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.

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.

Evil Russell, not really that evil, or smart

We were promised an evil guy and we got Evil Russell, who's really just a guy trying to play a character, this guy is 1,000 times less horrible then Coach. He also sucks at Survivor because the first thing he did was turn on somebody he claimed he had an alliance with. When an alliance mate says "I'm nervous" you win their trust by doing something about it, not by putting a bullet in their head. The play was voting out old useless Mike, the cook. You tell your 'stupid young girl' alliance partner "Trust me, look, we're getting rid of Mike tonight, it's all good." Mike goes home, she's reassured. I mean, if *she* sees you're plotting with everyone, then everyone else sees it to. This is what got Jonathan kicked off on his first season of Survivor, because he was 'playing to hard' Evil Russell is playing to hard, and he thinks it makes him badass and awesome, all it really does is put a bulls eye on him.

Since CBS is hyping Evil Russell a lot, I'm sure he'll last a while (Most likely to the merger, and then a little bit past that), but he won't win. People like him who are clearly gung ho and all out for glory flame out. Be sure to throw this prediction back at me when Evil Russell has his million dollar check at the end of the year and is crowing about how smart he is.

One final note: No exile island tonight, and thus no hidden idol. I think that gimmick has run it's course. It was fun for gaming for a while, but then it turned into a moronic arts and crafts project.

Episode 3, giving them a lay-up

Show starts with Coach bitching, because he's a bitch, his tribe lost and they suck, of course he doesn't suck merely 'his tribe' does...Erinn the ever useless is now the tribe outcast because she hung out with Candace the evil...

Red Tribe does some fun and frivolity and fail at fishing a great deal, before they are successful at fishing, which leads to fish to feast upon. Red Tribe is both pumped and jacked. They expect to totally pwn Black Tribe.

Reward challenge is one of those 'somebody directs the rest of the blindfolded tribe around'. You would think Coach, a giver of directions and a leader of people would be right for this job, but of course he doesn't do it, but Worthless Debbie is called in for this task. Steven I believe does the calling for Red Tribe, I could be mistaken, I ain't getting paid for this shit...

Coach pouts like a bitch some more...Black tribe's most pressing issue is that Jerry the Marine is sick, he's hurting bad and everyone's worried about him. Meanwhile Coach and Crazy Gay Mormon hatch an alliance and Coach proves he's an even bigger fucktard, calling CGM his 'assistant coach'...Man what a fuckass...

Fuck Coach...

Red Tribe get their tarp up and celebrate their awesome awesomeness, they really hope they can defeat Black Tribe at immunity and really drive the shiv in deeper.

At Exile we have Taj and Brandon, who are clearly an alliance and everyone's an idiot for not noticing.m They get the 'here's an idea as to where your idol is' clue. It says to look around where there is lots of wood, I'd have screwed this up and checked my tribe's campfire...But Brandon think's it's the treemail statue, he will be proven right later. Brandon and Taj decide that the two of them must find their idols and use them for an Uber-Alliance to crush the rest of the cast. Taj says she'll get Steven in, Brandon says he'll get Model Girl...And thus, the Illuminati are formed.

Immunity time, and it's our standard "Run around and then solve a puzzle" challenge, in this case the two tribes have to get 6 giant cubes and then after doing that, they must line up the cubes to spell the tribe's name on one side, and climb up the cubes to a platform. So the cubes have to be liked up 1 high-2 high-3 high. For the simulation of this challenge we see Red Tribe's cubes being used to spell out their tribe name, since the American Public wouldn't really find Black Tribe winning to be believeable...

Black tribe gets the lead, but blows it at the end, as usual, they fail, fuck them, and Red Tribe wins, outfuckingstanding! Burn in hell worthless Coach Tolerating Black Tribe. At the end of this challenge JTM decides to try to end his time on Survivor by declaring "I'm through, I'm finished."

We get back to camp and Coach is pissed, he's whining that because JTM is sick that he'll be voted out, which would keep the tribe strong, instead off voting out Erinn...Because as you recall when he got on the Island, Coach talked about forming an alliance that would allow him to settle his petty grudges and force everyone to suck his dick because he's so fucking awesome...Oh wait, he didn't say that, he said he wanted to 'change the way Survivor is played" by having an "Alliance of the Strong"...In this case "The Strong" is an ill man who's declared 'I'm finished' and the weak is a girl who's fighting to stay in the game...Coach of course is a fucking worthless dick...

Coach now goes to Crazy Gay Mormon and pouts about how much he hates Erinn, how he wants her to go hope, and how that's just how it has to be. CGM agrees, they HATE her...CGM gives a whiny miserable speech about how Erinn sees to 'lie to get ahead in the game' unlike CGM who LOSES WITH HONOR...Or some shit...I love when people give interviews to the camera where they say "fuck that asshole for trying to win, seriously, who the fuck do they think they are!" I mean, I didn't hear any Steelers defensive players saying "Man fuck Larry Fitzgerald for burning us for a 65 yard touchdown, it's like that asshole wanted to win the Super Bowl or some shit, what kind of a prick is he? Honestly." IT'S A GAME, FUCKING PLAY IT.

Coach now goes to Model Girl and some other generic female who's had no air time and basically tell them that in spite of the fact that Jerry is practically dead he should stay and Erinn should go, basically because Coach hates her. Model girl says Coach can suck a dick, that he was all about keeping strong people before and was going to boot her, now he's trying to keep a corspe just so he can spite vote out somebody, she's voting Jerry,

Crazy Gay Mormon decides that his previous stupid promo wasn't dumb enough so he decides to bury himself by cutting an absurd promo about how he likes to blindside people just for the sake of making them cry and hurting them, that he knows Erinn really wants to stay in the game, and to take that away from her would be wonderful. CGM is following in the footsteps of all those other famous survivor winners who've voted out people totally out of spite before. It's a great list of FUCKING NOBODY...God, CGM is now 2nd behind Coach for insufferable losers on this show now.

Brandon goes to the mailbox and finds his idol...Go Brandon, fucking own this shit! Illuminati represent!

We go to the vote, it's basically Coach and Erinn bitching at each other, mostly because Coach wants to be the leader of the tribe, but when asked who he thought should be leading, Jerry said Brandon....This led to all kinds of pointless talk...And now the vote

Jerry gets crushed in a rout, he's the only person who didn't vote for him. This is a really odd vote and I hate the way it was edited, because it really looked like Coach and CGM were hell bent on getting Erinn out, but in the end they voted for Jerry, did they just find nobody else who would be in on that plan, does Model Girl really have that kind of clout with the tribe? I mean Coach should have turned Useless Debbie, that's 3 votes, Jerry's a 4th vote, and they win...So how didn't they get to 4 votes? It's really odd...I really wish they showed us what really fucking happened at camp, I guess I'll have to go on CBS.com and watch "What really fucking happened to make Black Tribe vote out Jerry."

I will say that you NEVER...EVER EVER declare yourself 'done', 'finished' or 'spent' in Survivor, you suck it up, you fight through the pain, you do whatever you can to continue, because you give people an excuse to boot you, you get booted, I'm sure Jerry's reaction at the end of the challenge was just pure emotion and just a kind of shock at how tired he was, but it's the kind of outburst that ends a person's game, and that's why he's out.

Next Week: Taj welcomes Stephen into the Illuminati...

Episode 2, nobody knows how to play

The show begins with 10 odd minutes of people just milling about before the challenge, the big deal out of all of this is that Black Tribe still really has no use for Model Girl, who looks for the idol with help from Brandon, a pretty buff guy, to no avail. Also Coach and Candace have a fight over cooking beans and rice. On Tribe Red, Taj admits she could buy and sell the rest of the cast three times over, why she's on the show or would get cast is beyond me, I mean really, once she admits this, her cover is blown, everything she does is tainted by the 'she's rich' stigma and not only is she rich, she's *really* rich, she's not earning like 500K a year, her husband earned tens of millions of dollars in the NFL, she's really on easy street...Of course she's the perfect person to take to the end now, cause nobody would give her more money, which also taints the game, cause you can plan around that fact. All around bad times.

We get to the challenge which is 'basketball in a river with wrestling"...Sandy tries to act wacky and funny for her tribe, but whatever on that...The big thing is that Red Tribe falls behind 2-0 before rallying for a big 3-2 win which earns them fishing gear and immunity.

Back at Red Tribe Stephan and JT bond, JT is declared by Stephan to be the "Tribe Leader" and he hopes that by bonding with the king, he shall be kept around a while longer, they try to fish, but fail, this matter little cause everyone's happy.

Meanwhile at Black Tribe, Candace declares that Coach sucks, he sucked in the challenge, he sucked at camp, he sucks, fuck him. Candace speaks for me now...She wants him gone.

Of course she said this out in public, where some nameless older woman on her tribe overhears it and brings it to Coach's attention. Coach's bullshit speeches about 'dying at the hands of a worthy foe' and 'alliance of the strong' go right out the window when the objective is 'saving my own ass' and he invents this idea that Candace is some sort of tribe killing poison that must be removed for the good of everyone else, the Sheep of Black Tribe seem to agree.

Meanwhile we have Exile Island to attend to, this time around Red Tribe sent Brandon to exile, because sending strong buff men who most likely have leadership status in their tribe is a great idea, I mean you really want people like that to find the idol and use it to crush you after the merger, the 'twist' was he got to take someone from Red Tribe with him, so he took Taj. He ends up getting the clue for the idol, which he can't figure out till he gets Taj's help, which basically was "The idol is back at camp, moron". He also is given the option of flipping tribes, Which he shoots down instantly, cause he's in good at his tribe. He and Taj chill and both of them think they have worked out a possible post merger alliance.

Candace hangs out with some random woman who may or may not be named Erinn. Candace for some reason decides that instead of bringing the hammer down on coach ASAP that it is best to let Coach run things for now since while he is useless, Model Girl may be more uselesser, of course having already called out Coach and started talking about a possible boot for him makes this not the greatest of plans, once you've stated your objectives in the open, with people who you're not in a clear alliance with, you might as well follow through and see who wins the power struggle, deciding to just back off and let your enemy run the game means your enemy might do something crazy, like vote you out for running around camp talking about voting them out.

Army Man and Naked Crazy Mormon hang out and talk about this whole crazy ordeal, the they seem to think the Coach plan of booting Candace is silly cause Model Girl is weak. This seems like a really fucked up tribe cause we got the alliance of Coach, Model Girl, and NOW voting for Candace, Candace and Erinn voting for Model Girl, Army Man and NCM now on the fence, and odds are Brandon will vote against Candace because he buddied up with Model Girl.

Fuck Coach. Oh by the way Mr. honor and nobility fucking walked out on his soccer team mid season, what a fucking prick.

We get to the tribal, where basically what we learn is that Coach is even more of a dick then normal, dressed in a dress shirt with a jacket and scarf, man this guy is such a fucktard, he throws his jacket over his shoulder in his 'badass moment of coolness' as he swaggers over to vote out Candace. Man I hate him.

Of course because this is how my life works, the whole tribe obeys coach and it's a 7-1 blindside of Candace who can't believe she got played like that, well next time if you want to take somebody out, work for it, don't just sit around and let them run the game.

I remember Cirie from Fans Vs Favorites when the rest of her alliance wanted to boot somebody out (Most likely the universally distrusted and hated Jonathan) but she was blindly against this and wanted Yau-Man out ASAP. She was so irrational and angry about this I half expected her to get herself voted out, but in the end she broke her alliance to her iron will. That's what wins this game, not mushy half-measures of "This guy is failing, but I'll let him run things for a while and then stab him in the back"

I mean that *can* be your plan, but if it is, then keep your mouth shut about it till it's time to strike, work alliances, build connections in your tribe that don't invovle the target, and when the moment comes, then bring up to people that your target sucks and they have to go.

Next week: Taj becomes a member of the Illuminati.

Failed Pagonging

The Failed Pagonging is the doom of many players of Survivor. Pagonging is named after the doomed Pagong tribe that never got it's act together in the first season of Survivor and was slaughtered by the Tagi Alliance lead by Richard Hatch. The Pagong tribe was voted out one by one till they were all destroyed. Pagonging is basically a form of total war where you completely and totally destroy your opponent, and it is very effective for a simple reason, whoever makes it to the end of the game with you will have as much blood on their hands as you do. When the dominating allliance outright crushes the losing alliance, the losing alliance must vote one of the enemy the winner of the game and make them a millionare.

The failed Pagonging has recently come about and been and 3 of the last 9 seasons have had winners come as a result of the failed Pagonging. The failed Pagonging is basically a fatal mistake for any tribe since it gives the jury a member of their defeated alliance to vote for, and somebody who has less, if not no, blood on their hands.

The first failed Pagonging was when Chris won on Vanuatu because the woman's alliance (The tribes had been split by gender at the start) decided to start voting out the weakest link in their own alliance, but in doing so, allowed Chris to get himself into a 4 person alliance with the three women on the bottom of the totem pole. The leader of this new alliance was seen as Twila, who was pretty much hated by everyone, allowing Chris to take her to the end and win the game.

The second failed Pagonging millionare was Danni on Guatemala who had her alliance be defeated, but then was kept around as the winning alliance always found itself in need of backstabbing somebody in their own alliance over voting out Danni. The offically most moronic play ever happened at final 4, when Rafe, one of the ring leaders of the winning alliance (The other being Steph) won immunity and had the choice to either vote out Danni, who was a potental physical threat, or to vote off Lydia, a tiny woman who really had shown no hope of winning a challenge. Rafe kept Danni around like an idiot and convinced Steph to do the same, then shockingly, Danni won immunity at three, booted that fool Rafe, and collected a million dollars for his and Steph's stupidity.

The final failed Pagonging was last year when Bob won because Sugar just couldn't bear to vote the old guy out whenever they had the chance, and he helped himself by winning immunity a bunch of times, but still, at final 4, Bob could have been booted, but Sugar, clearly thinking Survivor is far more important then it is, decided to keep him around and hand him a million dollars, I need more friends like Sugar.

So fully 1/3rd of the last 9 seasons have been failed pagonging victories. So a hint to anyone playing this game, if you got the numbers going into the merger, don't stop voting out the outgunned alliance till they are all gone, every last one of them! Then you can tend to your own house.

Episode 1 recap

We're welcomed by the omni-useless and amazingly bias Jeff Probst who lets us know we only get 16 morons who'll stumble and fuck-up till one of them, against their will, is given a million dollars.

The two tribes start off by pillaging a truck of it's supplies, Black Tribe gets all the water cause Red Tribe is very stupid. After this we have our 'first vote'...Which I know is bullshit cause we only have a 16 person cast and they are not kicking 3 people off the show on the first episode.
Red Tribe elects to 'vote out' an old lady named Sandy, who we're about to find out is very dumb and deeply annoying, while Black Tribe vote out Model Girl who's got a fever and is very ill.

Of course this was all just a clever trick, and Sandy and Model Girl get sent to camp by helicopter while the rest of the tribes have to hike. Sandy celebrates, Probst tells her she's a fucking moron for celebrating cause she's clearly first to go on her tribe.

On the hike we get introduced to Coach who is this season's LOSE WITH HONOR moron. He gives a stupid speech about how he's going to 'change survivor' and how he seeks only to fight an opponent worthy of defeating him. Coach will give an *Epic* farewell speech because his fucktarded sense of honor will be violated when people brutally outplay his stupid ass and send him packing, and if he makes the jury his question will clearly be "I should have won you fucking pricks!"

The other tribe does nothing I can remember on their hike, you want a better survivor recap? Go somewhere else, here's anger and gameplay discussion, of which I have plenty of the former and there's very little of the latter this early in the season.

Sandy and Model Girl end up at their respective camps and are given the option of either working to build camp, or go searching for an idol that offers immunity for only 1 vote. Sandy gives a rambling, incoherent speech about how 'I shouldn't waste my time working my way into my tribe's good graces when wasn't there to begin with' because winning a million dollars would suck...And so would PLAYING FUCKING SURVIVOR...The whole point of which is that you need to establish yourself as a more worthy target then whomever you end up against at the end of the game...So having already fucked up by going for the idol, Sandy compounds this error by not finding even the second clue to it before her tribe arrives.

Model Girl on the other hand tries to build a camp for her tribe and does a good job, none of this means anything because Coach, who again, is a fucktard, declares the hike to camp to have been a live altering event akin to being in the shit in Nam...And that since Model Girl wasn't there, she's going to be voted out in spite of all her efforts. Coach re-states that he is keeping 'the strong' in the game...Because a good work ethic and helping the team isn't strong if you're a young woman...Or something...

Fuck Coach... (Note, this will appear in every recap till he's voted off, it may even be in the recaps after he's gone.)

Red Tribe arrives at their unbuilt camp and seethe at Sandy's lazyness, Sandy's just like "Blah Blah blah, I'm stupid and useless!" and Carolina mades some comments about how the camp should be set up...Carolina needs to learn that talking at this point of the game is for strong men (Like Coach) who people want to keep around for their strong-manness, while people who look to be expendable should never ever talk about anything, a deaf mute would make it to the merger 75% of the time in this game I'm pretty sure.

Sandy, having somehow missed a GIANT STICK on the beach when looking for the idol last time, finds it this time, and gets a clue to take 'ten paces' to a palm tree, she has no idea 'what a pace is'...This shit is fucking pre-school level hard and she's blowing it...(Note: when I make Survivor and fuck up this badly, please throw these comments in my face.)

Now it's time for the immunity/fire challenge that kicks off every season, I wish that one time when Probst said "Want to know what you're playing for?" the tribes would just say "Nah...We trust it'll be good Jeff, let's hit the field!"

The challenge is your standard physical/mental challenge, with an additional mental twist at the end, 6 of the tribe have to run across a beach full of sandhills into a river to get a raft that has pieces of wood that'll be used to make steps, once the steps are made, the tribe climbs up the steps and then any two people get to work on a peg-board maze, solving the maze wins fire and immunity for your tribe.

The tribes stupidly split up their teams such that Model Girl and Sandy are in the 'stair building' phase of the challenge, you would think you should hide your weak links in the 6 person task, rather then making them half your stair building team, of course, if they screw up the stair building, the vote out is easier, so I can see that as a tactic if you were hanging them out to dry on purpose, but this early in the game I don't think anyone should be making plans like that, avoiding tribal is your only goal.

JT on Red Tribe gets off to a big lead to assure himself of being a target when the merge hits and the strong are voted out as immunity threats (I.E. The part that Coach is opposed to, because IT IS WRONG TO VOTE OUT STRONG PEOPLE! STRONG PEOPLE PLAY WITH HONOR! THERE IS NOTHING TO THIS GAME EXCEPT HOW MUCH YOU CAN BENCHPRESS!)

The two tribes make it back to the beach at about the same time, Black Tribe takes a bit of a lead getting the planks to their stair builders, but this is erased as Sandy turns into the STAIRMASTER and start busting out mad stair building skillz. Sandy's work gives her team about a 4 step lead going into the peg maze, which her tribe promptly screws up as Black Tribe makes up the difference on the steps, gets to the peg maze and beats Red Tribe.

Note: Ultra-Strong Coach, who's job title on the show is listed as "Champion of the God-Kings" did really nothing of note in the running/swimming part and didn't put himself in the pegmaze part of the challenge either...Yes I hate him, yes it's irrational, deal with it.

Red Tribe, having been DEFEATXCORED shamble back to their camp broken and defeated, where Carolina makes a comment that pisses people off. Taj, a black woman who is apparently in a band of some note, pulls aside Carolina and lets her know it's most likely not a good plan to get mouthy after a loss, Carolina admits she talks to much.

The tribe now feels bad that Sandy did so well in the immunity challenge, and that perhaps booting her would be a mistake, so this opens the door for them to boot Carolina, who's annoying people.

We get to tribal, where Jeff for some reason doesn't ask Sandy if she has the idol and wants to play it, most likely cause she couldn't find it. The rest of the questioning is the standard moronic Probstian garbage we've come to hate. Probst hates old women, and women in general, if he's not planning on banging you for a while after the season ends, you're pretty much dead to him if you're a woman, unlike his burning love for Ozzy, Rupert, Colby and other great men of Survivor Past. Finally votes are read, and it's a rout, as Carolina gets voted out by everyone 7-1, and she fades into Bolivian.

Probst makes a stupid comment about how the tribe is 'clearly willing to blindside' people, as if to sow the seeds of distrust, when the alternative of telling Carolina she was going and booting her 7-1 would have been so much better? God Jeff's such a fucktard.

Now if anyone on Red Tribe were worth their weight in piss, they would go after Sandy to be the 4th in a 4 person alliance to take control of the tribe, because she's got no political power currently and would take any deal offered to her, I doubt this will happen, because everyone sucks at Survivor, but it's an easy play, unless of course there is already a solid alliance in orange tribe that we haven't seen yet.

Next week: Coach will not be voted off, I'll be pissed about that, I expect my anger to last till at least mid season...Grrrr...