Here we are, back for another action-packed episode of “Who in the hell is going to win Survivor?” this season. I apologize for missing last week, I was on PTO–vacation really–and by vacation I mean a four-day neverending gambling wasteland for the March Madness college Basketball tournament. Basically, the team I chose to win it all was essentially like betting on Jennifer from this season to win Survivor. Not good…not good at all.
I think where I left off the week before last was I felt like Anna maybe was in the best slot….well, it looks like I have a great feel for this season, as naturally, Anna was unceremoniously voted out this past episode. This is the farthest I can remember a season being where we have not have one or two people really emerge as “favorites” to win this season. I know Debbie seems to be calling shots, and for whatever reason, people are playing her game, but you have to think that her crazy is going to continue to come out more and more and that there is no way she can win…right? Maybe I’m just awful at this and she will be the Sole Survivor, but my instincts tell me that she is going to burn people out at some point and be gone. Neal, who up until this last episode seemed like an extra from
Neal, who up until this last episode seemed like an extra from Lost, a character that was always around but never had any lines, has now emerged due to finding an idol and maybe has more life in this game than I gave him credit for. Neal, to me, still seems like a guy that one would find still coming down after a Phish concert. It’s hard to imagine him actually being able to pull off social moves to win the game. Tai has an idol, but he decided to open his trap, which gives away the element of surprise should Scot ever want to turn on Tai. Tai is very likable, but he’s not winning this game this season.
Nobody else has really emerged in any aggressive or major way to single themselves out as real leaders in the game this season. Understandably so, nobody seems to want to take that “number one” spot. Everybody wants to be the “man behind the curtain”, stay safe without putting yourself out on the ledge too much, which again isn’t a bad strategy; it just makes it hard to anticipate who is going to emerge out of this muck. Maybe after tonight we will get a clearer picture, but as of right now, I have no clue who I would put my money on to win this season. It’s like betting on March Madness college basketball tournament. With all the traditional powerhouses gone, you’re left with teams you’re not familiar with and don’t know how they’re going to play when the lights are at their brightest. With that said, it’s 8 pm Portland, Oregon time, so let’s see how this unfolds tonight!
8 pm
Previously on Survivor: The surprise switch really did screw up the Beauty tribe. Who knows how this season would have played out if they didn’t lose Caleb and Anna. They built an advantage and then got pretty screwed that the Brawn tribe was such a dumpster fire. Yeah, I’m still bitter I picked Anna two weeks ago….
8:01
We join the Gondol tribe post the last vote. Everybody is hugging Tai and telling him how they protected him. Oh well, Anna’s loss was Tai’s gain..at least for now. How is Scot so comfortable by the way?
8:02
President Obama Peter is already plotting with Tai, trying to sell stabbing Joe in the back. To me, Tai seems to be humoring him, and quite frankly, looks horrified as Peter is making his pitch. I’m sure this won’t come back to sting Peter…
Then again, I guess you really can’t blame the president. I mean he knows his reputation is pretty bad right now…Like if this is Can’t Buy Me Love, he would be Ronald Miller once he was outed for paying Cindy Mancini to date him for a month:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPvfRzyAK6w
Commercial Break:
Again, I want to discuss how people met and got together before the advent of cellphones? Maybe it’s bad that I feel so physically dependent on my phone now, but how in the hell did people meet up and make plans? Think about how many times you make plans with people to go somewhere, then on the way there you get a text that creates an alteration to the original plans. Before cellphones, you were locked into the original plan wherever that was and you were f’d if anything changed. You would end up driving to some party far away, then if your friends weren’t there or they were late, you had no idea what the hell was going on and you would panic. It was like being in a war every weekend when you went out; you knew that you were going to lose some of your friends in the course of the night simply by the lack of communication, but you knew that you had to move on and be strong.
Being a teen in the 90’s, I got to see both worlds of no cellphones and then the bridge in between with pagers– which looking back, how fun were pagers?! My friend Jason even had a pager watch , which was like the most extreme futuristic thing ever at that time. You could page certain secret code numbers into the pager…and yeah…lots of fun. We need an updated pager device (They probably already exist. I’m sure one of you will tell me.)
8:07
Back from commercial, we join the Chan Loh tribe as Nick tells us how he is plotting non-stop. Nick tells us it’s time for him to start “playing”.
Debbie and Nick start chatting, and Nick tells us that he has a pretty good read on Debbie. Nick showcases his inner Talented Mr. Ripley self to Debbie, playing whatever part he thinks she needs to see to trust him:
Debbie and Nick bring tree mail to everybody else back at camp, which tells them that there might be a basketball challenge today, which makes the Chan Loh peeps feel like the competition is rigged (and if it is a basketball challenge, it would be) due to a former professional basketball player being on the other tribe in the form of Scot…but Scot honestly had one of the worst jump shots in NBA history…yet still.
We get some shots of Nick practicing shooting. I don’t think he is going to be mistaken for Larry Bird anytime soon.
8:10
We go to the reward challenge, which is swimming and then shooting some little ball-type thingies into a hoop-type of thingy. So yeah, kind of a basketball challenge. I guess we will see if Scot gets to shine this episode.
8:12
The Gondols have a big lead and Scot gets to start shooting hoops first. He airballs his first couple shots as the other team catches up.
8:13
Nick takes a lead on Scot. This would be the biggest upset since Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo. I don’t think Scot can live with himself if he loses to Nick…
Scot responds, finds his shooting rhythm, and ties it up and…
Wins it! Scot wins reward for the Gondols and they win the food reward. That’s the first positive moment for Scot this season as it’s definitely been a grind for him.
Commercial Break:
Okay, I know in the past I have harped on the career choices of Robert De Niro:
What the Hell Happened to Robert De Niro
But what about Al Pacino? We have about 15 years of shitty movies (maybe he was good in that one HBO miniseries) he’s headlined. I can’t go back into Righteous Kill. It’s just too painful to rehash out here, but what the hell has happened to one of our greatest living actors? Somewhere in the early 90’s Pacino just decided that he was going to play and merge his characters from Scent of a Women (great movie) and Heat into one…and this is what it became:
That is what we have been dealing with for the last decade and it needs to stop. Go look at his IMDb page:
Al Pacino IMDb. It’s grizzly…It’s hard to look at. I mean, for the love of god, we are talking about Michael Corleone here! He was in Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Carlito’s Way. Hell, even in Dick Tracy he was good!
Go back and read the IMDb page. You’re telling me that in the last ten years he couldn’t find one good movie to be a part of??? Not one goddamn movie? Why are you doing Adam Sandler movies where Adam Sandler is playing both male and female twins, Al??? Why!!!!?
(That’s like watching a family member using crystal meth on YouTube…Yes, it hurts that much).
8:18
Back from the competition, the Gondols are basking in the groceries that they won.
Julia comes back from Exile and doesn’t look like she’s too traumatized.…like chasing Shelly Duvall in the Overlook Hotel traumatized. It looks like she still has her sanity.
8:20
Peter right away tries to link up with Peter. Peter is definitely fighting for his Survivor life, so you’ve got to respect that, but maybe he should be playing possum for a couple days before playing so aggressively?
8:21
Aubry and Joe talk about Peter and Julia linking up and are pretty sure that they want to take him out.
8:22
We join the Chan Lohs as they return back to the beach. Debbie makes sure to give Nick props for his effort in the competition. It doesn’t seem like Nick is going to get the full blame for this as Michele kind of tanked the beginning of the comp during the swim portion of it. She knows that since the merge she has been in a really dangerous spot for survival.
8:23
Michele goes to Debbie for safety. Debbie shares that if they go to tribal that Jason would be the target.
Next, we go to Nick and Michele, who talk about what Debbie wants to do, both of them think they are playing each other. It’s tough to tell who is playing whom, or if the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Michele definitely thinks Nick is a douche, though…
Commercial Break:
I know throughout the season I have talked about what I feel was an intentional effort made by the casting department to get a female winner this season, and really, I would love to know how they do really cast a season. I mean, obviously they are going to want to find the most “interesting” people they can find– that is a given, but I wonder how they mix and match and decide. Like, is it a group of 20 people sitting around watching videos of each person with Jeff at the end of the video standing up, without saying anything, either giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down like in Gladiator?
I’m sure they cast people knowing a person won’t win the game, but that they will be entertaining or controversial. But do they cast people that they target as potential winners? Meaning, do they cast seven people that are interesting, but that they know most likely won’t win the game, cast three people that they know are going to be hated and know can’t win, and then cast like four people they target as potential Survivor winners? Or do they just cast 16 interesting people and this whole paragraph is just stupid…very, very stupid?
8:28
Back from commercial, we join Peter and Scot talking. Peter is shown trying to win over Scot, but Joe is watching this all unfold and tells Aubry he is going to confront Peter about this.
8:30
Joe aggressively– and by aggressively, I mean Joe would have water- boarded Peter if he had the apparatus in front of him–confronts Peter about whether he is talking about voting Joe out.
That was pretty intense. I half-expected Joe to follow up with: “Are you telling people to take out Joe?” with “Did you order the Code Red!?”
Then naturally, Peter would have to follow up Joe’s question with: “You can’t handle the Truth!”
8:31
It’s time for the Immunity challenge. We’ve got a big obstacle course the teams have to run through. Looks like this competition should be fun.
8:33
One part of the competition is knocking blocks off an overhead net thing, which Scot being damn near 7-feet tall dominates like Godzilla taking out a city block.
8:37
Competition goes down to the wire… And the Chan Lohs win it! This could mean the end of our President.
Commercial Break:
What if Ben Affleck causes Batman vs Superman to bomb? Is this a possibility? Can this movie bomb? I imagine it has to make 300 million for it to be considered a success, which I guess it probably will, but is Benny Affleck hurting the reputation? We’ve been down this road before with Ben Affleck when he’s turned every woman against him (The Gigli/Jennifer Lopez era) and it wrecked his career for like five to seven years. Hard to imagine this movie bombing, but so far the critics have mostly killed it and maybe the whole “hooking up with the nanny” turns off more potential ticket buyers? I have a question, though, why do these wives hire “hot” nannies? Like what is the “upside” on it? I mean, has there even been a Hollywood story where the husband didn’t hook up with the young hot nanny? I feel like Jennifer Gardner is also one of those women whom all women irrationally defend no matter what, like Beyoncé, Jennifer Aniston, or Khloe Kardashian. So it was bad luck for Ben to upset American women by cheating. He really has had a weird career if you look back at look at it.
8:41
The Gondols are regrouping after the loss and it seems like the heat is on Peter.
Aubry is shown saying, though, that maybe Peter isn’t the move tonight because then it would put the numbers in the favor on the other faction of the Gondol team. Joe seems like he is open to, at least right now, keeping Peter around.
8:42
Joe and Peter talk in the water and come to an uneasy truce…I guess we will see how long Peter plans to stick to this.
8:43
Scot and Peter talk, and Peter tells Scot that he is going to stick with Joe and Aubry for now.
Scot then talks with Tai and Julia about them being stuck. They know they need to somehow flip Aubry, whom they think they can flip.
8:45
Julia and Tai make their pitch to Aubry and she takes the bait. It’s a pretty simple play, but Aubry is taking it.
8:46
Joe disgustedly tries to talk some sense into Aubry about sticking with the plan to vote out Julia. Aubry, for at least this moment, appears to be okay with following Joe’s plan tonight.
8:47
We go to Tribal. There is definitely a lot of tension in the air here tonight.
Everybody seemingly takes turns trying to throw Peter under the bus. This is not unfolding the way Peter would have hoped. You can feel him begging for Jeff to just take this to the vote now.
In fact, while Aubry is talking, Scot and Tai whisper to each other that they are going to vote out Peter.
Everybody is whispering to one another and it’s tough to tell exactly where we are headed here. It’s going to come down to what Joe and Aubry want to do.
8:51
Jeff calls a halt to the action and it’s time to vote! Seems like Peter might be done for…
8:52
We go the votes:
Peter
Julia
Peter
Julia
Peter
Julia Peter
Sixth person voted out…Peter.
Recap:
Well, high drama here at the end of this episode as Peter wasn’t able to get Aubry to stick with the original plan, and I guess you really can’t blame her for being paranoid as Pete didn’t really instill that all-for-one and one-for-all mentality with her. Peter got caught being too shady a couple of episodes ago and it built up to tonight. It just wasn’t in the cards for him this season.
That leads us to the fact that next week we get the merge and this game will officially start. My question is whether we will get two factions formed against one another or whether it will be more splintered and we will get “voting blocs” episode to episode like we got last season? Right now, again it seemed like Debbie was the leader of the Chan Lohs, and on the Gandols, it was more chaos. When we get to the merge, will the Beauties get back together now with the remaining Brawns? I really have no idea where we are headed!
What do other people think? Who are the two or three players to beat this season??? Please, share down below so I can have an idea! Thanks for reading and see you next week.
