MTV’s in a slump, but it can still round up 30 doofuses to compete in The Challenge

By Erik Adams | July 18, 2017 | 5:00am

TV Features TV

Top pick

The Challenge (MTV, 9 p.m.): As multiple publications have written in the past few weeks, Music Television is in one of those periodic stretches in which it’s fallen out of touch with the youthful audiences advertisers crave, its news division’s unfortunate “pivot to video” presumably sparked by all the prospective MTV viewers being siphoned away by that loathsome online personality known as “the influencer.” The channel remains firmly committed to peddling influences of the negative kind, however, with those talks of a Jersey Shore reboot and tonight’s premiere of The Challenge’s 30th season. In this edition of the competition that’s now lasted twice as long as one of the shows that once served as its two talent pools, the contestants consist of the “dirty 30,” 15 men and 15 women who’ve made bad reputations for themselves across MTV’s many reality franchises. Is CT from Real World: Paris still on this thing? Yes, CT from Real World: Paris is still on this thing. C’mon, CT from Real World: Paris—isn’t it time to move on?

Regular coverage

Friends From College (Netflix)
WWE SmackDown! (USA, 8 p.m.)

Wild card

Shooter (USA, 10 p.m.): The second season of this adaptation of the Stephen Hunter novels that inspired the 2007 Mark Wahlberg movie begins with spectacularly named hero sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Ryan Phillippe) traveling to Germany to attend an awards ceremony that goes terribly awry. Will someone get shooter-ed? If Bob Lee Swagger is on the case, you know someone’s going to get shooter-ed.