Survivor 41.9 “Who’s Who In The Zoo”

Hey, Survivor — give it a rest with the twists already!

Seriously, I would love to see an episode of Survivor this season that did not have some cutesy twist.  I would like to see just one episode that’s a straight-forward episode, with a reward challenge, an immunity challenge, and then a tribal council.  Is that too much to ask?  There’s an old saying about not fixing something that’s not broken.  Survivor was never broken so why are the producers trying to fix it?  Between the overly sentimental player profiles and the nonstop twists and Jeff Probst turning into an anemic Ryan Seacrest, this has been a difficult season for those of us who just wanted to enjoy some old school reality fun.

Last night’s twist was that, at the immunity challenge, the tribe broke into two different groups.  Both groups competed, two immunities were rewarded, and then there were two tribal councils.  Bleh.  This season feels like the producers made a bet to see how many stupid twists they could force into one season.

So, our first group of five was:

Ricard, Shan, Erika, Heather, and Naseer.  How exactly do Ricard and Shan always manage to end up on the same team?  For that matter, how did Heather end up on a team with her only ally, Erika?  Also, how many of you forgot Heather was on the show until last week?

Our second group of five was:

DeShawn, Danny, Liana, Xander, and Evvie.  Again — how do Danny and DeShawn always manage to end up on the same team?  DeShawn was on the verge of turning against Shan, which would have made for great television but that pretty much got pushed to the side by this stupid twist, which sent them to separate tribals.

Anyway, at the immunity challenge, the winners were Erika for team one and Xander for team two.  Since both Erika and Xander were being mentioned as potential targets, they were lucky to win immunity.  Good for them.

The first group to go to tribal council was the Ricard, Shan, Heather, Erika, and Naseer group.  Because Heather went crazy during the previous tribal council, she seemed like the obvious target.  But then Ricard decided that Naseer was a bigger threat, since he had an idol.  So, Shan played her extra vote and, at tribal, the first vote was a 3-3 tie between Naseer and Heather.  This led to our first revote of the season.  Ricard, Shan, and Erika all voted for Naseer.  Bye bye, Naseer.  Actually, let’s give Naseer some credit for handling getting blind-sided well and not leaving a bitter goodbye message.  

The second group was a bit less interesting.  Xander thought he had convinced DeShawn to vote with him and Evvie to take out Liana but DeShawn decided to stay true to his alliance with Danny and, as a result, the vote was 3 for Evvie and 2 for Liana.  Because Xander did not play his idol, Evvie was sent to the jury.  (It’s a sign of how weak this cast is that Evvie was one of the season’s “big threats.”)  Personally, I would have liked for Liana to be voted out because she’s annoying but then again, Evvie was pretty annoying as well. 

In fact, everyone in the game is kind of annoying.  After last night, even Xander is annoying.  It was pretty obvious that DeShawn was not going to betray Danny and vote opposite of what his alliance wanted but Xander naively believed everything DeShawn said and didn’t play his idol.  Huge mistake!

It appears that next week’s episode will feature Shan getting paranoid about Ricard, as she should be.  At this point, Ricard seems to be the only person capable of thinking strategically.  That doesn’t make him any less annoying.  He’s way too smug to be likable.  But at least he’s pulled off a good blindside.

We’ll see what happens next week!

Lisa Marie