Three episodes in and things are getting interesting on Survivor, as last night saw the women experience back-to-back triumphs with a little help from their pals opponents over on the men’s tribe.
That’s right, help. HELP! From their OPPONENTS! On last night’s episode the women sat, soaking wet and freezing cold in their crappy, poorly made shelter, with no fire, while the men sat in their tarp-covered shelter with a fire that was still going. Big advantage, right? If you were the men, you’d be thinking you’re a lock to win the upcoming challenges. The women would be too exhausted and waterlogged to even see straight.
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| Kim, my Survivor pool player. |
Except these men let them come dry out by the fire. And gave the women an ember to restart their own. Why? Why??? This is a competition! And then, even worse, the men proceeded to whine about how the women were taking advantage of them. Well then stop letting them, boys! Geez! Tell them to get the hell out and go back to their own camp? Because otherwise, why wouldn’t the women milk you for everything you’ve got? After all, it appears to be like taking candy from a baby.
Since the women won, the men had to go to Tribal Council and the vote was even more surprising than I thought it would be. I can’t wait for next week’s episode to find out what happened and see how the drama unfolds. So let’s get to this recap, shall we?
There’s a fire, starting in my heart
The women returned from Tribal Council knowing that a storm was coming, and there wasn’t much they could do to prepare. Improving their feeble shelter didn’t help them much, and they were too proud to accept Colton and Jonas’s invitation to take refuge in their shelter. Man – the women didn’t even have to beg for that one, it was just offered to them on a silver platter. The women toughed it out in their own “shelter” overnight, but in the morning they scurried over to the men’ camp to dry out by their fire.
Was it really wise of the men to let the women have some comfort right before a reward challenge? I wonder how they would have performed had they been as cold and miserable as they were all night? But hey, I have no sympathy for the guys here. They made that decision.
The reward challenge was memory based – tribe members would face off two at a time by looking at a series of objects and then trying to replicate it. Either player could pull a curtain down whenever he or she wanted. For Troyzan, this meant immediately. Why? What was he thinking? Was their any strategy to that at all? Troyzan and Kat looked at the objects seven times, way more than anyone else. It was an epic stupid-off, and Troyzan won when Kat finally got the sequence right. Oh Troyzan, being beaten by Kat in a mental challenge? Embarrassing.
In fact, the whole thing should have been rather embarrassing for the men – they didn’t win a single round! The women beat them, five-zip, and walked away with fishing gear and a new canoe.
Back at camp, the women still didn’t have fire so they had to ask their pals opponents the men for an ember. Jay said OK, but only if the women would allow the men to take the canoe out. OK, seemed like a fair enough trade. But Kat and Monica said they weren’t prepared to speak for their tribe and make a decision. Now, what the men SHOULD have said was “OK, go confer with them and come back for an ember if the consensus is yes. Otherwise, no deal.” That’s what they should have said. Instead, they gave them an ember anyway.
Next thing you know, Chelsea and Alicia are over there drying out again, and the boys are saying they are absolutely taking the canoe even though it was never agreed upon. Sigh. Boys, come on – you negotiate before you give away an asset, not after. Now that the women have an ember, they have no reason to agree to let you use the boat.
Reaching a fever pitch, and it’s bringing me out the dark
The next day the rain had subsided and the sun was out, so the women used the opportunity to take their boat out and try their hand at spear fishing. Kat, Kim and Chelsea each caught a small fish. Not a huge victory, but it was enough to send them into the immunity challenge with raised spirits.
The immunity challenge was a two-parter. First, one tribe member would act as caller to guide blindfolded pairs of tribemates through an obstacle course to collect bags of puzzle pieces. I always love these challenges – it’s fun to watch blindfolded people walk into things, and it always puts the caller in the hot seat because so much of the challenge rides on them. After all five bags were collected, the caller had to solve an intricate tree-shaped puzzle.
Bill and Sabrina were the callers, and the men blew the women out of the water during the first half of the challenge. They had a huge lead. But the women had an unexpected advantage – since Survivor rarely prevents tribes from looking over and seeing what the other tribe has done so far, the women could see what Bill had already done and basically copy it. Fair? Maybe not, but them’s the breaks in Survivor. Sabrina (with a lot of help from Kim) managed to catch up to Bill. It was a nail-biter, since they both had nine out of ten pieces placed, but Sabrina managed to finish before Bill and the women scored their very first immunity challenge win.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see the gals win. Not only is my Survivor pool pick on their tribe, I just don’t want to see one team be completely decimated by the other. With the two tribes living on the same beach there’s a big opportunity for secret pre-merge alliances, and I think that will be more exciting if the tribes merge with close to even numbers. Plus, I’m a girl, and it was embarrassing to think that the women could lose week after week. And really, weren’t you eager to see how a visit to Tribal Council would play out for the very divided men’s tribe?
Kill Bill
I wasn’t the only person excited to see the men lose. Colton was thrilled. “I’m so excited to vote someone out. I dislike so many people here.”
Besides being a racist and a jerk, which I’ll get to later, Colton is dumb. He’s so excited about the backstabbing and cutthroat aspect of Survivor that he’s completely overlooking the part where you have to be on a team. He’s wishing that he could chop about five people out of his tribe, without even thinking that he may need them down the line. He’s banking way too much on the bonds he thinks he has with the women when it appears that they’re almost as annoyed by him as his own tribemates are. If the women were to go into the merge with the numbers there is no guarantee they’d take Colton on – and even if they did, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t cut him loose once they didn’t need him anymore.
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| Overenthusiastic hipster, yes. Ghetto trash, no. |
Colton’s first target, surprisingly, was Bill. I was shocked to see the guy I put in the number one spot on my rankings for the Survivor office pool targeted so early. But when I did so, I hadn’t realized just what Bill would be up against. First, Colton expressed his irritation with the fact that Bill says “bro” a lot. OK, that’s a harmless enough trait but I can see how it could get annoying. “Go kill yourself,” Colton said, while ranting about his distaste for Bill. Um, what? Seriously, dude? That’s a bit much. And then came this: “”You’re ghetto trash. Like, that’s all you are.”
Yeah. I’m sorry, but in my eyes there is no other explanation for a comment like that other than racism. What on earth has Bill done that one could classify as “ghetto”? Sure, I can see his intense enthusiasm getting under my skin a little. But I think you’re kidding yourself if you try to argue that the color of Bill’s skin had nothing to do with Colton’s statement or, frankly, his general dislike for the guy. Now Colton is arrogant, likes to brag about his republican values, and is racist? I officially can’t stand him.
I’m also not a big fan of Matt, who said “I’ve spent eight days out here kind of creating some power and I want to
use it. I want to execute some of it, and tonight that’s going to
happen.” Oh Matt. You created an alliance with three other dudes. That’s a total of four people. Out of nine. That’s not power, that’s trouble.
Still, a lot of the other guys saw Matt as a bigger threat than Bill – and rightly so. Matt seems more competitive, more eager to play the strategic game. He would have been my first choice to vote out too, if I were in the “Average Joe” alliance.
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| Jay |
Before heading to Tribal Council, Jay crashed the Average Joe alliance party to ask what they were talking about. Boston Rob these guys are not – instead of perfectly segueing into talk of how to make caramel brownies, they told Jay they were talking strategy. Then they told him he could be in their alliance if he wanted. Silly boys! Jay’s a model! Models can’t be in the Average Joe alliance. Jay might be pretty, but he’s not dumb. He knew that five guys had the advantage (so apparently he can’t count one higher than Matt — golf claps for Jay!) and that he better get on board while he has the chance. When Matt walked in on the powwow he wasn’t so lucky. He knew the numbers were against him and made a weak, last ditch effort to add Troyzan to the “Rooster” alliance, but it was too late. We headed to Tribal Council knowing either Matt or Bill would be going home.
Reverse Duh Double Dare
I usually have a problem with how opinionated Jeff Probst has become in recent seasons of Survivor, acting less of a facilitator of Tribal Council and more of a champion of whichever players he fancies most – which are almost always the alpha males in the group. But since I intensely dislike Colton and I think he’s playing a stupid game, I was rather delighted to see Probst tear a strip off him and throw some much needed logic in his face.
When Probst heard that Colton was hanging out with the women a lot, and that Colton considers that behavior inevitable, he was surprised. Of course he was surprised. Because was Colton has never realized or acknowledged is that fraternizing with the enemy is going to cause your own team to dislike you and, more importantly, distrust you.
While we’re on the subject of Colton being stupid, I think it was a bad move to announce he was going to play the No-Longer-Hidden Immunity Idol. It was clear he knew he didn’t need to use it, so now he’s nothing more than The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Why would you lie and say you’re going to play the idol when everyone knows you won’t? Now if he tries that move again, there’s a good chance no one will take him seriously.
I was glad Bill pointed out that, in truth, it’s Colton who judged them and not the other way around. Colton assumed he wouldn’t be accepted by the guys. He assumed he wouldn’t get along with them. He was hanging out with the women before he even gave the guys a chance.
Of course, Bill was also so excited for Tribal Council that it led me to believe he didn’t know what Tribal Council was for at all. Did he think they were voting for which person gets free ice cream for life? Or was he under the impression that they were there for a Best Hair contest? That’s something he’d handily win. Otherwise, why the exuberance?
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| Matt, in need of a remedial math class |
Time to vote! This went down in a very unexpected way. Matt voted for Colton. OK, that makes sense. Tarzan, Troyzen, Colton, Leif, Jonas, Jay and Bill all voted for Matt. OK – I assumed that since Jay was on board with the plan he’d also clued in Bill. But why did Michael vote for Bill? What went awry in whose plan there?
Before leaving for camp, Tarzan asked Probst if he could see the two unread votes. Obviously, things hadn’t happened as Tarzan thought they would and he wanted to see if anyone else had gone off plan. Probst said no, and Colton smirked and said “Save those questions for me.” Why? Is Colton now adding Survivor Host to his resume, along with Republican and Racist?
Based on the scenes from next week, the aftermath of this vote is going to be awesome. Tarzan’s mad, Colton’s mad, they’re all mad! I can’t wait.
So, what did you guys think of the episode? Did the men deserve to lose for being so weak with the women? What do you think happened with that vote? Do you also hate Colton?
