The Eyes– Hakuna Matata!

Archive

After turning off my TV once the episode ended, my first thought was one of confusion. I did not catch the fact that the previews we were shown the last couple of weeks with the “medical emergency” were part of a promo for future episodes as a whole, not one specific episode. All night, I was anticipating this medical emergency, and when Bruce broke his tooth, I thought “That’s it, it’s going to develop into something!”

So I was pretty surprised and lost until I came online and someone told me that no, that promo was an overview of what is to come once the break is over. I rechecked for myself, and sure enough, that was the truth. So, the “medical emergency” is still to come in a future episode.

However, despite the momentary confusion I felt after watching last week’s episode, I was very pleased. Survivor is back, folks, and it’s better than ever! This episode had a lot of great stuff in it, you really couldn’t complain: the merge, alliance arrogance, everything in one nice, neat package.

I will start off by saying that I was shocked by the following things:

1) The Casaya tribe is actually sticking together! I’m shocked. I doubt it will last much longer, but of all the groups to split at the merge, I thought for sure this would be the one. Ironically enough, they were one of the most divided tribes in Survivor history, with chaos at camp coming out of their ears, and yet at the merge, this week they acted like one of the strongest and most unified.

2) Terry actually thinking that he had four strong. More on this later.

3) Bruce voted with Casaya. I really thought he’d jump over and vote for Shane, especially since he clearly has the most to lose by sticking with Casaya. He seemed so proud of himself for being the swing vote, I’m just surprised he made the decision that he did.

Now, let’s move on to my favorite topic of discussion: Terry. When he kept talking about “we have four, and we need at least two more,” I was thinking “You have got to be kidding me!” Does he honestly expect Sally to stay with him? Why should she? The only reason she is there is because she was saved by being sent to Exile Island. She was clearly the next to go if they didn’t merge and La Mina lost again; it was so obvious because Terry, Austin, and Nick were so obvious in their alliance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Terry is proving himself to be a terrible strategist. I wish I had kept track of how many times he told someone that if they joined with him that they would have six strong, they would not have to worry for the next two weeks. Hello? Have you EVER seen this game played before? I hope he’s just talking; I’d like to try and give him the benefit of the doubt, because if he’s genuine, his “Hakuna Matata” strategy of convincing the others to come over isn’t going to hold for long.

Once again, Cirie is my favorite, because she didn’t buy it for a second. She made me laugh (again) when she talked about how she knew it was ridiculous because Terry was trying to offer her something she already had. This girl is quickly on her way to being added to my list of favorite Survivors of all time.

The big question I have is did Terry make the right decision by keeping the Immunity Idol secret? I didn’t know that he could have given it to Nick and saved him, therefore eliminating, until Jeff said he could. The plus side would clearly be to have numbers on his side by sparing his alliance member, therefore helping him take three more days to try and swing someone like Bruce.

However, I agreed with his decision. He needed to keep that for himself. He found it, he did the right thing there. He had the necklace, which guaranteed himself safety for that night, the Idol is his ace in the hole for later.

The conflict here is that, as clearly demonstrated in the previews, next week he’s going to tell them about the Idol anyway. Um, why? I’m not going to berate him for this one until I see his reasoning for doing it, I hope it’s not as unsound as several past strategic moves have been. But, trust me, if I find the reason stupid, he will get another tirade in my column next week. No worries, it will be there!

That kind of fits with my theme of this column, I realized. No worries! Hakuna Matata! I don’t think we have to worry about this season being boring, it’s been so interesting so far, with a lot to talk about and debate. I’m looking forward to seeing how Terry’s decision to reveal his possession of the Idol will affect the game.

I also don’t think we need to worry about the Casaya alliance sticking together for long. I could definitely be wrong; heck, I never thought they’d make it through the first round together! But the personalities in this group are too volatile against each other to last long as a cohesive whole. I think we may bounce off Austin, and potentially even Terry, but before they get Sally something will change. I think Sally will be the perfect conduit for someone from the Casaya tribe to change things up in their favor later on down the road.

But, for now, against all odds, the Casaya tribe is together, and with threats like Austin and Terry still in the game, they will remain so for at least this week.

BOOT PICK: Austin
SOLE SURVIVOR: Cirie

“See” you next week!