Welcome back for another fun week of Survivor. I think it’s safe to say that we are all probably still recovering from one of the biggest self-destructive meltdowns in Survivor Tribal history with Jennifer’s implosion. Part of my and the other bloggers’ “job” here is to watch all the Survivor pre-game videos and analyze the players and then talk like we have some clue of how they will be as players in the game. IF you’ve watched any of the videos yourself, they’re all highly produced videos where every player looks like they are auditioning for Temptation Island and sells themselves to us on why they will win the game.Then all of us decide who we like best like it’s Love Connection.
Basically, all of them say the same thing in their videos: how they read people very well. Why is it that everybody thinks they read people well? Have you ever met someone who didn’t think that they read people well? Every person tells us how they are going to “play” the other players and so on and so forth. We watch these two-minute videos and then pretend to know who will shine and who will be a dumpster fire. Jennifer was someone whom many of the bloggers liked, including me, because she seemed like someone that wouldn’t pull a Tom Cruise acting psychotic on Oprah move.
My point is that clearly we don’t know what the hell these people are going to do once the game starts. Players that seem like they will be the first to go end up being good players, and the ones that we think have a chance to win the game end up going down early in spectacular fashion. We have watched two episodes so far, and quite frankly, I have no idea which players are in the best positions right now. With these three-team formats, they tend to focus on the teams that struggle and end up at Tribal and not the team dominating, so for the players in the best position so far in the game, we have only seen two minutes here and two minutes there, but have not really gotten a big picture of their camp life. For example, is “Beast Mode Cowboy” Caleb in the best position in the game right now, as the girls seem to like him and he’s good
For example, is “Beast Mode Cowboy” Caleb in the best position in the game right now? The girls seem to like him and he’s good in physical challenges. He’s not going anywhere right now, right? Is it one of the girls on the Beauty tribe like Anna, who seems to be playing a good social game? It’s impossible to tell right now. I mean, you can convince me that anybody left in the game right now with the exception of Neal, Alecia and Debbie will win the game this season. I do still strongly feel that the winner will be a female this season. None of the men this season seem to be particularly strong social game players. No matter what, in Survivor, social game players win– not the physical beasts. You can be both, but then you end up being too big a threat like Joe or Malcolm. Survivor has and always will be played at camp, not the highly contrived immunity challenge competitions. These past seasons there always seemed to be returning players and they seemed to be playing the game at a higher level than everybody else, so it’s nice that we have this fresh, green cast where nobody is really separating themselves. It just seems wide open.
So yeah, that was my typed word vomit heading into tonight’s episode. Will the producers change the teams or do something shady to try to even the teams up a little, or will we get another Brawn 50-minute death march to Tribal tonight? Will Tai continue on his quest to be the least smooth idol hunter ever? Will Caleb punch a leaf to intentionally try to set Tai off the deep-end? Will Alecia cut back on her “crystal blue persuasion” use so her eyes don’t look they are about to swan dive out of her head whenever somebody questions her? These are the questions I’m looking forward to having answered tonight. It’s 8 pm, Portland, Oregon time, so let’s start this party!
8 pm
Previously on Survivor, Jeff starts us off with the craziness of Debbie and talking about the girls’ alliance on the Beauty tribe. What do we know about all-girls alliances? Well, we know that they’re about as stable as an alliance between Kevin Spacey and the Russian President on House of Cards.
Luckily, Jeff just glosses over Jennifer’s implosion last week.
8:01
Back post-vote in Black-and-white Survivor camera mode, Scot tells Alecia that he promised Jennifer he would never “write her name down” and tells Alecia “No hard feelings” and I guess since he said that, Alecia now is not able to carry any ill-will toward Scot moving forward…Savvy move.
Alecia is not happy with what is happening and is, in fact, having “hard feelings”.
Somehow Cydney, who pre-show talked about having four personalities, is the “stable” one on the Brawn tribe….dark times with the Brawns right now to say the least.
8:04
We join the Beauty tribe as it looks like they have a nice little brunch going on with crab and mimosas.
Tai tells us that he is done hiding his intentions and just going to go for the idol and damn anybody who knows. There is a problem, though: he loses the tool needed to “unlock” the idol. Luckily, Tai is resilient and is able to knock the thing off the tree.
8:05
Tai finds the idol and finds out that there is a twist. The twist is that he can join forces with somebody else who has found an idol and they can choose to combine their idols to use after the votes have been read instead of before. I would like to see this happen, but I have a hard time seeing two people admitting that they have an idol to one another. Seems like a long shot, but I hope it happens!
Commercial Break:
To be honest with everybody here reading this, I’m writing his with a heavy heart. I’m still grieving from the fact that Sylvester Stallone did not win the Oscar this past Sunday. I mean, what in the hell happened?? They give the award to Bridge of Spies, and I’m sorry, but no, very questionable move by the Academy. I mean how many times has Sly been screwed and not even nominated for his legendary performances such as Cobra:
Or his portrayal of Snaps Provolone in Oscar:
The list goes on and on. I mean, I didn’t even include a clip of Tango and Cash here and you all know I could have…You know what? Screw it:
The Academy should have done what’s right and given the man the prize he so richly deserved. Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender should have organized a walk-out the second Sly didn’t win…and quite frankly, I don’t know if I can forgive them for not doing that.
8:09
Back from commercial and we join the Brains. President Peter Obama breaks down the Brains as being two teams of two, Aubry and Neal and then Joe and Debbie. Peter feels confident that he and Liz can run things at the Brain camp.
8:11
Debbie next shares with us that she is onto Peter and Liz, but knows that they need Peter right now for challenges so they need to cut Liz. She is showing some smarts since she knows that she and Joe need to get Aubry and Joe on their side.
8:12
Debbie makes her pitch to Aubry and then to Neal. We don’t get to hear from either of them if they are buying what Debbie is selling, but it looks good for her so far.
8:13
Back with the Beauties, Caleb wants to kill a chicken but knows that it could be devastating for Tai. Caleb is trying to play nice. It turns out that Tai wants to be a part of the team, as he holds the chicken while Caleb decapitates it. Tai starts crying and Caleb comforts him.
Nick, whom we haven’t heard talk in two episodes, shares that he has to pretend to show emotions because he doesn’t really feel “emotions”. I guess Nick might be Terminator sent back to find John Connor on Survivor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uTO31B1R2c
Anna shares that she doesn’t like Nick. She wants to get Caleb on her side with the other two girls to get rid of Nick. She approaches Caleb and he plays ball, not revealing too much or if he would go along with it right now. I must say that Caleb seems like he is doing pretty well so far.
Commercial Break:
So the other bloggers on here and I are in a Survivor pool, which I think right now I’m leading. I wish we had money on it. Gambling is fun, and recently, I’ve been on a sports gambling frenzy–all small bets, I have a three-way never ending text message group with three other friends, in which we talk daily about that night’s games and all the while desperately try to hide it from our girlfriends and wives. You’ve never seen such great acting before. Watching the Superbowl together with the significant others there, the acting was on par with Pacino and and De Niro in Heat.
Everybody had to play it calm and not look too rattled when everybody bet the Panthers and the over (the total points being over a specific total)…Too much of a reaction would raise eyebrows…A little too much enthusiasm would elicit questions that we didn’t want to answer. My friend R.J. took it to another level when he went to a couple’s massage during a game he had some action on. Since his wife would frown upon him being on the phone checking scores during this couple’s bonding time, he concocted a plan to put the phone under his pillow during the massage and then if his team won, my other friend would text him five consecutive times so that his phone would vibrate and he would know that they won. Sometimes during times of war, we all do things we’re not proud of.
8:19
Back from commercial, we join the Brawns as Alecia finds the clue to find the idol. She shares it with Cydney to try to win favor.
Jason catches the two ladies on their quest and isn’t pleased.
8:20
Cydney then finds the idol clue, but somehow gets Alecia to walk off thinking that it’s somewhere else. Wow…
Cydney next tells Scot and Jason about it and chaos ensues as Jason starts sprinting around the forest with a crazy look in his eye, likes he’s Tom Hardy in The Revenant, but it works as he finds the key to the box. Somehow Alecia has been left out of this process even though she was the one who found it…but, let’s be honest, it’s probably better in somebody else’s hands than hers.
8:22
Somehow this went from Alecia finding the clue to Cydney being in control to now Jason and Scot taking over. Now Jason has the idol and Alecia is back on the bottom of the food chain.
8:29
It’s Immunity Challenge time. This week they are playing for the choice of helpful tools to help them at camp, or personal “emotional” items from home. Why on earth would they choose that? I get it would be nice, but isn’t survival better being able to eat and sleep a little better than having your teddy bear there?
8:30
Jeff Probst as the teams try to get bags of rice through a gate-thing in the water : “It’s very hard to squeeze that in a very small hole”…..Umm… That’s…what..she said”?
8:33
The comp comes down to the three tribes trying to balance three balls up through a wall filled with holes that they have to avoid.
8:36
Beauty tribe once again wins the comp and is your first place winner.
8:38
Big upset as the Brawn tribe avoid their third consecutive death march to Tribal.
The Brain tribe is going to Tribal. The Beauty tribe chooses the practical items as their prize and the Brawn get the emotional items. The Brain tribe gets a trip to Tribal and we will get to see which way Neal and Aubry decide to lean. Will it be with Debbie and Joe or Liz and the President?
Commercial break:
My seasonal rant about network sitcom/comedies is about due now. Does anyone have any funny comedy show they want to share? I really can’t take Modern Family much longer. The problem with family comedies or most sitcoms is that after the first three seasons, they have basically covered every life lesson or situation that can come up like: the “husband learns how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom”, “Brother and sister or sister and sister learn that they need each other more than they thought”, or “Money isn’t everything”. They have covered every scenario possible, and every episode gets more and more contrived. Character traits become more exaggerated to the point that it just becomes one big over-the-top mess.
Like I have said before, they never know what to do with the kids on these shows. I mean Manny on Modern Family’s whole thing was that he was this little chubby kid that wore suits and quoted Shakespeare…which works for like four episodes, but then you start peeling that onion and it doesn’t make sense at all, then you realize it’s just a cheap laugh, lazy writing. They never know what to do with the kids as they get older. You get to season 8, or whatever they are at now, and every character is like their season 1 character but on acid. It’s almost sad, except there is something about that world that compels me to watch and then I end up hating myself for even liking it…It really is a vicious cycle. We need a new comedy in our lives…..and no I’m going to stop you here. It’s not going to be the reboot of Full House…My lord.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXuGLswn2l0
It’s shocking that all these actors but the Olsen twins were “available” to do this…….
8:42
Back from commercial break and Liz is telling us that it’s good that they lost actually, so they can vote out Neal. She thinks she can get Debbie and Joe on their side.
8:43
She approaches Debbie about the plan. Debbie tells us that “it’s not happening”. Debbie shares that plan with Neal, who seems on board with her plan.
8:44
Peter overconfidently explains his status in the game, thinking that he and Liz are playing everybody else and have complete control of the game. Aubry is not liking what she is hearing or seeing from Peter.
8:45
Aubry and Debbie talk about voting Peter out. Debbie seems on board with blindsiding Peter. The Prez might be in trouble tonight, boys and girls.
8:46
We go to Tribal and Jeff goes to Peter first. Peter gives his analysis of the dynamics at camp. Everybody but Liz is having a hard time hiding their disdain for Peter.
Everybody tries to hide their intentions, but it seems like Peter is basically completely solidifying everybody, banding together to vote against him. Doctors are so freaking smart, but it’s jarring how socially awkward they can be sometimes.
8:52
We go to the votes:
Aubry
Aubry
Pete
Pete
Liz
Liz
We have a three-way tie and will revote.
Vote number two:
Liz
The third person voted out of the game is Liz. I guess they decided to keep Peter around for competitions.
Recap:
So Liz ultimately paid the price tonight. Was it her bad game play, or her association with Peter that did it? It was probably both. Regardless, Peter lives to fight another day and maybe that will be a bad move the rest of the Brains just made by leaving him in the game.
This was a good episode as we got to see more dynamics on all the tribes as opposed to just the dysfunction of the Brawn tribe. To me, it seems like the Brawns will continue to fight for their lives and nobody on that tribe will win the game this season. I feel confident crossing everybody off the Brawn list as a potential champion. This is coming down to Beauty and Brains and the Beauties seem to have the edge right now. You got the three girls and Caleb on the Beauty tribe that will probably be able to pick up a couple of other people come merge time and they might become the power alliance this season. You have to agree with me now that this season was cast and built for a female to win. You tell me one male this season that you think will win.
Caleb? No, he will be deemed a threat at some point and taken out.
Neal? No, he doesn’t seem to have the relatability to win the game.
Jason and Scot seem like they have gone to a dark place together and won’t be coming back.
Tai is likeable but just seems like he is playing by himself.
Joe seems like he is okay, not bad, not great. I’m sure he will make the jury, but I just don’t see him winning the game.
Nick seems like an unlikeable robot, and no, he can’t win…He just can’t.
Not that it has to be cast a certain way for a woman to win the game, I’m just saying they cast males that have no chance to win the game. Just like I’m sure they have cast the show to get a male winner before. The producers are smart; they know what they’re doing. Call me crazy, though, maybe I’m wrong. Tell me who your top three are right now. Thanks for reading and I will see you guys next week.
