The first television program of its kind is still running—and is becoming more bombastic by the year.
T.J. Lavin, the host of MTV’s The Challenge, could only cackle as a tank he’d commandeered ran amok, drawing looks of anguish from those around him. Everyone aside from Lavin had been tasked with dragging heavy cargo across a 500-foot field, stopping only to solve a jigsaw puzzle and math equation. If Lavin caught up to the contestant and flattened their supplies, they were eliminated. It was a grisly yet welcome sight for those who watched the premiere of the 35th season of MTV’s The Challenge, which aired April 1, 2020, weeks after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was fittingly filmed in and around an isolated Cold War bunker in Prague months before “social distancing” entered the lexicon.