Survivor 42.9 “Game of Chicken”

I have to say that, after last night’s episode, I feel bad for Tori.  Tori was one of two castaways voted out last night.  She would not have been voted out if not for Omar’s “brilliant” idea to vote out Rocksroy first, despite the fact that Romeo was the obvious target.  And then, before Tori could be voted out, she had to sit through Jeff Probst auditioning for another chance to host a daytime talk show.  One can sympathize and understand and agree with Maryanne and Drea’s refusal to vote out three black players in a row while also realizing that Jeff didn’t really give Tori much of a chance to make a case for herself.

Last night, we got hit by another one of those annoying twists that Survivor has recently become so enamored with.  The tribe was again split into two teams for the immunity challenge.  On the first team: Hai, Mike, Omar, Romeo, and Rocksroy.  On the other team: Maryanne, Drea, Tori, Jonathan, and Lindsay.  Two people — one from each team — would win immunity.  Two people — one from each team — would be voted out at tribal council.

It was actually a pretty exciting immunity challenge.  The castaways had to balance on A-frames that were floating in the ocean and try not to fall off.  The last person standing for each team won immunity.  Due to the heavy winds, the majority of them fell off within seconds of the challenge starting.  In the end, Hai and Jonathan won immunity.  Because Jonathan managed to stay standing the longest, his team also won a special feast.

For the first team, Romeo seemed like the obvious target but Omar suddenly decided that they should blindside Rocksroy because he figured it would probably be his only chance to gets Rocksroy out of the game and that Rocksroy was a bigger threat than Romeo.  Because Mike and Hai aren’t really that good at thinking for themselves, they went along with Omar’s plan.  By a vote of 4-1, Rocksroy was voted out.  Rocksroy was not happy about it and I don’t blame him.  I’m not sure what Omar was thinking.  Rocksroy may be a bigger physical threat but he’s not as clever or as sneaky as Romeo.  Omar basically turned on an ally for no good reason and now he’s going to have to spend the rest of the game trying to convince his other allies that he won’t do the same thing to them.

When the second team arrived, they were all stunned to see Rocksroy sitting next to Chanelle in the jury.  Jonathan’s original plan had been to split the votes between Maryanne and Drea, with Drea as the target.  However, the plan fell apart as soon as Maryanne and Drea saw that Rocksroy had been voted out.  Maryanne announced that there was no way that she would vote to send three black castaways to the jury in a row.  Both Maryanne and Drea played their idols before the votes were even cast.  With Jonathan having immunity, this meant that only Tori and Lindsay were eligible to be voted out.

Here’s my issue with how Jeff Probst handled things.  Maryanne had every right to refuse to vote for Drea, regardless of how much Jonathan wanted her to.  And Maryanne had every right to talk about how she was feeling and why it was important to her not to send Drea to the jury.  But Jeff spent so much time talking to Maryanne, who was safe, that he didn’t really give Tori or Lindsay much time to make a case for themselves.  It probably wouldn’t have made a difference but it’s still hard not to feel that Jeff got so caught up in the moment that he forget that he was hosting a competition show and the two people who actually were at risk of getting voted out were both treated as afterthoughts.

And then, to top things off, Jeff decided to not even have the castaways cast their votes.  He took their word that they were all planning to vote for Tori without actually having  them write down her name.  Sorry, that’s not  the way that Survivor is played.  You don’t take anyone’s word for anything.  You make them go into the voting area and you make them write down a name.  Instead, Jeff just decided that everyone was telling the truth and that it would be pointless to actually go through the ritual.  And again, it’s not that Jeff was wrong because he wasn’t.  Everyone would have voted for Tori.  But the point of the show is to actually make them do it, as opposed to just shrugging and saying, “Okay, I guess that’s it.”

Instead, Tori was reduced to playing her shot in the dark, which is the most useless of the many recent Survivor twists.  The shot in the dark didn’t work and Tori was sent to the jury.

Anyway, Maryanne and Drea are now idol-less and I have a feeling that Omar is going to be in some trouble back on the beach.  We’ll see what happens!

 

Survivor 42.8 “You Better Be Wearing a Seatbelt”

And the first member of the jury is….

(SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE OF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE YET)

…. Chanelle!

Well, that’s not really a surprise.  As soon as Tori won her second immunity challenge in a row, it was pretty obvious that Chanelle would be the next to go.  The merge clearly divided the tribe between the majority and a handful of players who are, as of right now, being picked off one-by-one.  Tori, Romeo, Chanelle, and Maryanne are being targeted right now.  Of that group, Mayanne is probably the strongest but because she’s so good at convincing people that she’s insecure and harmless, the majority went after Chanelle instead.

Of course, Romeo nearly saved Chanelle by getting paranoid that he was actually the target.  (Mike did tell a few people that Romeo was the target, just to keep Chanelle from catching on.)  As a result, Romeo started running around camp and talking to everyone and basically making a pest of out himself.  Hai decided that he wanted Romeo gone because he felt Romeo was causing too much chaos but, in the end, Mike was the one in charge.

The votes broke down as follows:

Drea, Hai, Jonathan, Lindsay, Mike, Rocksroy, and Tori all voted for Chanelle.  Even though Hai was the one who tired to convince everyone to vote out Romeo, he ended up going with the majority when it came time to vote.

Maryanne, Omar, and Chanelle voted for Romeo.  All three of these people were told that Romeo was the target as a part of Mike’s disinformation campaign.  This should be especially worrying to Omar, who spent most of this episode talking about how he was the only player to be trusted by both the majority and the outsiders.

Romeo voted for Hai.  I’m going to guess that Romeo heard that Hai was targeting him and, being paranoid, he probably thought he was doomed so he decided to vote for Hai as just a way to let Hai know what Romeo thought of him.  

And by a vote of 7-3-1, Chanelle became the first member of the jury.

In other news, Drea managed to get yet another advantage.  The Beware advantage, which she discovered during the Reward Challenge, gives her the ability to take away someone else’s immunity idol.  As much as I dislike all of the idols and the twists, I did like the way the Beware Advantage was covered in red paint.  It forced Drea to think quickly in order to cover her tracks.  Unfortunately, she didn’t get all of the red paint off of her arm and Tori now knows that Drea has an advantage of some sort.  Drea and Tori are both determined to get the other out though, in the end, I don’t think either one of them is quite as brilliant a strategist as they think they are.  They’re just been lucky when it comes to winning immunity and finding idols.

Finally, Omar and Mike had a few bonding moments.  Omar has a good social game but I think he’s also trying too hard to play both sides of the tribe.  People like him but eventually, they’re going to realize that he’s been making secret alliances were almost everyone on the beach and that could come back to take him out of the game.

Next week — two players go to jury!

See you then!

 

Survivor 42.6 and 42.7 — Again, With The Hourglass!

Ugh!  I hate that hourglass!

The hourglass is probably the worst of the many twists that Survivor has recently introduced.  The three-part idol is overly complicated and the shot in the dark seems useless and I’m not a fan of people losing their votes at the Summit but at least all of those can be justified as just being a part of Survivor.  The hourglass goes against everything that Survivor is supposed to be about.

For those who may not know, the Hourglass was introduced last season and it returned last night.  As Julie Chen Moonves might say, here’s how it works:

In the past, whenever the tribes merged, they would just come together, have a feast, and then everyone would compete for individual immunity.  However, the show decided to shake things up last season.  Now, before the merge, the tribes are reshuffled into two groups.  The groups compete for reward/immunity.  The group that wins is told that they are safe and they’re given a big meal.  The group that loses is told that they will be competing for individual immunity and that anyone who doesn’t win immunity or isn’t already safe will be eligible to be voted out.  After the council, the tribes will officially merge.

So far so good, right?  I mean, it’s a bit too complicated for its own good but it’s not terrible.

Here’s the thing, though.  The winning team picks two players from the losing team.  One person gets to join the winning team and gets to take part in the feast and is safe.  The other person is sent to Exile Island where Jeff presents them with an hourglass.  They can either let the sand run out of the hourglass, which would leave the results the same.  Or they can smash the hourglass, which “changes history.”  The losing team suddenly becomes safe and the winning team has to compete for immunity.

It’s the worst Survivor twist ever.  The whole point of Survivor has been that, if you win a challenge, you get the reward.  Pre-merge, the show is as all about teamwork.  Post-merge, the show celebrates individual effort.  But the main point is that the winner gets the reward and gets bragging rights.  The hourglass twist makes a mockery of all that.  And since breaking the hourglass also gives immunity to whoever breaks it, it’s not as if there’s any suspense over what the person on Exile Island is going to do.  Of course they’re going to break the hourglass!

So, last night, Hai, Jonathan, Maryanne, Lydia, and Tori thought they had won the challenge.  They selected Lindsay to join them and they sent Rocksroy to Exile.  While Rocksroy went to Exile, the winners had their feast and then all of the players gathered on Vati Beach, where the majority of them agreed that Tori and Chanelle should be the first players to be targeted, post-merge.

Meanwhile, Rocksroy broke the hourglass.  The next day, at the immunity challenge, Jeff explained what had happened and that the losing group (Rocksroy, Chanelle, Drea, Mike, Omar, and Romeo) was now safe.  Hai, Johnathan, Maryanne, Lydia, Tori, and Lindsay now had to compete for individual immunity.  Tori managed to win the immunity contest, which was good for her because she was the number one target.

With both Tori and Chanelle safe, the question became who would be voted out.  At first, Jonathan seemed like an obvious target because he’s such a physical threat.  Hai and Omar, however, both wanted to keep Jonathan.  (Jonathan is Omar’s closest ally while Hai feels that Jonathan is such a big target that keeping people focused on him will also keep them from targeting Hai.)  While Jonathan tried to convince people that Maryanne was actually a bigger threat, Omar targeted Lydia and somehow, he managed to pull it off.  I’m not sure why Lydia was viewed as being a bigger threat than either Jonathan or Maryanne but she was and she was voted off the island as a result.

The final vote, which was a bit of a mess, went like this:

Omar voted for no one, because he lost his vote as a result of last week’s Summit meeting.

Chanelle and Tori voted for Jonathan.

Lydia and Romeo voted for Maryanne.

Rocksroy, for some reason, voted for Lindsay.

Everyone else on the new tribe voted for Lydia.

By a vote of 6-2-2-1, Lydia was voted off the island.

And the tribes finally merged!

Next week, jury selection begins!  Let’s hope that last night’s episode was the last time we will ever see that hourglass.

Survivor 42.5 “I’m Survivor Rich”

Well, I think we all knew that was going to happen.

Daniel getting voted out at tribal council was really a foregone conclusion.  As soon as Jeff announced that the Vati Tribe had lost the immunity challenge and would have a meeting with him that night, Daniel was the obvious target.  Chanelle may be a better player and she may be more of a threat but Daniel had given his tribe plenty of reasons not trust him.  The last straw came when he sat out the challenge because of his arm, despite the fact that he had previously spent the day swimming in the ocean and leading his tribemates to suspect that he wasn’t being honest about his injury.

Daniel’s main mistake was thinking that he could talk his way out of any situation.  Daniel’s a lawyer in the real world and he obviously believed that he could plea bargain his way through any tribal council.  It didn’t work, of course.  The original vote was 2-2-1.  Hai and Lydia voted for Daniel.  Mike and Daniel voted for Chanelle.  Chanelle voted for Mike.  I’m not sure why Chanelle voted the way that she did.  Maybe she was thinking that Daniel had an immunity idol and she figured she might have to use her shot in the dark and, if she succeeded, that one vote against Mike would be the only one that counted.  

The revote was 3-0 for Daniel.  Mike chose to go with the majority, though he made it clear that he wasn’t happy that Chanelle had voted for him.  Daniel did not appear to be happy at all about being voted off.  So many castaways pretend like it’s no big deal when they get kicked out of the game.  Daniel made it clear that, to him, it was a big deal and that moment of honesty was kind of refreshing.

The other big development from last night was that Romeo and Drea found Ika’s idol.  Eveyone said their weird phrases and the immunity challenge so their idols are finally functional and, most importantly, everyone has gotten their votes back.  

Next week, we’ve got a two hour episode and it looks like there’s going to be a tribal shakeup.  It’s about time!  I just hope this season doesn’t screw up the merge with a stupid twist like last season did.

Lisa Marie