Survivor 41.6 “Ready to Play Like A Lion”

I really disliked last night’s episode.

So far, this season of Survivor has been a season of twists that no one has really wanted.  Usually, I’m okay with the silly Survivor twists because Survivor still remains Survivor — i.e., you have to make fire, boil water, win comps, and survive tribal council.  But last night’s twists annoyed me for a few reasons:

1. They interfered with the Merge, which is one of the most sacred Survivor traditions.
2. They were needlessly complicated.
3. They were stupid.
4. They led to the show ending on a cliffhanger that was not a cliffhanger at all.

From the minute Jeff (who has been way too hyper this season, I miss the mean Jeff who didn’t even pretend to care) announced that there would be no tribal council this episode, I mentally tuned out. Tribal council is what the show is all about!

Okay, here’s what it comes down to.  Instead of a traditional merge, the survivors were split into two tribes, a blue tribe and a yellow tribe.  The competed in …. I guess you would call it the merge challenge.  The blue tribe solved their puzzle first.  Yay, Blue Tribe!

So, Jeff announced that the Blue Tribe was safe and now the Yellow Tribe would later compete for individual immunity.  Yellow would then vote someone out and whoever was left would then join the Blue Tribe in forming a new tribe.

However, both Erika and Naseer sat out the challenge.  The Blue Tribe had to choose one to join the tribe and another to send to Exile Island for two days.  The Blue Tribe picked Naseer.

Here’s where we stand:

Blue Tribe: Ricard, Evvie, Danny, DeShaw, Sydney

Yellow Tribe: Heather, Erika, Xander, Tiffany, Shan, Liana

So, the Blue Tribe got their feast and, eventually, the Yellow Tribe was sent over to join them.  Erika went to Exile.  Erika was upset but eventually Jeff Probst showed up and revealed the really stupid part of the twist.

Jeff put an hourglass on the beach.  If Erika smashes the hourglass, the results are reversed.  The Yellow Tribe (and Erika) is safe an the Blue Tribe has to compete to make the merge.

“TO BE CONTINUED”

Oh gee, what is Erika going to decide?  She can either risk getting voted out or she can make herself safe.  That’s not much of a cliffhanger.  Plus, it means all that hard work at the challenge was for nothing.  I may not like Ricard but he pushed himself solving that puzzle.  The Yellow Tribe, meanwhile, didn’t even come close.  But now, because of some stupid twist, that doesn’t matter.

It just felt unnecessary.  It felt more like a silly Big Brother twist than a Survivor thing.  And I was disappointed.  

Oh well.  We’ll see what happens next week.  If Erika doesn’t use her power to flip the results, she’s the worst Survivor player in history.

Lisa Marie

Survivor 41.5 “The Strategist or the Loyalist”

Raise your hand if you’re sick of the Ua Tribe?

Seriously, as of last night, Ua has lost three straight immunity challenges and they’ve lost three players. They are one of the least impressive tribes that I’ve ever seen on Survivor and yet, every time we see them at camp, Shan and Ricard are bragging about what great players they are.

Uhmmm …. great players occasionally win immunity, y’know?

Last night’s episode was pretty much dominated by Shan, the pastor who loves to lie. After Genie found the Beware Advantage, Shan convinced Genie not to open it. Then Shan stole the advantage for herself and made a fake idol to put in its place. After doing that, Shan then bragged about how she still had JD’s stolen extra vote. She gave the stolen extra vote to Ricard as a way to show that she trusted him and then, shortly afterwards, she demanded it back. Ricard, not surprisingly, thought that was weird and got paranoid.

Ua lost immunity for a third time. As a result, the first winning tribe, Yase, decided to send Liana and Shan on the summit trip. Shan and Liana formed an alliance while hiking up to the top of the hill. Liana also won the Knowledge is Power advantage, which gives her the power to steal someone else’s advantage. All of these advantages are getting difficult to follow.

At Tribal, to the shock of no one, Ua voted out Genie. Shan said that she had to choose between “the strategist and the loyalist.” Apparently, Ricard is supposed to be a strategist. Hey, Ricard — maybe strategize how to win a challenge for once! Seriously, for two people who have not performed well at all, Shan and Ricard spend a lot of time bragging on themselves. It’s kind of annoying.

As for the other tribes, Naseer found Luvu’s Beware Advantage so I guess that idol finally works and Xander’s gotten his vote back. DeShawn and Danny formed an alliance with Naseer, despite the fact that Naseer again refused to throw the immunity challenge. Meanwhile, on Yase, the girls searched Xander’s stuff and then threw a hissy fit because Xander had an extra vote. Tiffany confronted Xander. Xander tried to lie but then admitted that he had had it for a while. Tiffany patted herself on the back. Tiffany’s almost as annoying as Shan.

Fortunately, there’s going to be some sort of merge next week. But, in usual Survivor fashion, it apparently won’t be a typical merge. I don’t know what the means but this is a shorter-than-usual season so I imagine that somehow, they’ll all be one big tribe by the end of next week’s epiosde. We’ll see how that works out! But, seriously, I’m ready to get rid of some these players (Shan, Ricard, the Yase Tribe …. basically, anyone who isn’t Luvu) so anything that gets us closer to that goal, I’m happy with!

Lisa Marie

Genie, voted out last night

Survivor 41.4 “They Hate Me Cause They Ain’t Me”

After watching last night’s episode, I’m struggling to think if there’s even been two tribes as pathetic as the Yase and UA tribes. I mean, how bad do you have to be that you can’t even win a competition even though the other team is attempting to throw it?

DeShawn and Danny did try to throw the immunity competition last night, specifically so they could go to Tribal and get rid of Erica, who DeShawn doesn’t trust because Erica, for some reason, is obsessed with getting rid of Sydney. (A lot of people probably rolled their eyes when Sydney said “They hate me because they ain’t me,” but she’s probably a 100% correct when it comes to Erica.) However, because the other two tribes are terrible, Luvu still ended up winning the immunity challenge. Yase, in their defense, won as well but they still struggled, even with Luvu giving very little effort.

And so, UA returned to tribal for a second time and JD was voted out. And again, it’s not like JD was blindsided because the other members of the tribe were brilliant strategists. JD was voted out because he was naïve, cocky, and made a dumb mistake. Would anyone else have fallen for Shan’s request that he give her his advantage in order to win her trust? Probably not. Shan’s not that clever or slick.

JD did not react well to being voted out. Most people say, “Good luck.” JD asked if anyone wanted to tell him why he was being voted out. JD was under the impression that Genie was that night’s target. JD, though, had a tendency to be a bit cocky and, once you got beyond the bluster, he really wasn’t that good when it came to challenges. I’m not sure how I would have voted if I had been on that tribe. Genie struggled in the immunity challenges. JD was annoying and didn’t seem trustworth. Actually, if I was on that tribe, I probably would have quit the game already.

The UA Tribe is now down to three. Usually, this would be the time that Survivor shakes things up by combining the three tribes into two but no mention of that was made in the previews for next week’s episode. Personally, I kind of want to see UA suffer for at least one more episode so I’m fine with putting off any sort of merge for a while.

It also appears that, next week, Tiffany is going to try to get rid of Xander. Tiffany has an irrational hatred of Xander and it’s actually pretty annoying. While Luvu dominates the game, the other two tribes are obsessing on how to get rid of their strongest players.

So, I’ll be lighting a candle for Xander and hoping the best for him. If he goes, I hope the rest of Yase quickly follows.

JD, the 5th person voted out of Survivor

Survivor 41.3 “My Million Dollar Mistake”

Well, poor Brad.

Last night, when the UA tribe went to Tribal Council, Brad was votd out by a vote of 3-1.  I can’t say that I was particularly surprised.  Even though Brad seemed like a nice guy and he was undoubtedly a hard worker, he didn’t really seem to fit in with his tribe.  He wasn’t as social as JD.  He wasn’t as much of a snake as Ricard and Shan.  Though Brad thought that Shan was his ally, she voted to kick him off from the island.  Nice work being a liar, pastor.  Only Genie voted to keep Brad.  She instead voted for JD.  Brad, due to the Beware Advantage, did not get a vote.

Brad actually found two Beware Advantages last night.  One of the Beware advantages was the one where he got to the go the summit with Tiffany fro the Yase Tribe and Sydney from the Luvu Tribe.  At the summit, Tiffany and Sydney both received tarps for their tribes.  Brad recieved nothing.

Brad also found the Beware Advantage that works as a thee-way immunity idol but only after all three of them have been found and activiated by everyone reciting the password at the same time.  This was the same advantage that Xander found last week.  Unfortunately, the idiots on the Luvu Tribe has yet to find the third advantage and so, the legendary three-way immunity idol has yet to be activated.

Now that Brad has been voted out of the game, what happens with the three-way immunity idol?  Does he leave his beward advantage for someone else or is Xander permnanently voteless?  I guess we’ll find out next week!

A few final thoughts:

On the Yase Tribe, Evvie, Liana, and Tifany have managed to become three of my least favorite people to ever play this game.  Liana’s whining is not easy to take.

On the Luvu Tribe, Naseer is bizarrely obsessed with getting rid of Danny and DeShawn, who are the two main reasons why that tribe has yet to go to Tribal Council.  It appears that, next week, DeShawn is going to try to convince his team to throw the immuntiy challenge.  Gee, I wonder who he’ll be targeting?

Lisa Marie

Brad, the fourth person to be voted out of Survivor 41