First to get weights are Adam/Nate and Candice/Sundra. So Aitu is going after the big dogs, while Raro is trying to knock someone off quickly. Honestly, I think either of those strategies is probably all right. I've never been convinced that it matters that much what you do here, though it feels like it should. If you go after big dogs early, then you leave the weaker people standing around doing nothing and you don't get on the road to wearing them out. If you don't, then you just make the big dogs wait around and let them save themselves. I think I would take the approach of going after the big guys, though, because my hope would be that they're the ones you'll have to break down over time, while the weaker people will snap right away when you put maybe fifteen pounds in their hands. Adam mutters to Nate that he hopes the other team will just pile it on so that they can "hold it for as long as [they] possibly can." He learned that kind of sharp, critical, super-logical thinking from The Grind.

Next weight goes to Jonathan/Yul and, again, Nate/Adam. "And we wait a little more," Jeff says. "Weight a little more," Jonathan says contemptuously. "That's, like, a bad pun, Jeff." Jeff's all, "Oh," because he had no idea he even did that, because all of a sudden, he's too good for puns. Somebody needs to tell Jeff that there's very little he's going to convince anyone he's too good for, considering the hats he wears. Puns everywhere are thinking, "I wouldn't be seen in that hat, smart guy." Aitu goes after Nate and Adam again, and Raro continues spreading it around, so now they all have five pounds on the Aitu side. Adam and Nate look uncomfortable, but Nate just keeps talking about how they feel like "wine tonight." "Whine-in'," JessiFlicka teases. JessiFlicka winks and makes kissy faces. I do not like kissy faces.

More weights are added, but we go into time-lapse, so you can't really tell what strategy was used. By the time we surface and Jeff gives us and update, Adam and Nate have thirty pounds each, as do Jonathan and Yul. Brad and Cristina and Candice and Sundra have fifteen pounds each. With ten each are Rebecca and Stephannie and Ozzy and Flicka. And then, surprisingly, the first drop of the entire competition comes from Yul. He and Jonathan are standing with their arms around each other's waists for support, and Jonathan suddenly leans over away from Yul, pulling Yul with him. Yul's grip is tenuous enough, and his balance is poor enough at the moment, that he's just kind of yanked away from the handle he's grabbing, and his hand slips off. He looks very surprised to see that this just happened. It certainly looks immediately like that will just about do it for this challenge, though we'll have to wait for it to play out. Rebecca/Stephannie and Ozzy/Flicka take the next bags, so that now everyone has fifteen pounds except for Nate and Adam, who have thirty. And, not for nothing, Nate and Adam are now grabbing each other in a rather spectacular embrace with one arm while holding the weights with the other. If you're into this kind of thing, this is exactly the kind of thing you'll be into, if you see my point. "Handsome boys, make quite a pair," Cao Boi notes. I think he's actually trying to freak them out and make them leap away from each other in some kind of boys-touching-each-other panic, which does not look like it's going to work. Nate goes the other direction entirely and sings, "Ebony, ivory..." Aw, there's some of that racial harmony and understanding that we all knew would come from this season.