‘The Challenge’ Viewers Frustrated Over Drastic Change In Show’s Editing After Dee Nguyen’s Firing

Last night’s episode of The Challenge: Total Madness looked a lot different from all episodes prior, and fans believe it’s because of the recent firing of Dee Nguyen. MTV announced earlier this week that they would be cutting ties with the Australian for inappropriate comments she made regarding the Black Lives Matter movement.

While the network noted they would continue to air Total Madness in fairness to the viewers and other Challenge competitors, it appeared as if MTV heavily edited the episode to remove Dee as much as possible. The network put a PSA in before the show aired explaining the reality star’s termination as well.

Many viewers took to Twitter as the show aired last night to express their frustration on what they described as a very choppy and confusing episode. For one, the episode had been cut down to an hour runtime after all episodes prior ran for an hour-and-a-half.

Dee has been the center of much of the story during Total Madness, so dropping the episode down by a third of its runtime proved just how much she played a part this season. Fans are now calling on MTV to leave Dee in as much as possible so they can see everything they would have, if she hadn’t been fired.

“Dear MTV, please show scenes with Dee if its vital to the story of the episode. Today [sic] episode was horrible cause you removed all of her confessionals and her argument with Baileigh [sic]. Air the season like you said you would then keep it moving. Stop performative acts,” one viewer wrote.

“Mtv drafting their statement like ‘Dee won that elimination and there was nothing we could do about it so we punished you all and cut the episode short,'” another fan joked.

Last night’s episode was supposed to feature a major fight between Dee and Bayleigh Dayton that fans had been looking forward to, but things were cut short by editors, last minute. The fight has since leaked and is being shared across fan accounts on Twitter.

MTV was right to fire Dee. However, if you’re going to continue to air the season that features her then air everything. Everyone’s confused at the tension because we missed the argument between Dee and Bayleigh and others. #TheChallenge35

— Kayla Joy ??? (@ThatsSoKB) June 11, 2020

Viewers have also noticed major changes on The Challenge section of MTV’s website as well as the show’s social media accounts. Dee has been removed from the official cast list page, and her image has been taken down from any promotional photos on Instagram and Twitter.

After the frustration fans expressed on Twitter last night, it’s unknown if MTV will leave future Total Madness episodes as they were originally edited, or if they will continue to chop them down even further, removing her storyline and confessional interviews.

Dee will also be left out of the upcoming Zoom reunion.