Survivor: Heroes Vs Villains episode 2

Survivor Heroes Vs Villains

Episode 2

We open with the Villains being kept awake all night by a rainstorm, due to the fact that their very crummy shelter doesn’t afford them any protection from the elements. Boston Rob crabs that his tribe is a deeply lazy bunch of scum.

Back from the credits and commercials we get Jerri and Coach talking about how Survivor is a mentally challenging game and that these conditions test one’s will.

Over to Heroes Camp where Steph and Rupert have a sort of odd conversation that hints at tension between the two of them, Steph reassures us that Rupert is friggin’ awesome (editor’s note: Rupert sucks) but that he’s being a bit to ham-handed in trying to show people how fantastically wonderful he truly is. Rupert seems none too pleased with Steph either.

Now before this show, it had looked like we had 4 2 person alliances, Steph/Tom JT/James Candice/Colby and Cirie/Amanda with Rupert as the odd man out, but the dynamics of the Heroes really has changed a lot, as this episode shows.

Villain camp and everyone’s bickering about how to build the shelter, said bickering leads Boston Rob to take a break. Courtney laments that if Boston Rob were to die, they would all follow behind quickly.

Boston Rob then dies…Or he either takes a nap or blacks out in the woods. There is a blanket under his head and his shoes are off…So I kind of think he knew he was going to lay down, but I don’t think he knew he was going to pass out…Jerri finds him sorta dead on the ground and goes for help. Doctors arrive and tell Boston Rob he has the flu. Rob declares in a promo he might have some ‘crybaby-itus’ and that he’s got to just take over the Villain tribe, to hell with trying to be nice.

Boston Rob returns to a hero’s (Villain’s?) welcome. He’s pretty much irreplaceable on the Villains tribe and everyone knows it, even Russell.

It’s combined Immunity/Reward challenge time, with the challenge rigged to benefit the Heroes, allowing them to sit gimpy, useless Rupert since the challenge is 8 vs 8 for some odd reason. The Villains sit out Courtney and Randy, who are as useless as Rupert, but that’s the advantage of winning challenges, you can sit your gimps out. Mark Burnett’s sick love affair with Rupert knows no end.

The Heroes declare JT will be their leader, for no other reason than the fact that he’s done this challenge before. The Heroes decide they will rise and fall by his leadership in the puzzle.

The Heroes out physical the Villains again and take a lead going into puzzle solving, where JT isn’t really a very good leader, he’s busy trying to figure it out as best as the rest of the heroes are, his superhuman powers of having ‘done the challenge before’ avail him no hidden insights. The Villains have no such problems, totally ignoring the fact that Tyson and Coach did the challenge before, and just listen to Boston Rob.

The Villains quickly figure out the puzzle and win. Aided by acts of strength by Boston Rob and Russell, who I predicted would be pretty much the brawn for the Villains and thusly irreplaceable. (Of course somebody else I thought was in good shape will turn out to not be in good shape later in this episode, no 2 of my final 3 I predicted didn’t go out 1^st and 2^nd, SHUT UP!)

I always enjoy the moment of victory for a tribe, I love seeing the reactions, who celebrates loudest and who they celebrate with. All the villains celebrate pretty big, except Sandra and Randy (Who didn’t play, and seems surprised when he gets a big hug from fellow bench warmer Courtney.) Coach nearly tackles Boston Rob with a hug. (After he slapped Sandra on the ass after pulling her up to the platform, but I attribute that more to his Coachness and the fact that athletics have lots of ass slapping more than trying to get a feel.) Russell and Danielle have a hug, than pretty much everyone pigpiles on Boston Rob, Tyson telling him to ‘go home and sit back and relax dude.’ The Villains leave with immunity and the materials needed to make their shelter not suck, the Heroes leave with James whining and complaining, his ire raised at Steph, his great enemy for no real reason.

Back at Heroes camp James continues his fit throwing, his rage at Steph now incoherent and unstoppable. JT in a promo laments that if only everyone had listened to his wishy-washy, not-very-good instructions on the puzzle, victory would have been the heroes, but alas, the evil of Steph and others brought forth not but bitter defeat for them.

It is now somehow clearly set up that the battle lines are JT/James/Rupert Vs Tom/Colby/Steph, somehow it’s also a given that Amanda is in good with team JT/James/Rupert. Faced with their impending doom, Tom/Colby/Steph decide their only hope is to sway Cirie and Candice into their alliance by convincing them that the JT/James/Rupert alliance will just vote out the women one after another. They then decide the best plan is to get Cirie and Candice to vote out Amanda

(record scratching noise)

Wait…WHAT?! The very woman you distrusted last show enough that you wanted her gone, you’re now going to try to enter into an alliance with her, and your plan is ‘vote out you alliance mate from Fans Vs Favs’ really? You think this will work? Why not go to her and say “Vote out Candice, who’s totally meaningless” or even “Vote out James, he’s a crazy dirtbag” or “Vote out Rupert he is friggin’ useless.”

Now, you expect to get Cirie on board with a game plan that is “My alliance of three needs you and somebody you don’t really know to backstab a person you do know, and the only justification I can give you for this is that I’ll threaten you with the fact that you and the other girl I’m trying to scare are next to go.” Now while this does follow one of my Keys To Survivor (“Give power to the powerless”) the problem here is that Cirie and Candice are not powerless. They know they could be on the boot list, or that Steph going out is a shot against Tom and he’s next, and Cirie knows Tom is a good player, so Tom losing an ally and then himself going home is fine with her.

A quick trip to the Villains camp shows them in good spirits having defeated the Heroes again, they put their tarp over their shelter, Boston Rob has got a clam from a fishing run. Russell then goes off and catches a chicken to prove his worth. He talks a lot about how he’s gonna take down Boston Rob, but I really doubt he’s going to take a shot at the champ anytime soon.

After having Tom talk to Candice and Steph talk to Cirie, now Cirie and Candice talk and hash out what they should do. The end result of all of Tom’s scheming and plotting was basically to run Candice into Cirie’s arms, as the two of them feel alone amid a group of plotters. Cirie reminds Candice that Amanda sold her out at final 3 and gave Pavarti the million dollars, so she’s not exactly beholden to her.

The Heroes head to Tribal, where James continues to make a fool of himself, Steph is defended by Colby and Tom, we get to the votes, and the Colby/Tom/Steph alliance does not get the swing votes from Cirie and Candice and Steph is sent packing 6-3. She and James continue to verbally spar after it’s over.

THOUGHTS

Think how different this game would be right now if Colby had just let Sugar hit on him. He’d have had an ally and any of the other bumbling clods (Cirie, Rupert, and Amanda) who botched the puzzle to vote off. They could have shipped out Rupert, and had a Sugar/Colby/Tom/Steph alliance that maybe JT sticks with, but since Colby’s an idiot who doesn’t use a young girl’s emotions for his own gain, a girl who was pretty much begging to be a free vote for him for as long as he needed goes home, and now Colby’s on the wrong end of a power struggle.

Dear Colby, next time a girl asks to just follow your votes in exchange for cuddling now and then, you take the deal, now you're totally screwed, you moron.

The Steph boot really makes no sense, Candice, Cirie, and Rupert are all far worse for challenges at the moment, Rupert’s dumb as a post, Cirie’s overweight and only marginally useful at beating people up, and Candice is nigh worthless. Steph was intelligent and physical, she took a dislocated shoulder without batting an eyelash.

Furthermore she as an outsider in a 3 person alliance in a tribe of 9…You could vote out somebody who is worthless (and in Cirie’s case, worthless and dangerous) and still have her boxed to a 5-3 minority. Now who stands to gain from this? Cirie of course, because now she is truly in a position to “Give power to the powerless”, Cirie now has Amanda and Candice as an alliance. She can offer that to Tom and Colby, who now have only the choice off ‘be 4^th and 5^th in a 5 person alliance’ or ‘go home next vote’ and in Survivor, you take the deal that allows you to survive. The previews seem to show James continues to act like a jack-ass, so if the Heroes lose again it is possible he could be snaked by the women allying with the 2 men who are on the wrong side of the majority (Depending on Amanda’s loyalties to James.)

On the Villain side of things, the center of the tribe is Boston Rob It seems like Tyson, Coach, Jerri, and Sandra are close to him, this puts Pavarti, Russell, Randy, Danielle, Courtney on the outside. Everyone knows Rob can’t go yet, he’s too important to the tribe in challenges and around camp, so pretty much he should control the first couple of Villain votes. I think Pavarti will be in trouble given that she’s won, she has ties to Amanda and Cirie, and she doesn’t appear to in good with Boston Rob.

So of course, next week if the Heroes win, Tom gets voted out with no drama, and if the Villains lose Boston Rob gets blindsided, I am just awful at predicting things.