Survivor 41.13 “One Thing Left To Do …. Win”

It’s a familiar story, the type of thing that we’ve seen on Survivor more than a few times.

After a long and hard-fought season, it’s time for the final tribal council.  The final three consist of one person who made it to the end by betraying a few of his closest allies, one person who held onto an idol for the entire season, and one person who basically managed to survive.  And even though the first two people have a better claim for being awarded the title of sole survivor, the third person wins because they’re the only one who has not alienated the key members of the jury.

I think that’s the best way to explain last night’s victory for Erika.

The final three were made up of DeShawn, Erika, and Xander.  The biggest threat in the game, Ricard, had been voted out during the show’s first tribal council.  After that, Xander won immunity and decided to bring Erika to the finale with him, despite Heather warning him that Erika had a lot of support on the jury.  In the fire-making challenge, DeShawn nearly lost to Heather but managed to pull off a close victory.

DeShawn faced a jury full of people who he betrayed or who remembered him talking about betraying other people.  DeShawn spent a good deal of the game talking about the other players behind their backs and it turned out that the jury remembered that and they were kind of bitter about it.  Ricard, especially, seemed angry about it.  (That’s a bit hypocritical on Ricard’s part, considering some of the things he said about people over the course of the game.)  Shan and Liana obviously never forgave DeShawn for betraying their alliance.

Xander could have made a good argument about why he deserved to win but it was obvious that his personality rubbed a lot of jurors the wrong way.  He came across a bit too slick and I think that a lot of the jury found him to be fake.  Naseer listed all of the “kind’ thing that Xander had done but Xander made the point of smiling and nodding while he did, which made it seem like Xander was admitting that he only did all of that to win jury votes.  Ricard felt that Xander had betrayed him by not playing his idol for him.  (Xander didn’t help matters but implying that he might right before announcing that he wouldn’t.)  Heather was obviously not happy about not being selected for the final three.  And I’m sure there was a feeling that Xander had basically gotten a free ride because he had an idol.

Then you had Erika, who played a much more low-key game than either Xander or DeShawn. Erika did just enough to build up a resume but she did it without personally betraying anyone or gloating. I think the jury liked her personally and they felt she ahd done enough that they could vote for her without coming across as being too bitter.

So, it was a 7-1-0 Erika victory. DeShawn got Danny’s vote. Xander got no one’s vote. I would have voted Xander but it is what it is. Erika played a good enough game. Congratulations to her!

So, that brings this uneven season to an end! I enjoyed writing about this season more than I enjoyed watching it, just because there were too many twists and I’m not a huge fan of this kinder, gentler approach that Jeff Probst seems to be going for. That said, I’ll definitely be back, writing about the next season.

As for this blog — it’ll return for The Amazing Race and Celebrity Big Brother. See you then!

Thank you for reading and commenting!

Lisa Marie

Survivor 41.12 “Truth Kamikaze”

Well, so much for Danny.

After weeks of silly twists and weird advantages, last night’s episode of Survivor was pretty straight-forward.  Everyone realized that Ricard should be the next to go.  The first 30 minutes of the show was made up of scenes of people talking about how dangerous Ricard was and how he absolutely had to be the next person voted out.  The show so overhyped the idea of Ricard getting voted out that I don’t think anyone was shocked when Ricard won immunity.

With Ricard now safe, it came down to whether to vote out DeShawn or to vote out Danny.  DeShawn was clearly the bigger threat to win the game but Erika and Xander thought that DeShawn also might be the only person who could beat Ricard in the next immunity challenge.  Because there were also concerns that Danny might have an immunity idol, the first vote was evenly split, 3-3, between DeShawn and Danny.  This led to  revote where everyone voted for Danny and Danny went on to become the next member of the jury.

There’s only one more episode to go.  As we head into the finale, the five remaining castaways are: DeShawn, Ricard, Xander, Erika, and Heather.  Xander has an idol so he’s guaranteed to make it to the top four, regardless of how the next immunity challenge goes.  The final three will come down to whoever wins the final immunity, who that person decides to take with them to the end, and then whoever wins the fire-making challenge.

Ricard is obviously the biggest threat to win.  If he doesn’t win the next immunity challenge, he is out.

DeShawn is a big threat and is good at challenges.  He’s definitely a threat but I think that the other castaways would keep him over Ricard.  If Ricard does win immunity, then DeShawn is out.

Xander and Erika could both make convincing cases for why they deserve the title of sole survivor.  I think, though, Erika will be viewed as a bigger threat than Xander because, unlike Xander, Erika survived despite not having an idol.

Heather has done nothing.  Whoever wins the final immunity might take her to the final three because they feel they can easily beat her.  I doubt Heather could win the fire-making competition.

So, here’s my finale prediction:

Deshawn wins the first immunity comp and Ricard is sent to jury.  My theory here is that the show has focused so much on DeShawn that it’s obvious he’s making it to the finale.  For that to happen, Ricard has to be next one voted out because otherwise, DeShawn would go.  I think only Xander and DeShawn could beat Ricard in an immunity challenge but I also think that, because he has an idol, Xander is going to want to conserve his strength for the final immunity challenge.  So, I think it will all pretty much fall on DeShawn and he’ll make it.

DeShawn has done will in previous endurance comps so I think he will also win the second immunity comp and he’ll select Heather to go to the final three.  Xander and Erika will then compete to make fire and I imagine Xander will win.

The final three, in this scenario, are DeShawn, Heather, and Xander.  Out of those three, I think DeShawn would be favored because he can claim that he made it to the final three without having any idols or extra votes.

That’s what I think will happen, just based on the players and how this season has been edited.  We’ll see if I’m right next week!

Lisa Marie

Survivor 41.11 “Do or Die”

Last night, Survivor introduced the Do or Die twist to the game and I loudly groaned because it totally went against everything that Survivor was supposed to be about.

Basically, at the immunity challenge, Jeff got all excited about the fact that there was a new twist.  The winner of the immunity challenge would, of course, win immunity.  However, the first person to fall out of the challenge would be forced to pick one of three boxes at tribal.  If the box had a picture of a skull inside of it, that person would be sent to jury and there would be no vote.  If castaways agreed to sit out the challenge, they would not win immunity but they would also not have to pick a box.  Yippie, I guess.

Heather and Liana chose not to participate in the challenge.  I get Heather’s logic because she’s not really that good at challenges so why should she take the risk?  But Liana had just seen her closest alley blind-sided and she no longer had any reason to trust Danny or DeShawn.  SO WHY NOT TRY TO WIN IMMUNITY!?  Liana is not very good at this game.  That’s been obvious ever since she fell for Xander’s fake immunity idol.

Anyway, DeShawn was the first castaway to fall out of the challenge, which means he got stuck with the Do or Die.  Meanwhile, Danny won his first immunity challenge.

Before I say anything else, I should explain that I started to mentally check out from tonight’s episode as soon as Jeff explained the Do or Die twist.  The Do or Die goes against everything that I love about Survivor.  Survivor is supposed to be about strategy.  It’s supposed to be about blindsides and close votes and people wondering who they can trust.  The Do or Die Twist was way too random.  It was something that maybe would have been appropriate pre-merge but it’s a bit unfair to spring it on everyone this late in the game.  DeShawn is a power player and a threat to win the game.  Survivor was prepared to randomly remove him with a silly twist.  That’s more like Big Brother than Survivor.

It actually reminded me of what happened to Paschal, during the fourth season of Survivor.  Paschal was one of the most popular guys on the show that season.  He played a good social game.  He was loyal to his allies and courteous even to those in opposing alliances.  He was loved by just about everyone.  Throughout the entire season, he hadn’t gotten one vote at tribal council.  Paschal made it all the way to final four and then, due to a tied vote at tribal council, everyone was forced to draw a rock.  Paschal got the purple rock and was sent to jury, leading to a rather lackluster final three of Neleh, Kathy, and Vecepia.  No one was happy about that.  Jeff Probst made a huge point of declaring that the rules would be changed to try to prevent anything like that happening again.  And yet, Do or Die was this season’s equivalent of the purple rock.  Why are so many of the recent Survivor twists — Edge of Extinction also comes to mind — devoted to recreating things that everyone hated from previous seasons?

Anyway, after the challenge, there was a lot of strategizing about how to vote out in case DeShawn survived the Do or Die but it was kind of hard to care because it all depended on a random whim of fate.  Danny tried to get Xander to take out Ricard.  Xander, however, still felt loyal to Ricard and felt that Liana should be the target.  I can’t stand Liana but, at the same time, Ricard was obviously a bigger threat so, last night, I definitely didn’t agree with Xander’s logic.

It was an emotional tribal.  DeShawn opened up about how he felt about Shan calling him a snake.  Tears were shed.  Still, it was hard to really focus on all of that when I knew that the whole stupid Do or Die thing was coming up.  For all my complaining, DeShawn did pick the right box.  He picked the box with the picture of a flame, so his game will continue.  Things could have been worse but the Do or Die twist still should never have happened in the first place.

As for the vote, Erika decided to stay loyal to Heather, Xander, and Ricard and she voted for Liana.  Xander also wasted his extra vote on Liana.  Danny, Liana, and DeSawhn voted for Ricard but, in the end, the vote was 5-3 in favor of sending Liana to jury.

Two more weeks to go until we got our final survivor!  Right now, my money is on Ricard.

Lisa Marie

Survivor 41.10 “Baby With A Machine Gun”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today, Survivor fans can give thanks that, last night, the castaways finally did something that made sense and they voted out Shan.  The self-declared “Mafia Pastor” was vote out largely because everyone realized that she had been involved in so many big moves and had been responsible for sending home so many people that she would be difficult to beat in a final two situation.  Add to that, she also still had her idol.  Trying to blindside Shan and take her idol out of play was simply good gameplay.  The move to blindside Shan was led by Ricard and DeShawn, who were previously two of her biggest allies.

(Of course, if Ricard hadn’t won immunity, he probably would have been the one voted out that night.  What’s interesting is that the whole reason RIcard fought so hard to win immunity was because Shan warned him.  So, Ricard won his immunity and then thanked her by leading the move to blindside her.)

Personally, I haven’t been a big fan of Shan since the game began.  Before the merge, she led her tribe to so many consecutive tribal councils that, by the time the merge happened, she and Ricard were the only two left.  She would brag to the camera about how ruthless she was but then get upset if anyone else called her out on it.  While she did find a lot of advantages and did use a few of them to get some people out of the game, she was also frequently tricked by the other players.  Who can forget Xander tricking both her and Liana with a fake immunity idol?  My main problem with Shan, to be honest, is that she often seems to hide behind the fact that she’s a pastor.  Ricard is frequently annoying but at least he admits to his villain status.

As for how tribal council went down, Shan and Liana thought that Erika was the target.  Everyone else split their votes between Liana and Shan.  (The votes for Liana were in case Shan played her idol).  This led to a 3-3 tie vote between Liana and Shan.  In the revote, in which everyone but Liana and Shan could vote, everyone voted for Shan.  By a vote of 6-0, Shan was sent off to the jury.  As she left, she called DeShawn “a snake” and announced that she would vote for RIcard if he made it to the final two.  That’s definitely going to put any even bigger target on Ricard’s back and I imagine that Shan realized that.

There will definitely be fallout over this  vote.  Liana is going to be furious.  Ricard is still going to be a target.  Xander still has his idol and, after spending so many tribals as a target, is now suddenly flying under the radar.  Personally, I’m starting to think that Danny might secretly be the biggest threat to win the game.  He’s likable and, unlike DeShawn, he hasn’t made any enemies.

We’ll see what happens.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Lisa Marie

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

Survivor 41.8 “Betraydar”

We are a little more than half-way through the latest season of Survivor. We got our first juror last night. It’s an individual game now, with everyone on the same tribe and everyone having an equal shot at the win. Now is traditionally the time when we start to learn who the real players are and who is just there taking up space.

So far, these are my main thoughts on this season:

First off, I’m missing the days when Jeff Probst was mean and snarky and openly made fun of the castaways. Now, he’s endlessly enthusiastic and hyper and positive and it just doesn’t feel right. I guess Jeff was told that the show needed to be more positive but that’s not what Jeff is good at. The Amazing Race’s Phil is the positive one. Jeff is at his best when he’s being sarcastic.

Secondly, I still have no idea who the majority of the people on this show are. Last night, Heather tried to make a big move at Tribal and, for me, it fell flat because I honestly had no idea who Heather was.

Third, the castaways who I do feel as if I’ve gotten to know are not a particularly impressive group. Shan, Liana, Evvie, and Naseer all would have been voted out early during a good season of Survivor.

Four, the editors are trying to change things up through the use of flashbacks and not showing us people finding idols until the moment that they decide to use them and all the rest. Sometimes, that’s been effective. Other times, it’s just been a distraction. I think the folks behind-the-scenes are trying to change things up to keep Survivor from becoming stodgy but I also think they may be trying a bit too hard.

As for last night’s episode — well, who knows? I mean, it was pretty straight forward until they got to tribal. Xander agreed to sit out of the reward challenge so that Erika could get a chance to win the reward. Shan and Liana got mad because Ricard ate some of their food right after he finished off the reward challenge feast. (And they should have gotten mad because Ricard really is a jerk.) After the previous tribal, Evvie was the top target but Evvie managed to win immunity. Going into tribal, the plan was to split the votes between Tiffany and Xander in order to make sure that at least one potential Evvie ally went home. DeShawn said that he would rather get rid of Naseer but Shan dismissed his concerns, which upset DeShawn.

And then at tribal, for some reason, Heather decided to blow everything up by running around and whispering to everyone that DeShawn was right and that they should vote out Naseer. I’m not really sure why Heather did this because Heather has gotten next to no screentime and I really don’t know anything about her interactions with Naseer. Is Heather just a flake or was she genuinely trying to be a master strategist? I imagine the former is probably correct.

Of course, this led to Shan briefly whispering that they should vote out Heather but DeShawn refused to go with that plan because it had just been sprung on him and plus, he was sick of Shan acting like she was in charge. Ricard told Xander to play his idol but neither he nor Tiffany did so. The vote was a bit of a mess but it went like this:

1 vote for Naseer (from Xander)

2 votes for Xander (from Danny and Naseer)

2 votes for Heather (from Tiffany and Evvie)

6 votes for Tiffany (from DeShawn, Erika, Heather, Liana, Ricard, and Shan)

And so, Tiffany became our first juror. (Last week, I was under the impression that Sydney was the first juror but I was wrong. Probst specifically announced TIffany as being “the first member of our jury.”)

Next week: DeShawn gets sick of Shan! It’s about time!

Lisa Marie

Survivor 41.7 “There’s Gonna Be Blood”

Last night’s episode of Survivor was better than last week’s, if just because there was actually a tribal council.  I’m still not happy about the “Changing History” twist or whatever the official name of it is and, judging from some of the comments online, I’m not the only person who feels that way.  Hopefully, Survivor will pay attention and never do something like that again.  I know this season is supposed to be the start of a “new era in Survivor,” but I don’t think anyone watches this show because they want to watch Jeff Probst get all giddy over every new twist.

To the shock of no one, Erika broke the hourglass on Exile Island. As a result, immunity shifted.  The lame-os who didn’t even come close to winning the previous challenge were suddenly safe while the people who actually worked hard and past some effort into winning were punished with yet another immunity challenge.  The show tried to make it look like Erika had to make a difficult decision but we all knew what Erika was going to do.  The fact that Erika only had to break an hourglass to give safety to some of the weakest players ever to appear on the show will never sit right with me.

Danny, DeShawn, Naseer, Ricard, Sydney, and Evvie all played for individual immunity.  Ricard won the challenge, which meant that he was safe while the other five could be voted out.  Continuing the season’s list of unfair twists, every member of the merged tribe could vote at tribal council but only those five — Danny, DeShawn, Naseer, Sydney, and Evvie — could receive votes.  It would have been more fair to limit the votes to only the six who had to compete for individual immunity but whatever.

Fortunately, Tribal council was a wild one, though it really shouldn’t have been. Xander managed to totally fool Liana (and, since Liana doesn’t do anything without her advice, Shan as well) but that was less about Xander being clever and more about Liana being a complete idiot.

The majority had decided to vote for Evvie but Xander announced early on that he would be using his idol to protect her.  Liana, however, had the steal an idol advantage and she and Shan came up with a plan to steal Xander’s idol at tribal.  However, Xander knew that Liana had the advantage because Liana was dumb enough to tell Tiffany about it and Tiffany repeats everything that she hears.  Going into tribal, Xander knew that everyone knew he had an idol and Liana knew that everyone knew she had the advantage.

So, at tribal, Xander made a very big deal of announcing that he had the idol and that he was going to play it for Evvie.  In fact, Xander made such a big deal about it that it should have been obvious to anyone that Xander was holding up a fake idol and basically trying to trick Liana into wasting her advantage.  However, Liana is not a particularly clever player so she wasted her advantage by asking Xander to give her his fake idol.  It was a good Survivor moment but it’s kind of indicative of the level of competition this season that both Liana and Shan fell for such an obvious trick.

As for the vote, Evvie, Tiffany, Xander, and Sydney tried to vote out DeShawn and they would have possibly succeeded if they had been able to keep Naseer in their alliance but Naseer ultimately decided to go back to Deshawn and Danny.  The rest of the group divided their votes between Sydney and Evvie.  Suspecting that the majority of the votes had been cast for Sydney, Xander told TIffany not to use the idol on Evvie.  (Xander had given the idol to Tiffany before Tribal.)  Xander’s instincts turned out to be correct.  The final vote was 5 for Syd, 4 for Evvie, and 3 for Deshawn.  Sydney became the first juror, which sucks because Sydney was the castaway to whom I most related.

While the whole thing with Erika and the hourglass got last night’s episode off on a bad note, a wild and chaotic tribal council redeemed last night’s episode.  Hopefully, future episode will feature more strategy and less twists!

Lisa Marie

Juror #1, Sydney Segal

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