, as we hear again.

Now we watch Matt and Justin work a match - hey, Justin uses a jacknife cover, that's different. Justin tells us that he was upset because he was having a hard time keeping his balance and focus. Bill yells at him for not learning what he's supposed to be doing. John says Justin's having a lot of physical problems in the ring and doesn't have the "it" factor. Do we have a cut this episode? Because we've already sized two people up. Bill finds three synonyms of "crap" to describe Justin's work in the ring.

Some coffee place somewhere. Justin isn't happy because he sucks and Bill yelled at him because he sucked. Back at the house (wow, thanks for that trip to the coffee place - was that a paid deal to show it?), Justin works out his frustration by surfing a well known internet portal (and that is a paid ad - Al was wearing a shirt with their logo at Trax too) in another scene that lasts all of 20 seconds, 10 of which are looking at the brand name.

Eric: "Jonah is definitely a scumbag." He explains that Jonah doesn't do "his fair share of cleaning" - as Jonah complains about the dishes and notices the ants in the kitchen, which is becoming a fine Tough Enough tradition - and is in "a college mode". Jonah: "I'm not the neatest person. That's why we have Eric in the house. He's a neat person, he's supposed to clean up after the slobs. He'd be a great house husband" I think he's half-kidding. Jonah shows off the ants he whipped off. Matt agrees with Eric.

Big says "ribbing in this business is a time honored tradition" as we see the previous ones. Al reiterates his promise to get Jonah.

Night. At the house. Most people are asleep. I guess that's Justin brushing his teeth and going to the bed. Sometime later, Bill and Al drive up in a yellow convertible. Bill says that Jonah felt as if he could get anyone, and if that he's untouchable, so being the house trainer, he's got to fix that. Al and Bill look through their bag of goodies - four to five cans of shaving cream for Operation Snow Storm. Al and Bill do the Wild West "bandana hiding your mouth" look as they talk strategy.

Was the front door unlocked? I sure hope it just looked that way. Bill and Al have absolutely no problem sneaking into the red room (where Jonah and Eric are now sleeping) and sneak right to the foot of their beds. Bill: "We never lie to the kids, they just don't believe us." Al leans down to set something up at the foot of Jonah's bed as we go to break.

Back - we see Bill and Al (from night vision room camera) at the foot of Eric and Jonah's beds, with a shaving cream bottle each. They don't spray the bottles, nah, they bust them open, exploding the shaving cream on the kids, the room, and even themselves. Al and Bill bolt downstairs as Eric and Jonah wake, trying to figure out what happened - Jonah says all he saw was white. Bill and Al bust into the other rooms and give the kids the same shaving cream bomb treatment. John tells us he heard the running around upstairs and got up, catching Bill as he darted in his room - and we see Bill running in the room, yelling while the shaving cream bomb goes off, Bill bending over while trying to get out of the room (his red visor falling off in the process) and emerging with John on him in a waistlock. Bill breaks free (well, more that John gives up on him) and runs with Al back into the car for the getaway. Al and Bill crack up while driving away - Al explains that Bill had about two inches of shaving cream on his face, and Al's pretty covered himself too. It ain't a clean job, to punk people out like that. 

The kids survey the damage. Hey Jonah, you heard of pants? He's covered in shaving cream anyway. The Red and Green rooms are particularly devastated. Jonah [ranting to no one in particular but maybe the camera]: "I'll get you Al Snow, if it's the last thing I do!"

Trax, next morning. The kids coming in clapping, though Al and Bill play dumb. Hmm. Anyway, John is wearing a red visor. When they all sit down, Al notes they look beat, and they say they had a lack of sleep last night. Al: "I heard you had company?" John: "Yea, one of them left his hat there." Bill: "I have a red hat like that." John screws by saying he saw them running down the driveway, which allows Bill and Al to deny - and then reveal that they were driving. Everyone laughs at the prank and Bill gets his hat back. At least he got his hat back!

Challenge time. They drive to Someplace, CA. Ivory explains it was her turn to pick a challenge, and it would have been nice to remind us here of her time working as a stunt woman in a theme park, because this would seem something at least partly drawn from that. The kids walk up to see a guy standing on a very high piece of scaffolding - I guess 30 feet up and I turn out to be shorting him 15 feet - who yells down: "Hey Tough Enough, you guys got what it takes?" and he JUMPS OFF...onto a large air cushion. But it was a pretty impressive fall. Ivory of course loves it, and you can see the hesitation on the kids faces, knowing they'll have to do something nutty like that today.

Ivory introduces them to the instructors - Ken and Mark have last names but I'm particularly lazy here - and talks about the challenge being all about "body control while airborne" though it's obviously also about "hey, if we want you to fall from the top of the big screen for an angle, how quickly do you agree to do it?" Ken explains he's done that jump a 100 times, but still gets nervous each time because if you do it wrong, it'll kill you. Oh wow, we can save a cut right here. Mark says the jumps should scare the heck out of them, and that'll keep them safe. And now, time to practice falling - surely a novelty on this show!

The kids work on lower stuff - off about 10 feet to a pad, which is probably safer than a top rope move, all together. The pad doesn't give all that match. While people are doing this, we go to Jonah. Not only, in his words, has he failed every single challenge so far (they only show the trapeze one, which makes them seem stupid for saying 'every single one' and only seemingly having one [they had the World Strongest Man one last week, and I'm sure a couple that didn't get shown]) but he also doesn't like heights. 

Diving montage. Jamie (and I think John) actually do Swantons off the platform, which makes me think the height is comparable to the MSG ledge where Jeff did that in the 2000 Rumble Table match. Those Dudleys weren't probably as good padding.

Moving up to twenty feet, which is actually the low platform in of the structure Ken jumped off in the beginning. Jonah is scared but jumps fine. Eric explains the jumping part wasn't bad, it was the climbing up to the scaffolding (shaky ladders), standing there waiting to jump and the nervousness of that moment. Eric jumps fine. so does Jonah. Justin does a corkscrew. Matt. John does a deadman's Swanton - it looks like he's walking off to kill himself [jumpers don't wear glasses, so neither did he] but did the flip and harmlessly landed on his back. John looks like he's having a lot of fun with this.

Thirty feet. Jonah's gone first on all of these, and he's scared completely now. We see him completely out of his mind frightened, holding onto the structure for dear life. It probably says something that his fear of death is just less enough than his fear of chickening out, because he falls - well, kinda. While they've been taught to land back first (not really mattering how they get there), Jonah's not thinking (shocker!) and pretty much goes down feet first. Matt assures us that's the worst way you can go down (ankle/knee injuries easy), and Jonah's thankfully okay. Ken and Mark? Not so okay with it - Jonah's non-fall makes them uneasy about the rest of the kids getting to fall from that high, figuring they're not experienced enough, and call an early end to the challenge rather than having someone hurt. Everyone is not so happy with Jonah - Eric: "Of course Jonah ruins it for us." Jonah is having self-doubt, which gives us 3 questionable people - are we SURE it's not a cut week?

House. Jonah's on the phone with his girlfriend, who is crying for reasons she won't tell him. Never a good sign. She misses him a bunch, apparently. Jonah's not only having self-doubt but now he's homesick. Jonah tells Matt that his girlfriend was crying the whole time he was talking. Jonah wishes she was happy he was here and not crying.

Trax. Running the ropes, running the corners. Turnbuckle smashes - Jonah has trouble taking them. Montage. I think I've said this lately, but John? Very good. Liking high spots a bunch is gonna be something the judges are gonna be unhappy and the people at home aren't gonna understand why, but he's always looking good in these. Matt's good too, and those two probably should be the ones if they ended right now, but who knows what'll happen between now and then. Jamie does a very nice sell of one.

At some other time during the day, Matt explains (in the locker room), that he and Jamie were working in the ring. Basic stuff - Jamie has a headlock, Matt shoots Jamie into the ropes, Jamie comes back with a shoulderblock. Jamie says she thought her head was in the game, but apparently, it was not. It was actually her shoulder that was the problem - Jamie bounces off the ropes, and both she and Matt duck a leapfrog neither is giving, causing them to collide, Jamie's right shoulder to Matt's head. Matt is knocked over and down, while Jamie turns while sitting and smiles at her mistake before continuing - well, actually we see her talking again first. Jamie does recover to go for a pin on Matt, though Al (between a laugh) is telling them to stop for a minute as Ivory calls over to Matt, to check on him. Matt doesn't answer - Jamie knocked him out cold. Break

Unconscious, these commercials are much better.

Let's recap. Matt is blacked out. Matt: "From what they told me, I was out cold for 15 seconds." Al says he thought Matt was just kidding around. John explains what was supposed to happen there. Matt gets a water break, as Bill notes that he still was glassed eyed. Jamie self-doubts that not only does everyone not want to work with her that she's a girl, but that she's hurting people. And now she's crying about it. Al reassures her that they'll be hurt and hurting other people all the time. What a happy thought!

Hey, guest trainer time. It's totally a different day, by the way. Your guest trainer is Chris Benoit - roll video. Justin explains he looks quite like Chris Benoit on TV. Eric explains that Benoit is a very good wrestler. Benoit: "I don't have an ego when I step into the ring. I'm there to have the best match for the people." Matt says Chris talked about respect and attitude and how they're so important to make a business work. Benoit: "What was being show to me, what was being taught to me was respect. Respect for this business, respect to this industry, to this art, because it truly is a form of art." 

Jonah says Benoit's specialty is suplexes, and for the purpose of this next scene, let's pretend so. Benoit explains to Matt how they do his snap suplex - and does one. Neat. Benoit helps on the finer points of what they're doing - he seems so into the turnbuckle smash, he stumbles over his words explaining what the important part was. Jamie says she had a really (unusually) good match against Eric, and afterwards Chris talked to them (they show this, but only slightly - the closed captions lists Benoit's words as "[mumbles]") and said they were good. 

Matt and Jonah wrestle. There's a botched leapfrog (I think I want to blame Jonah for not getting up enough there, but I'm not 100% sure), Matt covers, and Al counts to three. Chris asks why he didn't kickout, and Jonah mumbles himself: "I start - I just thought it was going to sh[bleep]t..." We catch Benoit in mid sentence: "there's a certain boundary, that attitude line. It's like he [Jonah, I think] hasn't learned as much as he can being as much as he can. Now, if you're not going take advantage of this time, then you've got to go, you know, you don't belong here." Benoit explains to the camera: "These kids have such an opportunity. I-I-I really don't think they-they...quite grasp what-what-what they have in the palm in their hands. You really have to love and want it and make it part of your life and live, sleep, eat and breath - it's gotta become everything." Everyone says good bye to Chris.

Back in the Saddle Ranch once again. Jonah, who once made fun of Scott after he drunk himself into a stupor to drown his depression, promptly drinks himself silly to drown his depression. "I don't remember what happened the rest of the night." Matt says he'd never seen him that drunk - he ends up throwing up a couple times outside the van. People note that he seems out of it - Justin says he's cracked. John: "It's almost as if Jonah's become the new Scott." Is that irony? I don't remember.

The next day (this episode seems forever this week), they go to the Improv Olympics. I'm guessing this is another challenge or something along those lines. Who knows. Who cares. They explain us that they're doing Improv to create characters and to be able to project them. Matt explains that they kinda did promos on stage. Matt:" I'm the flavor, baby!" Eric's doing a Jericho-like gimmick. John is "red hot Johnny Blaze!" Jamie is "the Vixen" - which is every beautiful heel woman persona with perhaps a little more sexuality (I think the difference is the typical is "I am very hot - hotter than you, in fact - but I will not be having anything to do with you" while Jamie goes for "I am very hot - hotter than you, in fact, and I have very good sex, but I will probably not do that with you" - it's all about the subtleties.) Ivory is impressed. Justin's gimmick is that he's tall - that went as well as it sounds. Who's left? The kids look around and...

Elsewhere, Jonah says he got very emotional, and he's been having thoughts of quitting. Instead of sticking with everyone else, he went somewhere (a bar?) and called his girlfriend on his cell. "If I have any doubts, I shouldn't keep myself in it, right?" Jonah's looking for a way out - reversing the last bit with her, Jonah's Girlfriend is more supportive here, asking him if he should give up, seeing as he's got this far and done this well. Jonah tells us that all the time on the road, away from his girl, scares him. Jonah: "Do you think people would be disappointed if I didn't - didn't go the whole route?" Girlfriend says that's not the right reason to be doing this. Jonah self-doubts. "I dunno if it's my time." Oh not that again.

In Two Weeks: Jonah talks to Al - "Is there going to be a life beyond wrestling?" Big (to Jonah?) "I'll be damned if I'm gonna select someone who doesn't have this in his heart." Hey, here's that cut - Jonah wars a "it's so gonna be me" face.