UNEXPECTEDLY BADASS.

Four of the celebrity cast of Special Forces made it to Escape and Evasion, only to be captured and put on the conveyor.  "When it came down to it, Hannah Brown and Carli Lloyd proved they have what it takes to pass the tough Special Forces selection process. The fierce female contestants tackled the brutal interrogation process and outlasted Danny Amendola and Dwight Howard."

For the concluding episode, the producers brought in a team of veteran interrogators and an anonymous umpire whose job was to recognize when the interrogatee should be removed from further questioning, and from the challenge.  All viewers saw of this individual was his beard, and they heard a Scots burr that might itself be part of a legend.

“The interrogation was obviously super unpleasant. It’s never fun to have people yelling in your face and trying to get in your head,” Hannah admitted. “I’m interested to see what Carli says, but for me, it was really the having to endure listening to really horrible sounds and being in stressed positions, and not getting any sleep. That was really really hard for me. That was probably the only time that I was like, okay, I don’t know how much longer I can do this. But just like Carly said, I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t bring myself to be the one to tap out. That was kind of my mindset the whole time. They’re going to have to kick me out. I’m going to keep going. But those 9, 10, I don’t know how many hours of just being so uncomfortable and just hearing these horrible sounds was really, really difficult for me to keep going.”

For Carli, the stressful positions were “really tough” for her following her knee injury. “I didn’t really have good flexibility, and my knee was still pretty swollen. That was challenging. You don’t know how you’re going to react in those situations,” she noted.

Hannah, Carli, Danny, and Dwight had to memorize a cover story beforehand and try to not blow their cover with the interrogation specialists, who tried everything they could to break the recruits. “It was definitely a small deep dive into a real-life interrogation situation,” Carli pointed out. “I would say I would never probably ever want to go through that. That was probably my least favorite thing.”

The stress positions plus the recorded noise, which sounded like babies crying and dial-up modems handshaking proved to be too much for Mr Amendola, who tapped out.  You'd think that after playing in the Metrodome or Seattle a little prolonged noise would be no big deal.  Mr Howard evidently never heard that part of The Talk that advises against mouthing off to the Man.  Or woman, in this case.  Colonel Klebb didn't even have to use her stiletto flats to cut him down to size.  The umpire had him removed when his reaction to confinement would have gotten him killed in real war.

In the briefings of the interrogators, who didn't haul off and smack people the way real ones might, the training staff described the two women as "a soccer Olympian" and "Miss Alabama."  They had previously brought Miss Alabama in for a second debriefing, where the question was "How are you still here?"  Not an athlete, but it was she who had the sense to check for a way out of the locked room in an earlier exercise.  It never occurred to the three remaining athletes that the designers of the exercise would provide a way to slip your manacles down and off the pipe.  The two women were also in the pit and it was she who gave up the real mission, something that is apparently permissible in extremis (and, who knows, confessing to some third world irregular that you're training with the special forces could concentrate their minds ... on avoiding the shock and awe that might be about to rain down on them).

Unit cohesion also matters, even more than on the pitch.

I don’t even know what happened with Danny and Dwight. Danny passed every test. He was an absolute beast and such a great leader, such a great person. I was pretty bummed for him in the end, and I think with Dwight as well. I think Dwight turned a corner, and the DS kind of gave it to him a little bit in a tough love type of way to really get him to change his attitude a little bit and he bought in. I was kind of disappointed that he didn’t make it through either.”

In the end, the Olympian is “just super proud and it just shows the world how powerful women can be. I think Hannah and I both leaned on one another to get through I, which was special.”

And thus, the cast members all return to their Instagram followers and production assistants. The trainers and interrogators, I hope, found a pub and had more stories to share.