Survivor's back – yay!
No warning from Eddie – boo!
Someone should bone him.
This year we’re in Fiji: east of Vanuatu, west of the Cook Islands and south of Palau. It kicked off with the usual spiel about the remoteness of the islands, and how fear of the unknown was so strong that one Survivor quit "just moments before being set adrift". Um, I don’t know about "just moments"; Melissa quit the day before filming started, and in enough time for the producers to work out a solution to suddenly having 19 people instead of an even 20. It’s OK Jeff, I’ll allow you a little poetic licence because I’ve missed you. Please just remember that ‘poetic licence’ is a figure of speech, not an authorisation to write tree mail.
Much like last year it’s a pretty even mix of ages, races and people who have clearly never watched the show before. Case in point; everyone who filled their water canteen straight from the well, about an hour before the instructions arrived telling them not to drink it without boiling it first.
There’s plenty of others who have most definitely watched the show before. They were the ones who were really suspicious about being provided with blue prints, building materials and detailed site plans to build a shelter, kitchen and out-house complete with toilet seat. Oh, and flint as well as machetes and pots. Yep, something is most definitely askew.
Hang on, we have to stop and define ‘askew’ for James since he asked so nicely to have the big words explained to him. (James is also known as Boston for his tattoo, and Rocky for his resemblance to Sylvester Stallone in both his physique and his enunciation). Sylvia is a qualified architect, which made the project management side of building the shelter a whole lot easier. She cleared everything up for him by explaining that ‘askew’ is an architectural term meaning ‘not orthogonal’.
Despite the unprecedented beginning and all 19 Survivors working together, they still didn’t have the main shelter finished by the end of the first night. John Howard wants us to pray for rain to break the drought, but perhaps we should just ask producer Mark Burnett. Every series of Survivor has had a massive rain storm on the first night - before the shelter is built - so that everyone gets wet and miserable, and this series continued that proud and totally entertaining tradition.
There’s also always someone annoying who just can’t shut up and keeps everyone awake. This year it’s Dre, whose real name is Andre but he prefers to be called ‘Dreamz’. Apparently he grew up poor and homeless, "living out the back of a suitcase". His profession is listed as 'Cheerleading Coach'. He’s also a reverse racist, asking all the white folk to put their hands up during one phase of his inarticulate ranting. Since it was too dark to see without night-vision equipment I’m not sure what that achieved, other than letting the camera catch the looks of utter horror on the faces of Earl and Cassandra, who share his race but not his lack of social skills.
Having 19 people squeezed into that shelter was a bit too cosy, so the next morning at the first challenge Jeff kindly split them into two tribes. Actually he asked whether anyone had emerged as a natural leader, and when everyone nominated Sylvia the architect he made her separate the teams. He then sent her off to Exile Island while the new Moto and Ravu tribes competed in a pretty standard race: collect puzzle pieces in bags, solve puzzle, find knife, cut rope, raise flag, celebrate.
The winners got to go home to the amazing camp, which in their absence had been further kitted out with bone china, cutlery, hammocks and a couch. The losers got sent to a new beach with just a machete and a pot, not even flint. And they had to go to Tribal Council that night and vote someone out.
The real loser, however, was Sylvia. Exile Island is allegedly inhabited by thousands of sea snakes, although from the editing I think we’re supposed to believe it was the same snake that followed her out of the water, across the beach, 400 metres across the island and up a hill to the lookout post.
The snake was the bad news. The ‘good’ news was allegedly that:
a) she’s immune from being voted out at tribal council that night;
b) she’s still in the game because she replaces the person who does get voted out; and
c) she gets a clue to the location of the hidden immunity idol.
If that’s the good news then Jeff needs to take some vocabulary lessons with James/Boston/Rocky because she rejoins the losing team on the dud beach, and the ‘clue’ read (warning: crappy Exile Island ‘poem’) "Here you won’t find the idol you crave. Search back at your camp if you hope to be saved."
Even worse, the tribe she joins is comprised mainly of idiots. James/Boston/Rocky forms an alliance with Princess Jessica, and later adds Erica who is the walking definition of ‘glass half empty’. They decide to vote for Rita. Rita finds out and reminds everyone else that it was Jessica’s inability to solve the puzzle which lost them the challenge. James/Boston/Rocky makes Jessica promise to tell him if she hears that he’s at risk of being voted out. She’s not smart enough to extract a reciprocal promise from him. James/Boston/Rocky finds out that the rest of the tribe is planning to vote out Jessica. He says nothing to her. Jeff counts the votes. It’s six for Jessica, and one each for Mookie, Rita and Yau-Man.
The really sad thing? As the credits roll we see that the three odd votes out came from the James/Boston/Rocky/Jessica/Erica alliance. They couldn’t even manage to vote the same way!
The only thing we really saw of Boo (aka Kenward; I’d probably change my name to something less stupid like Boo, too) this week is that he can spell his own name, and from the ad for next week it looks like he's incapable of much more than that.
No warning from Eddie – boo!
Someone should bone him.
This year we’re in Fiji: east of Vanuatu, west of the Cook Islands and south of Palau. It kicked off with the usual spiel about the remoteness of the islands, and how fear of the unknown was so strong that one Survivor quit "just moments before being set adrift". Um, I don’t know about "just moments"; Melissa quit the day before filming started, and in enough time for the producers to work out a solution to suddenly having 19 people instead of an even 20. It’s OK Jeff, I’ll allow you a little poetic licence because I’ve missed you. Please just remember that ‘poetic licence’ is a figure of speech, not an authorisation to write tree mail.
Much like last year it’s a pretty even mix of ages, races and people who have clearly never watched the show before. Case in point; everyone who filled their water canteen straight from the well, about an hour before the instructions arrived telling them not to drink it without boiling it first.
There’s plenty of others who have most definitely watched the show before. They were the ones who were really suspicious about being provided with blue prints, building materials and detailed site plans to build a shelter, kitchen and out-house complete with toilet seat. Oh, and flint as well as machetes and pots. Yep, something is most definitely askew.
Hang on, we have to stop and define ‘askew’ for James since he asked so nicely to have the big words explained to him. (James is also known as Boston for his tattoo, and Rocky for his resemblance to Sylvester Stallone in both his physique and his enunciation). Sylvia is a qualified architect, which made the project management side of building the shelter a whole lot easier. She cleared everything up for him by explaining that ‘askew’ is an architectural term meaning ‘not orthogonal’.
Despite the unprecedented beginning and all 19 Survivors working together, they still didn’t have the main shelter finished by the end of the first night. John Howard wants us to pray for rain to break the drought, but perhaps we should just ask producer Mark Burnett. Every series of Survivor has had a massive rain storm on the first night - before the shelter is built - so that everyone gets wet and miserable, and this series continued that proud and totally entertaining tradition.
There’s also always someone annoying who just can’t shut up and keeps everyone awake. This year it’s Dre, whose real name is Andre but he prefers to be called ‘Dreamz’. Apparently he grew up poor and homeless, "living out the back of a suitcase". His profession is listed as 'Cheerleading Coach'. He’s also a reverse racist, asking all the white folk to put their hands up during one phase of his inarticulate ranting. Since it was too dark to see without night-vision equipment I’m not sure what that achieved, other than letting the camera catch the looks of utter horror on the faces of Earl and Cassandra, who share his race but not his lack of social skills.
Having 19 people squeezed into that shelter was a bit too cosy, so the next morning at the first challenge Jeff kindly split them into two tribes. Actually he asked whether anyone had emerged as a natural leader, and when everyone nominated Sylvia the architect he made her separate the teams. He then sent her off to Exile Island while the new Moto and Ravu tribes competed in a pretty standard race: collect puzzle pieces in bags, solve puzzle, find knife, cut rope, raise flag, celebrate.
The winners got to go home to the amazing camp, which in their absence had been further kitted out with bone china, cutlery, hammocks and a couch. The losers got sent to a new beach with just a machete and a pot, not even flint. And they had to go to Tribal Council that night and vote someone out.
The real loser, however, was Sylvia. Exile Island is allegedly inhabited by thousands of sea snakes, although from the editing I think we’re supposed to believe it was the same snake that followed her out of the water, across the beach, 400 metres across the island and up a hill to the lookout post.
The snake was the bad news. The ‘good’ news was allegedly that:
a) she’s immune from being voted out at tribal council that night;
b) she’s still in the game because she replaces the person who does get voted out; and
c) she gets a clue to the location of the hidden immunity idol.
If that’s the good news then Jeff needs to take some vocabulary lessons with James/Boston/Rocky because she rejoins the losing team on the dud beach, and the ‘clue’ read (warning: crappy Exile Island ‘poem’) "Here you won’t find the idol you crave. Search back at your camp if you hope to be saved."
Even worse, the tribe she joins is comprised mainly of idiots. James/Boston/Rocky forms an alliance with Princess Jessica, and later adds Erica who is the walking definition of ‘glass half empty’. They decide to vote for Rita. Rita finds out and reminds everyone else that it was Jessica’s inability to solve the puzzle which lost them the challenge. James/Boston/Rocky makes Jessica promise to tell him if she hears that he’s at risk of being voted out. She’s not smart enough to extract a reciprocal promise from him. James/Boston/Rocky finds out that the rest of the tribe is planning to vote out Jessica. He says nothing to her. Jeff counts the votes. It’s six for Jessica, and one each for Mookie, Rita and Yau-Man.
The really sad thing? As the credits roll we see that the three odd votes out came from the James/Boston/Rocky/Jessica/Erica alliance. They couldn’t even manage to vote the same way!
The only thing we really saw of Boo (aka Kenward; I’d probably change my name to something less stupid like Boo, too) this week is that he can spell his own name, and from the ad for next week it looks like he's incapable of much more than that.
1 comment:
Yay! Glad the commentary is back! Just put as link in my blog so other people can enjoy it too!
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