Here we are, back this week for basically the beginning of the end of this season. The block of clay that is this season has almost been molded into something and that something may not be as pretty compared to a lot of seasons of Survivor, but overall this has been a pretty good season. Do I think the players this season have been real high IQ players? No, but we have gotten some pretty good moments this season and whatever happened happened to get us to where we are now. Tai not saving Scot, Aubry crossing out Julia’s name last second to vote out Peter… I mean there have been moments that could have shifted the game into a whole other universe, but here we are for this season. The choose-your-own-adventure this season has led us here tonight and let’s look at where everybody stands heading into tonight:
Aubry: Aubry the first time this year becomes our number one player for back-to-back weeks. It’s tough to argue against her place here now too, right? I mean, she has gone from looking like an extra from a “stranded on a deserted island” movie where one of the characters becomes ill and they need to find a way to save her to now looking like she will be the one standing alone in the finals. I mean, she still looks like she could use a dose of penicillin, but mentally she is all there and way ahead of the next closest player as far as mentally seeing the game. Most seasons, at this point in the game, there usually seems to be two or three people you don’t want to be sitting next to in the finals, but this season it doesn’t seem like that. It seems like Tai is really Aubry’s only really threat to potentially get more votes than her in the finals…even that may be debatable. So if you agree with my thesis there, then who does Aubry want to sit next to? I guess she feels aligned with Joe and Cydney? I would think sitting next to those two she would feel good about her chances. Tonight, though, she doesn’t have to make that hard choice.Tonight, I would think her goal would be to get Tai out of the game, which is probably going to be easier said than done, considering he has an idol and a voting advantage so maybe Jason or Michele as a backup? Either way I would be shocked if Aubry got taken out tonight.
Tai: So like we just discussed, Tai is sitting with quite the arsenal at his disposal, but again, did Tai make the right choice when he decided to break away from Scot and Jason??? I guess you could say that Jason and Scot would have never taking Tai to the finals with them….but they were also a little stupid game-wise, so you never know…I still think Tai should have taken his chances with them over his current situation. With all that said, Tai needs to survive tonight and so the easiest way there is for him to play his idol obviously. The biggest win for Tai would be for him to not have to play it tonight and have it in his pocket for next week, but don’t think that will happen unless Tai can win the Immunity Challenge. If Tai can do that, then he will be sitting pretty. If you’re Tai, your biggest threat in the game is basically everybody, because everybody probably will be pushing for him to go, so all things being equal, he should go for Aubry, which he won’t do. I don’t think Tai is seeing the game like that. I think Tai will probably push for Jason or someone else that really isn’t a threat. For me, seeing Tai gun for Aubry would be really awesome. I just don’t know if he understands that she is his biggest rival? Look out for Tai tonight. This whole episode could be centered on what he does or doesn’t do.
Cydney: Cydney heads into tonight being in a power position, but doesn’t seem like she is playing for anything other than 2nd or 3rd place. What I like about Cydney’s game is that she seems willing to do whatever it takes– turn on anybody at any time to get further– but her moves also seem more emotional than strategic. She has had some messy breakups and soon will have to pay the Survivor grim reaper for those breakups. I don’t think Cydney will have to face that reaper tonight, but there is an outside chance she could end up as a target if everything broke wrong for her or if she telegraphs a move against Aubry and gets caught…Is that likely?…No, but it could happen. I think Cydney needs to be stealth about it, but she needs to find a way to stick in knife in Aubry as a back-up to plan A of getting Tai. Maybe if Cydney does that and can somehow parlay getting Aubry and then Tai out , she could make a case to the Survivor crown. I don’t think that will happen and I think she will be safe tonight.
Michele: The Curious case of Michele. The once thought of “dark horse” of this season, Michele has just kind of survivored her way into the middle. She lost her most trusted comrade in Julia last week, so now she is fully locked in, it would seem, with Aubry and Cydney, but she has to know that playing the middle all season has left her at the bottom of any group of people she joins. Maybe her move is to join my hypothetical Cydney move of getting Aubry out this week and then Tai out the following week. Another option is working with Jason maybe, but that isn’t really a promising lead anyways as Jason is pretty much dead at this point game-wise too. Michele needs something crazy to happen to have any chance to win this season. Michele also could potentially be a default target if Tai wins immunity and Aubry and Cydney decide to stick together and vote her out over Joe. Michele needs to be very careful tonight as it could be her going.
Joe: Joe hasn’t spoken to us I feel like in five episodes at least. He’s still here, though, and I guess people are probably thinking that maybe he isn’t a bad guy to be sitting next to in the finals. I mean, his hands haven’t been truly bloody since around the third episode of the season. He’s likeable I think…Again, I’m basing this on memory because we haven’t heard or really seen Joe in seven weeks. Joe, I don’t think, really has a big move left in his Survivor gun. I think he is just going with the flow and really doesn’t have a huge say in the matter either way. I could see Joe winning second place, though, or if you want to get really crazy, maybe we will get an all-time hostile, bitter jury and Joe is sitting there as an option for them to express their displeasure at an Aubry or a Tai…I mean crazier things have happened? It would be hilarious, though, if Joe really has just been playing possum up until now and is going to use some old FBI brain-washing move to get everybody to turn on Aubry…That would be something. I think Joe is safe tonight and I don’t expect much out of him.
Jason: Jason is still trying to pick up the pieces of what could have been. Give him credit for holding it together, though, because you know he wanted to explode on somebody last week. He was like Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own when the girls keeps missing the cutoff man, but he doesn’t want to make her cry again:
Jason would be the obvious target for most of the players in the game, so he needs to be on the bottom of this list, but maybe he can pull a rabbit out of his hat tonight and win the immunity challenge. If he can do that and somehow get Cydney and Michele with him to make a move, well, we would get a very interesting Tribal because Tai plays the idol and then Aubry goes home. That would be quite the survivoring. He just really needs to win that Immunity challenge because that creates the most chaos. I don’t think that will happen, but I can hope. The most likely scenario, though, is that Jason leaves us tonight.
So that leads us into tonight. Can the powers of my death fog take out Aubry, or does Aubry take tonight to cement her status as our soon to be Survivor champion? Can Tai make the biggest move in the season and somehow get Aubry out? Will Jason be able to control his emotions and not let “it” out:
Usually, though, the most likely thing to happen will happen and so tonight we will probably see Tai burn his idol and Aubry has the girls targeting Jason. That is most likely, but I guess we will see, as it’s 8 pm Portland, Oregon time:
8 pm
Previously on Survivor: We recap the happenings of last week, focusing on Cydney and Michele making the choice of gunning for Julia over Tai, which yes, maybe they are playing with fire here. I really want to see Jason flip out tonight…We need one more flip out.
8:01
Back from the vote and Tai gives Jason props for the argument he made to vote him out. You really don’t see that on Survivor that much– someone giving someone credit for throwing them under the bus. I mean, how do you not like Tai?
Jason makes the argument that we are all thinking to Michele and Cydney that Aubry and Tai are going to win the game and so why in the hell would you not target them now? Michele, though, doesn’t want to “flip” on her alliance….I mean you’re down to five other people Michele and you can’t all win, so what are you talking about?
8:03
Tai then shares what his advantage is to Aubry and Joe for some reason. Aubry, smartly, is thinking about taking Tai out…but Tai is heavily armed. And like the great Omar once said, “If you come at the king, you best not miss.”
As we head into the first break, it does seem this episode will be the “To Tai or not to Tai; that is the question”. Does everybody gun for Tai?
Commercial Break:
So I guess as I see Beyoncé on my TV right now that her new record came out this week? Or what are we even calling it these days when a performer releases new music? “Beyoncé released her new music online so it now can be taken for free by everybody”?
To be honest I’ve never been a big Beyoncé fan. She is definitely on that list of women that other woman irrationally defend no matter what, and usually, I don’t like any of these girls that other girls blindly stick up for like:
- Kloe Karsdashian: Only because she isn’t the most attractive of the Karsdashian girls she gets the Mindy Cohn treatment from Facts of Life
2. Amy Schumer: I mean she blatantly steals jokes from people….
And not like kind of stole an idea from someone, but like word-for-word stole jokes…..
3. Lena Dunham: Just too hipster for my liking.
Beyonce, just always looks like a deer in the headlights, programmed to sing and dance but no substance…all sizzle no steak, so to speak. Just my humble opinion, though….And I would really like a two-hour documentary on what happened or led up to this happening in that elevator:
8:07
Back from the break and we join the group as they find a strange bug in their fire pit. Joe challenges Tai to eat it…I guess it’s a grub, whatever the hell that is. Tai declines, but the rooster eats it.
8:08
Jason and Joe talk. Jason, basically, passive-aggressively calls out Joe as he says that he is the only one “still playing the game”. Naturally, Joe is not taking Jason’s obvious ploy as he shares his disgust for Jason with us. I could listen to Joe talk with contempt about all the players for the fully sixty minutes of the show and be satisfied. I wish they had the option where you could just follow one player and all their thoughts for the full season…
8:10
Reward Challenge time: Two teams of three, running through an obstacle course and then completing a maze-thingy with a ball.
Oh, great! It’s my favorite prize of the year where the winning team goes on a humanitarian visit and has to act happy and profoundly changed as crew members off-camera hold them at gun point, making sure everybody looks happy and deeply moved, even though they haven’t slept or eaten in thirty days and really would choose two donuts each over the “powerful” visit to the animal rescue place.
It’s Jason, Tai, and Michele against Joe, Aubry, and Cydney. My money is on the first three I named.
8:16
And yes Jason, Tai and Michele take the prize. Tai shares that he is happy he won, but he is also worried about Joe, Aubry and Cydney being at camp alone as they probably will be plotting his demise. And it’s tough to argue with his thinking there.
Commercial Break:
I’m looking at stupid car commercial and thank god for all the technology these days. No, we’re not flying yet like Back to the Future 2 predicted we would, but overall, I guess I can’t complain. Can someone explain to me why some people appear to be born with the sense of direction and others don’t? I, unfortunately, am one of those people that every time there is a 50/50 decision that needs to be made about either turning right or turning left, I’m always wrong….every time. It must be a left brain skills because I did some test and I use the right part of brain more than my left at a rate like three times the normal person, which would be great except without GPS and smart phones I would be lost three-fourths of every day. I guess the left side of our brains is also the side that helps you put your shirt on the right way, because no matter how hard I plan ahead I always put my T-shirts on the wrong way and then have to take it off, flip it around and put it on again. I can’t help it no matter how hard I try…I put on a T-shirt, feel the awkwardness of having a shirt on the wrong side of me, pause for two seconds to be disgusted with myself, and then flip it over….And that scenario happens over and over again…daily.
8:20
Back from break, we join the losing team at camp. It seems like Joe is calling the shots at camp as he asks the girls to get firewood. Specifically, he tells Cydney to get up as she is snacking on some coconut…naturally, Cydney is not happy with Joe.
8:22
Next, Aubry gets Joe ire as she is not following his explicit instructions on building the fire. Aubry is trying to hold it together, because she knows that Cydney would make a monumentally bad decision to vote out Joe at this stage of the game….which, yes, would be idiotic.
8:23
We join the winning team at the wildlife sanctuary as they enjoy a picnic, before they need to display their acting chops.
They get to feed and meet a baby elephant, so far pretty cool for them. Tai, though, is probably thinking in his head: “OK, so have Aubry, Cydney and Joe 100 percent planned my hit yet, or are they 50 percent there?”
Tai throws out to us voting out Michele next, as he likes Jason’s rapport with the elephant????
Michele tells us that Jason is the target.
Commercial Break:
Anybody got any new shows that are good that should be checked out? I feel like we are due for a new good one-hour drama and I can’t seem to find it. I haven’t seen the new season of House of Cards but that is pretty much it, as I gave up on Game of Thrones. Yes, I know that sounds strange, but I had read all the books and then I guess the author George R.R Martin and the producers of the TV show stopped seeing eye-to-eye, on things, parlayed with the fact that Martin is really taking his sweet time completing the next book….like really taking his time…so he seems like the type of guy that will carry a vendetta and probably will royally f**k up the book just to try and make the TV show look stupid…and then you have a weird thing where if his book doesn’t match at least loosely to what’s happening on the TV show then what the hell do we have?….Some people won’t care and will look at each as its own entity, but I’m not one of those people and it will drive me completely nuts. I need that continuity between both; plus and I don’t mean this flippantly, Martin doesn’t exactly look like the picture of health and fitness and considering it takes him like seven years between books, the chances of him finishing the whole story seems like a bet that I wouldn’t want to be a part of. By the way, can a show like Game of Thrones “jump the shark”? Is that even a possibility, when that show has everything from incest to flying dragons? I mean, what would Jumping the shark on that show look like?
8:29
Okay, here we are, time for the gigantic immunity challenge tonight. Looks like the challenge is balancing blocks on a loose board and spelling out “Immunity” with those blocks. To me, this favors Jason…Jason winning would produce a very interesting Tribal.
8:34
Jason looked like he was going to win and then he drops all the blocks and Cydney who has been in last the whole comp is now in the place.
8:37
And boom, your winner is Cydney. Cydney wins immunity. We head to commercial not knowing who the target is tonight. Man, I wish Jason would have won, like I said, solely for the potential chaos it could have caused. Maybe we will still get chaos????
Commercial break:
Last week, I talked about Gary Sinise’s new Criminal Minds show…which yeah, I don’t think is going to be “appointment watching T.V”. It gets me thinking, taking Forrest Gump out of the equation, what is Gary Sinise’s best movie? I’m not talking small parts here. I’m talking like one of the three main character roles.
- Apollo 13– I mean, probably is the obvious answer, but it hasn’t exactly aged over time well. Like Apollo 13 isn’t a movie that you just sit back and say: “You know what I feel like watching, Apollo 13?”
2. Ransom– Well, Mel Gibson…is Mel Gibson and it’s tough to unhear this now:
Ransom was a pretty big movie at the time and it will always leave us with this:
3. The Green Mile: Yeah, it’s probably The Green Mile, even though I don’t really remember Gary Sinise that much in the movie…but still a good flick. Probably more by default; plus, I’m thinking about this in a three-minute commercial break and yeah, I write these things live!
Let’s go with The Green Mile for now…Plus, the rest of his IMDb page is full of just utter bombs like Mission to Mars and movies of that ilk. I wonder if any of you even read my commercial break ramblings. I mean, it is a Survivor blog for god sake so why am I even this far down this Gary Sinise rabbit hole?
8:41
Okay, back from break and here we go. Where are we headed? Everybody is back at camp chilling. Tai is still wanting to go for Michele.
8:42
Tai makes his pitch to Aubry, Joe and Cydney. Joe is just wanting to stick with plan of getting out Jason. Before they can really hash it out, Michele comes to join them.
Aubry tells Tai quietly that she is with him on Michele, but it’s tough to tell if that was real or not.
8:43
Tai goes and tells Jason the plan of Michele. Jason doesn’t want to hear what Tai is saying and wants to vote out Joe. Why would Jason not be down for this plan? Strictly as an FU to Tai is why he wouldn’t be down for it?
8:44
The two hostile players, Joe and Cydney are not happy with Tai pushing for Michele and want to get out Jason. For this, I’m not really seeing them as smart players. I mean, why would you want to vote out a guy that is hated against a player that has people in the jury that like her in Michele? You already have the numbers. Why not think past raw emotion of not liking Jason???
Cydney next shares with Michele all the shade being thrown her way by Tai. So now things are getting interesting.
8:45
Cydney now goes to Aubry and makes her pitch. Aubry tells us that she agrees with Tai, as Cydney tells Aubry that she doesn’t like anybody dictating to her who she should vote for…And then she dictates to Aubry who Aubry should vote for. Cydney is not playing smart…Let’s just say it.
Aubry starts crying and tells us that she doesn’t know who she is voting for. It’s a tough decision only because Cydney is being a brat about this, but if Aubry doesn’t go with Cydney this vote, does it make them at odds moving forward in the final two episodes?
8:47
We head to Tribal.
Tai’s getting hammered by everyone, as he calmly tries to explain the dynamics of the group to everyone and everybody pretends to be shocked by this, even though everybody knows exactly what he is saying…He just is saying too much, though…
It seems like Tai is basically steering people to vote for Jason, because he is being a little “too open” about the dynamics of the alliance. Plus, if Aubry goes against Cydney in what she wants, Cydney will be petty about it, so she basically has to stick with her, I think, tonight.
8:48
We go to vote and Tai uses his power to cast another vote.
We go to the votes:
Jason
Michele
Michele
Jason
Joe
Jason
Eleventh person voted out: Jason. Jason is done..And of course he went out dumb…Voting for Joe????? I guess it really wouldn’t have mattered, but still on pure principle, why didn’t he vote for Michele??
Recap:
Okay, Jason goes. Nothing shocking there, except again, his idiotic vote for Joe. Tai survived the night and didn’t have to use his idol, but I would guess that next week he is going to be wearing that bad boy around his neck all night. I don’t know where we go next week as Tai has ensured that he will probably be targeted next week by Cydney…The previews for next week hint at Michele and Tai working together, which after all that tonight, really? Honestly too, I know why she did it, but I would have liked to see Aubry not get bullied into a move by Cydney. I want my Survivor winners to be pulling the strings, not getting bullied into moves that they know aren’t the smartest. Do people agree or disagree with me on this point? Is Aubry still our favorite to win? I mean, I’m kind of disappointed in her play tonight, but I really would have a tough time stomaching anyone other than Tai winning this season. I think Tai might be facing a very hostile jury, though. There are going to be some real dummies in this jury so god knows whom some of them might end up voting for…seriously. Tell me what you think and thanks for reading. See you next week!
