Murtzcellanious: What An Episode Of Survivor!

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People often ask me why I believe Survivor is the best show on television. Thursday’s episode gave me all the evidence that I need.

I thought it featured everything television is about. Sex (well, Parvati’s flirting), drama (the vote), and violence (Yul trying to fight off an entire tribe). It was awesome.

I was completely riveted when they made the selections for the new tribes. I have never been a fan of twists in Survivor. As I have argued many times, I believe that they punish the strong in favour of the weak, just because the producers want to avoid the show becoming predictable. With that being said, I thought that the surprise consolidation of tribes was handled fairly. The tribal selection process was amazing because it was completely random. I don’t know if you caught it, but there were two nods paid to Survivor: Palau in this episode. The immunity challenge was featured on Palau when Tom, Ian and Gregg dominated Ulong. The second was the same tribal selection process that was featured here on the Cook Islands. The reason that this tribal selection was fair was because players were not allowed to select anybody from their original ethnic tribe. Immediate judgments had to be made. So much for all those CNN stories that said that this season was pushing the envelope of good taste. It was obvious that the racial divide would not last more than two episodes and it didn’t.

I thought that the episode was phenomenal. Once again, the top players dominated. Candice (my favourite player), was sent to Exile Island by the other tribe just because they wanted to ensure her safety. Jonathan and Yul formed an immediate alliance to protect themselves and both did phenomenal jobs of selling their respective parachutes (Jessica and Cao Boi) on the plan to vote off Cecelia. Ozzy made a good move by trying to leverage himself with the weaker players, and while it didn’t work… the effort had to be appreciated.

This season has been outstanding so far and I really think it can be one of the show’s best.

Sir Linksalot: Survivor: Cook Islands

Murtz Jaffer is the world's foremost reality television expert and was the host of Reality Obsessed which aired on the TVTropolis and Global Reality Channels in Canada. He has professional writing experience at the Toronto Sun, National Post, TV Guide Canada, TOROMagazine.com and was a former producer at Entertainment Tonight Canada. He was also the editor at Weekendtrips.com.