Survivor: Heroes Vs Villains episode 1

SURVIVOR: Heroes Vs Villains Episode 1

Welcome Back Everyone!

The show opens with the 2 tribes landing on a beach in helicopters. We’re treated to confessionals from various and sundry people who remind us of who they are. Coach is still an idiot, Cirie is still awesome. Boston Rob is still Rob, and Rupert still sucks. About the only new character development we get is that Russell is a bit intimidated by this cast, said intimidation lasts only 5 minutes, so don’t worry.

We land and the Heroes love being heroes, the Villains not so thrilled about being Villains. Jeff Probst the host of the show greets our cast, now I seldom swear on Bartcop, and I’ll try to keep to 2 or less swears a recap, but I do feel the need to point out that Probst is a misogynist piece of shit. His first series of questions are all directed towards men, and when he finally gets around to talking to a woman, Pavarti, he does so only to reassure her that she is a villain and evil and awful. He even uses “alliance of woman” as part of his slurs against her, cause again, woman are bad when you’re Probst.

We open right away with a reward challenge, which is flint. The challenge is a wrestling challenge, and on the opening round the hero women have Steph get a shoulder dislocated. Events of note include Sandra unhooking Sugar’s bra but Sugar not caring and running topless to score for her team (and then flipping off everyone, if they are gonna blur her whole chest, might as well give them more to blur) Coach somehow out physically Colby, which sparks a snarky commentary from Tyson about what a emasculating turn of events that had to be for Colby. And finally Rupert breaks a toe…Since I hate Rupert this is a good thing.

The Heroes win and get flint. We go to Villain camp and Russell instantly starts the same game he had last time, which is talking up the ladies. Danielle accepts an alliance, as does Pavarti, but Pavarti explains that she knows Russell is scamming her and that she’s just going along with him rather than try to fight him at this point. Russell of course thinks he has the game knocked and that he’ll finally get a jury that respects game play and they’ll give him his million dollars.

We get to the hero side and the heroes are all ‘we’re awesome’ Amanda talks about the great karma they all have on team hero…Suddenly some chickens (That were absolutely 100% not unleashed near their camp by production!) appear in the camp and get captured by the Heroes, Rupert lets us know the Heroes are awesome, and everything’s coming up Millhouse.

We get back to Villain camp with everyone rehashing the beating the Heroes have taken and Coach’s shocking win over Colby. Jerri is smitten with Coach. Russell and Pavarti tease Coach about this in the morning. Meanwhile Sandra and Courtney tease Jerri about it. So Coach and Jerri end up in an alliance, but they worry people might think it’s an unbreakable alliance and thusly target them.

Back to Heroes camp, JT and James form the “He-Man Woman Hater’s Club” (Which must delight Probst) with a comment about not wanting ‘flower power’ to be running the game. In an aside JT lets us know that he’s not going really go to final 2 with James, he’s just going to make tons of alliances. Then Colby and Candice talk about people who played together forming alliances, as well as seeing the obvious JT/James alliance. This brings about a quick shot of Steph and Tom who played together, and Cirie and Amanda who played together. Amanda asks Cirie if she’s already beaten the game yet, Cirie tells her it’s close, but not quite (I might be overstating Cirie’s powers, but I doubt it) We then get to a Steph/Tom pow wow where Tom explains he wants a winner to face him at the end, so the jury won’t just give the million to a non-winner, so he strikes up an alliance with JT, his tribe’s other resident winner (Ignoring that Rupert got handed a million bucks also) JT lets us know that he’ll cut people’s throats, because honor is for suckers….JT is playing survivor correctly, good on JT.

We get back to Villain camp, the where Boston Rob curses the Villains for being lazy as hell. Randy tells Boston Rob that a lack of trying to get fire won’t have anyone voted out, and making fire won’t save anyone, but Rob organizes a group to make an attempt and they get fire, which delights the Villains. Rob celebrates his fire victory in an aside. Coach, who’s already in love with Jerri, now loves Boston Rob. Coach has his heart all over the place. Russell instantly declares that he will defeat Boston Rob and become champion of the Villains…Which is what I expected. I’m awesome at making predictions…Just ignore what I said about the last few people standing when you see who gets voted out tonight.

We get back to Heroes camp where Rupert pretty much destroys their flint. JT gives it a whirl and gets fire almost instantly, making Rupert sad, because he’s now totally useless. Rupert is shockingly edited to look angry and upset, which is not how Rupert, America’s Hero gets edited normally.

Boston Rob talks about a giant tree he was going to try to climb to get fruit, but that it’s too much work and likely could fall and break his leg. He makes a speech in an aside about how some idiot will assuredly go after the tree, and the producers do a HILARIOUS shot of Coach looking all smug and cocky, on his way to battle with the tree. Coach busts out the term “Iron Sharpens Iron” which is an inside joke for me. Sandra and Boston Rob make a bet on Coach’s success/failure , and Sandra says she wouldn’t mind allying with Rob. Coach of course, fails.

Back to the Heroes tribe for night 2….Sugar tries to hit on Colby, but all she ends up doing is annoying Colby and waking up the whole tribe. This is an awesome game plan knowing the next day will be an immunity challenge (Immunity challenges normally happen once every 3 days) denying your tribe sleep and making a scene is a great way to play the game.

Morning of day 3 JT breaks the rooster’s neck and they eat him. JT really playing up his ‘hayseed’ persona. Colby cuts a promo about how the Villains lack fire and are screwed. Colby is out of the loop. To further prove this point we go to a roaring fire at the Villains tribe, and they read the tree mail stating the first immunity challenge is on the way.

At the Immunity challenge the tribes meet up (Rupert is of course carrying the flag for the Heroes because that’s the kind of stupid stuff he cares about). The Heroes talk up how good their camp is, while the Villains downplay their camp, not even admitting to having fire.

The challenge is ‘build a boat, sail the boat, get fire, solve a puzzle, then solve a minor puzzle, use fire to light something on fire and win!’ no it’s really that complex…Honest…Heroes open a huge lead in the boat building, but completely fall apart on solving the first puzzle, where Sandra and Boston Rob really take charge and figure it out really quickly, the Heroes never recover and the Villains win with ease. Sugar, having already screwed up by keeping her tribe up all night, decides that crying is the right play now. Colby declares Sugar dead.

We get the rare treat of seeing the winning tribe post immunity challenge and the Villains revel in defeating the Heroes. Everyone’s in good spirits, Coach and Russell play see-saw breaking a board across a log. Boston Rob gives the tribe ‘an 8 out of 10’ for how they did today. Sandra celebrates, but doesn’t really bring up how vital she was to the challenge, since she was lead puzzle solver with Boston Rob and that was where the challenge was won.

We get back to Heroes camp for the cutting of the throat. Sugar is a wreck, and she wants Amanda voted out. The group wants Sugar gone, but only Tom sees the truth, and the truth is you MUST VOTE OUT CIRIE! She’ll kill you all!

Cirie of course, sees all and knows all, and she wants to keep Sugar around cause she’s a useful weak player who’ll vote her way, and she wants Tom and Steph broken up. This right here is the key to Survivor, the bad players take the easy vote. Colby, James, Candice, even JT and Steph just figured they would vote out Sugar cause she’s been an idiot around camp and blew the challenge. The strong players like Tom and Cirie see that Sugar can be voted out whenever, and that now is as good a time as any to strike at a strong player and rid yourself of them.

Amanda and Cirie debate Sugar being worthless in challenges Vs Steph, who’s good in challenges, but also is with Tom and plays a good social game. Amanda declares that she and Cirie are ‘out for blood’.

We go to Tribal, and Jeff stirs the pot, I hate Tribal so much since Jeff asks just annoying questions and plays favorites. We finally get to the voting, nobody shows a vote…Or I missed it, sorry if I did….

First 4 votes are for Sugar, then a vote for Amanda, and then the rest for Sugar. She takes it well enough and leaves, Cirie and Tom gaze balefully at each other, knowing they shall clash upon the chessboard that is Survivor again soon enough.

Sugar’s farewell has her admit that she should have been voted out. So she took it well in both her walk off and her speech, good on Sugar.

NEXT WEEK: Boston Rob dies. This sucks.

Thoughts: The Heroes seem to be weirdly fractured, JT’s got alliances with James/Tom and most likely anyone else who’s talked to him…Tom’s with Steph, Amanda is with Cirie. Rupert’s kind of lost, Candice is just sorta there. You need 5 for a solid majority, the question is really, which twosome (Cirie/Amanda, JT/James, Tom/Steph) makes a deal with what other twosome. Colby and Candice were kind of talking also. 5 votes would be a death grip on the tribe, so whoever can find them is pretty much safe to the merger, who’ll be able to do it is the question. Rupert could go next if all the fractured alliances can’t figure out how to get to 5 votes, better to take the free boot of Rupert and then review the situation after then go for a power play and find out you’re on the wrong end of it.

The Villains are in an odd place, if Boston Rob is in fact dead well then pretty much the question will be “How long will everyone pretend to let Russell run the game before they get sick of him” if Rob lives, then the question is who wins the Russell/Rob power struggle, and then after they win it, how long does the rest of the alliance let them have power…It really seems like everyone’s a leader and nobody’s a follower in the Villains, with the exception of Danielle. I can see Jerri/Coach/Rob/Tyson/Pavarti as an alliance, that is of course pending Rob living.