Selena Gomez’s Rare was one of the year’s first high-profile album releases, as it came out in early January. Now, a few months later, Gomez has decided to add onto the record with a deluxe edition, which introduces three new songs to the tracklist: “Boyfriend,” “Souvenir,” and “She.” “Feel Me,” which previously appeared as a bonus track on some versions of the album, is also included on the new deluxe edition.

Posting about the album today, Gomez wrote, “I hope you can take a moment to disconnect and dance to the new songs!!” Ahead of the deluxe album’s release, she also shared a message about the song “Boyfriend,” which she says isn’t indicative of her current priorities:

“Many of you know how excited I’ve been to release a song called ‘Boyfriend.’ It’s a lighthearted song about falling down and getting back up time and time again in love, but also knowing that you don’t need anyone other than yourself to be happy. We wrote it long before our current crisis, but in the context of today, I want to be clear that a boyfriend is no where near the top of my list of priorities. Just like the rest of the world, I’m praying for safety, unity, and recovery during this pandemic. Because of that, I’m personally donating to the Plus 1 COVID-19 relief fund as well as donating $1 of every order in my official store to the fund starting now.”

Stream the new deluxe edition of Rare below.

Rare (Deluxe) is out now via Interscope. Get it here.

Modern Family wrapped up its Emmy-winning, 11-season run last night. Much of the two-part series finale was about change — Mitchell and Cameron move to Missouri, Phil and Claire go on an RV trip, Jay and Gloria head to South America to spend time with her family, etc. — but one thing that stayed the same was the format of the show.

Modern Family is presented as a mockumentary, with the characters speaking to an unseen crew, but as co-creator Christopher Lloyd told Entertainment Weekly, “we didn’t” consider pulling an The Office and presenting the footage as a “real” documentary.

“Look, it’s a valid idea. Obviously, we started out in our pilot having that person be a character. And then the more we thought about, we thought, “That might take the audience out of it.” And then having lived in a mockumentary form without literally a crew for 250 episodes, it felt like it might’ve been to meta or too cute to maybe do that for us,” Lloyd said. “The Office made you aware that they were actual people much more than we did. We were just using it as a technique more than a sort of an actual reality.”

You know what else stayed the same? Manny being annoying. Anyway, Lloyd was also asked what he hopes people will say about Modern Family in the future:

“I hope that they say, ‘Oh, that was a really well-made show. There was care in the writing of it. There was incredible professionalism and talent in the cast, and what it all added up to was a really rich experience of great laughs. I loved spending time with those characters, but also I found myself moved at the end, and that’s like a full meal.’ … The hope is that people remember it as a fuller experience than you sometimes get with a comedy and come back to it for the nourishment that comes from that.”

R.I.P. Modern Family. It’s hard to imagine another broadcast show ever winning Outstanding Comedy Series five years in a row ever again.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

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My first John Prine show was an accident — I was going to see Emmylou Harris.

It just so happened, Emmylou and a singer I didn’t know were doing a doubleheader in Alabama during the week I was visiting, back in March of 2011, so we bought tickets and plotted the drive to Birmingham. I kept meaning to go on Spotify and learn more about the guy sharing the bill, but grad school is a busy time and I never got around to it. Which means that the first time I ever heard John Prine’s voice, it was live and in person, without a single hint of what I was about to experience: a flummoxing, mesmerizing performer whose presence would be swaggering if it wasn’t so gentle.

Hearing “Sam Stone” (“there’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes”) and “Spanish Pipedream” (“blow up your TV”) or “Souvenirs” for the first time in an half-full Alabama arena sounds like a scene out of a Prine song; encountering his storytelling was like meeting someone from my family I’d always heard about but never known. How is there so much familiarity in his work that everyone who hears it thinks it belongs only to them? What a feat. Returning home with what felt like a secret, I spent my daily long trail runs carefully listening to every single album he’d ever released, settling on 2010’s In Person & On Stage (Live) as the one that felt most like the show where I first encountered him.

And for a while, I lived happily in my own bubble, wearing grooves in his 2000 classic Souvenirs that I found on vinyl in some record shop, playing the 1971 self-titled album that started it all on loop on my laptop, reading up on how Roger Ebert discovered Prine back when he was just a mailman, and drawing connections to my own life, growing up the daughter of a garbage man. I used to try to mask my dad’s working-class job before finding Prine, but after, my old shame about it seemed to matter far less. Like Prine, my father was a songwriter and a guitar player, but unlike him, never got discovered. I bet there’s a whole lot more golden talent at open mics in towns around the world that never makes it past those tiny bars, even more that never makes it past the living rooms. One thing I always cherished about Prine’s music is the fact that we were lucky to have it all, and my own random introduction to it only deepened that sentiment further.

As I fell in love with John Prine, though, I began to see his influence everywhere. Not only did my idol, Bob Dylan, praise his songwriting skills, but the younger, up-and-coming artists I loved were citing his influence constantly. Foremost among them? An upstart country singer named Kacey Musgraves, who later shared that one of the first songs she wrote after moving to Nashville was “Burn One With John Prine.” Because sometimes life is good and right, the two performed it together in 2015. Well, that’s not quite right — Prine introduces the song with a story of Kacey trying to get stoned with him (unsuccessfully, despite the hints contained in “Illegal Smile,” another classic), and then sits there basking in it while she performs the song. “My idea of heaven, is to burn one with John Prine,” she sings, and later: “I bet that he would understand, just how I feel and who I am.” As the video itself illustrates, she was right.

Actually, Kacey wasn’t the only one who felt that way, and who was held and supported by John’s benevolent gaze and listening ear. His generous spirit bridged generations, as recent collaborations with Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Kacey herself, and Margo Price illustrate. But even before that, Prine was hellbent on working with and elevating his songwriting peers, particularly women. In 2016 he released For Better, Or Worse, a collection of duets with all-female country musicians and folk singers, many of whom don’t enjoy the longevity that their veteran male counterparts do late into their careers. Largely unsung legends like Iris Dement, Kathy Mattea, Lee Ann Womack, Susan Tedeschi, and Alison Krauss are all present on that release, along with newcomers like Holly Williams (Hank Williams’ granddaughter) and Morgane Stapleton (Chris Stapleton’s wife).

He toured frequently with Emmylou Harris, wrote a legendary hit song for Bonnie Raitt, and routinely, thoroughly, and lovingly praised his wife Fiona from the stage, everywhere he went. At a Grammys showcase hosted at the Troubadour in Los Angeles last year, artists as disparate as Dwight Yoakam, Ashley McBryde, Anderson East, Boz Scaggs, Mary Gauthier, and loads more gathered to pay tribute to his songs. Nearly every single one of them had a story about the way a song of his had helped them through, how the experiences he put into writing had made their own life more bearable, better, or richer. His songs were like friends when you didn’t have one, exquisite proof that someone else had been in the same kind of sad, weird, or lonesome situation, and found a way to make something useful, funny, or somber out of it.

Prine was beloved and respected within the songwriting community — young and old — because he treated his peers with the same open-hearted acceptance and tenderness that is present in so many of his songs: Everyone is interesting, anyone can surprise you, and no one is unworthy. In a world where those principles are so rarely upheld, much less lived out for decades, it’s a supreme loss that John Prine is no longer with us. But the seeds he’s sowed with his peers and the next generation are just beginning to grow, and the tree of forgiveness will outlast us all. As that last great album of his is embraced by those who are mourning this loss, it will be comforting to hear the covers of those songs that inevitably emerge. The next generation will keep singing Prine’s songs, because, when he was alive, he already made them ours.

When The Strokes released their debut album in the fall of 2001, there were two ways to read the title. The common approach was Is THIS It, as in, is this the next great American rock band? But now, it’s more like Is This IT, as, is this all there is? That is the question at the heart of this band’s entire career. It’s what makes them great, and also what makes them seem like they’re never great enough.

With the possible exception of Weezer, no fanbase for a contemporary rock group derives as much pleasure from being perpetually disappointed as those of us who love The Strokes. From the start with Is This It, The Strokes were accused of being trust-fund kids ripping off the legends of NYC rock. With Room On Fire, they were criticized for ripping off their “classic” and “one of a kind” debut. With First Impressions Of Earth, people felt the band had drifted too far from the now unimpeachable standard of the first two albums. (Like Weezer, The Strokes will be haunted by the “first two albums” benchmark from here on out.) With Angles, The Strokes were now supposedly “less engaged” than they had been on First Impressions. With Comedown Machine, they were apparently even less engaged than they were on Angles.

To follow this band is to constantly feel that what they’re doing falls short of your expectations. What this means is that how The Strokes disappoint us in the present will inevitably become a gold standard against which the next way The Strokes disappoint us will be measured. Every new record makes the old ones sound better. That’s their process.

Which brings us to the latest Strokes LP, their first in seven years, The New Abnormal. It occurred to me while listening to this album that The Strokes aren’t merely a band that I love to feel disappointed in. They’re actually a band that makes records about disappointment, particularly that specific sort of dissatisfaction that derives from an inability to accept what you have because you’ve been sold a fantasy of something better. The very rot at the heart of the American dream. That’s where The Strokes live.

The “first two albums” Strokes were presented as a fantasy of New York City cool right as that archetype was lost to the 20th century in the wake of 9/11. It was the same mirage that compelled so many people to move there in the aughts, only to find they were relocating to a billionaires’ sandbox where everybody else was increasingly squeezed. You can be mad at the inequities of our sociopolitical systems, or you can be mad at The Strokes. Being mad at The Strokes was easier and more fun.

As they pivoted to being a mainstream rock band, they signified how guitar-based music was being squeezed out of pop music’s sandbox. The Strokes, once again, failed to “save” rock music. As their once-indomitable friendship seemed to crumble around the time of Angles, The Strokes might’ve become a metaphor for your own collapsing social circle at the onset of middle age. If The Strokes can’t keep the old gang together, how can I be expected to keep up with my drinking buddies now that I have all these kids? Each step of the way, the specter of the recent past — which didn’t even all that great at the time — suddenly appears more desirable. This feedback loop of near-sighted nostalgia is a defense mechanism against a future that you suspect will only be worse. This is also where The Strokes live.

The Strokes, in fact, have internalized this common cultural malady as brilliantly as any artists I can think of. I mean this as a compliment: The New Abnormal might be the first time they’ve done it on purpose.

When it was announced that The Strokes were working with Rick Rubin, it was natural to assume that The New Abnormal would be a deliberate evocation of Is This It. Failing that, perhaps Rubin would hand Julian Casablancas an acoustic guitar and encourage him to do dirge-y covers of Soundgarden and Danzig tunes. But The New Abnormal, thankfully, is not that. It sounds, in fact, like an amalgam of the ’80s synth-pop and stoner-experimental chicanery of the previous two Strokes albums. It also reprises the batting average of those LPs: Four undeniable bangers, and five weird and bombastic sorta ballads in which Casablancas addresses his own profound Strokes disappointment in bizarre, fascinating ways. Put another way, The New Abnormal has been consciously constructed to be another “disappointing Strokes album” that will sound better in about three years.

First, the bangers: You’ve already heard three of them. The album’s first single, “At The Door,” is a delightfully strange synthesizer warble that never fully turns into a classic-sounding Strokes song, instead wallowing in the sonic murk of Casablancas’ other band, The Voidz. The next single, “Bad Decisions,” is both a gooey confection and a massive overcorrection, evoking new-wave era ear candy like Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” and Modern English’s “I Melt With You” with such obviousness that Idol was granted a co-writing credit. The third single, “Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus,” exists in a similar Stranger Things zone, though Casablancas acts out his discontent closer to the surface: “I want new friends, but they don’t want me.”

My favorite track on The New Abnormal, “The Adults Are Talking,” is also the song that sounds most like the old Strokes. The band premiered it in May 2019, at a show in Los Angeles. About a year before that, Casablancas gave an interview to New York magazine in which he said that The Strokes were not “where my focus is.” He also compared himself to Natalie Portman, who makes both brilliant movies like Annihilation that buck mainstream convention (The Voidz in this analogy) as well as popular crap like Thor “that are more pay-the-bills” (guess who?).

Given that The Strokes reportedly have been pondering their sixth album since 2016, Casablancas felt this way two years into the project, and about a year before unveiling one of the best songs to come out of The New Abnormal. For most bands, this would be described as a troubling contradiction. But the peculiar genius of Julian Casablancas is that he wrote a fantastic Strokes song about being bored with The Strokes — not just his boredom, but also our universal, existential boredom with everything that is symbolized by The Strokes.

“The Adults Are Talking” gives you everything you could want if you love Is This It — the guitars interlock perfectly, the drums sound as if they’re being played by a cyborg with limited technical proficiency, and the bass part appears to have been copied note-for-note from Unknown Pleasures. Meanwhile Casablancas details the impossibility of being a Stroke in 2020: “They will blame us, crucify, and shame us / We can’t help it if we are a problem / We are trying hard to get your attention / Climbing up your wall.”

Casablancas picks up this thread in the back half of the record, which is darker, less melodic, and (I assume) probably closer to his heart. “Not trying to build no dynasty,” he sings on “At The Door.” “But we’ve lost this game / so many times before.” On “Not The Same Anymore,” a languid dream-pop ballad that Casablancas drives into a ditch with his histrionic vocals, he bellows, “And now it’s time to show up / Late again I can’t grow up / And now it’s on me they’ve given up.”

Your patience for this sort of thing will depend on how much you have invested in The Strokes saga. But, personally, I appreciate how these guys are leaning into their age. They aren’t trying to sound like the long-lost leather-jacketed masters of the universe that we remember. You bear every inch of their accumulated milage on The New Abnormal. The rock ‘n’ roll life has finally rubbed away the lingering rich-kid stink. It suits them.

On the album-closing “Ode To The Mets” — a reference to another perennial NYC disappointment — Casablancas affects a Sinatra-like posture as he launches into his version of “My Way.” “Gone now are the old times,” he croons, after motioning to Fab to pick up the pace. He speaks of old friends that are now forgotten, and old ways that have been left behind. “The only thing that’s left is us / So pardon the silence that you’re hearing / Is turning into a deafening painful shameful roar.” It’s the sound of The Strokes getting older, and us getting older, too.

The New Abnormal is out tomorrow on RCA. Get it here.

After Killing Eve introduced us to its compelling cat-and-mouse game a few seasons ago, success threatened to become the show’s own worst enemy. The very title of the series, after all, meant that at some point, Jodie Comer’s assassin would presumably take out Sandra Oh’s MI6 agent. The first season finale managed to stave off this threat when Eve pulled a surprise stabbing move on Villanelle, but how long could the show sustain that sense of urgency, and those wild collisions that everyone has come to expect from the central relationship’s gravitational pull? Well, the sophomore season began splendidly, but some folks inevitably expressed disappointment by the season’s end. That’s where it gets tricky. Even though I felt that the show remained better than 90-ish% of current TV drams, the debut season was so on-the-mark that some of the show’s momentum unavoidably slowed. Then Villanelle tried to do what the title said she’d do, and two more seasons were greenlit while no one knew Eve’s ultimate fate. So, gauntlet thrown?

One has to respect the chutzpah involved with greenlighting those additional seasons. It was almost as if BBC America gave the naysayers the finger, as if to challenge skeptical viewers who can’t possibly see how this show could continue. A large (and vocal) contingent of loyalists do remain, and the show’s most prominent pairing has continued to feel hypnotic enough to make people look forward to more. Still, one cannot deny that third seasons are prone to be make-or-break points when many successful series must make some tough choices to stay afloat. Given Villanelle’s harsh decision at the end of the year, the show put itself in an extraordinarily difficult position. Even more so than most other third seasons, which, like I said, is already bound to be a vulnerable point.

Let’s make one thing clear: Eve and Villanelle’s dynamic, if both of them are to stay alive — and the trailers made clear that Eve survived what went down in Rome — can only ride the cat-and-mouse game so far. Dragging that out, full-on, through a third season would be exhausting, so there’s no room for a True Detective-style attempt to go back-to-basics in an effort to re-bottle lightning. That method churned out a respectable product for HBO, though not a magical one, and BBC America resists that temptation with Killing Eve. Instead, it tweaks itself to survive through (at least) year four.

Mainly, Killing Eve accepts the challenge by diving inward and reflecting upon itself. It does not struggle to maintain the game. It doesn’t even try to make the cat and mouse get along like Season 2 did. All of that would be too played-out to sustain in an engaging way. And this is where Killing Eve decides to start running a marathon, rather than a sprint. So, the flashier aspects of the show still exist, but they’re fueled differently. This might make the show less exhilarating for some viewers, but overall, there’s a more solid construction. It really was the wisest way to go to keep these characters going and, in the process, to give the people want they demand: more Villanelle and Eve. That’s what we get, but the show also turns into more of an ensemble team effort, which is very cool. Oh, and the writing’s still chock full of biting humor and morbid coping mechanisms.

As always, the show’s stills are best posted without context, but let’s just say that these two are coping differently with their trauma.

Unfortunately, I cannot say too much about what actually transpires without spoiling a ton of what happens this season. And I can’t wait to talk more about the events that take place with you fine people, but for now, these loose ends will have to do:

– The first several episodes are kind-of The Villanelle Show. That doesn’t mean that Eve isn’t on the scene. She’s definitely around and receives plenty of face time, but she’s muted, worn out in a sense, physically and psychologically, while attempting to recover from what went down in Rome. Whereas Villanelle’s personality grows ever more amplified (she’s got career goals now, y’all) and contextualized, including her own bottle episode mid-season. You may or may not appreciate the additional information — I did, and the payoffs from that episode don’t feel forced or unearned.

– Several regulars who previously haven’t received much fleshing-out get that treatment now, and it’s wonderful to see this show written as more of an ensemble, rather than players rotating around a central pair. We learn more about Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) and Kenny (Sean Delaney). Carolyn (Fiona Shaw)’s also now got a daughter, Geraldine (Gemma Whelan from Game Of Thrones), on the scene, and a newly revealed Twelve member, Dasha (Harriet Walter), is shaking things up real good. Sadly, Eve’s long-suffering husband, Niko (Owen McDonnell), is still very much suffering. There are a lot of threads are floating around in this season! It’s definitely not dull.

– Keeping with tradition, the show’s installed a new lead writer, Suzanne Heathcote, who’s best known for Fear The Walking Dead. That might not inspire confidence, but Heathcote’s experience helps turn this into an ensemble show. There are also some brazenly sharp lines of dialogue on tap, like “when a bullet goes though you, it leaves something behind.” Viewers know that more than one player on this show can benefit from that reasoning. Of course, no one can replace the wit of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s first-season writing, but the show’s still got an admirable edge.

This third season burns as brightly as always even if it does so less intensely. It succeeds by pulling away from a lot of what made the show stellar, but the show mines new potential from secondary relationships and fresh characters. So, Killing Eve is still as mesmerizing as it used to be, but in a different way, with fewer shocks to the system. The show’s passion still exists, it’s just not so in your face as it has been previously. And fans won’t want to walk away from this show’s commitment to keeping the gang together.

The third season of BBC America’s ‘Killing Eve’ premieres on Sunday, April 12 at 8:00 PM EST and will be simulcast on AMC. You can still catch up on seasons 1 and 2 on Hulu.

What Stephen King comparisons have you heard about since the pandemic began? Obviously, The Stand sprang to many people’s lips, including James Marsden (who’s starring in CBS All Access’ upcoming reboot). Fortunately, the current disease in question, while deadly, isn’t nearly as fatal as the Captain Trips superflu (which wiped out 99% of the world’s population), which is why King initially pushed back at those comparisons, but that’s not the only King story that bears a resemblance to current times. There’s also The Mist, which sees characters taking refuge (and freaking out inside) a supermarket while unknown, barely invisible horrors lurk outside. And we’re all familiar with the twisted version of cabin fever that struck Jack Torrence in The Shining. Well, King’s done fighting any analogies, and now, he’s talking to NPR about it.

While promoting his new collection of short stories, If It Bleeds (which is Holly Gibney focused for you fans of The Outsider), King says that he keeps hearing, “Gee, it’s like we’re living in a Stephen King story.” His answer: “And my only response to that is, ‘I’m sorry.’”

That’s a more than fair response, since King can’t even log onto Twitter these days without seeing comparisons. It’s gotta feel like a lot to him, like it does for everyone else. Still, he states, that a situation like this was inevitable. “There was never any question that in our society, where travel is a staple of daily life,” he reasoned. “[T]hat sooner or later, there was going to be a virus that was going to communicate to the public at large.”

The horror icon admits that he’s experiencing cabin fever, too, along with the “gnawing anxiety” that horror awaits outside our homes. He also revealed that he’s changed a few things in the book that he’s currently writing, since it was set in 2020. It actually includes a few characters who go on a cruise in 2020, so that got pushed back to 2019. “I don’t think anybody’s going on cruise ships this year,” he supposed. Unfortunately, people continued to do just that and are still stuck on those massive floating cities full of the virus, so that’s a different type of horror show. But King made a wise move by bumping that event into the past because, in the future, cruising may not exist.

We’re living in scary times, but here’s a recent King tweet that might bring a smile.

(Via NPR)

Phoebe Bridgers shared “Garden Song” earlier this year, which represented her first solo material since her 2017 debut album Stranger In The Alps. That was certainly a sign that more was to come, and now, more has: Bridgers has announced that her sophomore solo album, Punisher, is set for release on June 19.

She also shared a clip for the new song “Kyoto.” The original plan for the video was to shoot it in Japan in March, but when that trip was canceled, she decided to make the video with a green screen. Bridgers says of “Kyoto”:

“This song is about impostor syndrome. About being in Japan for the first time, somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, and playing my music to people who want to hear it, feeling like I’m living someone else’s life. I dissociate when bad things happen to me, but also when good things happen. It can feel like I’m performing what I think I’m supposed to be like. I wrote this one as a ballad first, but at that point I was so sick of recording slow songs, it turned into this.”

This is Bridgers’ first solo album in a few years, but she’s not going about it alone. In fact, Punisher features contributions from members of Better Oblivion Community Center and Boygenius: Conor Oberst, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker all feature on “I Know The End,” while Oberst also guests on “Halloween,” and Dacus and Baker contribute to “Graceland Too.” Bridgers is also joined by her band (Marshall Vore, Harrison Whitford, Emily Restas, and Nick White) and guests Blake Mills, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Christian Lee Hutson, Nick Zinner, Jim Keltner, and Bright Eyes’ Nathaniel Walcott. The album was also made with her Stranger In The Alps collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska.

Listen to “Kyoto” above, and below, find the Punisher art and tracklist.

1. “DVD Menu”
2. “Garden Song”
3. “Kyoto”
4. “Punisher”
5. “Halloween”
6. “Chinese Satellite ”
7. “Moon Song”
8. “Savior Complex”
9. “ICU”
10. “Graceland Too”
11. “I Know The End”

Punisher is out 6/19 via Dead Oceans.

Until now, the only DSP (digital streaming platform) listeners could stream Dr. Dre’s iconic and groundbreaking 1992 debut album The Chronic on was Apple Music. That will change this month, as Dre and Entertainment One distribution team up to finally bring The Chronic to all streaming services on the most appropriate day for it: April 20. That’s right; on 4/20, you’ll be able to stream he West Coast classic from Spotify, Tidal, and more to soundtrack your day’s — ahem — “activities.”

It’s been a big year for The Chronic in general. In March, it was announced that The Chronic had been selected for archiving in the Library Of Congress. Each year, the National Recording Registry selects a collection of records for inclusion into the Library, choosing recordings considered “worthy of preservation because of their cultural, historical, and aesthetic importance” to American culture and history. Dr. Dre himself was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 Grammys, which seems like a decade ago already.

Intriguingly, the last time the album was made available for streaming — as an Apple Music exclusive in 2015 — it charted for the first time in over 20 years. With the conjunction of the streaming availability and significant date, it’s possible that it just might repeat that feat once again.

The Chronic comes to Spotify, Tidal, and all DSPs 4/20 via eOne.

Hello, friends and welcome back to The Challenge: Total Madness Stock Watch. After bidding adieu to Asaf last week, this week is a women’s challenge and we also get our first team challenge of the season, as they are put in groups of three and told to run 15 boxes of “ammo” to a drop spot a mile away for the first leg, with the three fastest teams getting to chuck those boxes out of a helicopter at a target in the second leg.

The team of Jordan, Wes, and Jenny dominate the first leg, followed by Fessy, Kyle, and Melissa and then Cory, Swaggy C, and Dee in the third group to finish. Jordan, Wes, and Jenny do terribly in the helicopter drop section, only getting two boxes to hit the target as Jordan struggles to figure out the proper time to tell them to toss the box. After missing their first two, Fessy serving as the spotter gets into a rhythm and their team hits the target on their final seven attempts, but Cory gets it right from the jump and his team hits on all nine tosses and earns their spot in the Tribunal.

Jenn performs terribly in the daily challenge, is a rookie, and has angered Dee by being flirty with Rogan, so she knows she’s the most likely to get thrown in. Bananas and Wes decide to mess with her and help craft an awful speech in which she admits to being the weakest player and tells the rest of the girls they should want her to last as long as possible because she’d be easy to beat in a Final. Wes then casts the first vote for Jenn and she gets voted into elimination in a landslide. The Tribunal nominates Jenny, Tori, and Big T as the three they’ll consider to put in against her — with all three angling to be put in and Tori and Jordan applying major pressure to Dee to throw her in so she can get the much needed red skull to earn a possible spot in the Final.

At the elimination, T.J. announces that along with the three nominees by the Tribunal, a member of the Tribunal can vote themselves into an elimination as well, giving Dee a chance to take out Jenn herself. For reasons passing understanding, Dee decides to still vote for Jenny, instead of taking the layup that is Jenn and the easy way out of having to anger either Jenny or Tori and Jordan, because they easily would understand if she took that opportunity. Jenny destroys Jenn in a barrel flipping competition, as Jenny gets all of hers flipped (sometimes going one-handed) while Jenn can’t even get past the first.

Dee admits being a bit mad at herself for not taking the opportunity and T.J. expresses some disappointment and bewilderment for that choice as well. Next week, we’re blowin’ up trucks, because this year’s budget is apparently $Texas.

STOCK WATCH

STOCK UP

Jenny: Not only is she now the only woman with a red skull, she was dominant in both the elimination and the daily challenge. After winning the first challenge, she has now won a daily, been in the top 3 of another, and won an elimination. She is looking the part of the favorite and as long as she keeps up this pace she will cruise to, at the very least, the late rounds of the competition if not a Final.

Fessy: Fessy’s team didn’t win but he has been a hoss through two rounds. He’s come in second in both of the daily challenges thus far and it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to deal with him in an elimination. The question he’ll have to answer is whether he can find an alliance that will help him get into an elimination so he can earn a red skull — or if he can simply win a daily and throw himself in.

Cory: It seems like some time off from The Challenge has done Cory some good. So far he has been in both Tribunals thanks to a win this week (where he was the catalyst serving as the spotter in the helicopter) and somewhat randomly being asked in last week because he’s viewed as a net neutral. He seems, to this point, to be avoiding the pitfalls of past Challenges by laying relatively low as far as not causing drama or making his “hitlist” public as he did when he was younger, and, coupled with quality performances, it’s paid off through two weeks.

Aneesa Reaction GIFs: Aneesa didn’t show up a ton this week, but when she did she helped make great television. First, she pops up in a confessional laughing at how Jenn had a “full face” on for the daily challenge and looked great while not doing anything.

Later, when Jenn is reading her awful speech she produced this tremendous GIF. I’m always in on random cutaways to vets like Aneesa when young folks do stupid stuff.

STOCK DOWN

Dee: Scared money don’t make money, and not throwing herself in against Jenn in what was very clearly going to be a physical elimination is going to haunt Dee. Not only was it going to be a walk to a red skull, she could’ve taken care of her own beef with Jenn, and avoided starting anything with Tori and Jordan. Instead, she now has enemies in the game and gifted the strongest woman in the game a red skull. That partnership with Jenny better pay off soon or she’s in trouble.

Jordan: The effort from him as spotter in the helicopter was, truly, pitiful. He then got cranky and wouldn’t clap for anyone and was pouting off to the side, and now has most of the house seemingly happy to root against him from guys to girls. He’s so, over-the-top all-in on making sure Tori gets to a Final that he’s going to end up playing a reckless game and jeopardize both of their chances.

Rogan: Like Nany last week, Rogan’s hopeful love interest is gone and, worse than Nany last week, he’s also further pushed away a possible strong ally in Dee who still somehow wanted to make things work with him. He looked strong a week ago with a winand was close to the top 3 this week, but he doesn’t have an awful lot of friends and seems to be doing poorly at the social part of the game to this point.