“We don’t want excuses, we want results.” – Rudy Reyes
The second episode of the third season of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test begins right after the season premiere, “Ocean Warfare,” left off – moments after a truly bizarre scene in which Stephen Baldwin kinda/sorta offered the on-site doctor a bribe (or something?) before kinda/sorta ordering him that I cannot get injured.
I need to emphasize that it’s one of the stranger scenes that I’ve ever witnessed on a reality television show.
That being said, an entire episode went by without a single celebrity “recruit” leaving the show via “voluntary withdrawal” or other means. So as I like to do, let’s recap the 16 recruits who are still part of the special forces “selection” course at this point: Stephen Baldwin, Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Denise Richards, Brody Jenner, Christy Carlson Romano, Jordyn Wieber, Marion Jones Thompson, Landon Donovan, Carey Hart, Nathan Adrian, Alana Blanchard, Ali Manno, Trista Sutter, Kayla Nicole, and Kyla Pratt.
The DS (Directing Service) “staff,” aware of the situation with Baldwin, confer and quickly surmise that “he’s looking for an excuse.”
Inside the recruits’ barracks, as soon as Carey Hart jinxes things by talking about how it seems like everyone can finally relax and go to sleep, Rudy calls everyone out onto the parade square on the double.
There’s no preamble. “Someone here has made excuses for their pitiful performance,” Rudy says. “This is Day One. We don’t want excuses, we want results. 100% full commitment.”
He then announces that “someone is going home.
It’s no shock then when Stephen Baldwin is asked to give up his armband, indicating in this instance that he’s been involuntarily withdrawn from selection.
After the other recruits are sent away, Baldwin is told that “you failed this course and you failed yourself.”
Which means as enter Day 2, we’re down to 15 recruits left.
In the morning, as the recruits get to know one another a bit, we learn that Kayla Nicole, who we’re told is an “influencer and model,” tells a fellow recruit that she used to date Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (who is playing in his third Super Bowl in a row in a few days as I write these words).
“He’s dating Taylor Swift,” she then says in a hushed tone.
Fact check for anyone completely tuned out of the pop cultural universe: absolutely true.
It makes sense that Kayla is motivated to take on the special forces selection course as a way to feel like she’s something more than “a newspaper story about an ex-girlfriend.”
Soon enough, the recruits are taken to a “remote location” with their heavy Bergen packs and equipment. The task, Billy explains, relates to being taken captive behind enemy lines with the aim of being able to maximize their chances of escaping, surviving, and fighting again.
That leads to the aim of the task: sabotaging a bridge. To do this, the recruits must leap off “a 130-foot viaduct” and have their full weight caught at the end of a rope that drops them some ten or 15 yards (I’d estimate). They then must “swing back and forth,” “deploy the rope bag and then rappel silently to the ground,” Dusty tells us.
It looks seriously dangerous, and Billy explains that if they smash themselves into a stanchion supporting the bridge, “it’s modeling career over.”
“It’s like a 12-story building,” Landon Donovan estimates of the bridge’s height. “That’s high, dude.”
The Bachelor/The Bachelorette star Ali Manno is up first, and she tells the camera that she wants to get back to being the fearless girl she was when she was much younger. While Manno does take the leap – which I guarantee you many people would say hell no sir to, she doesn’t correctly complete the rest of the task and is given a fail.
“You were all over the place,” Billy tells her.
Golden Tate is up next, and via interview he reminds us that his nickname in the NFL was Showtime. Now that his career is over, he seeks a new purpose. Tate jumps off the bridge confidently and it looks like he’s going to crush the task, but then something strange happens on his way down. It seems like maybe Tate is “pretending he’s in a real war” a little too much at this point for Billy’s liking, and he’s told afterward that he’s failed miserably for not acting in a covert enough way.
This is now two recruits in a row where it’s actually pretty confusing to tell what we as the audience are supposed to be looking for after the jump and slightly after the recruit swings wildly from the end of the extended rope.
Another easy way to fail: making any noise at all when the rope snaps tight upon jumping. A bunch of recruits in a montage get failed this way.
Dusty explains that they’re looking for special forces recruits who are able to overcome fear and “simply get on with doing what they’re asked to do.”
We learn that half the recruits have passed the task – but again it’s odd that we are not able to really completely understand why as a viewing audience – including former NFL star quarterback Cam Newton. However, in yet another very odd moment after the task – when an exuberant Newton kind of bumps into or rams Golden Tate (the camera angle makes it difficult to see) – causing Tate to bow over in pain.
“I was trying to give him a handshake,” Cam tells Billy a moment later.
“We don’t showboat and we don’t f— around,” Billy says immediately. “You will pay for that,” he adds.
All told, nine recruits pass the task – including Kayla Nicole – while six fail. This is a much higher pass rate versus the task to jump onto a helicopter from a speeding boat in “Ocean Warfare,” but Billy is still deeply dissatisfied.
Which means it’s time for a punishment: the DS throws the recruits’ already heavy Bergens into a creek, forcing everyone to retrieve them and haul their now wet, heavy equipment back to the vehicle.
In their barracks, Golden Tate promises his fellow recruits that he will “limit his goofiness” to their living quarters from now on.
The DS call Kayla Nicole in for “tactical questioning” based on her “panicky” emotional state right before she successfully handled the previous task. While they await her arrival, it’s kind of fun – for a typically serious show – to see Dusty and Jovon “Q” reading an article on a laptop about Nicole’s past history dating Travis Kelce.
Q notes Kelce’s role in Kansas City’s ongoing NFL dynasty and says, “Oh, he’s big time.”
Kayla talks about how the Internet “trolls” who hound her as her name is splashed across the news and social media has been difficult to deal with. Dusty advises to “not let her emotions dictate her actions,” and to push out what’s going on in the outside world to focus on why she’s chosen to participate in selection.
After a short break, the recruits are once again assembled and then brought “to the rugged coast of North Wales for a brutal test of endurance.”
Now on the beach, Q doesn’t mess around: “Make no mistake: this will suck. You will feel pain, you won’t feel like you can breathe.”
“This is gonna be a test of your character,” he adds.
The recruits form a line, lock arms, and are marched into the water. Narrator Guy relays that this is a Navy Seal exercise known as “surf immersion.”
Now in shallow water, the recruits are ordered to sit down in the surf and then dunk their heads under “ice cold” water while their arms remain locked together. From there, they are ordered to rock all the way back and forth upon being ordered to.
“You feel like you’re drowning,” Q tells the camera.
This feels like a task that is designed to scrub at least one recruit out, and it works as Denise Richards soon breaks the chain and bows out.
“I hurt my back… I have a lower back problem, I can barely walk,” she tells Q.
Q has no sympathy: “Either get back in there or you’re out.”
After hesitating, Richards takes her armband off and VWs.
When Q emphasizes that no one out on the course is going to get special treatment, it makes perfect sense from the standpoint that it’s designed to find and train the most elite fighters in the world.
Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Jordyn Wieber then breaks the chain and tells Dusty that she can’t breathe because she’s panicking. I was a bit surprised that he didn’t give her the same ultimatum that Q gave Richards, but instead simply instructs her to breathe.
When she says that she doesn’t think that she can continue, he simply says, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back in there.”
Which worked, because she does as ordered!
Next up: an endurance drill called “duck walking” on the beach. “Waddle like a duck!” Billy shouts.
“Hands and feet, ass up!” Rudy adds.
If that’s not enough, what comes next is standing in place while holding a large bag of sand over their heads. It’s exhausting to even watch as a viewer sitting on my duff, I can tell you.
Somehow, the now fourteen remaining recruits make it through two hours of this before being dismissed back to the vehicles. Inside the cars, you can tell the recruits are dead exhausted and miserable.
And to hear a highly motivated ex-NFL star like Golden Tate – veteran of grueling training camps and workout regimes – say, “I think that broke me a little bit,” hits home that this course is no joke at all.
Back at base, it’s Jordyn Wieber’s turn for tactical questioning with the DS. She tells staff that her fear of the water prompts her to panic and have an anxiety attack. Like Golden Tate, she’s participating in Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test to challenge herself in new ways now that her gymnastics career is over.
However, unlike Tate and most other professional athletes, her career ended at the age of 18 (after starting at age 4!). Wieber alludes to “things going on behind the scenes that made it hard for her to continue.” When prompted by Dusty, she reveals that she was involved in of the biggest “sexual abuse cases in the history of the sport.” In fact, it was the team doctor who was eventually prosecuted and went prison.
Dusty tells Wieber that there’s only one person who can calm down and make it to the end, and it’s her. “Don’t give up,” he tells her.
And then right at the episode’s end: one more recruit leaves the course, this time due to a “medical withdrawal.” Ali Manno hurt and possibly broke one or more fingers during the course of the day, and Dusty has her handover her armband after she sees the doctor at the end of a rough and tumble Day 2.
At the end of two days and two episodes, three recruits have left the course, leaving thirteen now remaining.
More info about Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 3
TV SHOW – Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 2
AIRED ON – January 8th, 2025
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX/TubiTV
GENRE – Reality TV, Competition Show
CAST – Mark Billingham, Jason Fox, Rudy Reyes, Shaun Dooley, Jovon Quarles, Stephen Baldwin, Golden Tate, Cam Newton, Denise Richards, Brody Jenner, Christy Carlson Romano, Jordyn Wieber, Marion Jones Thompson, Landon Donovan, Carey Hart, Nathan Adrian, Alana Blanchard, Ali Manno, Trista Sutter, Kayla Nicole, Kyla Pratt