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Kim Hollis: I'm hoping they re-examine the challenges this season, because I do think they need to be balanced. Obviously, any physical challenge is likely going to favor the "young" tribe. If you want people to keep watching (and let's face it - CBS's demographic is probably going to be rooting for the elder team), you're going to have to construct the challenges in such a way that one week, the older tribe should *theoretically* win. Another week, the younger tribe should. The hope would be that the contestants will bust up those expectations and prove more formidable in either strength, wisdom, or puzzles than you might have believed.

Regardless, Jim is right. The challenges have gotten repetitive. I also think they've gotten too violent. I don't have a problem with a challenge being easy, necessarily. I just really hate seeing people getting hurt in these things - it's generally an instant (or episode later) ticket home.

David Mumpower: We joke about this in the recaps a lot. There are some challenges that as soon as they are described, you know that a petite woman is going to win them. We'll call them Parvatis. I have no doubt that the first half of this season will be chock full of Parvatis that guarantee the older participants win. I'm not talking about ones where it's a possibility that the younger group could theoretically win like "Chess Matches" or "Name the CBS Fall lineup" (I think I'm co-opting Kim's joke there). I'm talking about challenges that give the younger team no chance whatsoever like: "Name every episode of Matlock", "Name some things that happened in 1955", "Name the various types of arthritis medication" and "Name every player on the 1993 Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys - only Jimmy Johnson may answer". They can't let this be a competition that skews toward athleticism and energy. Instead, there will be stronger aspects of team work and mental acuity required, but I also believe a lot of the challenges will be constructed in a manner that rewards planning. That's what needs to happen for the elder tribe to have a chance at having numbers at the merge.

Tony Kollath: I'm interested to see if one of the challenges involves the old person tribe growing a lawn in front of their camp, and then inevitably yelling at the younger tribe to get off of it.

Daron Aldridge: I haven’t thought too much about it but the challenges have gotten very violent lately, especially last season. (Maybe the geek in me will examine the amount of injury and injury-related departures from the game...but that's for another time). Because I inherently like to think that things that I trust (like TV) are on the up-and-up, I hope that they don't construct the challenges so it is disproportionately lopsided for one team. Like I mentioned earlier, I don't think the "Old'"team will be as physically weak as their name implies and if the "Young" team has a couple of Rob Cesterninos on it, then they won't have the physical challenges all sewn up either. By the way, David, I think that I might be able to own that Matlock challenge.

Jim Van Nest: Thanks for mentioning the violence Kim...I completely forgot that point in my post. The knock-down drag-out challenges have gotten WAY over the top. It used to be they'd have some sort of tackling type challenge in waist deep water, so even if you totally owned someone, they were thrown into water and were not in too much danger of being hurt. I would hope they would go back to that type of physical challenge instead of some of the blood baths we've seen in recent seasons.

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