Idol Speculation: “Survivor 45” Cast Assessment.

Well, CBS certainly took their sweet time this year, and also certainly continue to be stingy with the info they give us.  Nevertheless, the cast is officially here, so it is time for me to go over each of them, and how I think they’ll do this season.  Yes, welcome back once again to “Idol Speculation”, my knee-jerk opinion that everyone is entitled to.  

Before we get into the cast, one quick bit of business: Amongst the information that CBS refuses to give us is the tribe divisions. That said, as tribe division does have a major impact on one’s chances (but tell me again how luck plays no part on this show), I’ve found a reported leak of tribe divisions, and will be going based off of that.  I normally wouldn’t do so, but I’ve come to respect how important knowing said division is, and this leak does line up with what we saw in the preview, so I’ll act as though it is legit.  If, for some reason, it is inaccurate, my apologies.  That said, let’s dig into this new cast, starting with…

Austin Li Coon (26, Grad Student, Chicago, IL, Reba Tribe): When I first read Austin’s initial profile, I worried that he didn’t know much about the game.  He initially listed Owen Knight (“Survivor 43”) as the guy he’s most like, which made me a bit concerned.  After all, Owen would have been on his tv VERY recently when Austin was going out to film, so perhaps it was just recency bias.  But then he went on to list Wendell Holland (“Survivor Ghost Island”) and Jay Starrett (“Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X”) as well, so I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt here.  That said, I do feel Austin missed his true closest “Survivor” companion: Woo of “Survivor Cagayan”.  And no, I’m not just saying that because the two look like they could be cousins.  Dude projects a very laid-back, surfer-bro attitude.  Someone who’s there more for the experience than to play the game super-strategically.  I mean, the dude literally put Naruto, the anime/manga ninja not known for his decision-making prowess, as his hero.  Put cruelly, Austin’s an idiot.  That said, he seems like a pretty likable, easygoing guy (he certainly has one of the most relatable pet peeves to date.  Banana-flavored candy is an insult to both bananas and candy), so he’s probably a useful idiot.  Expect him to be a number in an alliance just happy to go along for the ride, eliminated mid-to-late merge as a challenge threat.  He’ll be a bright spot on our screens until then, but not necessarily the smartest.  

Dee Valaderes (26, Entrepreneur, Miami, FL, Reba Tribe): So not only are we repeating tribe divisions and colors from “Survivor 43”, but we’re repeating contestants, too?  With Bruce from “Survivor 44″ coming back, I had to double-check that this wasn’t Justine Brennan of “Survivor 43”, aka “The Salesperson Cody Insisted Had To Go”.  But no, Dee is just a woman who gives off similar energy to her, and thus will probably meet the same fate.  Look, don’t get me wrong, there’s not a lot on paper that goes against Dee.  Most of her answers are inoffensive, and while I could nitpick things like her wanting to emulate players who made “BIG MOVEZ”, sometimes to their own detriment, that’s getting really nitpicky.  No, my call here is 100% vibes.  Some people just exude that “sales” energy, and while Dee technically isn’t a salesperson, she’s doubtless had to use similar skills in her career.  To her credit, Justine’s vibes in that particular area were low; she just got caught out by someone who was also a salesperson.  But only the blind could miss what Dee exudes here, and I bet most people are going to consider her a threat.  Luckily for Dee, I don’t see her tribe going to Tribal Council much, and there is one person on her tribe we’ll be getting to who’s a more obvious early target.  However, I still say Dee is out at the later pre-merge, maybe early merge if she’s lucky, just because her vibes are too obvious.  

Brandon Donlon (26, Content Producer, Sicklerville, NJ, Lolo Tribe): Doubtless those of you who saw the preview remember Brandon.  He’s the “My grandfather robbed a bank.” guy.  Unfortunately for him, in his bio he stated that getting a root canal was preferable to playing Settlers of Catan, and for this sin, he shall be the first boot.  

I kid, I kid.  Despite my newfound dislike of the guy for dissing one of my favorite board games, I actually like his odds decently well.  Dude knows the game well, and seems to have a good understanding of himself, with apt past player comparisons to the likes of Jonathan Penner (“Survivor Cook Islands”) and Mike White (“Survivor David vs. Goliath”).  Add onto that a solid challenge-helping package on a tribe that’s going to have some easy early targets, and I don’t see a way Brandon doesn’t make the merge.  That said, he does give off that obvious “schemer” look in the way he carries himself and talks, but does have a charm about him.  Thus, I’m putting him as a late-merge boot, probably the penultimate episode, when his schemes finally catch up with him.  Think a similar fate to Omar on “Survivor 42”.  Good, certainly, but not good enough to lower his threat level and pull it all the way.  Look for him to be a top contender for a returnee season, though.  Dude does give a good confessional.  

Emily Flippen (28, Investment Analyst, Laurel, MD, Lolo Tribe): No, that is not a typo.  There are, in fact, people on this season who are not exactly 26 years old.  Emily is probably my personal favorite of the season, purely on the comparison to Kass McQuillen (“Survivor Cagayan”) alone.  Kass remains one of my all-time favorite characters, and somewhat underrated as a strategist (yes, her social graces could leave much to be desired, but I could see where she was coming from, and she had a good BS detector.  Plus, her return on “Survivor Cambodia” did show us that she could work in that area as well), so I’m pleased to see she takes the comparison as a compliment.  That said, by numbers alone, probably not the comparison you want to be making, Emily.  Add onto that the admission that you’ll be making mistakes, and the first concerning pet peeve of the new cast (her pet peeve is basically “everything”), and while we’ll enjoy Emily as a character, I doubt she’ll stick around for too long for us to enjoy.  Again, there’s an earlier target on this tribe we haven’t met yet, so unless she costs her tribe a challenge, or they collapse into the disaster tribe of the season, she probably makes the “Earn the Merge” portion.  There, however, her personality will probably be too big to ignore, and she’ll be an easy consensus boot, especially if her tribe is large, and therefore easy to target.  She could be out earlier in the event she costs her tribe a challenge (she does admit she’s not the best athletically), but for now, this is unfortunately where I’m sticking with her placement.  Also, as an aside, can you believe it took US “Survivor” this long to cast an “Emily”?

Brandon “Brando” Meyer (23, Software Developer, Seattle, WA, Belo Tribe): Oh Brando.  I hate to repeat myself from the bio I gave Zach Wurtenberger (“Survivor 42”), but I wish you were on a different season or on a different tribe.  Dude is open, smart, friendly, surprisingly athletic, all qualities that should work in his favor.  Unfortunately for him, I predict there will be a disaster tribe this season, and he’s on it.  He does appear to be the brains of his tribe, so expect most challenge wins to come from puzzles completed by him.  But he can only take his tribe so far, and as they keep losing, places to hide become fewer and fewer.  Put another way, I think he’s smart enough to get in an alliance, but I don’t see him as the driving force.  All right for a few votes, but eventually, the alliance will be forced to eat each other pre-merge, and as such, the lieutenant position he would find himself in would be most vulnerable.  A late pre-merge boot, but a pre-merge boot nonetheless, and I am sorry for him for his unfortunate tribe placement.  With just a few better challenge competitors to start with, dude could run deep.  

Hannah Rose (33, Therapist, Baltimore, MD, Lolo Tribe): Before we get into discussing Hannah, I do have to call out “Entertainment Weekly”, here.  No one calls it “Baltimore City, Maryland”.  It’s just “Baltimore”.  “Balmer” if you want to do it in the Maryland accent.  Drop the “city”, it’s already implied.  

Anyway, onto Hannah yourself, she can basically be described, relating to “Survivor 44”, as “Carolyn-lite”.  Tattoed blonde therapist?  Check.  Manic energy?  Check.  Looking for authenticity?  Check.  Now, with how Carolyn did, you might think this would bode well for her.  But backing all this up, Carolyn at least had experience with online reality games to back up her claims of being able to read the room.  Hannah makes these same claims, but with nothing to back them up, and her REALLY feeling like a rehash of a character we’ve seen, if she loses a challenge, I see her going out.  Not to mention therapists who aren’t Denise Stapely (“Survivor Philippines”) tend not to do well in the game for some reason.  Add onto that another concerning set of pet peeves (loud chewers and narcissists), and I peg Hannah as a pre-merge boot.  Ironically, despite a memorable personality, she’ll be forgettable just because Carolyn was on so recently, and will kind of dominate the character space for a bit.  It’s a shame, too.  First player from Baltimore, my hometown, and the only one of this cast to admit a love for Aubry Bracco (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”).  I kind of like her a lot.  But unless her tribe outright NEVER loses (which I doubt), she’s out pre-merge.  

Bruce Perreault (47, Insurance Agent, Warwick, RI, BeloTribe): Here he is, Bruce from “Survivor 44”.  Probably the most heavily anticipated contestant of the season.  I’m glad he gets a chance to actually play the game this time, though I do question a bit the wisdom of having him be the ONLY returnee.  On the one hand, it wouldn’t be fair to have him pull a Caleb Reynolds on “Survivor Game Changers”, and be brought back with a bunch of other players, only to be thoroughly outclassed and have no real shot.  On the other hand, having him be the only returnee makes him stand out, and standing out early on is an easy way to get a target.  That said, this is the era of “Touchy, Feely Survivor”, where everyone wants to be nice, and given Bruce’s obvious overall experience, I doubt being a returnee will affect his placement too much.  

No, Bruce will be out early for OTHER reasons.  Partly it’s the “disaster tribe” theory I spoke of earlier, but it’s also an age thing.  I feel like I say this every season nowadays, but this season skews YOUNG.  I believe I read that the average age on this cast is 29.  Not a bunch of fresh-faced babes, but definitely outside Bruce’s target range, and when you consider that Bruce is one of only two people in his 40’s (and the only one in his 40’s on this tribe), there’s just going to be a connection issue.  Bruce’s story, and his willingness to go all-out in challenges, mean he probably isn’t the very first boot, but unless his tribe can win a lot, I just don’t see him connecting with this group, and he’s out somewhere in the early-to-mid pre-merge.  Sorry, man.  At least you’ll get to see Tribal Council this time.  

Janani “J. Maya” Krishnan-Jha (24, Singer, Los Angeles, CA, Reba Tribe): Hoo boy, it’s tough when they don’t specify whether someone is going by their given name or their stage name.  Since they made a point to mention it, I’ll stick with J. Maya for now, but I reserve the right to change it if that’s not how her chyron refers to her later on.  J. Maya certainly wins the award for the wordiest bio of the bunch, though weirdly it doesn’t feel like she says much of substance in it.  Sort of a commentary on influencer/internet sensation culture in general when you think about it.  Not to say that I dislike her; she definitely has her good moments.  One of the nice nuggets I got out of her bio was her respect for her mountaineering grandmother.  Not sure how much it’ll help her in the game of “Survivor”, but it’s nice to see, and a cool shout-out.  I know from expanded media that she also won a competition centered around making puns, which again, not really relevant to the game, but awesome nonetheless.  Apart from possible wordiness, there’s not really anything in her bio that goes against J. Maya, so I’ll give her a fairly average rating.  Barring her turning out to be a major challenge sink, expect her to be around until the merge at least, probably going out in the mid-to-late merge by trying to make a big move and getting called out for playing too hard, too fast.  If she makes puns throughout the game, however, I at least will enjoy the time she’s there.  

Drew Basile (23, Grad Student, Philadelphia, PA, Reba Tribe): Say what you will about Drew, but he knows himself very well.  Dude screams “nerd” with every orifice of his being, and owns it, openly comparing himself to the likes of Cochran (“Survivor South Pacific”) and Ryan Ulrich (“Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”).  The latter I would say is a fairly deep cut for “Survivor” lore (not to say that the season itself is forgotten, but conversation seems to center around Ben and Chrissy), so clearly this guy knows his stuff.  It’s most unfortunate for him that he’s coming hot on the heels of Carson Garrett (“Survivor 44”).  Now, I doubt that our other players this season have seen ALL of that season, so they may not have seen Carson’s talent with puzzles play out.  But they definitely saw some of that season (Carolyn gets referenced in at least one bio), and Carson’s 3-D printing shenanigans were referenced in the first episode.  Top that off with him wanting to play fast from the get-go per the season preview, and you’ve got a receipt for a super-fan ready to play their way right out of the game.  Drew is lucky he’s not on the disaster tribe, or he’d be out super early.  As it stands, I mark him an early-to-mid merge boot for overplaying his hand.  Again, probably a fun watch, but a flameout in the game almost certainly.  

Julie Alley (49, Estate Attorney, Brentwood, TN, Reba Tribe): I hope you like “Survivor Cambodia”, or at least the phrase “Second Chance”, because Julie will be saying it nonstop for the entirety of her screen time.  From said season being referenced repeatedly by her, to her talking about how she took a second chance in life by changing careers at a (relatively) older age, you can bet this is going to come up a lot.  Thankfully it won’t get old, but unfortunately for Julie, that’s because I have her pegged as the first boot.  There’s just too many factors working against her for me to say otherwise.  The oldest woman on a tribe is always going to have an uphill battle, especially in this day and age where tribe swaps are a rarity, and so challenge strength becomes more paramount as a factor.  This season will be particularly pronounced, since as mentioned, average age is 29.  The only person even really close to her age is Bruce, who’s on another tribe.  Almost makes you think she was put on so Bruce wasn’t the oldest player this season.  Sprinkle on the “Second Chance” rhetoric that I can see getting old real fast, and unless she’s not nearly as much of a challenge sink as she appears, or can form bonds better than she’s indicated with her bio, she’s toast.  I’m happy she’s successful in real life, but I don’t see that translating to “Survivor”.  

Jake O’Kane (26, Attorney, Boston, MA, Belo Tribe): Say what you will about this cast, but for the most part, there’s been some meaty stuff to talk about with them.  No truly generic characters in the bunch.  Jake is the exception to that.  Surprising, given that he had one of the more memorable lines from the season preview (about moving out of his grandma’s house if he wins), and maybe he works better on tv.  But man, his bio just went in one eye and out the other, leaving basically no impact.  He’s fine.  What he says is fine.  Pretty boilerplate stuff about his skills.  Inoffensive, but not leaving an impact.  Weirdly, BECAUSE he’s so inoffensive, and seems like he’ll do ok in challenges, I expect Jake to actually survive a good while despite being on the disaster tribe.  The strength of being kind of generic is that you can chameleon your way in with most groups.  If Jake has even the barest game smarts, and doesn’t sink the tribe in challenges, he should do fine.  I won’t put him as a winner pick proper, since I worry he lacks the killer instinct he needs to strike when the time is right, but he’s definitely in my unofficial “dark horse” slot for the season.  I see him making the finale, the everyone says “Oh, right, he’s still here and a threat”, and gets booted.  Decent placement, but could be better.  

Katurah Topps (35, Civil Rights Attorney, Brooklyn, NY, Belo Tribe): The other person I expect to survive the disaster tribe, Katurah edges out Jake to be one of my two proper winner picks for the season.  This is odd because there are a couple of red flags in her bio.  Her pet peeves are “slow walkers, slow talkers, and people who ooze privilege”, all traits she has at least a decent chance of encountering on the show.  She also talks about moving from a deprived upbringing to become the successful attorney she is today.  beautiful to read about, but I can see coming across as self-righteous or as a major jury threat.  Worth mentioning as well that she’s technically on the “older” end of the spectrum age-wise, but that’s more a mark of this season being young-skewed that her being “older”, and she seems to have the physical fitness to help counteract any negative age perceptions.  All that said, her experience in multiple worlds I think will give her an edge.  If she’s grown up in poverty, she likely knows life on the streets and how to navigate that.  But she can also move in the privileged attorney circle with at least some comfort.  Put those skills to use on a tribe in desperate need of command, and you’ve got a recipe for someone surviving the decimation of their own tribe.  Come the merge, she’s then in the enviable swing vote position, and based on her qualifications, she’s shrewd enough to ride that out all the way to the end.  Add in some good oration at Final Tribal, and you might as well just write her the check.  

Kaleb Gebrewold (29, Software Sales, Vancouver, BC, Lolo Tribe): Our Canadian representative for the season, and the first from British Columbia!  Dude just seems like a nice guy all around, and I did get a kick out of him using “golden retriever” as an adjective to describe himself.  Though I do then have to deduct points for him not technically naming a “Survivor” he is most like.  He starts out comparing himself to Tony Vlachos (“Survivor Cagayan”), then wisely retracts that as too high a bar to clear, but never gives an alternative name.  I still like the guy, though, but likability alone is not enough to win the game.  Even Ethan Zohn (“Survivor Africa”) had his cutthroat moments.  On top of that, Kaleb has the Canadian problem, not to mention the salesperson problem again.  Yes, I know Kane didn’t win on “Survivor 44”, but I don’t know if THESE players know that, and Maryanne and Erika are still going to be fresh in people’s minds.  Kaleb’s doing the best he can to present himself as a chill-non threat, and luckily for him he’s on a tribe I see rarely going to Tribal Council.  But such goodwill cannot last forever.  Expect Kaleb to be a consensus boot in the early-to-mid merge area, just for being too nice.  

Kellie Nalbandian (30, Critical Care Nurse, New York City, NY, Belo Tribe): Welp, add another one to the “Unorthodox Spelling of the Name ‘Kelly’” Pile!  Long-time readers may recall that I once had a hypothesis that contestants with the name “Kelly” (one of, if not the, most common name on US “Survivor”) could be successful if, and only if, their name was not spelled the traditional “Kelly” (Wiglesworth of “Survivor Borneo” being the exception, and I think that one only applied retroactively when she started being called by said last name).  As such, it would seem like Kellie would have a good shot at the game.  I would agree… If she were on a different tribe.  Unfortunately, Kellie is on what I predict to be the disaster tribe of the season, and that’s going to cost her.  She’s not a challenge sink, but she’s not exactly a challenge strength either, so there’s not much incentive to keep her around based on that.  She’s definitely tough enough for the game (if she can survive being a nurse during the height of COVID-19, I’m not going to question her toughness), but unless her tribe wins more than I expect, she just won’t have the chance.  Granted, she also has some concerning things in her bio.  Notably, her pet peeves are “inefficiency” and “know-it-alls”, both of which are concerning (and in regards to the latter, how’s she going to do RHAP exit interviews if she hates “know-it-alls”?).  Still, the poor tribe luck is the biggest factor in her downfall.  She’s not first out, even on her tribe, but eventually her number will just be up. I will say that if she CAN make the merge, she probably makes a deep run, but this time, I just don’t see the numbers working out for her.  

Nicholas “Sifu” Alsup (30, Gym Owner, O’Fallon, IL, Reba Tribe): Ok, I have to take umbrage with this nickname.  “Sifu”, as people probably know from either “Avatar: The Last Airbender” or “Kung Fu Panda”, is not a name, but a TITLE, basically meaning “master”.  Not really a proper name.  I’ll still refer to him as that, since that’s what he wants to be called, but know that I know your “name’s” origin, dude.  My weird little annoyance aside, Sifu is in a pretty good spot.  Likely the physical anchor of his tribe, he seems pretty level-headed and inoffensive.  Dude’s used to working with people in his gym, so probably some good interpersonal skills without being domineering.  Expect him to take a lead role in challenges, but be a bit more of a co-leader at camp.  While he does have the most concerning pet peeves outside of Emily’s with “liars and mean people”, his overall challenge strength probably keeps him safe until the merge.  If he can kind of fade into the background at that point, which I suspect he can based on how he describes his work, expect him to be a late-merge boot, once the other physical threats are gone.  Also, he likes “Dragon Ball Z”, and while that’s not the same as “Naruto”, it seems like he and Austin are cut from similar cloth that way, so I expect them to get along swimmingly.  

Kendra McQuarrie (31, Bartender, Steamboat Springs, CO, Belo Tribe): Rounding out our disaster tribe is the person I’d say is most likely to go once they lose a challenge.  On a tribe of overall pretty, for want of a better word, “normal” people, Kendra stands out as “the crazy one”.  She openly compares herself to Carolyn, and some might say that bodes well, but I maintain that Carolyn was an exception, rather than a rule.  Most of the time, playing that openly and out there and off-the-wall is only going to stick your neck out for elimination.  I’d also peg Kendra as the most likely to cost the tribe a challenge, based on overall physicality, another mark against her.  Add onto this she’s another one super-excited by the adventure.  Not a problem in and of itself, but again, the extra enthusiasm makes her stick out to dangerous levels.  Also, did you know she completed the “Camino de Santiago”?  Because she did!  And she mentions it!  Repeatedly!  It’s the same problem as Julie and “Second Chances”, though admittedly on a somewhat smaller scale.  Bigger tribes, or a tribe that avoids Tribal Council, might give Kendra just enough wiggle room to make the merge, but I don’t think she has either.  Thus, for standing out too much, Kendra is probably a pre-merge boot.  

Sean Edwards (35, School Principal, Provo-Orem, UT, Lolo Tribe): As the last man on the cast we have yet to talk about, you can expect that he’s my second winner pick of the season.  And again, a bit of a controversial one.  Fairly concerning pet peeve there with “arrogant people”.  Because “Survivor” has never produced one of those.  Also, while he isn’t “old”, he’s on the older end for THIS cast, as I’ve mentioned before.  That said, being a principal means both dealing with (usually quite stressed) adults, as well as people from a VERY different age demographic as yourself.  What I’m saying is that if anyone on this cast can bridge the age gap and be a uniter, Sean is the guy.  Dude exudes charm with that smile, and he’s one of the rare breed of people who admit he needs someone to cover his blind spots in an alliance.  An undervalued quality, and from this, I gather some good game smarts.  He’s not the most athletic, but again, not a sink, and so long as his tribe does fairly well in challenges (as I predict they well), I expect to see Sean in the finals.  

Sabiyah Broderick (28, Truck Driver, Jacksonville, NC, Lolo Tribe): To round out the cast as a whole, we have Sabiyah.  Are you happy now, internet complainers?  You got someone who didn’t get a college education on again!  Don’t get used to her though, as the fact that she’s about the ONLY person on the cast like this is a problem for her.  Say it with me now, “This makes her stand out, and that’s a bad thing.”  The fact that she seems like she’ll be good in challenges, and I don’t see her tribe spending much time at Tribal Council probably saves her during the pre-merge, but I expect her to be an early-to-mid merge boot, just for personality clashes.  She also doesn’t strike me as the type to let go the things that bother her, and when those things include “laziness”, again something very common on “Survivor”?  She’ll be fun to watch, but I don’t give Sabiyah a particularly long shelf-life.  

Oddly, that about does it.  Pretty solid cast overall, but not one that’s knocking my socks off.  I had stuff to say about pretty much everybody, which is encouraging, but again, maybe these people come off better on paper than they do on camera.  Or vice-versa, we’ll have to see.  And you can see, when we return with the blog following the premiere!  See you then!  

-Matt 

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

“Survivor” Retrospectives: Cambodia

Well, that break went on far longer than intended. But no matter! With no new season on the horizon, I’d say it’s a fine time to resurrect an old series. A look back at the past, if you will. Yes, it’s time once again for the return on “‘Survivor’ Retrospectives”!

Given that it’s been so long, I’d say a refresher on the concept is in order. In this series, I go back through all the major elements of a season (the casts, the challenges, the twists, etc.), both recapping them objectively, as well as giving my subjective opinion on each. Each category is then given a score out of 10 for how well it holds up on its own. The exception is the “Overall” category, in which the marks from the previous categories are combined with the mark from the “Overall” category (which considers both the themes and aesthetics of the season, as well as how all the elements of the season came together), leading to a score out of 40. Naturally, this means there will be SPOILERS for the season. I will be writing as though everyone reading knows the outcome of the season, as well as the major players and events of the season. Thus, if you have not watched the season in question, as indicated by the title, read on beyond this paragraph only if you are prepared for said spoilers. However, if you wish to know my general, spoiler-free opinion on the season, scroll down to the bottom of the page. There, I have a section labeled “Abstract”, which will give you just that.

With those warnings out of the way, let us considered the case of Cambodia. The season that really felt like it began the 30’s, for good and for ill. Does it become the standard-bearer for the sins of later seasons, or does it have merit on its own? Read on and find out!

CAST

As the subtitle “Second Chances” would imply, Cambodia is an all-returnee season. This makes judging the cast a lot harder. Usually, when looking at a cast, I look at the big names to come out of a season. The flaw with a returnee season, unlike an all-newbie season, is that people can be big names both going into and coming out of a season, yet not have done much on the season as a whole. Consider the case of Rupert on “Survivor All-Stars”. The guy was a big name coming into the season, and still a big name coming out of the season, but did he really do anything during “Survivor All-Stars” to earn it? Not so much. Really, all he did was avoid tarnishing his legacy. As such, in this section, I’m only going to be discussing members of the cast who actively maintained or improved their overall perception amongst the fandom.

With that in mind, no one had a higher rise this season that Kelley Wentworth. Originally of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, Kelley was that one person who gets on a returnee season that you think “Huh?” For reasons I’ll get into in the twist section, Kelley didn’t have that obstacle, but as a fifth boot who was nearly invisible during her first run on the show, she had arguably the lowest floor in terms of perception. Even so, Kelley can be said to have dominated the fandom in this season. She showed herself to be a sound strategic player, and a scrappy fighter, as she was rarely in the majority on the season. She also gave off a number of good sound-bytes, making her one of the rare people named “Kelly” who is not, as I once said, “as bland as beige wallpaper”. Perhaps it’s the odd spelling that does it? In any case, I can’t go into too much detail about why Kelley is so beloved without delving into the twists of the season, though her snark in confessionals definitely helped. For now, suffice to say that Kelley proved why she was considered a threat her first time around, and became a beloved fan darling for all the right reasons.

If you’re looking for someone who was popular before coming on the season, but increased it during the season, look no further than Joe “Joey Amazing” Anglim. Hailing from “Survivor Worlds Apart”, the season immediately before Cambodia, Joe was seen as something of the nice, good-looking challenge threat with not much else to note about him. Basically a newer version of Ozzy from “Survivor Cook Islands”. Cambodia did little to change that, but it did take the comparisons to a whole new level. Joe was pretty good in challenges? Now he’s immune for a month before you even have the chance to vote him off. Joe seemed comfortable in the outdoors? Now he’s so handy that he’s being referred to as “MacGyver”. He had a determination and competitive drive? Now he’s collapsing out of exhaustion during a challenge. You get the idea. This is a tried-and-true character archetype that people eat up, and Joe was no exception. I can definitely see why, and I’d argue he did more to earn it this season than on “Survivor Worlds Apart”, with just how over the top it was. That said, I do think the love for Joe is a bit overdone. There’s nothing wrong with him, of course. He’s a perfectly inoffensive guy, and quite likable, even on screen. When I first started watching the show, Joe is the sort of guy I would have gravitated toward, rooted for, and been heartbroken by his inevitable defeat. But as I’ve grown as a fan, I’ve fallen out of love with this sort of character. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with them, but they just don’t have a lot of depth to them. They’re good at survival, and that’s about it. Perhaps, then, the bet way to describe Joe is that he’s one-dimensional, but a likable one-dimensional.

Now, if Kelley and Joe are the two biggest characters to come out of the season, surely they’re the ones the season focussed on story-wise, right? Wrong! That honor would go to Spencer Bledsoe of “Survivor Cagayan”. Coming into the game, Spencer was the person I expected to do well above all others. He was perceived as an underdog, but a likable one, with a good strategic mind to boot. Add onto that him being “robbed” due to playing with Kass (who’s also on this season, but sadly doesn’t make much impact despite a valiant attempt to change up her game), and he seemed to be in the same position Cochran was in on “Survivor Caramoan”: perfectly set up to go far. And go far he did, making the final three, though not winning due to one mistake at the finish line, wherein he got a mite aggressive when campaigning against Kelley to try and avoid being voted off at the final four. This turned off what few jurors might have voted for him, leading to a perfect victory for our eventual winner, Jeremy. We’ll get to him in the next paragraph. Getting back to Spencer, though, Spencer was set up early on with the arc of needing to be more “emotional”. Understandable, considering he was a primary target of the “gamebot” criticism, but I don’t think the show pulled it off as well as they wanted to. We’re TOLD that Spencer has grown in various ways, such as professing his love for his girlfriend, or opening up with his tribemates, but since a lot of that deals with matters outside the game, it comes across as the producers shoehorning in an arc to try and get the audience to like someone. That said, I do think Spencer has an arc, and a good one at that. It’s just not the one the show pushed. Spencer may not have grown as much emotionally (at least on screen), but his arc in terms of strategy is an interesting contrast to his arc in “Survivor Cagayan”. On his first season, Spencer was plagued with perpetual bad luck. Every plan he put together pretty much fell through, and he never really found his footing. Doing well despite this made everyone praise his potential. While Spencer’s second go-around did continue his bad luck trend early on, particularly with his tribe swaps, Spencer seemed to have a better footing on where he was in the game, and more in control of his destiny. Further, come the merge, Spencer seemed to be the man of the hour. His name was rarely brought up, and he was almost always the swing vote in determining who went home. A picture-perfect strategic game, right? Possibly, but in spite of that, Spencer still lost in the end, with little to no “bad luck” to blame this time around. We may not have seen Spencer’s emotional growth on screen, but we did see him come to terms with the fact that playing well and having good luck can still result in a loss. A fascinating arc. Shame the show didn’t do more with it.

But now, onto Jeremy, the winner of the season. Similar to Spencer, Jeremy is not as big of a character, but big on the strategy Jeremy this season would pioneer what he called his “meat shield” strategy, which meant keeping around people who were perceived as bigger threats than him, to avoid getting booted post-merge. This is why Joe stuck around past his first immunity loss. Jeremy had a bit of charm that had shown through during confessionals, but the bulk of his screentime this season was devoted to strategy. And again, to his credit, that strategy worked. Jeremy was the first man to win an all-returnee season, and arguably played a perfect game (he did receive votes against him at the final six, but they were negated with an idol. Whether or not this disqualifies his “perfect game” status is up for debate, and I’m not sure there’s a wrong answer). It even got rehashed on the later “Winners at War”, though we’re nowhere near there yet. For my part, Jeremy is a fine addition to the season. Extra strategizing is always welcome, though I did tire of hearing of it after a while. Still, Jeremy played well and is a likable enough winner to be welcome on the season. Also worth mentioning here is Jeremy’s right-hand man for much of the season. Stephen Fishbach, originally of “Survivor Tocantins”, was brought back after a six-year hiatus. That said, it’s interesting to look back on Stephen’s first appearance to his second, as they make an odd contrast. On his first season, Stephen was paranoid about being cast as the “wimpy guy” who couldn’t make it in the outdoors, yet was portrayed as competent in all areas of the game, and a strategic force on the season. While his second appearance did keep some of that strategic competence, it was too focussed on the aforementioned Joe, who became a proverbial white whale for Stephen. As such, Stephen came across as paranoid and obsessed, somewhat dampening his strategic prowess, and not helped by his getting what I call “the goober edit”. Had his tribe gone to Tribal Council first, he likely goes home, due to everyone being suspicious of him, and his not being that helpful around camp. Note the scene, with goofy music, of him trying to break a tree branch, and losing. On top of that, Stephen’s general failure at challenges, coupled with the coining of “#severegastrointestinaldistress”, and it’s clear that Stephen was not meant to be taken seriously. Even so, he managed to have his moments of brilliance, and a lot of emotional insight that dwarfed what we were told Spencer had. Not the same Stephen we got the first time around, but still a fun character and occasionally good strategist.

Every major alliance needs a rival, and the head against Jeremy would be Ciera Eastin of “Survivor Blood vs. Water”. While Ciera is usually referred to as “The Woman who Voted out her Mom”, this to me is really where Ciera came into her own. She showed some good strategic chops, but now had the chance to flex them. She led the counter-alliance, referred to as the “Witch’s Coven” by Jeremy’s alliance, and actually hung on for a few votes through a combination of cunning and hidden immunity idols. Her defeat was inevitable, just due to her numbers disadvantage, but she did her best to shake up the game, making the post-merge all the more exciting. That said, she did coin the phrase “Big Moves”, which would come back to bite the show down the line, but we won’t hold that against her. That’s the show’s fault, not her’s. For what she was, Ciera was a good spoiler: Not going to win, but keeps the game from becoming so smooth that it’s boring.

Now we move on to the characters who were big at the time, but are now kind of lost to history. Really, though, there’s only one name in Cambodia that qualifies, and that name is Jeff Varner. Being from the earliest days of the show (though Kelly Wiglesworth of “Survivor Borneo” was also cast), Varner was built up big time. He had a big game personality, lots of preparation, one of the more aggressive campaigns to get on the show, and a vendetta against peanut butter to help make him memorable. Once on the show, he controlled the earliest votes, only to mess up a twist that shouldn’t really have screwed him, but ended up doing so anyway. He made a mess of his standing in a swapped tribe (the exact circumstances will be gone over in the “Twist” section), and had an early exit as a result. Varner certainly made the pre-merge exciting, and put him back on the radar for modern season. So, why was someone so influential to the early game forgotten? “Survivor Game Changers”. Yeah, wait a few seasons, but Varner will basically be writing himself out of “Survivor” history. For the moment, though, he’s a short but enjoyable part of the season, keeping up the unpredictability that will make this season so good overall.

That covers everyone that gets remembered today, but I feel like it does a disservice to the cast. Yes, there were few standouts, but most everybody brought something to the table. Usually it’s what we expected, and thus their legacy was maintained. Abi-Maria Gomes (“Survivor Philippines”) created conflict despite swearing not to do so. Keith Nale (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”) brought back the humor, and I would argue did it better, now that it wasn’t the only entertainment game in town. Andrew Savage (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) finally proved that no, he’s not good at “Survivor”, but can at least make the jury. Really, even if they weren’t the most memorable, everyone brought something to the cast. Or, I should say, almost everyone. Who in their right mind thought that Monica Padilla (“Survivor Samoa”) would be a good addition to the cast? She brought NOTHING! She appeared in the background a bit, was a focus in her boot episode, then NOTHING! Just a waste of a space that could have been filled with the more interesting T-Bird (“Survivor Africa”). The only argument I ever heard for bringing her back, apart from her looks, was that “She put the fear of God into Russell Hantz on her first season, ruining his game.” To be fair, she did do that. What I don’t agree with is that this makes her some sort of strategic mastermind. Bear in mind, RUPERT of all people also managed to put the fear of God into Russell Hantz on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”. Heck, Rupert did it BETTER, as his interaction with Russell actually saved him for a couple of votes. Monica? Voted out the same day. Why was she impressive again?

My score for this section may seem a bit weird, and that’s because this case is inexorably tied with a twist of the season. I’ll get to it shortly, but for now, be satisfied with the idea that the show did something with this cast that gave us, the fans, more buy-in than with previous casts, even if the majority just maintained their respective legacies this season.

Score: 9 out of 10

CHALLENGES

Every challenge in Cambodia is a repeat of an old challenge. Every. Single. One. But, since this is a returnee season, that’s to be expected. They even make a big deal out of it, with Probst noting which players left had done each challenge before, and their overall performance in said challenge. Now, this got a bit old by the end, and I would argue it led to self-defeating scenarios in some challenges (people putting themselves in a position they weren’t the best at to “redeem themselves”), but overall it was a fun touch that didn’t take up too much time overall. And as for the challenges they chose to redo? For the most part, good ones; big and memorable. They didn’t show favoritism for modern “Survivor” either, as they pulled from seasons like “Survivor Borneo” and “Survivor Africa”, which we hadn’t seen in a while. Not every challenge was a hit, of course. They used “Simmotion” from “Survivor Tocantins” for the final immunity challenge, which I maintain is among the weaker final immunity challenges due to the lack of epicness. Still, apart from one or two missteps, the challenges this season were a solid addition to the overall product, and even at their worst, tend to just be a neutral component.

Score: 9 out of 10.

TWISTS

Cambodia holds the distinction of being one of few seasons whose twists actually began in the previous season. As the title “Second Chances” indicates, the season was made up of people who had only played once before, and never won. What split it apart from returnee seasons before and after, however, was that the producers did not entirely pick the contestants. After narrowing the field to 32 potential returnees (16 men and 16 women), those watching the show were allowed to go online and vote in 10 men and 10 women to get their second chance. The results were revealed live at the end of “Survivor Worlds Apart”, also known as “The Best Thing About ‘Survivor Worlds Apart’”. Aside from the requirement that you select 10 people to return no matter what had some logistical issues (a player who gets people to vote specifically for them does not receive sole benefit of convincing people to vote for them), I’d say this is still a major hit of a twist, and the reason why the cast as a whole is stronger than it looks on paper. With pretty much any returnee season, there’s always going to be controversy in the casting choices. “Why did you ever put this person on?”; that sort of thing. You’ll also have players who don’t bring as much as they during their first go-around, and thus lose a big part of their legacy and memorability as a result. The same is true for this season, but even those early boots, you were still happy they were on and much less likely to question the choices. Why? Because, if you were a fan YOU PICKED THEM! You had a say in who got on, which created a buy-in to the cast no season has had before or since. Even if someone failed to live up to expectations, you viewed them charitably because they were, in a sense, your cast. You had ownership like you never had before, thus effectively snuffing out most criticism of the casting decisions before it even had a chance to develop. This is why Kelley doesn’t come off as a weird choice for the season, particularly given her aggressive social media campaign to return. Now, there is an asterisk to this aspect of the season, but as it deals with how the season can be seen overall, I’ll be saving it for the “Overall” section. Suffice to say that by giving the fans more say on this season than on any other, the show started itself off on the right foot.

Continuing this trend, Cambodia’s first twist was a blend of old and new. After being divided into the Bayon and Ta Keo tribes, all players did the “scramble for supplies” start, a tribute to “Survivor Borneo”. However, a new hiccup came in the form of a race to a second boat, which the tribe must do together, with the reward of extra rice hanging in the balance. While not the most exciting aspect of the season, it was a good look to start the season out on: Paying homage to the past while simultaneously not just repeating everything that had been done before. Another old twist with a new spin was the hidden immunity idols. There were two new quirks to them, one good and one bad, or at least underused. Hidden immunity idols would now not look the same, just with different coloring based on tribe camps. They were new different shapes. The theory was that this made it harder to tell a fake idol from a real one. In actuality, it was pointless. While the idols no longer looked exactly the same, they still looked production-made, and very clearly not something made by one of the players. I don’t know, I was expecting them to go all-out in making the idols different. Maybe Ta Keo is your traditional idol, but then Bayon’s is a tin can with a hole in it. Harder to identify, and makes for potential hilarity when you try and convince someone it really IS an idol, and not just trash. That said, the twist itself wasn’t BAD, just kind of pointless. More impactful, however, was the hiding of idols at challenges. A clue was hidden at camp that, if found, told you where in the challenge to look for the idol. You could grab it, but had to risk being seen by your teammates. A dynamic new twist that adds drama to an already drama-filled component of the show? Sign me up! Watching someone go for one of these idols is like watching a really good spy movie, or at worst, an average spy movie. Admittedly, this twist works better during the tribal phase rather than the individual phase, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Kelley was the first recipient of this twist, getting the Ta Keo idol at the first immunity challenge. This plus her usage helps explain why she became such a big character of this and future seasons. Not that she had much of a chance to strategize with her idol at first, since Ta Keo had to go directly from the immunity challenge to Tribal Council, with no talking. Bad flashbacks to the Michelle Yi boot on “Survivor Fiji” come up, and I must admit this was an ill-conceived twist. Thankfully it didn’t hurt anything, but it didn’t help either.

Tribal Council itself was good in terms of a twist outcome, though. Roughly speaking, Ta Keo was divided between “Old School” players and “New School” players, vying for control with Varner and Peih-Gee (“Survivor China”) in the middle. I say “roughly” because although most early players fell into “Old School”, and later players into “New School, there were exceptions. Vytas, despite being firmly from the later seasons of the show, fell into the “Old School” alliance due to his connection with Terry Deitz (“Survivor Exile Island”), who was an old school player who played with Aras, Vytas’ brother. In a blindside, Vytas himself was voted out first, and Jeff and Peih-Gee sided with the new-schoolers to vote him out. This could have made for boring tv, if it was just “New School” steamrolling “Old School”, but thankfully, this was not to be. Varner, along with everyone except Spencer and the as-yet unmentioned Shirin Oskooi from “Survivor Worlds Apart” flipped to vote out Shirin. While the second could hardly count as a “blindside”, it did show that alliances were not going to be as firm this season, helping lead to a constantly-shifting season, leading to some great moments down the road.

Episode 3 brings us our tribe swap, though not in the way expected. Instead of dividing into two new tribes, with nine members each, the show decided to create a new third tribe, Angkor, with all three tribes getting six members each. A twist that worked out well in the end, I would argue, but that badly needed the tweaks it got in later seasons. It’s good for keeping people on their toes, and helps subdivide the cast to prevent Pagongings, but MAN did the Angkor tribe get screwed in this deal. Later subdivisions like this would see the third tribe get some advantage, or at least some supplies to start them over. Angkor? Squat. Naturally, going up against two tribes that didn’t need to expend extra energy building their shelters, and already had supplies set up, Angkor was going to lose. A lot. And they did. A fun twist, but not the fairest, and in need to some tweaking.

Now, Angkor had a 4-2 majority favoring original Ta Keo, while the other two tribes had a 4-2 majority favoring the original Bayon. Had Angkor lost, and just gotten rid of the minority 2 on their tribe, there would have been boredom to be found. The weakest tribe loses constantly, and Pagongs the minority. Simple and dull. Thankfully, this did not happen, largely due to the presence of Abi-Maria on Angkor making it impossible for the original Ta Keo to stick together. Savage and Tasha were able to exploit Abi-Maria’s divisiveness, and vote out first Peih-Gee (with whom Abi-Maria had argued early in the game), then Jeff Varner (who was weak in challenges). Disappointing boots at the time, particularly as Varner was the driving force behind a lot of the early-game excitement, but again, good at keeping things shook up, and the audience on their toes. Say what you will about this season, but don’t say it had one dominant alliance steamroll over everybody the entire time.

Before we get to our next big shakeup in episode five, we should get to two minor twists that happened in between. In episode 3, Jeremy found the clue to the idol, and got it during the challenge. Fine work for him, though less exciting since we had already seen Kelley do the same thing in episode 1. Episode 4, meanwhile, featured what Probst termed a “Hero Challenge”, which had just one player from each team compete for the entire team. Not the worst idea, but it lost the epic scale that most team challenges give us, and is a stupid thing to go in for from a strategy perspective. In the end, apart from a heart warming scene of Savage handing Angkor one of the few victories (though only for reward), this twist brought little to the game, and I’m not upset about its exclusion from future seasons.

On to episode 5, and Angkor gets an honest-to-goodness challenge victory! And it’s even an immunity challenge! Thanks in large part to Stephen’s “skills” at target shooting, his tribe, Bayon, ends up going to Tribal Council. There, they continue the trend of not letting the bold majority maintain control. Monica goes home, the only original Bayon member to not make the merge. Again, while maybe not the most sound strategic decision, it is good to see that the season remains unpredictable, and solid majorities don’t stay solid for long.

Episode 6, unfortunately, starts off on a sour note. Terry gets a visit from Probst informing him that his son, Danny, has been hospitalized, and Terry needs to leave the game to be with his son. Terry understandably agrees, and gets a tearful goodbye with his fellow Ta Keo players. It doesn’t impact much in terms of the game, since Terry was likely to be voted out should Ta Keo have ever lost, but it was still a depressing and unfortunate way for a decent player to go out. Dude should have had the honor of playing his full game without outside life getting in the way, PLUS having to go through the trauma of being far from home when your child is in serious danger. Certainly memorable, but something all involved would have preferred not to happen. Sort of like Penner’s medivac on “Survivor Micronesia”.

Terry’s exit sets the stage for a reunification back into two tribes. New Bayon is stacked with the challenge beasts, and so Ta Keo goes to Tribal Council. Shockingly, given the opportunity to vote Spencer out, Kass does not do so. Instead, allying with Spencer, Abi-Maria, and Ciera, she conspires to vote out her other original-season player Woo. Once again, the season does a good job with playing with strategic expectations, and keeping us guessing at every Tribal Council. Granted, this does label Kass as “Chaos Kass” once again, and gets her voted out at the next Tribal Council, so possibly not the smartest move Kass could have made. Still, hindsight is 20/20, and it did help keep the season exciting, if nothing else. Plus, Kass does get to make the jury, though I’m not exactly happy as to why. The merge comes in the next episode, with 13 people left. Good for helping ensure fan favorites make the jury, but bad in terms of comprehension. For all that I say Kass’ actions got her the boot, it’s really that she was the easiest person to come to a consensus on. Probably the least interesting strategy we’d seen so far this season, and hard to follow due to the sheer number of players left. Yeah, I get why production merged this early, but it was still a stupid decision.

Speaking of stupid decisions, it’s time to talk about hidden immunity idols. Now that challenges were individual, they couldn’t be hidden at challenges anymore, since it would be too easy to get them with everyone focussed on their own work. Instead, you now found clues that had them hidden in obscure places in or around camp. Not bad, but what we’d seen before, and the difficulty in obtaining the idol varied. Kelley, for instance, would have to crawl under the shelter in order to get her idol, while Jeremy got his second idol just by walking away from camp at night, with little to no risk. The variation in quality just makes the whole thing unfair, and it’s all inherently less interesting to watch than what came before.

Fortunately, the unpredictability that has characterized the season so far continues. After Kass’ boot, Kelley remains on the outs, but uses this and her idol to negate a record-setting (for the time) number of votes, leading to the elimination of Savage. From here up until pretty much the finale, it’s just a series of blindsides, with the groups swinging between “The Witch’s Coven” and other two and threesomes to form what Stephen termed “Voting Blocs”. Again, good for unpredictability, but loses points for overuse of the term “Voting Blocs”. It wasn’t even that original idea. You could argue they were seen as early as “Survivor The Amazon”, or possibly even “Survivor Marquesas”, depending on how liberal you wanted to be. It was a fun watch, but it wasn’t as innovative as the show made it out to be.

That about covers the player-implemented twists up until the finale, but the producer-implemented ones kept coming every couple of episodes. First, players were given the option to step out of an immunity challenge to race for a “secret advantage”. No one knew what it was, and players were given very little time to make the decision. Spencer and Stephen both swam for it, with Stephen ultimately getting the “Steal-A-Vote” advantage, at the time unseen. Powerful, earned in a unique and exciting way, and the potential to flip the game? Yeah, despite what we see in later season, I’d call this one a winner. It even has a funny conclusion, with Stephen stealing Joe’s vote, leading to Joe technically voting for himself, only to himself go home as a result of a split vote. To follow this twist (the vote steal, not the boot of Stephen) up, production offered to build everyone a better shelter (the weather was causing people to basically shut down), if a majority would sit out of an immunity challenge. A decent prisoner’s dilemma, but I would argue not executed well. No real drama came of it, because people had too long to think. This might have worked if we had seen the negotiations, but we didn’t. Most everyone sat out, and Joe won again. Even when he did lose, Jeremy’s aforementioned “meat-shield” strategy kept him safe for a bit. On the whole, while I’m glad the cast was saved from further strife, this was just unnecessary.

And so we come to the finale, a big blowout at first that leads to a predictable conclusion with no surprises. The final six vote came down to a 3-3 split, with both Kelley and Jeremy playing their remaining idols, leading to a 0-0 vote. A revote resulted in a tie again, which would normally mean rocks, but this time would have only one person eligible. As a result, we got to see an actual negotiation for the boot go down, leading to Kimmi’s ejection. A boot so complex, Probst had to chart it out during the reunion show. A little hokey, and I know a lot of people hate on it, but I think it continues the trend of unpredictability that has so far been this season’s greatest strength. Sadly, it’s also the END of that trend, as the rest of the finale goes predictably. While the majority changed at about every Tribal Council, Jeremy didn’t face real opposition until about this point. Fortunately, with Spencer as the omnipresent strategist, and Kelley as the underdog that just won’t die, there was real question about whether Jeremy could win in the end against them. This notion was killed prior to Final Tribal Council, with Kelley eliminated and Spencer being so mean to her before leaving in front of the jury that all chances of his victory were shot. Add onto that Jeremy’s gender reveal of his unborn child at Final Tribal Council, and the vote was unsurprisingly 10-0-0 in favor of Jeremy. A well-deserved victory, but a foreseeable one for at least the last half of the finale.

Despite my complaints, on the whole I would say that this season actually did pretty well in terms of twists. While there were a fair number of misses, they tended to be minor things, or things that only look worse in hindsight. In general, this season had new, innovative twists that largely kept things up in the air, while still being recognizably “Survivor”. In a season that largely focusses on strategy, there’s little more you could ask for.

Score: 9 out of 10.

OVERALL

Aesthetically, Cambodia was and still is a breath of fresh air for the show. Bear in mind that for the previous 12 seasons, the show had been to precisely three countries: Samoa, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Admittedly, two different areas of the Philippines, but the fact remains that from a visual and cultural standpoint, the show was getting stale. Not a lot new to draw on, making a lot of the seasons blend together in terms of colors and visuals. This would get more pronounced when, shortly after this season, the show made what seems to be a permanent move to Fiji. As such, Cambodia visually feels like the last “Hurrah” of creativity. Stunning vistas, unusual wildlife, and a varied and bright color pallet really help this season stand out on a purely visual level.

That said, Cambodia is a season that suffers pretty badly on rewatch, though not always fairly. Some criticisms simply come from trends started by Cambodia, which I’ll get to later. For now, though, one aspect of Cambodia that I will say doesn’t work overall is engagement. I’m not talking here about keeping interest in the season (we’ll get to that), but to the buy-in of the characters I mentioned earlier. I stand behind the statement that voting in this cast gave those of us voting a lot of buy-in, that let us forgive the weaker aspects the cast may have had. The flaw in this, however, is that it REQUIRES the viewer to be an active participant in the casting process. If you’re someone getting into “Survivor” after this season, or just someone who didn’t vote for whatever reason, the cast seems a LOT weaker. Without that buy-in, a lot of the early boots are forgettable, and even some of the later boots don’t stand out, and you just wonder why they were even shown. This means, in a sense, that this season suffers on rewatch, and as that’s one of my main criteria for overall enjoyment of the season, Cambodia suffers in the rankings for it.

Before we go on, one more word of warning: I can’t talk about Cambodia without talking about the seasons that came after it, as trends there have had a direct effect on the perception of Cambodia as a whole. Thus, I’m going to be breaking my cardinal rule, and talking about the seasons that came after it, to help explain the overall perception of Cambodia. I’m going to talk in very general terms, but I cannot guarantee no spoilers. Therefore, if you have not watched any of the seasons post-Cambodia, I highly encourage you to stop reading here, or else scroll down to the “Abstract” section.

For better or for worse, Cambodia is seen seen as the start of the 30’s of “Survivor”. Technically “Survivor Worlds Apart” holds that distinction, but in terms of buildup and legendary feel, Cambodia really does feel like the start of something new. Thus, it gets to be the standard-bearer for all that happens in the 30’s. And, to put it mildly, the 30’s are not looked on positively by the fanbase as a whole. An emphasis on strategy over character. Strategic game over social game (at least a perceived one; wait until the retrospectives on “Survivor Ghost Island” and “Survivor Island of the Idols” for my thoughts on that). Twists being thrown out with no rhyme or reason. Time taken away from what the viewers want to focus on what production wants. Overall, a perceived decline in the quality of the show, and as such, Cambodia gets a lot of flak for it. And I cannot deny, Cambodia did start some trends that are a negative part of the show. Cambodia, for instance, coined the term “Big Moves”, which has since been used as justification to shift more emphasis to strategic play rather than social play. This was annoying even on Cambodia, and a trend in the wrong direction. As Probst himself used to say, “Survivor” is a social game. Therefore, that is where the emphasis should be. I’ve also mentioned my annoyance at things like “voting blocs”, and having too many people stay too late in the game. Again, these are problems in later seasons, and I can’t deny that Cambodia both started them and suffered for them. Perhaps most disappointingly, Cambodia started the trend of “invisible” players making the finals. To a greater or lesser extent, “invisible” players, or at least players we didn’t get much depth on, had been a part of “Survivor” since the beginning, usually more so in seasons with more players. However, these players usually left in the pre-merge, or the VERY early merge at the latest. With Cambodia? A third of the players in the finale (Kimmi and Keith), were shown as having no chance to win going in, despite reportedly playing good games that didn’t get shown, thus weakening the mystery of who would win. Sadly, given Cambodia’s overall success, production took the lesson that viewers wouldn’t care if a member in the finale had basically no screentime, and thus we saw it more and more, to the detriment of good gameplay. All these things, it’s fair to blame Cambodia for starting.

I think it’s important, however, to remember that Cambodia was actually quite well-received when it came out. Most reviews I saw were positive, and the few that weren’t were more along the lines of “Not my cup of tea” than “The season that ruined ‘Survivor’”. My guess is that production saw these same reviews, said “We want more seasons like this”, but took the wrong lessons from Cambodia. As I hope I’ve emphasized by now, what makes Cambodia great is the unpredictability brought about as a result of the PLAYERS. Production, however, saw that they’d tried new twists, concluded that this was what the viewers liked (along with, again, “Big Moves” and not needing every player in the finale to have a story), and thus threw more and more of them into the game until it became a bloated scavenger hunt instead of an intricate social game. This is something I cannot argue with viewers hating.

What I CAN argue, however, is that Cambodia is not at fault for the decisions of production. Just because production took the wrong lessons from Cambodia does not make Cambodia, in and of itself, bad. Yes, it probably did lead to the inundation of twists we’re now stuck with, but if you look at the numbers, Cambodia didn’t do that much-in game from a production standpoint. We had the two-tribe to three-tribe shakeup. A bit unfair, but new and exciting. We had the steal-a-vote advantage. Led to some good comedy, and didn’t overstay its welcome. And we had them give the players a new shelter after some social dilemmas. Could have been better, but doesn’t intrude on the game too much. We had idols hidden at challenges. Clever and innovative, without adding any new advantages to the game. Yes, despite evidence to the contrary, Cambodia only had ONE new advantage (two if you count the Angkor idol) into the game. hardly the oversaturation we see today. And remember, these twists were popular for a reason. These twists WORKED. Most of them get hate today, not for their content, but for their overabundance. Cambodia does not have that problem. It should not be tarred with the same brush as later seasons just because of dumb production decisions that may have been influenced by it.

Finally, however, there is one criticism Cambodia has had since its airing that cannot be denied. Love it or hate it, this season is very much a “strategy” season rather than a “character” season. I wouldn’t say the season has NO character (I mean, Keith Nale is on it, and he’s pretty much nothing but a character), but the fact remains, as evidenced by the forced Spencer arc mentioned earlier, that this season favors strategy above all else. Personally, as someone who enjoys talking about and dissecting the strategy, I found it engaging and innovative. However, my preferences are by no means universal, and I cannot deny that if you’re someone who prefers seasons with big characters above all else, you will not find much to enjoy in Cambodia. I still think the hate is overrated (just because something isn’t your cup of tea doesn’t make it “bad” overall), but the lack of universal appeal does make Cambodia a rare case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

SCORE: 34 out of 40.

ABSTRACT

Cambodia is very much a love-it-or-hate-it season. The emphasis on the strategic is pronounced, and while there’s not no character, fans who primarily want big characters will not find what they are looking for this season. That said, this season is wroth a watch for any fan of strategy, though as so much of this season is seeped in the lore of previous seasons, I would not recommend watching this season early in your “Survivor” viewing career.

-Matt

Idol Speculation: “Survivor HvHvH” Episode 7: My Fair Coley

35 seasons into the show, one of the hardest challenges to be faced is how to keep things fresh and original. No matter how complex a character, no matter how intriguing a plotline, the fact is that if it hasn’t been done before, most likely something similar has been done before. Therefore, it’s very refreshing that this “Survivor” merge has actually managed to bring us something fresh and original, something to keep this old concept alive in it’s old age: Cole actually says something intelligent!

We’ve still got plenty of stupid to get through, though. After our “Previously On…” segment reminds us of the plotlines of every single tribe thus far, we start off at Yawa, where Cole informs us of the “Yawa strong” pact. Yes, I DID say that Cole said intelligent things tonight. Don’t worry, they come later. Not to say that “Yawa strong” isn’t a good plan for Cole, but is assumes that people on his tribe not named Jessica can stand his presence. This is not the case, showing just how out of touch he is. Ben and Lauren do a good job playing up that they’re with Cole, but Ben in particular privately admits that he can’t STAND Cole, and therefore isn’t fully on board. Soko does little but reaffirm that the threesome there are tight, so they will only get this sentence of a mention.

Things at Levu aren’t looking too good either. They may yet be the disaster switched tribe, as Ashley informs us that they’re basically down to eating sugar. Now, I’m not going to act like “Survivor” is a cushy game show. There’s nothing cushy about it, and starving certainly isn’t fun. With that said, I feel like Ashley is exaggerating just a little. Like I said, I’m sure they’re not in good shape, but this plotline came right out of nowhere. No confessionals in previous episodes talking about their food supply. No previous complaints of malnutrition. Devon is just suddenly barely able to walk (though in his defense, he did have very little body fat to begin with). Again, I could understand a normal level of starvation plot with little buildup, but Ashley makes it sound like the second coming of Hunahpu (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”) or Barramundi (“Survivor The Australian Outback”).

Fortunately for them, product placement is right around the corner. Probst announces the merge, which is purple this time! I am a fan of this, as it both is a change from the usual black, and marks the first time since the duo of “Survivor Caramoan” and “Survivor Blood vs. Water” that we’ve gone two consecutive seasons without a black merge buff. Thank God! There’s really no fake-out as to this not being a merge, but there IS a fake-out as to the merge feast. Probst teases a twist they’ve never done before, only to reveal the aforementioned product placement. Outback Steakhouse, a long-time sponsor of the show, is catering this particular merge feast. Evidently this is the cue for everyone in the cast to start gushing about Outback Steakhouse, which makes sense, as only starving people would be eager to eat at Outback Steakhouse. Joe extols the virtues of the Chocolate Lava Cake. Dr. Mike cheers at the thought of personalized steaks. Ben literally levitates upon hearing the word “Rib Eye”. Even those who AREN’T as enthused must gush when the food actually arrives. Not that Joe will be gushing for long, as he follows in the steps of Joe Del Campo (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”), and orders a lot of meat. Two whole steaks, to be precise, and I find it miraculous that the pair did not share the same fate. But back to the main point, that being the blatant product placement. I understand that it’s a necessary evil on the show a lot of the time, but my God, this is over the top for a product that’s OK at best. I mean, the only way they could have pushed the product harder is is they….

CRASH!

SANDRA DIAZ-TWINE: Did someone say “Outback Steakhouse”?

ME: Oh, for Christ’s sake…

SANDRA: You know where there’s Outback Steakhouse, there’s gonna be Sandra.

ME: NO! NO! I don’t CARE if you’re one of the most awesome players ever, you can’t be here! You’re not even on this season!

SANDRA: Well, how else am I supposed to remind everyone that the queen of schilling for Outback Steakhouse stays queen of schilling for Outback Steakhouse?

ME: I don’t know, but don’t do it in MY house! I just had that wall fixed, and we’ve got a cold front coming!

SANDRA: You know what? I’ma vote you out, and if I’m in that finals, you’ll STILL vote for me to win.

ME: Most likely, but first I need to get on the show, something I can’t do with you in here. Now, please sign my buff collection and beat it.

(SANDRA exits to find a Sharpie).

Well, now that my day has been made much better, let’s get back to blogging. There’s no idol clue hidden in a napkin this time around, but there is strategy talk. You’d think it’d be hard to do with everyone gathered around a relatively small table, but thankfully the conversation is loud enough that Chrissy and Ben are able to touch base. They don’t say too much, as Ben makes it clear that he’s not comfortable talking around so many people, but they do agree to meet back up, reaffirming their old bonds.

Ok, Cole, enough with the dilly-dallying! Time for that intelligent commenting to start. As previously mentioned, there was no clue hidden at the feast, so it stands to reason that, when the new camp comes with a bunch of tools, that there is a clue hidden in one of these. Cole recognizes this, and sets about searching for it. He doesn’t FIND the clue (we the audience see it hidden in amongst the nails), but hey, baby steps.

Moving on to the strategizing, things quickly shake out to be an Old Healers/New Yawa group versus… not them. Ok, so the name thing kind of needs work. Desi and Joe are pulled back into the fold, and along with Ben and Lauren from the former Yawa, they appear to have seven. Ryan, meanwhile, recognizes that the original Healers have five people left, against the Heroes’ four and the Hustler’s three, putting his “underdog” strategy into greater prominence. Thus, it seems logical to him that these two groups band together against a supermajority. This makes Lauren and Ben the swing votes, unsurprisingly. One might argue that Dr. Mike is a swing vote as well, since he was no great friend of the Healers, while being more in bed with Ben and Lauren (proverbially speaking). However, for Mike it is clear which side he should go with. His connection with Ben and Lauren will remain probably no matter what, but going against his original tribe, even with Joe back in the fold, would have what we might call “John Cochran Downside”. Hailing from “Survivor South Pacific”, this is a phenomenon where someone flips too early, thereby pissing off most the jury, even if the move was strategically smart. Mike DOES need to move against his original tribe at some point, but this would put too many of the them on the jury too soon, even though the jury actually doesn’t start tonight. Since I know I’m going to get called out on praising Cochran’s move, while saying the same move for Dr. Mike would be a flaw, let me explain the difference. Cochran was between Savaii and Upolu, two tribes that, due to be a “returning captains” season and the lack of a swap, were relatively ironclad, with no cracks in the alliance, and very few major divisive characters to break up an alliance. Plus, Cochran had known the Upolu’s for a relatively short time, and had no firm allies on that side. Contrast with this season, where we HAVE had a tribe swap (thus making original tribe alliances shakier), and a VERY divisive character in the form of Joe (Chrissy wants him gone, and even his original tribe seems to view him as little more than a necessary evil). Even if Dr. Mike sticks with his original tribe, he has room to maneuver, whereas Cochran really did not. Hence why the move is appropriate for one, but not the other.

Point being, the decision falls to Lauren and Ben. Lauren quickly shows which side her bread is buttered on by firming things up with Dr. Mike, which I can kind of understand. As mentioned, Lauren was kind of the “oddball” amongst her tribe, with only Ali as anything resembling an “ally”. If Dr. Mike’s offering her a power couple pact, she has little reason not to take it, and thereby want to keep the people Dr. Mike wants around, around. Ben, however, has more ties to his old tribe, and an intense dislike of Cole. Cole doesn’t do himself any favors by continuing to gorge on food, this time cinnamon sticks. Ben makes his disgust about this known, a boon to the opposition. Dr. Mike does his best to talk Ben around, agreeing with his assessment of Cole’s character, but noting that it’s too soon, as they would lose their majority. Ben is civil about this, and Dr. Mike comments that he’s surprised at how crazy things are at the merge. Come on, Dr. Mike, I thought you were our superfan of the season? If you’ve seen ANY “Survivor”, you know that the merge is a major shakeup time.

In all honesty, despite my praise of Lauren joining with Dr. Mike, Ben IS making the smart move in wanting to go back to his original allies. The key, once again, is options. By sticking with Dr. Mike, they make Dr. Mike their ONLY connection. If he can’t swing some more people, when you get down to the last seven people, you’re most likely done. It’s true that that alliance has fewer people overall, and more hidden immunity idols, which are both attractive features. The other alliance, though, has many connections with Ben, and while Lauren didn’t bond with her original tribe, she can still potentially do something. Plus, Dr. Mike’s rocky history with the original Healers means he probably won’t shed too many tears at their loss, and would probably still be willing to work with you down the line, meaning you keep even more power.

Not to say that the old Healers don’t sense danger though. Realizing that Cole’s leash needs to be tightened AGAIN, Jessica calls him over and urges him to stop eating so much, which Cole seems dumbfounded by. Look, Jessica, I know he’s cute, but you’re smart, and might actually have a shot were it not for the lead weight of Cole around your neck. At some point, you really need to just cut him loose.

Oh, and the new tribe name is Solewa. It sucks, because it’s a combo tribe name. That said, the flag is cool-looking, with the name printed on a strip underneath the flag rather than on the flag itself. Plus, they used the last part of “Yawa” rather than the first part, and the last four letters give me “Bionicle” flashbacks, so I’ll just let this one slide, rather than rant about it.

Speaking of sliding, our immunity challenge is a new twist on the “ball endurance challenge”. We have people moving down an increasingly small balance beam, but this time instead of balancing a ball on a plate, they must spin it around the inside of a hoop. If the ball or you fall off, you’re out, last one standing wins. The small scale and repetitive nature of ball endurance challenges annoys me, but this one does change up enough for me to give it a pass. Our individual immunity idol is ok. It’s basically a big metal plate necklace with some gears and seashell designs on it. It’s a bit garish to me, but it stands out, and it’s hardly the worst thing. Oddly, though, the STAND for the idol is actually really cool looking. Part of it resembles a set of scales, which has a nice “judgement” tone to it appropriate for immunity.

Probst is in fine form with his challenge commentary today. He trashes Ryan for failing two seconds into the challenge, which later gives Chrissy a chance to show off her math skills, calculating how many times beyond Ryan our finalists have gone. He also attempts to hypnotize the players by pointing out how relaxing spinning the ball can be. And, of course, he has to throw some shade. He points out that you can’t really practice for this particular challenge, and he’s right. After all, who on earth has done THIS in their backyard?

CRASH!

COACH: (raising hand) I have.

ME: NO! NO! TWICE IN ONE EPISODE IS TOO MUCH! I DON’T EVEN WANT YOUR AUTOGRAPH! OUT! OUT!

(Coach leaves, pelted by Buffs).

I would fault the music for giving us basically no mystery as to when someone will lose this challenge, but as this was a balance and endurance challenge, we knew from the beginning that the women would dominate. Sure enough, it comes down to a battle between Desi and Ashley, which Desi ends up winning. Good for her!

As you’d expect, talk quickly turns to where Ben and Lauren will go. Cole, having evidently learned from Jessica’s etiquette lessons, goes up and gives what’s actually a really good apology to Ben, talking about what a scumbag he was for hogging the food, and promises to do better. Ben, not being an idiot, sees right through the play, but that’s not to say it wasn’t as good an effort as could be expected from anyone. Sadly, just when Cole is turning things around, it’s time for his demise. You see, while this episode does a fair job, in and of itself, of masking who will win out tonight, it’s soon made clear that Ben and Lauren will make the smart move and go against the old Healers, despite Lauren’s protests. You see, we soon learn our targets for tonight are Chrissy, the lady built up as a hero, smart cookie, and fan favorite, and Cole, who apart from this episode has been shown to be brainless, rude, and little more than a living prop for Jessica. I wonder which of these two has more to lose?

Of course, with idols in the offing, Chrissy and co. discuss who their backup target should be. Joe’s name is thrown out, as he annoys everyone, but is quickly dismissed on the grounds that, as he found one idol, he may have more, thus lending credence to the complaints of every fan who hates that idols are being hidden the same way at separate camps (for my two cents, I look on it as a necessary evil. I get that it makes it easier for the same person to find multiple idols, but it just wouldn’t be fair if idols were hidden differently at different camps. Based on camp, someone might have an easier time idol hunting than someone else). Jessica is therefore thrown out as a backup option, which is a smart plan, since she’s a good, unexpected player unlikely to have an idol played on her. But, with so little screen time so far, and all of it good, what are the odds of that happening? We wouldn’t want another Jeremy Collins (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”) incident on our hands, NOW WOULD WE?

Joe, for his part, has some sense of which way the wind is blowing, as he criticizes Cole for bringing in Ben. I can see his point, since Ben has a number of ties to other people, but I have to give the point to Cole on this one. Ben may not be the most solid ally, but he at least brought SOMEONE! I don’t see YOU making any friends on your tribe, Joe.

Merge Tribal Councils are usually fairly exciting, and this one does not disappoint. Dr. Mike and Ryan set up our main conflict, and Cole actually makes a good, JP-esque point about how solid he is. Once again, though, Joe steals the show. He makes a big show about his loyalty to his original tribe, shortly followed by Dr. Mike doing a pretty accurate impression of him, and pointing out that while he and Joe are cool now, they weren’t before. Apart from further cementing my “Voting against Dr. Mike isn’t a death sentence to that alliance” point from earlier, this sends Joe into a frenzy, ultimately pulling out his second idol. I can KIND of understanding this move, being a sort of “Put fear in the other alliance to make the scramble” tactic, but I feel like there’s too many numbers here for that tactic to be effective. Better to hold onto it, and pull a move like he did at Levu: Be annoying to attract votes to yourself, THEN bust out an idol with no warning after the votes are cast to ensure victory. Instead, all Joe ensures is that people will NOT vote for him. Good for Joe, bad for his alliance.

Sure enough, Chrissy’s alliance wins out, but unfortunately, it’s not Cole who gets a heroic death, but Jessica. While I prefer that Chrissy stay over her, I am sorry to see Jessica go. She had a lot of bite for being one of the “generic pretty girls” cast on the season, and might have become an interesting strategic force given more time. Plus, her exit falls prey to the “Jeremy Collins” effect, where her exit was foreshadowed SO little that it feels unearned. This one got a BIT more traction, and Jessica wasn’t as major a character as Jeremy was, so this doesn’t sting quite as much, but it’s a blemish on an otherwise fascinating episode. We got a good look into the dynamics of everything, and Joe’s antics made for some fun moments. In fact, I don’t want the fun to end, meaning it’s time once again for…

TOP 5 and BOTTOM 5!

In honor of the contestants shilling for Outback Steakhouse, this list will look at the best and worst attempts at product placement the show has ever had. For once, there’s no special rules, so let’s get started with…

TOP 5

5. Visa (“Survivor Africa”): I suppose there is ONE rule worth mentioning: Should a product appear in multiple seasons, I’ll be putting the time I feel it is most memorable/worth talking about, not the first instance. Such is the case here. Yes, it was understated, but for a couple of those early seasons, on certain rewards contestants would pay with “Jeff Probst’s Personal Visa”. Most likely a card made up with a dummy name, this one stuck around from “Survivor The Australian Outback” through “Survivor Marquesas”, and was usually an understated part of the reward, not the reward itself, hence why it ranks low. This is more of a personal choice than any on this list, but I love the idea, even though it’s unrealistic, that Probst DID fork over his actual credit card, and was forced to watch as Lex, Big Tom, and others spent his hard-earned cash on third-world frivolities. I also like to imagine the contestants splurging on the most ridiculous items just to rack up Probst’s bill.

4. Pringles (“Survivor Palau”): Doritos may be the ORIGINAL “Survivor” chip of choice, but it was Pringles that went one step further, and landed itself on the list. Not content with merely being shown on the show, Pringles decided to do special “print” chips that had trivia from the show’s history up to that point on them. As a hard-core “Survivor” fan, this pleases me, and earns the chip a spot on this list.

3. Sprint (“Survivor Gabon”): One of the longer-running sponsors of the show, most of you probably remember Sprint. Not only did the sponsor a “fan-favorite” prize at the end of the seasons, but they usually heralded the loved-one’s challenge by giving people video previews from home. This was a nice touch, more sweet than clever, but still fun. Gabon gets the edge here for having the trick of the reward seeming to just be the video, before having the loved one walk off-camera and reappear on the show. A bit hokey, and very predictable, but usually a fun part of the season, and therefore a worthy bit of product placement.

2. Casa de Charmin (“Survivor Exile Island”): Like most kindergarteners, we want to know how the contestants go to the bathroom out there. Exile Island decided to answer that question with the hilariously named “Casa de Charmin”. Actually an outhouse, and probably more famous for Bruce and BobDawg’s wild night in it, there’s something that’s just hokey enough for this reward to be a nice bit of product placement for the show.

1. Home Depot (“Survivor Palau”): The ultimate product placement trick is, of course, to get your product in a challenge somehow. This is easier said than done, but one of the few seamless integrations, that earns this company the top spot, comes from Home Depot. Challenges involving building something at camp are nothing new, and while some may miss the ingenuity brought on by contestants having to make do with islands supplies, it must be said that by giving them better tools, cooler products were made. The specific winner was a close call between Palau’s bathroom-build and All-Stars’ shelter build, but Palau wins out for two things. First, it gave more choice. All-Stars got a full tool kit, while Palau forced one tribe member to choose just six tools to use. Second, for whatever reason, the bathroom builds got more creative, making for a more fun watch, and more memorable product placement.

Honorable Mention: Febreze (“Survivor Guatemala”): You’d think a product designed to make things smell nice would be out of place on “Survivor”. You would be right. That’s why Febreze was never used on “Survivor” itself, but rather in the end slates. For a couple of seasons, starting I believe with Guatemala, following the vote you would get the “Survivor Family Moment” sponsored by Febreze. Basically a short clip of the eliminated contestant’s family congratulating them, it made for a nice touch, and misses out on the list because the product TECHNICALLY wasn’t on the show itself, but in the commercials. But it was really sweet, so I’ll mention it here.

BOTTOM 5

5. Outback Steakhouse (“Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”): For all my grief, this one nearly made the “Top 5” list, since Sandra’s love of Outback actually made the whole thing seem sincere. This episode just took it way too far, though, and thus the food must earn my ire.

4. 7-Up (“Survivor One World”): Maybe this one annoyed just me, but after name-brand soda had been absent from “Survivor” for a while, we didn’t really need to see it again. Thus the presence of 7-Up in the “Survivor” Dark Age was really unnecessary. I’ll concede that they did a good job making the crate look authentic, but once again, the plugging was a bit too much. Probst just used the phrase “Cool. Crisp. Refreshing” one time too many for my liking.

3. Craftsman Tools (“Survivor Redemption Island”): Remember how I said that the holy grail of product placement was to use it in a challenge, but how it was very rarely done right? Yeah, this is a case of it going horribly wrong. Taking apart a challenge and then putting it back together is not a bad idea in and of itself, but the use of modern tools just felt very un-“Survivor”. Do any of you remember this challenge? Of course not! If you do, it’s for how out of place it was, and I for one would like to see it buried by history.

2. “Gulliver’s Travels” (“Survivor Nicaragua”): If the Craftsman Tolls plug felt like forced integration, this one really pushed the envelope. Movies were nothing new for a reward on “Survivor”, but they were usually classics that related to life on the show. For example, “Survivor Africa” had a showing of the film “Out of Africa”. It’s hard to make a Jack Black comedy relevant too “Survivor”, and even carrying around a giant dummy didn’t help things. Only two things spare this atrocity from the top spot: One, the image of Dan sitting on a chair designed to make him seem small. This is hilarious. And two, for all that the attempt at integration failed, at least there was an ATTEMPT!

1. “Jack and Jill” (“Survivor South Pacific”): Yeah, you all knew this was coming. If “Gulliver’s Travels” was AT BEST tangentially related to the show, then the Adam Sandler vehicle “Jack and Jill” was in another solar system. No integration to the challenge or the theme, just dropped randomly as the last reward before the merge. How underwhelming. This in and of itself would have been bad enough, but the producers REALLY pushed people to praise the film, when anyone with taste could tell this was going to be an abomination to the art of filmmaking. Thus, we get forced Coach philosophizing, which is tolerable at best when it ISN’T related to Adam Sandler. I know for a lot of people this falls into “So bad, it’s good.” territory, but for me, it was just too cringe-worthy to be fun even in that respect.

Honorable Mention: Dr. Scholl’s (“Survivor Borneo”): While over-inserting the product may be the cardinal sin of product placement, under-inserting the product comes close. You may not remember this one, and for good reason. It was shilled precisely once, on “Survivor Borneo”, and never heard from again. It wasn’t even the focus of the challenge, instead given out as a bonus after an immunity win by Kelly Wiglesworth. Admittedly the challenge did involve balance, hence the foot connection, but when your product is overshadowed by a cheap tiki head on a string, you’re probably not getting what you’re paying for.

Overall, this episode averages out to “pretty good”. The strategizing was excellent, there were some fun moments, and taken in isolation, the misdirection was good. Taken in the context of the season, though, the winning side was obvious, and the exit unearned, which is why this isn’t yet one of the greats. There’s still time, though.

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Finale: The Best of the Worst

Welp, I said before this episode aired that, if neither Spencer nor Keith won, that this would become my favorite season of all time. I don’t want to spoil too much in the opening paragraph, so I’ll simply say that neither of those people won. This means that my final verdict on this season is: It’s my second-favorite all the time.

Is the utterly hypocritical? Absolutely. But I do have reasoning for it, which I will explain. I’ll just be explaining it towards the end of the blog. I have to keep some secrets, you know. For now, I’ll just be getting to starting talking about the actual episode.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an episode of “Survivor Cambodia”, if we didn’t begin with:

MATT’S MESS-UP!

An apt way to end this season, but the mess-up, for once, is relatively minor. It seems that, despite losing out on the “Second Chance” vote, Max Dawson (“Survivor Worlds Apart”) DID manage to show up. how else do you explain Jeremy inexplicably talking about the personality of Scorpios when dissing Abi-Maria. Then again, perhaps I’m just upset that said dig seems a bit lame. I suppose nothing can really top Malcolm Freberg’s “Mack Truck” dis on “Survivor Philippines”, though, so no surprises there.

We begin the episode proper with Keith being incredulous. His natural state, I assure you. Basically, Keith can’t understand why they would vote out Abi-Maria when she was easy to beat. Keith goes on about wanting to have her in the end more than, say, Spencer or Jeremy. This only confirms for Spencer that he made the right move in targeting Abi-Maria, but I would point out to him that this also means that HE can’t use her as a goat at the end. Really, this is less a case of Keith confirming Spencer’s point, and more a case of Keith just being really bad at articulating his point.

But enough of that! We have to talk about Kimmi! Yes, after 36 days, she’s finally getting up and doing something! And no, this is not like the “Women’s Alliance” from a few episodes ago, where it seems like it’s going to be this big game-changer but then just kind of fizzles out and dies, this actually goes somewhere! Welcome to the game!

To be fair, I get where Kimmi’s game has been. I said last blog that a big part of this season has been making your big move, but also knowing when to make it. Kimmi has sat quietly, flown under the radar, and waited for the perfect time to make her move. Granted, she’s had a few OTHER perfect times to make her move, but this is a good one as well. Really, my problem with this development is not from a strategy perspective, but a viewer perspective. While Kimmi has definitely played a smart game up until this point, it’s a boring one. Seeing her only really participating in a big way NOW makes it seem like she’s been lazing about for most of this game. It’s sort of the same problem that Natalie White had on “Survivor Samoa”. Contrary to what Russell Hantz would have you believe, Natalie WAS playing a good game. It’s just that said game involved very little actual movement. For Natalie, the best strategy was to sit and wait, let Russell dig himself a hole, and build bonds with the jury and play off their sympathies. Brilliant strategy, but boring to watch. Kimmi’s kind of in the same boat here.

We’re here to talk about GOOD seasons, though, so lets get back to Kimmi. Her move is actually pretty solid. She plays off the fact that her current alliance (Jeremy, Spencer, and Tasha) will split the votes between Kelley and Keith. This means that, by defecting to Kelley and Keith to vote out either Spencer or Jeremy, they can win. It’s actually quite brilliant. It gives Kimmi a move to call her own, and eliminates amongst the biggest threats of the game. I just wish Kimmi had made similar moves earlier.

Challenge Time? Come a bit early, hasn’t it? Well, as a function of having so many people left at the end, and fearing a fan riot if a Final Four were at Final Tribal Council, “Survivor” has to move up its vote-out schedule. Basically, from now until day 39, we’ll be having an immunity challenge and a Tribal Council. I’m actually kind of mixed on this. It definitely is better than having a Final Four finish, and I’m happy that we don’t have to sit through any “Challenge Advantage” challenges again. The drawback, for me, is that we don’t get to see any strategizing pre-immunity challenge. We may see a BIT here and there after Tribal Council, but for the most part it immediately goes to the challenge. Feels a bit rushed, you know. Ideally, I feel like the solution would have been to have a double-elimination earlier in the season, and just have the final episode start at Final Five.

Onto the challenge itself. Taken from “Survivor Redemption Island”, this challenge has people running up steps to put in further puzzle steps, and then solving a pretty cool 3-D slide puzzle at the top. First puzzle solved wins immunity. Certainly a difficult challenge, but toned down from how it was originally. On its first go, EVERY step was a puzzle step. Now, there are basically sections of puzzle steps. This makes it seem like the challenge has no teeth, but on the other hand, given that Boston Rob collapsed after running this particular challenge, that’s probably for the best.

Probst goes on to talk about how they’re no longer doing challenges that any of the contestants have previously played before, which is code for “We picked ending challenges from seasons that had no contestants make it this far.”, but I like the spin he puts on it. Basically, those remaining have, to one degree or another, redeemed their past failures. Now they get to write a new legacy. It’s appropriately epic, but with just the right amount of cheese to prevent it being too grandiose. However, I will slightly question Probst’s “Never played this before.” claim, specifically with this challenge. While it’s true that, strictly speaking, no one HAS played this challenge who’s left on this season, Spencer did play a very similar challenge at the final five of “Survivor Cagayan”, and won it as well. Not exactly the same thing, but it seems like Spencer may have a leg up on the others.

Sure enough, Spencer wins. Now let’s see Kimmi’s plan put into action. She goes off to talk with Keith, wisely reinforcing what he has to do with this particular plan for it to succeed to make sure he doesn’t slip up. Unfortunately for Kimmi, the word “Subtle” does not describe her. Spencer and Tasha both wisely notice that she’s going off and speaking with people she shouldn’t really be going off and speaking with if she were going to stay true to their alliance. Figuring out that she plans to exploit the split vote, Spencer and Tasha swear NOT to split the vote.

When the foursome actually meet up, Kimmi actually pretty casually brings up the split vote idea, with guys going for Kelley and girls going for Keith. The minute Kimmi leaves, though, Tasha and Spencer start shaking their heads. Jeremy, however, is more trusting of Kimmi, particularly after he confronts her and she does a pretty convincing job of acting offended and upset at the accusation. This might seem like stupidity on Jeremy’s part, but it makes sense if you think about it. Throughout the entire game, with all of the crazy switch-ups, Kimmi and Jeremy are the only two people consistently on the same tribe. With all that loyalty built, plus paranoia about another idol, it makes sense why Jeremy would be overly trusting of Kimmi.

You know how I said the Jeff Varner boot was one of the most exciting Tribal Councils ever, and that nothing this season could possibly top it. Meet the topper. This Tribal Council was nothing short of FANTASTIC! We got really subtle gameplay from a lot of people, particularly Kelley and Keith, at least for the first part. But, as if subtle jabbing wasn’t enough, Spencer just goes and blows the whole thing open, stating out loud that Kimmi has turned against the alliance. Kimmi once again does a good job acting indignant, but Spencer doesn’t buy it. We go up to vote with many excellent sound-bytes, and everything blown wide open.

As everyone goes up to vote, I do have to say that while Spencer’s can opening was a lot of fun to watch, I’m not sure it was the best move for him. Jumping ahead a bit, Kelley, the intended target of the night, plays her idol, presumably in direct response to Spencer’s line of questioning. Had Spencer NOT done that, and just let Jeremy play HIS idol, Kelley, the biggest threat left, goes home. Bam. Done. Much better outcome. No complains, though. It did make for an exciting Tribal Council.

As I mentioned, the line of questioning leads Kelley to play her idol, which makes Jeremy wisely uncomfortable, and he plays his idol. Since neither Jeremy nor Kelley is an idiot, both read the situation correctly, and nullified three votes against them apiece. This means that, for the first time in “Survivor” history, we have a Tribal Council with no votes cast. Man, I know I hate it when people go overboard about what a “Survivor” first is, but this season really deserves that title. The resolution to this, as you might expect, is that everyone goes to vote again, but Jeremy and Kelley are now also immune. Everyone gets the chance to plead their case, and Spencer tries valiantly to sway Kimmi back to his side, trying to counter her complaints about how he replaced her in the alliance. This is somewhat undone, though, by Keith playing the part of Hayden Moss (“Survivor Blood vs. Water”), and silently insisting behind everyone backs that this is not the case. As one would logically guess, this leads to another 3-3 deadlock, this time between Kimmi and Tasha. Keith once again channels his inner “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, this time going with Gervase Peterson, as he encourages them to go to rocks. Probst then gives Jeremy, Tasha, Kelley, and Keith the chance to come to a unanimous consensus. Usually these don’t come to a consensus, but this time there’s a catch that may change things. With three people (Spencer, Kelley, and Jeremy) having immunity, and the people voted for (Tasha and Kimmi) automatically being immune in a rock-drawing situation, Keith would, by default, be voted out, as the only one not immune. It seems like this would be crazy, but for the moment, Keith seems up for it, noting that he’s had a good run, and Kimmi’s in it for the kids. This is the point where Keith needs to be voted out immediately. If you vote out Kimmi, it makes the rest of you look like jerks, and him the noble hero who tried to keep a single mom in the game. Keith just became MUCH more dangerous, and really needs to go. However, self-preservation kicks in, and Kimmi leaves anyway. Frankly, I’m not sorry to see her go. She was getting better as the season progressed, but compared to those left, she wasn’t all that exciting a character. Still, as she said she had a pretty good run, and it was nice to see her back.

After the requisite post-Tribal scene of Kelley and Keith discussing how screwed they are, we head to our second immunity challenge, basically a ropes obstacle course used on “Survivor South Pacific”, complete with a rotation puzzle. A bit generic, as challenges go, but a nice and exciting nonetheless. I lambasted it when it first appeared, but that’s because it was the final immunity challenge, which I feel should always be endurance. Here? I think it works quite well!

Then again, perhaps I’m riding the high from how much Kelley Wentworth owns this challenge, using more brains than anything. Certain obstacles are tougher than others, so Kelley goes to the toughest first. This means she takes it on with the most energy, and gets it out of the way, while everyone else avoids it. I expected Jeremy and Keith to own this challenge, since it does seem similar to fireman skills, and they both do pretty well. By all saving the hard obstacle for the end, though, they make a bottleneck, which slows them down enough for Kelley to take victory. Good for her. Also, I find it hilarious that Spencer, the puzzle guy, couldn’t get a single piece in, even after looking off of Kelley’s puzzle.

The logical choice now would seem to be Keith, and a brief pow-wow between Jeremy, Spencer, and Tasha seems to confirm this. Of course, Kelley being Kelley, she’s not going down without a fight, and her solution is… a fake idol. Ok, not a horrible plan, since inducing paranoia at this few numbers is always good if you’re on the bottom, and overplaying could backfire. Again, though, this plan also has a chance of backfiring, and doesn’t give you a lot of options. If I’m Kelley, I make an open play against Spencer. For Jeremy and Tasha, he’s a huge threat to win who has no idols. He seems to be ideally placed. Better to unite for one vote and take him out now, than Keith who is less likely to win.

It turns out Kelley makes a damn good fake idol, and this also means that all idols looking different come into play for the FIRST TIME this season. Man, for how much they built that twist up, it really took its sweet time being relevant. Now, her idol’s not Bob Crowley (“Survivor Gabon”) levels of good, but few are. Certainly it induces the paranoia she needs. In a hilarious scene, Jeremy tries to subtly get Keith’s attention to mouth who they want to vote for, being unable to talk since Tasha is napping right next to them. Keith, being Keith, fails to notice, even going so far as to look the other way. After about a solid minute of hilarious miming, Jeremy is able to mouth “Spencer” to Keith, implying that Jeremy would like to vote out Spencer. Keith relays this information to Kelley, and the pair agree to vote for Spencer. After all, either he or Jeremy need to go, and if Jeremy’s willing to play, why not go with it? From Jeremy’s end, he now has the best of all possible worlds. He makes Spencer a target rather than himself, and can basically choose how the vote goes tonight. Speaking of which, the misdirection in this episode is excellent! I didn’t bring it up last vote, but I REALLY wasn’t sure how it would shake out, and this one is no different. Jeremy is definitely a good strategist, and has been playing beyond my expectations this season, but he’s not the best. He’s prone to being overly paranoid and making mistakes, so I could see him flipping to vote out Spencer. His idea move, of course, would be to stick with his alliance. If Keith plays no idol, he goes, but if he does, then a major threat is gone, and Jeremy doesn’t look like a traitor. Pretty sweet deal for Jeremy.

It’s pretty hard to top that first Tribal Council there, but this one gives it a good try Keith once again demonstrates some subtle gameplay I wouldn’t have expected from him, and Kelley also gets in a few good hints. A fun watch, but it feels kind of standard after the last Tribal Council. In the end, Jeremy once again plays it smart, and Keith leaves. Man, I’ve really got to stop doubting Jeremy. Just when it seems like he’s going to make a big blunder, he does the smart thing. As to Keith’s leaving, you’re doubtless SHOCKED to learn that I’m not at all sorry to see him go. The man brought very little strategically or entertainment wise, though I will say I found him less insufferable this season. Probably it’s because this cast was so good that there was stuff to watch other than Keith, so when he DID occasionally show up, it was fine. In contrast, on “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, there wasn’t much BUT Keith to watch, so his antics got old really fast. So yeah, glad to see him gone.

We head on over to our final immunity challenge, which means the drawback of not getting to see the “Fallen Comrades” bit. I know they haven’t done it in forever, and it’s a relic of a bygone age at this point, but I enjoyed it, and it would have fit this season, especially with how well people knew each other this time around. Sad to say, but our Final Immunity Challenge is really nothing to look at this time around. It’s “Simmotion” from “Survivor Tocantins”, basically catching balls as they go through a maze. It’s a clever little challenge, and it IS an endurance challenge, which is good for the final challenge, but it just doesn’t feel grand. For my money, I would have gone with doing “Hand on a Hard Idol” from “Survivor Borneo”. It just would have felt right. I may have given the show crap early on for how much it seemed to be trying to be “Survivor Borneo”, but the occasional throwback to the original season is nothing to sneeze at. Ah well.

You’d expect Jeremy, the strength guy, to be out quickly in this challenge, but he wins it pretty handilly, and talks about how he won it for Val and his kids. This seems like a pretty nice scene, and it is, with a lot of genuine emotion. you’ll be a lot more cynical, though, when you realize Jeremy is going to KEEP invoking the wife and kids. With the EXACT SAME PHRASING each time! At LEAST change up the word choice, man!

After Spencer, Tasha, and Jeremy celebrate, Spencer goes to give Kelley the “sorry you lost” speech, but mentions in passing that he thinks he has a good shot to win in the end. With nothing left to lose, Kelley brings this information to Jeremy, who says he might be ok with it going to a fire-making challenge. No, Jeremy, no. Look, I get that I’ve said that you’re not the greatest strategist the world has ever seen, but this would be REALLY bad strategy. Like, Mike Holloway (“Survivor Worlds Apart”) bad. And you’d never do something that stupid. Yes, sad to say this is the one Tribal Council this episode without any tension in it.

Not to say that we get a bad Tribal Council! It once again pales in comparison to our opening Tribal Council, but that’s a tough act to follow. As it stands, we get a great open debate between Spencer and Kelley about who should go, one that I’d say actually doesn’t do Spencer a whole lot of good. He basically threatens Jeremy, saying that if he gets voted out, he’s campaigning against Jeremy in the end. Not that this argument is bad, but Spencer is so forceful, so determined with it that it makes him scary. Kelley is more subdued, but Spencer’s doing a better case agains himself than she is. True, she’s still the bigger threat. As Spencer himself says, it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but he just makes himself seem so put out that it could make someone like Jeremy want to vote for him just on principle. Also, when Probst asks Jeremy if he’s ready to do various things, Jeremy says “yes” in exactly the same tone of voice each time. Hilarious.

As always this season, though, Jeremy plays with his head, and sends Kelley home. Definitely the right move, as she was the biggest threat left in the game, but I am sorry to see her go. Unlike most people named “Kelly” on “Survivor”, Kelley was a great strategist who brought interesting new dynamics and fun confessionals to the game, and played excellently. It’s a shame she wasn’t rewarded this time around, but hopefully she gets a third chance at some point. She really deserves it in my book.

Day 39 begins with a bright orange sunrise and a bright orange bird. Pretty sweet, but I still miss the cute baby monkey. We get our usual final day feast, as well as the “Scale and Mirror” twist from “Survivor Cagayan”, though this one causes less drama. We also get our usual “How far we’ve come” confessionals from our finalists. Tasha gets teary-eyed, but doesn’t really say anything memorable, Spencer talks about how his game has evolved, and Jeremy, yet again, talks about his wife and kids, as well as his emotional journey. From what little we’ve seen, and predicting what arguments people have for the win, Tasha is unlikely to win, but it should be a close battle between Spencer and Jeremy. What’s interesting to me is that it’s really framed as a battle of logic versus emotion between the two. Spencer, as you’d expect, plays the logical “I improved my game.” card, while Jeremy goes for his emotional journey. Granted, that’s not an entirely apt comparison, since Spencer claims his game evolution was an emotional one, but it is an odd switch-up.

We’ve got a 10 person jury this time around, and while most of them are interesting in terms of questions, for the sake of time, I’m only going to hit the highlights. Savage berates both Jeremy and Spencer for being arrogant, at which point I can’t help but roll my eyes at the idea of SAVAGE of all people giving others crap about being arrogant. He asks both of them to justify their actions. Spencer pretty much apologizes, but Jeremy says that that’s how he was feeling at the time, and that while it may have been immature, it was genuine. Seems to me like Spencer answered the question better, but I get the feeling Savage will vote for Jeremy anyway. Savage is big on “honor”, and Jeremy played the game in a more Savage-like way, and so would be seen as more honorable. Ciara spouts more crap about how this season is “Unlike any other season.”, which I’m frankly sick of at this point, but I bring it up because here we see a textbook example of how to answer a jury question on “Survivor”. Jeremy responds that the caliber of player is what made this season different, citing Ciera and her desire to play as an example. Bam! Answers the question in a clever way that makes everyone feel good about themselves, and praises the question-asker when it was not explicitly asked for! That’s how you answer a jury question! Kelly makes a callback to her season by asking everyone to pick a number for the win, and for once, people make logical choices. Jeremy says “two”, whereupon Tasha says “three” and Spencer “four”. Stephen, in a funny parallel to “Survivor Tocantins”, basically asks Jeremy “Is it true that you’re the greatest human being who’s ever lived?” Abi-Maria brings up a bunch of notes that she doesn’t use. Kimmi refers to Spencer as a “bully” for how he treated Kelley at the previous Tribal Council. Kass calls out Spencer’s “Zero chance of winning the game.” remark from “Survivor Cagayan”, and even though his response to that is the most genuine we’ll see from him tonight, I feel like Kass still probably won’t vote for him. Actually, this is shaping up to be a pretty even vote tonight. Thus far, I feel like we’ve got a 4-4-1 split, with Kass, Savage, Stephen, and Abi-Maria voting for Jeremy, Ciera, Kelly, Joe, and Keith voting for Spencer, and Kimmi voting for Tasha. This makes a certain amount of sense. Tasha doesn’t have much of a resume, but played a good enough social game to earn a vote or two. Spencer’s answers have been the most articulate, but you can tell there’s a lot of BS in them. Those who can’t see through the BS vote for him. Jeremy’s answers, by contrast, aren’t as good, but come across as more genuine.

And so, it all comes down to Kelley, who decides the entire vote. Just maybe not in the way you’d expect.

Kelley asks a pretty open-ended question, which you’ think wouldn’t amount to anything. But then, Jeremy pulls out the bombshell, the ace in the hole for him. He goes on about Val and his unborn child, whom he reveals to everyone is a boy. And the jury just collapses. Everyone is blown away by this revelation, and you can tell Jeremy just won himself a lot of votes. how many votes? Well, put it this way: No name is shown on any card for this final vote. Every time they do this, it means the vote was a landslide victory, a complete shutout. Since there’s no way Jeremy ISN’T getting votes, guess who wins?

Yep, we have our third “perfect game” in “Survivor” history, with Jeremy getting all votes at the Final Tribal Council, and receiving no votes during his time in the game, though with the asterisk that three votes for him technically exist, and were just nullified. Before I rant about this, let me say that Jeremy is a deserving winner. He played a much better game, flying below the radar, and made every move pretty much right. That said, I feel that his victory is tainted by the use of underhanded tactics. The trouble is Jeremy using his wife to gain sympathy votes in the end feels a lot to me like the “Dead Grandma” lie of “Survivor Pearl Islands”. While Val actually IS pregnant, and I do think Jeremy’s emotion is genuine, it doesn’t feel fair for everyone else that Jeremy used that tactic. It feels underhanded and personal, way below the belt for this game. And yeah, I know, fairness isn’t a part of “Survivor”, but it just rubs me the wrong way that Jeremy effectively USED his wife like a tool to win “Survivor”. On top of that, while I’m definitely cool with Jeremy winning, it feels like a travesty that neither Spencer nor Tasha got any votes. They played good games. They deserve some acknowledgment of it.

Is this what brings down the season, preventing it from being number one? Well, partly, but I feel like it’s symptomatic with the larger issue I have with the season: its directionality. Early on, it was clear this season would be one of the greats, but the question was just how great. As this season progressed with consistently good episodes, I knew it had to make the top 3 or so, and I began to toy with the idea of it being my new favorite season. As we saw episodes that should have been bad, but were still good, I became convinced that putting it anywhere less than 2 would be an insult. But there again, did it make number one. I tried to compare it to “Survivor Micronesia”, my overall favorite season, but the trouble was they were good in different ways. “Survivor Cambodia” was overall more consistent in its awesomeness than “Survivor Micronesia” (note again the making of boring episodes interesting), and had a somewhat better cast. However, it never reached some of the heights of ridiculousness that “Survivor Micronesia” reached, though Erik Reichenbach voting himself out is a pretty high bar to set. What really got me thinking, though, was the overall trends of the season. “Survivor Micronesia” started out as an excellent season, but progressed to phenomenal as time went on. Basically, it got better the longer it ran. In contrast, I feel that “Survivor Cambodia”, while excellent throughout, didn’t reach the same heights later as it did earlier. The episodes were still spectacular, but just not quite as spectacular as some of the early season stuff we saw. If you’ve got the choice between a better beginning or a better ending for a season of “Survivor”, I say the ending should be better, so that’s a point in the “Survivor Micronesia” column. To solve my dilemma, I decided to wait and see how the finale for “Survivor Cambodia” turned out before making my judgement, and I deem it not quite as good. This episode could actually be a microcosm of the season: all good, but the stuff early on was just more amazing than the stuff later. Not the episodes fault, since things do have to be shown in order, but with Jeremy’ semi-underhanded way of winning, and especially in such a landslide, it just makes this season not quite number one with me. Perhaps, if the vote had been close, kept the tension right up until the end, it might have been different, but the landslide victory, coupled with a stronger beginning than ending, just keep “Survivor Cambodia” out of the number one spot.

That said, however, this is still one of the greatest seasons of all time! We had an excellent cast who really brought their “A” game, spectacular twists that all really worked, and a great locale. If you love this season above all others, I really can’t fault you in any way. This one was a home run for the show, and I’m proud to have blogged it for you.

The reunion show, as per usual, won’t be talked about. It’s a pretty nice one, but nothing stands out. That said, I am not all that optimistic about “Survivor Kaoh Rong” from the preview. As many have gather, this is another “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty” season, doubtless trying to capitalize on the popularity of “Survivor Cagayan”. My stance on reusing twists is well known by now, so I wasn’t going to like the preview from the beginning, but what’s worse, the “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty” aspect WASN’T what made “Survivor Cagayan” work. Rather, it was a spectacular cast who all came to play. If you want to recapture the “Survivor Cagayan” magic, focus on getting a great cast, not reusing twists. To further the “copying” idea, they’ve even got an NBA player on the season! The emphasis on the harshness of the season and the medical evacuations also leads me to have little faith in the season. After all, if that’s your main selling point, there must not be a lot to work with. That said, I DID like a couple members of the cast that they showcased, and that makes me believe this next season might not be a total loss. The two who particularly stood out to me were Debbie, the lady with a bunch of jobs, who seems like she’ll be a fun character, and the older guy I am henceforth dubbing “Yau-Man 2.0” (“Survivor Fiji”).

But, as per the ending of any season, I have to do a:

TOP 5 AND BOTTOM 5!

There’s not a lot that stood out about this finale that I haven’t covered in a previous list, but I have gushed about the merged tribe flag from this season, so that’s what we get to talk about. Let’s dive right in!

TOP 5

5. Enil Edam (“Survivor Caramoan”): I almost put this flag on the “Bottom 5” list, because Erik’s drawing style really doesn’t lend itself the caricatures he was trying to do of everyone who made the merge. But the center of the flag, ooh man, that give me shivers! A perfectly painted sunset with the season’s helicopter overhead. That is awesome, and puts it in the top list.

4. Barramundi (“Survivor The Australian Outback”): I normally don’t like a cartoony style for a flag, but this one made it work. It fit the more casual feel of the season, and the image of a giant fish eating the tribe name is just too good to ignore.

3. Alinta (“Survivor Vanuatu”): This season was subtitled “Islands of Fire”, so of COURSE your flag has to have a volcano on it! The drawing itself is very well done, but what puts this one so high is the lettering. Most merge tribe flags have big, block lettering on them, but Scout managed to give the lettering a distinctive style that really makes this flag stand out above others.

2. Orkun (“Survivor Cambodia”): I’ve gushed about the beauty of this flag before, so I feel no need to do so here. To look at it is to marvel at the beauty of the color and the design, and while the tribe name itself is a bit hard to make out, you can’t help but love it.
1. Gitanos (“Survivor Exile Island”): Having a professional artist to do your flag for you really helps you out. Not only was this one beautifully and uniquely constructed, but Bruce was able to pretty well reconstruct a lot of the motifs from the season, and it really helped. This flag stands out even amongst other well-painted flags.

Honorable Mention: Hae Da Fung (“Survivor China”): Another cool looking flag, with a great yin-yang symbol featuring the old tribe colors and mascots. Lettering’s really unique as well. It would definitely have been on the list proper, had it not been for the fact that said cool yin-yang symbol wasn’t the work of the contestants. Production put it on there, which in my book, disqualifies it from consideration.

BOTTOM 5

5. Moto Maji (“Survivor Africa”): I’m doing a bit of a disservice here, since this flag isn’t all that bad. A nice, big symbol over a pretty standard rendering of the tribe name. What bothers me is that the tribe name was supposed to be Swahili for “Water” and “Fire”, and they tried to reflect that in their flag. I saw WATER in the symbol… but no FIRE! FAIL!

4. #Huyopa (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”): A pretty standard rendering of the tribe name, group initials, and nothing else, but what sets this one apart is adding in the hashtag directly to the name. Granted, I ranted about this in my “Worst Merge Tribe Names” list, but it still bothers me, and bothers the flag by extension.

3. Chuay Jai (“Survivor Thailand”): This one really just lands on the list for a lack of effort. It’s a poorly drawn “Survivor” logo that’s hard to make out, with, once again, everyone initials. Nothing to see here! Move along!

2. Te Tuna (“Survivor South Pacific”): I’ll admit, perhaps I’m being harsh. After all, this one did TRY and add some variety to the flag, but it has not central grounding image, and what’s there is pretty poorly drawn. I feel bad criticizing people’s drawing skills, since my own aren’t so hot, but this flag just looks childish to me.

1. Aitutonga (“Survivor Cook Islands”): Really a placeholder for all “Name and initials” flags, but this one always stood out to me by… not standing out to me. I know it makes no sense, but of the boring flags “Survivor” has had, this one seems to most boring to me, and therefore should be put out to exemplify all of its kind.

Honorable Mention: Balboa (“Survivor Pearl Islands”): The flag itself was fine, but I put it on here because I feel like there’s some wasted potential. You have a black flag on a pirate-themed season, and you DON’T have a skull and crossbones?

Still with me, dear reader? Good. We’re in the home stretch. I just need to critique my early opinions of the contestants, and sign off!

Vytas: Wrong. While I still say he’s a good player, I evidently wasn’t the only one who spotted it, and he got voted out much earlier than I expected.

Shirin: Wrong. While the quirky, crazy energy was still there, it got to people more than I would have guessed, and led to a much earlier exit than I predicted.

Peih-Gee: Wrong. She didn’t change nearly as much as I though, and as such went out much earlier than I expected.

Jeff Varner: He was out early, which I didn’t see, but I’ll give myself some credit that I think I predicted how he would play down pat.

Monica: Technically, she WAS the first one out when her tribe first went to Tribal Council, so I’m counting this one correct. Waste of a space.

Terry: Well, the man did learn from his mistakes (at least to some degree), and might have gone farther had it not been for his family emergency. I’ll give myself this one.

Woo: He played pretty much how I expect, but went out a bit earlier.

Kass: Wrong. I’m impressed at how she improved her game, and while she didn’t last as long as her first outing, she still made it pretty far.

Savage: While the man lasted longer than I thought, I’m saying I was right on this one. He acted in pretty much the same way I thought he would, and I still didn’t enjoy it.

Kelly: Wrong. I once again nail personality and gameplay, but flub time in the game.

Ciera: Wrong. She hung in there far better than I thought she would.

Stephen: Thankfully wrong. It seemed like he might be out early like I thought, but he managed to turn his game around, at least for a while.

Joe: Pretty much right. Didn’t really learn from last season, and out almost as soon as he became vulnerable. Hung on a bit longer than I expected, though.

Abi-Maria: Completely right. She learned nothing, and got dragged along for it.

Kimmi: Wrong. While I was correct in that Kimmi hadn’t learned as much about the game as she thought, she was able to overcome that and last longer.

Keith: Wrong. While his gameplay didn’t change, it still took him pretty far.

Kelley: Right. She played aggressively and lasted a while, like I thought.

Tasha: Though she didn’t win, she came close, and played pretty similarly to how I thought she would. I’ll give myself this one.

Spencer: Right. He played pretty similarly and lasted about as long as I expected. He might even have overcame himself to win, were it not for Jeremy’s pregnancy ploy.

Jeremy: Wrong. Not as wrong as some others, but I didn’t give the guy enough credit on his strategy or his odds.

And there you have it! Great season, great cast, hopefully the next one can prove me wrong. Normally I’d take a hiatus here until the cast for next season is announced, but I do actually have one bit of off-season content I’d like to do while the iron is hot. Be on the lookout for the next few weeks for “Matt’s 2nd Second Chance Fantasy Roster”!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 12: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast, OutFox’d

The only way this blog can really start off is with an apology. As you might expect, it’s for the unexpected lateness of this blog. As my frequent readers will know, I pride myself on my punctuality with these posts, so this one being later than usual is somewhat starting. Sad to say, I’m feeling a bit under the weather, and so don’t think I can really do the blog in full at my usual time. I’ll admit, it’s pretty pathetic to say “I’m feeling too ill to do a blog.”, but it does take a lot of brainpower, and I just don’t have that right now. I’ll write as much as I can before I have to crash, and I’ll be sure to make a note of where I have to break for the evening, to give you an idea of where my thoughts may be slightly skewed. I also need to apologize for something else that’s quickly become a staple of the blog this season:

MATT’S MESS-UP!

A couple of pretty obvious ones this time. When describing the puzzle of last episode, I mentioned that it was tricky because one had to spell the word “Nutrition” backwards. I was wrong. You had to spell “Nourishment” backwards, which I would say is even harder and more obscure than “Nutrition”, so kudos there. just a slip of synapses, I guess. My other fault is in how fast I went through the last Tribal Council. Not to say that I really skipped over the strategic points, but I failed to acknowledge the awesomeness that was the shot of Spencer’s silhouette when voting. That shot sent chills down my spine. They need to do shots like that more often.

Certainly Orkun wishes they had some shots as they return from Tribal Council. There’s been very little celebrating at the expense of others this season (one of the reasons I think it’s a cut above most other seasons), but here things go a bit in that direction. Nothing overly much, but the return to camp seems more jovial than usual. Though that may be because, as Kelley correctly points out, they now all have a decent shot at winning immunity.

Not all is at peace, though. Tasha got a mystery vote last night, and it’s quickly figured out that it was Keith. Speculation from the outside was that Keith knew about the vote, but didn’t want to vote out his friend St. Joe, and so threw a vote Tasha’s way. At worst, just a sentimental move, but at best, a pretty subtle way to win over jury votes. I’ll admit, even I bought into this. I’m not the biggest Keith fan in the world, but I’d say he’s capable of at least THAT much strategic thought. I mean, he’s not Ralph Kaiser (“Survivor Redemption Island”) or anything. Yep, I was all prepared to give Keith credit here. Too bad he completely throws that out the window, wondering why he wasn’t let into the loop. He doesn’t seem too hurt about it, but it’s a shame to see that no, Keith really is that out of it.

Though, perhaps Keith’s lack of hurt is because Tasha is siphoning it all. Tasha is EXTREMELY upset that Keith voted for her, to the point of wanting to vote Keith out next. I can’t criticize this move too much, since it DOES fit in with the women’s alliance, which I said before is probably the better way for Tasha to go at this point. However, Tasha, despite arguably being better at challenges than anyone left (as far as track record goes), Keith is nowhere near as big of a threat as Jeremy or Spencer are, by virtue of not being able to really put a coherent strategy together. I’m not saying Tasha should take a throwaway vote lying down, but this seems a bit extreme. This is what I mean when I say she’s kind of Andrew Savage (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) lite. She doesn’t go in for personal attacks against people who DARE to move against her, but she’s not very quiet about it. Better to play things subtly and close to the chest in these scenarios, rather than go on the warpath against your betrayer. Take a lesson from the book of Natalie Anderson (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”), and wait for the proper time for your revenge, rather than seek it immediately.

Speaking of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, all three people voted on from that season are still around! Remember that? Jeremy, Kelley, and Keith sure do! In fact, they’re shouting it in front of everybody! If that doesn’t pile on the “Royally Screwed” for one of the three (presumably Keith), I don’t know what does. Still, even if it amounts to nothing (which is what will happen), it does bring up a good point. I’m normally not one for talking about preseason talk from the contestants outside of my “Cast Assessment” blogs, but it bears mentioning here. One of the big themes a lot of people talked about preseason was “Splitting up the ‘Survivor Cagayan’ group.” After all, while fractious, they did have four people, more than any other season, and could form a secret voting block. However, in targeting the “Cagayan 4”, people may have neglected the “San Juan del Sur 3” Almost as many people, and with less bad blood between them than those from “Survivor Cagayan”. Given Jeremy’s “Anti-Girl Alliance” talk, I doubt that’s what’s actually happening, but it’s something to consider.

After more of the aforementioned “Anti-Girl Alliance” talk between Jeremy and Spencer, we head to our reward challenge, courtesy of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”. Everyone has to unwind some rope from a frame, being tied to the end of said rope. Once they believe they’ve unwound enough rope, they must construct and cross a bridge before using beanbags to knock blocks off of a table. The first person to clear their table wins a trip to the temple where we had our show opener, as well as a blessing from the monks, and a feast. Pretty sweet reward, all things considered, and not a half-bad challenge to boot. Sure, I think the block-knocking thing is pretty lame, and I do wish the bridge was a puzzle bridge rather than sticking generic sticks in generic slots, but I like the mental element with unspooling the rope. Not to say that it’s a particularly hard thing to do (unless you’re Abi-Maria), but there’s an element of timing to it. You want to leave as quickly as you can, so as to get a lead on your opponents, but not so early that you don’t have enough rope, and lose time needing to unspool more. It’s an interesting element, and one that saves this challenge for me.

Keith won the challenge on “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, and history repeats here as he wins it again. Unlike some, however, I don’t think this is a result of Keith’s impressive physical strength. Keith’s pretty decent in that area, to be sure, and he was one of the frontrunners, but it’s not as though he had a commanding lead the entire time. Keith was just the only one who made absolutely sure he had enough rope before heading out. Still impressive, just in a different way than you might think.

Keith gets to take two people with him on his reward, and he picks Kelley and Spencer, which I really can’t argue with. Keith’s not really in a position to curry favor with one alliance or another, so might as well take a key player in both and remove suspicion of alliance forming. Not that this strategy works, but the theory behind it is good. Keith’s justification, however, is that Kelley took him on reward last time, so he’s returning the favor (fair), and that, somehow, Spencer’s loved one gave him less that Jeremy’s or Tasha’s, which I would say isn’t fair. I’m not a huge fan of putting value judgements on how important a loved one is, nor am I a fan of it here, though I cut Keith a bit of slack since unlike some, I don’t think it comes from a place of malice. Kelley passes it off as an example of “Keith Logic”, and frankly I’m surprised that doesn’t become a hashtag.

Despite Keith picking people you’d think would get rid of alliance-forming suspicion, their names still get thrown around back at camp, mostly because Tasha is still on the warpath. The fair point is also brought up that with St. Joe out of the mix, Keith is now a threat to win challenges. Tasha’s the ringleader, of course, and Kimmi and Abi-Maria are definitely on board, Abi-Maria relishing in the villainousness of it all. Jeremy’s definitely open to the idea, but everyone can tell he’s a little reluctant. Jeremy thinks, not unfairly, that Keith may be a number in his corner, and he’s still scared of a women’s alliance. Not an unreasonable fear, especially since I’d say Keith might be a good asset for Jeremy, but Jeremy goes a bit far in saying that he wishes he HADN’T voted St. Joe out last time. I get that the women’s alliance is a threat, but that’s too big a sacrifice to cripple a potential counter-alliance. Tasha, for her part, is bound and determined that Keith go, saying that it’s her time to make a move, and that if Jeremy won’t go, she’ll find others to go with instead. You know, I’m starting to see a pattern developing on this season. Everyone wants to make “their move”, something they can point to and say that they and only they engineered. Granted, that’s true on every season, but it seems really pronounced here. This fixed focus on one’s move, though, is also setting up the downfall of a lot of people. People need to make moves for themselves, sure, but they need to wait for the right time for it to happen organically. Those who try and force a move on a situation where it’s not needed often meet their downfall as a result, or have their time game significantly shorted because of it, Stephen’s feud against St. Joe being a prime example. Granted, time’s running out to make a move, and while Tasha doesn’t exactly have NO resume, she doesn’t really have anything that stands out (unless you count voting Kass out).

At first, it looks like we won’t get any strategy on this reward, but just a lot of nice, non-gameplay scenes. True, Spencer’s talk about how far he’s come is a bit forced, but it’s a lot of fun just to watch the ceremony, and hear Keith make “Indiana Jones” quips. But eventually, the game must come again. Sure enough, the three discuss a final three possibility, which again, isn’t terrible. Keith probably can’t win in that scenario, but then again, I have a hard time imagining a scenario this season in which Keith CAN win, so I suppose it’s as good as any. I don’t see Spencer or Kelley wanting to go up against the other, since I’d say those two have the strongest resumes out of anyone there, but on the other hand, they talk about adding Abi-Maria as the fourth, and since she’s the only person less likely to win than Keith, it’s possible either Spencer or Kelley plans to betray the other. One could argue that Spencer’s choice means very little, since he’s in a similar situation if he goes with Jeremy, Tasha, and Kimmi, with Jeremy being someone Spencer probably doesn’t want to face, but each could betray the other and take Tasha and Kimmi to the end, except that I’d say Tasha and Kimmi overall have better resumes than either Keith or Abi-Maria, so there’s still some incentive for the reward final three scenario. The three debate who to get out first, Jeremy being their primary target, but all agree that that’s what will be expected, in terms of idol playing. Guess Jeremy wasn’t so good at hiding that idol after all. The three correctly surmise that, after Jeremy, Tasha is the biggest threat, and so agree to go for her first. Not a bad move, except for the fact that after getting rid of Tasha, Jeremy still has a Tribal Council in which he can play his idol, and now he’s tipped off to the fact that you’re against him. Better to take the risk and blindside him now, I say. Can’t fault their logic, though. Much though I hate to make positive comparisons to “Survivor Fiji”, it’s very reminiscent of the brilliant move of getting out Edgardo of the four horsemen, since no one would see it coming.

Remember all that single-mindedness I was talking about from Tasha earlier? Yeah, that’s out the window. Tasha realizes that Abi-Maria might not be the strongest ally, and so perhaps it’s in their best interest to get her out, since she’s a potential swing vote. I’m all for flexibility in the game, and I’m certainly grateful that Tasha’s confessionals aren’t going to be super repetitive this episode, but her choices make no sense. She swings from the second worst person to vote out to the worst person to vote out, targeting people who really shouldn’t be targets. I’ll go into her logic later, as it DOES have consistence, but suffice to say, it’s not what I would call a good strategy to win the game. It makes for exciting tv, and I’m happy to see it, but in addition to voting out goats, Tasha is now destroying the possibility of a women’s alliance, which, need I reiterate, is her best option.

We WOULD head over to the immunity challenge, but I’m tired, and need to head over to bed. Here endeth the part of the blog written immediately after the episode. See you guys tomorrow (or today, as the case may be).

So, as I was saying, we head off to our promised immunity challenge. It’s a pretty standard water obstacle course, with people running across various platforms and beams to retrieve something (in this case a key), out in the water, then swim back and solve a puzzle, with the first puzzle solved winning immunity. The idea of a water obstacle course is pretty old by “Survivor” standards. Elements of it can be traced all the way back to “Survivor Borneo”. Personally, though, I consider “Survivor Vanuatu” the birthplace of this particular variation on the challenge, since that was the season to have climbing over local boats as the obstacle. This seems strange, as no one from “Survivor Vanuatu” was on this season, or even eligible to be on this season. So, how does this relate to “Second Chances”? the answer comes in the puzzle. During the first episode of “Survivor Worlds Apart”, each tribe had a choice to solve one of three puzzles. The one with the fewest pieces, basically a tangram puzzle that would make a square when solved, was not chosen. It gets reused here, giving IT its second chance, as Probst puts it. Cheesy? Yes, absolutely, but cheesy in that good, “Survivor” kind of way. If you’re going to bring back something that never got used or finished (like the blindfolded ball-rolling challenge on “Survivor Samoa” that got finished only on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”), it’s best to do it on one of these all-star type seasons. It just feels right that “Survivor” history should be rounded out with “Survivor” alums.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that this isn’t going to be much of a contest for immunity, at least for the most. Jeremy and Spencer are far and away the heads of the pack, and really the only ones in the running for immunity. Spencer is slightly faster than Jeremy, but also a bit more reckless, and so takes a couple of pretty hard falls that are painful just to watch. Jeremy, in contrast, takes things very steadily, and never slips up once. As a result, he gets back to his puzzle station with a slight lead over Spencer, not that it matters. Jeremy’s a great guy in many ways, but he’s never shown himself as a puzzle champ. Spencer, while maybe not a puzzle CHAMP, is still pretty damn good at the things, and solves his puzzle in about 15 seconds, according to Probst. I still like this challenge, but I’ll admit a lot of the tension was gone from it. Part of that was due to just how far ahead Jeremy and Spencer were, but I also suspect that the producers were counting on the puzzle to make things exciting. When Spencer just whizzes through it, it loses a little something. Props to Spencer, as it’s not an easy puzzle, but it kind of leaves the challenge feeling a back lacking. Maybe if they’d had to run the course multiple times and retrieves multiple keys, it might have been something greater. Then again, given what we’re about to discuss, it’s probably for the best that they DIDN’T do that.

Everybody was behind Jeremy and Spencer to some degree, but Tasha was WAY behind. If this strikes you as odd, since she’s usually something of a force in challenges, well, you’d be correct. My read on the situation is that after 35 days out there, Tasha is tired, and not the best swimmer even at full strength, and this challenge required a lot of swimming. When she had FINALLY retrieved her key, and started backstroking back, she didn’t have the energy to keep her head fully above the water. Heck, in the show itself, you could SEE water lapping into her open mouth. It’s not the sort of thing that bothers me, but even I’LL admit that I’m inhumanly comfortable with feeling like I’m drowning. Tasha, for all her strengths, is only human, and so quite logically panics. For the second episode in a row, props must be given to the “Survivor” medical team, specifically their diving team. 31 seasons in, and we’ve never actually had to see the diving team rescue somebody, or even glimpsed them in the background of a challenge. They must have been there, since they got out to Tasha very quickly, but you never see them. The hid well, and performed their job to perfection. Once Tasha is out of the water, though, the tension leaves. Unlike Joe’s medical issues last episode, where it wasn’t 100% certain what was going on, leaving the possibility of an evacuation open. In Tasha’s case, it was very clear that she was just weakened and panicked. Once she was up on a platform, out of the water, it was pretty clear that she was out of danger, leaving Probst’s serious line of questioning a bit pointless. Everyone rallies around Tasha, and Probst sends them back to camp, leaving Keith to quip about how good it is that they’re sending Tasha home that night, since she’s so weak.

Back at camp, Tasha tries to walk it off, and gets some encouragement from Jeremy. Her absence allows Spencer, Keith, and Kelley to come together again, though, and try and bring Abi-Maria on board with them. As Spencer puts it, he’d be confident in this alliance if their fourth member was someone stable. Their fourth member is Abi-Maria. Enough said. Abi-Maria, for her part, does seem interested in this alliance, particularly since she and Kelley have been tight for a lot of the time in this game, but she herself talks about how she’s the swing vote, and might do something different just to shake things up.

Let us not forget that Abi-Maria is delusional, though. Just when it seems she might be the swing vote, we find out that the swing vote is actually Spencer, a role he should be used to by now. Tasha reasons to him that this season “Deserves a strong final 3” as a thank-you to the fans, as a reasoning why he should stick with the himself-Jeremy-Tasha final three. Now, as a viewer, I very much like this idea. A final three where most everyone has an equal or close-to-equal chance of winning is much more exciting to watch than someone going to the end with a goat or two. That said, speaking as someone who likes this show for the strategy more than anything, this is a STUPID IDEA! Spencer, you’re in one of the best positions to win the game! Don’t potentially jeopardize it for the sake of us! I get that this season honors the fans almost as much as it does the returnees, but that’s no reason to sacrifice your game for us!

Fortunately, as we head off to Tribal Council, I doubt that’ll happen, and I’m now pretty sure that Tasha is going. It just makes more sense strategically, and Spencer is nothing if not strategic. Admittedly, Abi-Maria’s comment about her being in power might be setting up some hubris for her exit, but the storyline of Tasha wanting to make a move and having it backfire on her has pervaded the episode. It makes more sense from both a strategic standpoint and an editing standpoint.

Gone are the early days of this season, when every Tribal Council was exciting. Again, I have to say, this was not the WORST Tribal Council ever, but it just doesn’t stand out. There is a bit where it seems like Keith might make another “Stick to the plan.” gaffe by saying “I think my ‘We’ is gonna win out.”, but this just gets everyone talking about their various “We’s”, and the five-year-old part of me is laughing his butt off. It’s entertaining, but it’s about the only strong part of Tribal Council, and when it’s based on juvenile penis humor, that’s not a good thing. If only we had an unpredictable vote to get to…

Say what you will about this season, but it’s very good at hiding who’s actually going home. I should have followed the hubris, as Abi-Maria leaves the game. She oddly DOES follow through with her threat of breaking away, and votes for Keith. Not the MOST illogical vote, since his name was tossed around earlier in the episode, but it seems weird to me that she’d break away from Kelley like that. The two seemed to be pretty well in cahoots. I’ve made it pretty clear that getting rid of Abi-Maria was a dumb move, so kudos to Tasha for convincing people that it was a good move to make. That woman can SELL a poor argument. As to whether I’m sorry to see Abi-Maria go, the answer is NOT AT ALL! Granted, she was the center of drama early on, but a decent amount of that drama was cringe-inducing. Even if you liked it, she quieted down after the merge, with the exception of dubbing Stephen “Poop-pants” for very little reason, so really, not much of a loss. Exciting for the viewers, but a dumb move for pretty much everyone involved.

This episode is a tough nut to crack. I can hardly call it a BAD episode, since we did get a decent amount of strategic talk and an unpredictable sendoff. Yet I still feel lukewarm about it. I guess because a lot of episodes this season have been MAJORLY exciting, one that’s only just standard exciting at best seems like a bit of a letdown. I will say, while this is still an excellent season, I feel like it might have peaked too early. Again, not that the episodes haven’t been good in their own right, just that all the most amazing stuff happened early on in the season. It can still make a comeback, especially since the finale looks exciting. A six-person final episode. Never seen that before. Presumably they’ll add in an extra Tribal Council, or just have a double Tribal Council, to get us down to a final three. But who can win in any final three scenario? time for my ordering of people from easiest win to toughest win. Usually I go from “guaranteed win if they make the end” to “no chance at winning”, but with Abi-Maria gone, I’d say everyone has some chance of winning. A slim chance, maybe, but a chance. And who’s the top of the heap?

KELLEY: Should she get to the end, I’m pretty sure she wins. It’s a tough call between her and the person I’d say is second most likely to win, but I think Kelley has the edge in this case. Of all the people left, her game has been the most up-front, and she’s got a great underdog story. She was in the minority a lot of the time, yet lasted a good long while. She never made the merge on her original season, yet she beat out people who did. Maybe I’m just biased since she’s a Kelley who’s not, as I once put it, “Bland as beige wallpaper”, but I feel like she could be a good winner, and has a great shot at it if she gets to the end. Her getting to the end is the biggest obstacle, but if she gets there, watch out!

SPENCER: If this list factored in who is most LIKELY to get to the end, Spencer is on top, no question. He’s got connections with everybody, is constantly the swing vote for alliances, there’s really no reason why he can’t make the end. And, unless he’s up against Kelley, he probably wins. He’s also got something of an underdog story with the “No firm alliance” thing and early votes against him. I give Kelley the edge because I feel like Spencer’s game is more subtle. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it means there’s less he can point to that was exclusively his move. Against anyone else, he’s fine. Against Kelley, it might cost him.

JEREMY: While his win is maybe not as assured as either Spencers or Kelleys in the final three, Jeremy still has a decent shot. He led a lot of big votes, can point to his “human shields” strategy as a way he improved his game, and has a decent sob story for the end. It’s probably best for him if he DOESN’T take Spencer or Kelley to the end, but even then, he still has a slim chance.

TASHA: I feel bad putting Tasha this low, since I don’t think she’s played a bad game (vindictiveness against Kass aside). The trouble is that, while Tasha has done an excellent job of making herself a part of every conversation, she, like Spencer, really has no moves she can point to as her own, and that may cost her. Not that her resume is bad, just that it’s a lot weaker that most everybody else’s.

KEITH: Like the order of the top two people, the order of the bottom two people are kind of a toss-up. Neither of them can really say they’ve done much of ANYTHING in this game, and so probably will have a hard time winning. I give Keith the edge because, unlike some people I could name, I could see him playing the “I was playing stupid.” card and actually have it be believed. Plus, he has a couple challenge wins to his name, which may count for something.

KIMMI: Kimmi has played a pretty fantastic social game overall, but like Tasha and Spencer, I think it may be too subtle to give her an easy win. I doubt she’s out of the running entirely, but she’s a long-shot. She really has no moves to her name, and can only hope for a bitter jury to give the win to her over someone else. I almost put her above Keith, since I really don’t see either of them winning. I only put her lower because of the edit. With how little screen time she’s gotten overall this season, she’s not winning it. Shame, because I do like her.

Well, the finale’s being built up big, and it’s not too late for the end game to be as exciting as the early game. Here’s hoping!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 11: Gender Identity

If any of my readers are wondering why I, and many others on the internet, are calling this one of the best seasons of all time, you need look no further than this episode. Oh, it is by no means a great episode. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a bad episode. Lackluster challenges, little to no strategizing, and a predictable boot. By all rights, this should be a terrible episode, the worst a season can produce. And yes, I’d say this was the weakest episode of this season as a whole thus far. And yet… I can’t hate it. For whatever reason, this season has succeeded at injecting such tension, such drama, that even the most predictable of episodes becomes exciting. How you may ask? An Oedipus Complex. Oh, sorry, that’s me pulling from a “Cards Against Humanity” Deck. The answer probably lies somewhere in the episode. Let’s look at it, shall we?

Our episode kicks off the morning after the regrettable Stephen Fishbach ouster, which Spencer takes credit for, though the way I saw it, that was more Joe’s move. True, Spencer was the swing vote that allowed it to happen, but I prefer to give credit for a move to the person who came up with the ove rather than the person who executed it. In any case, Spencer seems to have recovered from his temporary head trauma that led him to believe that Stephen was a bigger threat than Joe, as he now makes good with Jeremy, and wants Joe out of this game again. Jeremy is naturally a little suspicious, but since he has few options at this point, he accepts Spencer back into the fold.

It may be a case of too little, too late, however, as Kimmi has her own plans. Now, before I get into what bugs me about this, I’m going to give Kimmi the praise she deserves. She’s a lot more adaptable than I thought she was. Not long after I got done criticizing her for learning how to play the game better than on “Survivor The Australian Outback”, but still stuck in that early era of gameplay, she finally ramps it up here, and joins the rest of us. It’s a great evolution to see, and makes me feel bad for that criticism of her. But with that said, there is something that is equally true and must now be said: Kimmi’s strategy is irksome. Oh, not because it’s a bad strategy; far from it! Kimmi’s trying to form a women’s alliance so that, once obvious target Joe is gone, the women can just pick off the men all the way to the final four. For Kimmi, this is a great strategy. It’s a move she can claim as her own, pretty much guarantees her final three (since both Kelley and Tasha are bigger threats than she is at that point), and even gives her a decent shot at winning. At least she’d get a better one than up against, say, Jeremy and Spencer. No, my problem with Kimmi’s move is the hypocrisy of it all. Remember back to the days of Bayon? WHO was the one ranting about not letting a “women’s alliance” form? WHO was the one leading the anti-Monica charge? And don’t misunderstand, I have no love for Monica. I stand behind my assertion that she was a waste of a spot this season. But for KIMMI to be the one who suggests a women’s alliance? The hypocrisy of it all is just killing me.

With that nice little nugget of strategy tucked away (Kimmi having talked to Kelley, and Kelley having talked to the others), we head off to our reward challenge, which, as teased last episode, is the loved one’s challenge. Probst tries to fake out the contestants that they’re not getting a personal loved ones visit this time, but no one really buys it. I’ll be talking about the challenge itself in a bit, but let’s focus on the positives first. This is a really nice set of loved ones here. A few here and there are just kind of standard, but most of them have some factor that makes them stand out, and I mean that in a good way. We start out with Jeremy, whose wife Val is able to come out and see him, marking the first instance ever in which the loved one who shows up for a challenge was previously a contestant on the show. Recall that Jeremy had been a bit broken up about leaving his wife while she was pregnant. For him, this is probably the best day out there. He even gets to learn the sex of the baby. They’re having a boy, and if they happen to be reading this blog, I wish them a hearty congratulations, and ask that they leave a comment so that I can have some vindication in my sad, pathetic life. Jeremy for some reason doesn’t want his fellow tribe members to know that he knows the sex of the baby for some reason. Guess it’s that whole “Not wanting to seem too emotional” thing from earlier in the season. Tasha’s cousin shows up, though Tasha says they’re more like sisters than cousins. Frankly, this is one of the less memorable reunions of the episode, but it’s decent nice to see. Spencer’s girlfriend comes out, and he’s able to get over HIS inability to express emotion by saying “I Love You”. While I still think this conflict for Spencer is a bit contrived, it’s a nice scene to have. You really feel for Spencer’s reunion here, and you also feel jealous, if you’re me, since Spencer seems to have done very well in the girlfriend department. Abi-Maria and her mother reunite next, and like on “Survivor Philippines”, demonstrates to us that even the most despicable human beings have someone out there who loves them. I also like the little detail about how they speak Brazilian Portuguese to each other. It’s a little thing, but it adds a unique touch, and it’s kind of a fun little surprise to see what they’re actually saying. Keith gets to reunite with his wife, and this is another one that falls a little flat for me. Again, it’s a nice enough reunion, but there’s nothing special about it, and Keith’s quip afterwards really doesn’t do it for me. Fortunately, we have Kelley reuniting with her dad Dale after this, which is much more interesting. Dale becomes the second contestant to ever reappear as a loved one, and we get to hear his thoughts on the hardness of staying behind while your loved one goes play “Survivor”, and his happiness that Kelley managed to do better this time. Maybe not the most emotional reunion, but still fun to see. I’ve got a lot for time for Dale Wentworth, more so than most. He was a bit clueless socially, but he had some good ideas, and was good for an entertaining quip or two. Here, we get to see his arc come full circle, as he got his daughter voted out of the game, but now she’s surpassed him. It’s nice to see. While Joe may be boring in most respects, the one time he showed more than just bland niceness was when he was bitter about not even being allowed to make the loved ones challenge, since he wanted his dad to share the experience. This time, Joe gets his wish, and his dad comes out of the jungle just like he’d imagined. Once again, it’s nice to see the story come full circle. Finally, Kimmi’s dad comes out to greet her, and sadly, we end on a low note. The only real significant thing about that visit was when Probst played up how Kimmi had waited “the longest” for her loved one, referencing the fact that, with Kelly out of the game, Kimmi is the contestant from the oldest season left. It’s true, but it feels very contrived. Probably should have saved Jeremy or Joe for last, in my opinion.

As to the challenge itself, as I hinted, it’s pretty blah. Each contestant digs up a sting with three bags of puzzle pieces attached, then spin around a pole to get at a fourth bag. Now dizzy, they have to cross a balance beam and untie a fifth bag, before getting out the puzzle pieces to solve a word puzzle. This one’s a combination challenge, taking elements from “Survivor One World” and “Survivor Cagayan”. Like many post-merge challenges, it lacks in scale. Parts of it are entertaining. The dizzy balance beam portion is decently difficult, and the puzzle is, in many ways, insidious. Unlike most puzzles, which have words that commonly relate to “Survivor”, this one spells out “Nutritious”, and for this particular puzzle, you need to remember to spell it backward to be right, which is no small feet on little food, water, or sleep. Sadly, though, the challenge just isn’t that exciting over all. At least it’s not a team reward challenge.

Most everyone makes it to the puzzle and gets confused (no surprise there), but it’s ultimately Kelley who wins. She gets a barbecue feast with her dad back at camp, along with three other people, meaning for once it’s not an individual reward challenge where you offend more than half the tribe. Kelley, being the smart, strategic woman she is, picks… Keith. Ok, didn’t see that coming. I guess there might be a bit of a “Survivor San Juan del Sur” bond there, but other than that, I see no logic in this choice. A women’s alliance is a good strategy for Kelley, but it’s tenuous at the moment. This alliance is the perfect time to solidify that bond. Admittedly, you probably don’t want to take ALL the women on reward, since that might look suspicious to the men, but KEITH? What’s the excuse for taking him. You probably don’t want to take Joe, since he’s your prime target, and you don’t want him getting food, but with both Spencer and particularly Jeremy, you can make the “They needed it most” argument for taking them, thereby deflecting flak from yourself. Kelley’s next two picks are logical, though, as she takes Abi-Maria and Kimmi with her. One could argue that, since Kelley is closely bonded with Abi-Maria, that it’s better to take Tasha than her, but given how vindictive Abi-Maria can be, I can’t argue with that call too much. What I CAN argue against is her choice when Probst lets her take one more person along. Now there’s really no excuse for not taking Tasha. Leaving her out will make her less likely to join the women’s alliance, and since you’ll have taken at least one guy by this point, there’ll be less suspicion. But no, Kelley makes probably the WORST choice in this scenario, and takes Joe. Rather than take the person you want to bond with the most, you take the person you want to target, and you feed them. I fail to see the logic here.

Everyone goes off to enjoy their reward in front of the other three, and it’s very nice. Joe and his dad have a bonding moment in front of the Orkun flag, and while it’s definitely a very genuine moment, and I should be invested, I can’t help but instead focus on Joe’s Dad’s hair. At last, the origin of the man-bun is revealed! Ok, technically his dad has a ponytail, but considering how similar their hair is overall, I’m considering it a proto-man bun. Joe’s is just a slightly more evolved version.

Despite Jeremy, Tasha, and Spencer having the fact that they didn’t get a loved one’s visit rubbed in their faces, they’re not overly bitter. Spencer makes one comment, and even that’s a qualified comment. The three do agree, though, that they’d make a nice final three. Tasha rightly states that she’s in a good position now, as, so long as Joe goes, she can choose whether to side with Jeremy, Spencer, and Keith, or with Kelley, Kimmi, and Abi-Maria. I’ll also give Tasha credit for not being bitter over the whole “Not allowed to bond on reward” thing. I expected her to consider that having “crossed her”, which she, as you will recall, does not take well. She plays very well here, and throughout the whole episode overall, save for one small moment that I’ll touch on in a bit.
Only the halfway point of the episode, and already we get to the immunity challenge. This is the final immunity challenge from “Survivor Samoa” where everyone holds a small wooden statue over their heads on an increasingly long pole. Last person with their statue aloft wins. Not to say that this challenge isn’t difficult, but it’s yet ANOTHER endurance immunity challenge, and I’m getting sick of them. It’s also not exactly one of the most memorable or dramatic looking endurance challenges ever. I know that, by design, endurance challenges are not going to be the coolest looking, but consider, say, “Hand on a Hard Idol”, the classic final immunity challenge. Overall, not much is happening, just people standing there, but MAN do they make it look awesome to stand there. The pose is epic, the landscape dramatic! THAT’S what you can do with an endurance challenge.

But let’s add some ketchup to that awful sandwich, shall we? How about we make this a gender-segregated immunity challenge? Yep, this is one of those where the last man and woman standing each get immunity. Normally, this isn’t too bad a twist, especially in larger merges, since it gives a somewhat fairer shot at immunity. Plus here, it might break up the monotony of St. Joe winning everything. But the problem is that this twist works best right after the merge, just to add shake-up upon shake-up. This late, it feels tacked-on and not right. Having double immunity right after the merge adds a sense of grandeur to it. Doing it randomly, having not done it at any challenge before, just doesn’t make sense to me.

Well, better find something to like about the challenge. Um… the little wooden statue looks pretty cool?

Everyone lasts a decently long while, but the women start dropping like flies, leaving Kelley with immunity. Jeremy and Spencer drop out shortly after, leaving it be, once again, a showdown between Keith and Joe. Oh boy, we all know where this is going. We’ve been teased with a medical emergency, and Probst has been going on and on this challenge about not letting the statue fall on your head. Keith’s the one who’ll be feeling this challenge the most, due to his older years, so doubtless he’s the one to make this mistake, and probably get evacuated from the game.

All this is a very logical assessment, and I’m willing to bet most people who watched this episode expected that to happen. For them, I just have one question: why is Joe lying on the ground, unconscious?

Yep, the show got me. I’d been all prepared to snark cynically about how Keith’s evacuation was telegraphed, but instead, he wins. Joe ends up collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, something no one would have expected from him. This surprise really amps up the drama of what otherwise would be a fairly run-of-the-mill medical emergency, at least by “Survivor” standards. It doesn’t help that Joe doesn’t immediately respond to the medical team, bringing to mind the near death of Russell Swan on “Survivor Samoa”. It really hits you hard, and it feels, in a sense, like the show blindsided you.

Thankfully, it turns out Joe just needed a moment, and is going to be ok, which I’m grateful for. While I’m not the biggest Joe fan in the world, I hate to see people get evacuated for medical reasons, especially when they’re really playing hard. Further, St. Joe really needs to be voted out for a satisfying conclusion, showing that, despite his improved gameplay, he really couldn’t win. Probst gives a big speech on playing hard that really goes nowhere, and we get sent back to camp.

As one might expect, St. Joe’s name gets tossed around a LOT following the challenge. Abi-Maria, of course, ruins any tender moments that we might have. At first, it seems like the misdirection is really going to fall flat, as St. Joe talks to Jeremy about voting out Abi-Maria. Now you may ask, “Who in their right mind would vote out Abi-Maria? She’s cannon fodder at the end!” And this is exactly St. Joe’s argument. No one will ever vote Abi-Maria out, so she takes up an end slot. It might be yours. Why let that happen? Well, St. Joe, I’ll tell you why. At this point in the game, with so few people left overall, the focus shifts from “How do I get to the end?” to “Who can I beat?” Your argument might have worked earlier, when there was more cannon fodder left in the game, but now? No sane person would vote Abi-Maria out, at least on that evidence. This is REALLY bad misdirection, and had this been all we got, I might have found it in me to dislike this episode.

Thankfully, Tasha’s one stupid move of the night gets us much better misdirection. Hoping to build trust with the guys, she spills the beans about the women’s alliance. This, correctly, gets the guys paranoid about said women’s alliance, and suddenly voting out Abi-Maria seems much more attractive. After all, one less woman in the game weakens the women’s alliance. Now, I get where Tasha came from in the decision to tell the guys. She wants to build trust with a final three alliance, and she doesn’t want to look like a double-crosser, should one of the disgruntled women try and shake things up. But in doing so, Tasha pretty much throws all her eggs into the guys basket, since this makes it harder for the women’s alliance to get together, thus eliminating her best asset at this point in the game. Not only is this bad in general, but I’d say she’s throwing her eggs in the wrong basket. She has a MUCH better shot at winning the game against the women than against Spencer and Jeremy. It does give us better misdirection, though, which I appreciate. For all this episode’s faults, I can say I genuinely don’t know who’s going at Tribal Council.

Given this episode’s Tribal Council, that’s a good thing. It’s not the worst, but it’s just sort of generic posturing, nothing really special. The votes are cast, and predictably, St. Joe gets crucified, I mean voted out. Can’t say I’m sorry to see him go. Joe is a nice guy and all, but if there was one flaw in the past couple episodes, it’s that most strategy centered around him to the point of exclusion of all others, either by targeting him, or using him to target someone else. With him gone, we can now move forward with new and exciting storylines. If he wasn’t going to win, leaving sooner is better. Plus, while seeing someone immunity their way to the end would have been neat, it does not a legendary winner make, in my opinion.

Was the the right decision? Of course. The women’s alliance is a threat, to be sure, but Joe winning overall is a much bigger threat. It works well for both the women and the men. Plus, Jeremy’s immunity idol and the possibility of having Tasha on board means that this move is less risky overall. Good on you all for not making the same mistake twice!

This episode still confuses me. It has a lot of elements to dislike, that I listed earlier, but the exciting bits were just SO exciting, and I had such a fun time, that I can’t in good conscience dislike this episode. The preview for next week looked boring, maybe I can rag on that.

You know something I love, though? The “Lore” reward challenge from last week. I’m still riding a high from that. Thus, it’s time for a new segment I call…

MATT’S MARK-UP!

Yeah, the title’s a work in progress. Point is, I wanted to do a “Top 5 and Bottom 5” of lore challenges last week, but the blog was too long as is. This one isn’t though, so I’ll do it now. trouble is, by the strictest definition, there are only seven such challenges in the entirety of “Survivor” History. Rather than do a “Top 3 and Bottom 3” like I’ve done in the past, I thought it better to just rank all seven from the least good to the most good, since none of them are “bad” per se. I’ll be using a strict definition here, so the challenge must be one where Probst tells a story (or lists off facts about the locale), and then people must go and answer questions about that story, either by free recall, or picking the correct response. The lore challenge from “Survivor Cook Islands” doesn’t count because the lore barely factored into the challenge, and was just “Put the answers in the right spot”, rather than having to figure out the answer. Limits set, let’s get too it!

7. “Survivor Guatemala”: It pains me to put this one as the lowest, since “Survivor Guatemala” is one of my favorite seasons, and this challenge from this season is part of the reason I became a “Survivor” fan in the first place. That said, this one is the least remarkable of them all. It’s very by-the-numbers, and the flags grabbed to signify a correct answer just don’t stand out very much. Making the stuff to grab color coded to person (rather than question) was a nice touch, but this one is just too unremarkable to put anywhere else.

6. “Survivor Africa”: Sunset is a very picturesque time to run a challenge, but as we’ll discuss later, it’s not sunset. This was still a pretty cool challenge, with the breaking of ostrich eggs to get the ribbons being a cool part. Setting the whole thing in an abandoned boma was also a nice touch. However, while the ribbons falling off the staffs made for a nice bit of tension in the challenge, it ultimately came to nothing, and just seemed like a design flaw in the challenge. Plus, I can live without hearing about the circumcision practices of the Masai, thank you very much.

5. “Survivor Vanuatu”: The tale of Roy Mata is probably my favorite of all the lore stories ever given on the show. It was engaging, relatively easy to follow, and actually played a part in the end of the season, which was a cool touch. Collecting pig tusks was different in a good way in determining who won, though I take issue with the fact that you couldn’t really tell which tusk was from which question. Makes it harder to play along. It was also nice to see Eliza, someone who hadn’t won immunity to that point, win. But this one took place in broad daylight (unlike the rest of the ones further up the list), and the course felt really small and contained, which detracted somewhat from the tension.

4. “Survivor Marquesas”: I want to put this one higher, I really do. Kathy’s warrior whoop after winning is one of my favorite moments of the season, and holding it at night with everyone having a torch was a very atmospheric touch. Sadly, though, the story isn’t memorable, and the totems everyone needed, while easy to see, were a bit generic and couldn’t really be distinguished from one another. As such, here must this season lie.

3. “Survivor The Australian Outback”: Shackling the contestants was a nice touch, and added an element of strategy as to which lock you went for first. Locks as the thing needed to be turned in was a bit generic, but it made the challenge feel like more of a cohesive whole. It also helps that they could get easily lost, adding some drama and a somewhat come-from-behind victory. Really, it’s hard to say what this challenge DOESN’T have going for it. Really, what’s keeping it down is that the two above it have similar to what this one has, but more.

2. “Survivor Borneo”” This particular lore challenge is well-remembered by most, and for good reason. While it does take place at sunset, rather than night, it’s incredibly appropriate. Creepy masks all over the place, a story that for once directly relates to the contestants, it does a good job of scaring you. Giving each contestant a camera to record answers on was a pretty nice touch as well. The crowning moment, though, is Rudy’s repeated “I don’t know.” to pretty much every question. I’d ask what could possibly beat this out, but by process of elimination, you know what it is.

1. “Survivor Cambodia”: How could I not give it to this season? This iteration of the challenge throws everything at you. Three possible answers instead of two. People making stupid mistakes. People being tricked into giving the wrong answer. An atmospheric night shoot. A FREAKING IDOL CLUE HIDDEN AT THE CHALLENGE! All that effort deserves to be rewarded, which is why this most recent lore challenge is the best ever.

Feel free to disagree in the comments, but I’m riding high on this season. Not feeling too optimistic about next episode, but let’s hope this season proves me wrong again!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: Survivor Cambodia Episode 10: The Dark Side of the Feud

Prepare for an extra-long blog, my readers. Normally, to get down from 20 contestants to the final three in time, and in the proper number of episodes, the show would have a double-elimination episode. These were usually pretty exciting, as they either showed the voting dynamics in each tribe, or forced a tribe to think on its feet with very little strategizing. However, along the way some idiot decided “That’s dumb. We’ll just show two episodes in one slot. That’s a MUCH better idea.” But my disdain for this format is getting in the way of valuable episode coverage, and believe me, there is a LOT to cover. Let me just say here, that since there’s one intro and one credit sequence, despite how this is listed as two separate episodes, I count it as only one episode. Frankly, it’s just easier for me to format my blogs that way, even if it’s not the most accurate depiction of episodes.

As one might expect, things are a bit upset following the blindside of Kelly. Surprisingly, it’s not Kimmi (who seemed the most upset at the blindside) who’s annoyed, but Tasha. Granted, Tasha is also a logical choice, but Kimmi’s look following the vote of the previous episode made it seem like she would be the focus early on. Instead, Jeremy tries to make good with Tasha, explaining why the vote went down the way it did, and why he couldn’t tell her. He then begins targeting Ciera as a troublemaker, which I admit is a pretty good tactic on his part. While people might be pissed at you for betraying them, the principle of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” still applies on “Survivor”. By making it a case of us vs. them with the “three witches” against everyone else, you make it easier to get back into the good graces of everyone else. Tasha, however, is not buying it, saying that people only get to cross her once before she no longer trusts them. As evidenced by the eviction of Kass, she’s telling the truth.

Unsurprisingly, St. Joe is also unhappy about the situation, even going so far as to let loose a few swear words. Shame, on you, St. Joe! America’s darling should not have a potty mouth!

We come back to a very good bit of editing. We see cups laid out in the night, as it starts to rain. We cut back to the morning to see the cups completely filled up, a very effective visual way of demonstrating the rainfall and the harshness of this season. Up until this point, Cambodia has been a very mild location. Pretty and atmospheric, to be sure, but not a particularly harsh one. That’s going to change, though.

And who better to bring us into this new era of cruelty than America’s Favorite Idiot, Keith Nale? Actually, for all that I rag on Keith (and may possibly be Keith), I quite like this confessional from Keith. Not only does he admit to some determination and strategy on his part (saying he’d gladly get rid of Joe, and is here to win), but he actually provides both a good visual demonstration of the harshness of the weather (huddling pathetically under a cloak), but also a good verbal one, pointing out that “Survivor” is not fun. Fun, in the Keith Nale playbook, includes a cruise, going fishing, and playing golf, which I can’t argue with. Yeah, they’re kind of simple things, but they speak to a simple truth. Keith’s not an idiot in this scene, just an average guy, and that’s where he works best, as a simple, yet endearing, picture of the everyman. It’s when he deviates from this pattern that I become annoyed.

What’s simpler than a good, old-fashioned game of water basketball? NOTHING! So, that’s what our reward challenge is, hailing from “Survivor Tocantins”. The concept is so simple, I don’t need to explain it. This is always a challenge I’ve liked ok overall, but it became overused very fast, and I grew to hate it. It’s been a decently long while, so I suppose I can’t hate it too much, but that’s balanced out with my ire for yet ANOTHER team challenge post-merge! GRAGH! Can’t they just give us a simple individual reward challenge? In the next episode, perhaps?

Ah well. Just when you think Probst is going to go without reminding us that Stephen’s pride is on the line since his tribe won this challenge back in “Survivor Tocantins”, he does just that. Knew it was expecting too much of Probst. After a schoolyard pick, the purple team has Joe, Spencer, Tasha, Abi-Maria, and Ciera, while the green team has Kimmi, Kelley, Jeremy, Stephen, and Keith. Overall, I’d say it’s a pretty even match-up. The purple team has two of the heavy-hitters in terms of physical challenges this season (Joe and Tasha), but also has the two people who are effectively dead weight in a physical challenge (Abi-Maria and Ciera), while the other team is sort of middling. You’d expect it to be an even competition, and it’s certainly not a complete blowout, but ultimately, the purple teams runs away with the whole thing, getting a trip to see a Cambodian circus, and get warm under blankets, no small feat given the downpour.

Since Ciera is on this reward, you can be sure that talk will happen. I mentioned last week that the main drawback to the advantage that Stephen won is that it makes him more of a target, and since St. Joe, the obvious other target, is on reward, you can bet that Stephen’s name gets brought up. St. Joe, of course, immediately agrees to the plan, since Stephen’s been out to get him previously.

For once, though, the scheming is not as interesting as camp life. The remaining five are all huddled together and miserable. The only way to keep warm is to use the heat of hate. Hate specifically directed at St. Joe, whose perfect nature is getting on everyone’s nerves. After a good round of Joe-bashing, though, we see that Stephen is not doing too well. The cold and the damp are getting to everyone, but Stephen has a bunch of open sores on his feet that make it hard to walk, and is experiencing “gastro-intestinal disturbances” as he puts it. Makes sense, if you think about it. I wouldn’t really call anyone on this cast “chunky”, but Stephen had less body fat than any of them (save perhaps Abi-Maria), and so would be feeling the cold the hardest. And he breaks down. Big time. Thankfully, “Survivor” has learned not to put “#survivorbreakdown” up on the screen, because the moment really needed to just sit. I praised Stephens earlier breakdown about being unable to make a move, but this blows it out of the water. While I, and most other fans I know, watch “Survivor” for the strategy, the raw, utterly human moments are needed as well. Stephen looks on the point of quitting (and given the conditions, I could hardly blame him if he did), but still struggles through. It plays out beautifully on screen, and is a joy to watch, especially with his ultimate determination not to quit. When he says that, it’s clear he’s saying it to himself as much as he is to the producer he’s talking to, trying to talk himself back from the brink. Powerful. That’s really the only way to describe it.

Of course, a season of nothing but that would be boring to watch, so we get a twist at the immunity challenge. Probst hands everyone a white rock and a black rock, which normally heralds a “compete or eat?” twist, but as there’s no food available, it must be something else. Probst reveals that, due to the harshness, the crew of the show is offering to build Orkun a kick-ass shelter. Basically, Camp Koror from “Survivor Palau” will make a return. The catch? At least five people have to give up immunity by showing a white stone, and it’s a private decision. It could be considered a little cruel, since it’s obvious this group NEEDS that shelter, like it or not, but this is a FANTASTIC twist! It’s based somewhat on similar twists before it, like the aforementioned “eat or compete?” twist, but still manages to be unique and insightful. Basically, it’s a more complex version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

In case my readers are unfamiliar with the prisoner’s dilemma, allow me to briefly paraphrase it: In the classic model, two prisoners are being charged with a serious crime. However, most the evidence of their guilt is circumstantial, so to get a confession out of them, the police offer them a deal: If they confess, they go free, and only their partner is charged. The trick, though, is that if both confess, both will be charged with the crime. If they both stay silent, both get off with only a lesser charge that there is evidence for. The problem here is that, while the best OVERALL outcome is for both to stay silent, once one prisoner stays silent, the outcome for the INDIVIDUAL, is better to confess, since they get off completely scot-free. For a more succinct summary of the dilemma, see Spencer and Ciera’s confessionals. Usually, the model shows that both confess as a result, and get a worse outcome overall.

This is not the case here, however. Eight out of the ten contestants choose to sit out for shelter, with only Keith and St. Joe choosing to compete. A bit surprising to me, since if I were Abi-Maria, Ciera, or Kelley, despite appearing to be the swing vote this time around, I wouldn’t feel safe, and I’d compete. I can understand some of the others, but I feel like some of the competitors (Jeremy and Tasha specifically) were also at risk for playing. Frankly, this large a majority shocks me, and speaks to the conditions currently out there.

I’d also like to say that I feel like there’s a few missed opportunities here. The first would be to take the “prisoner’s dilemma “ aspect to the next level. It’s present here, but there’s less risk, as one person making a selfish decision can’t screw over everyone else. I say, why not take it all the way. Rather than at least five have to give up immunity, why not have it be that EVERYONE has to give up immunity to get the new shelter? Then the dilemma becomes much more pronounced. One person can screw everyone over for their personal gain, MUCH more easily than they can in this scenario. Plus, it would add the relatively new situation of NO ONE having immunity post-merge. True, this was done once on “Survivor Pearl Islands”, but it’s an interesting concept I’d like to see explored more. Now, I get that there’s incentive not to do the twist this way. After all, they want the challenges to be run, and forcing everyone to give up immunity makes for no challenge. I do, however, have a proposal that could have really changed up how everything went. You see, assuming I’m out there, but am not St. Joe, Abi-Maria, Ciera, or Kelley, I don’t want any of them to win, due to St. Joe being a challenge beast who needs to go away soon, and the other three still being targets. Therefore, if I’m there, before we reveal, I call these facts out. State the obvious truth: that everyone wants this new shelter, but we’ve already got four people guaranteed to compete, that leaves very little wiggle room for everybody else, which doesn’t seem fair, but does seem fairly risky. As such, I say out loud that I will give up immunity, but only if those four agree to do it with me. If they agree, they don’t get immunity, but if they don’t, they run the risk of the shelter not being got, and looking like jerks for not getting it. Win-win for me. I guess there might have been a moratorium on talking beforehand, but given Probst’s love of showmanship, I bet he would have let it slide.

But, none of that happened, so let’s talk about the challenge itself. I hate it. It’s a repeat from “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, wherein people stand on a block, while holding a ball against a pole with a rolling pin. Last one with a ball left wins. Look, I’ve said in the past that I like endurance challenges, but this is just TOO MANY! We need SOME variety in out individual immunity challenges! Plus, this just seems like another excuse for Probst to make “ball” innuendos. Add to that the fact that the challenge is just underwhelming and funny-looking in general, and you’ve got one that is decidedly NOT my favorite.

In the time it has taken me to describe the challenge, St. Joe has won it. Shock, horror!

We get our first look at the new Camp Koror… and frankly it’s underwhelming. C’mon! I mean, I wasn’t expecting the shelter equivalent of Angkor Wat here or anything, but I expected SOMETHING extravagent! As the nickname might imply, I expected the second coming of Camp Koror. Instead, we basically got some food and a waterproof roof. Hardly bad things to have, but not quite the elaborate spectacle Probst built it up as. I feel had.

As Stephen notes, though, a better shelter means drier people means time to strategize. Surprisingly, our strategizing for this first Tribal Council is fairly simple. Joe is still high on the Anti-Stephen wagon, and while it seems like Jeremy has managed to pull Tasha back in, as she says she wants Ciera gone (way to stick to that “everyone only betrays me once” thing, Tasha), Joe and his crew have pulled in Kelley (as you might expect, since she’s so tight with Ciera and Abi-Maria) and Keith, so it’s probable that Stephen’s going home tonight. We do get lip service to the fact that Ciera is the bond that keeps Kelley and Abi-Maria from becoming free agents, and certainly Ciera’s had enough screen time to merit an exit, but we’ve just seen so much more setup for the fall of Stephen. Add to that his ouster seeming like the more cohesive plan, and Stephen’s confessional that he has no plans to use his advantage, and you’ve got a pretty much guaranteed Stephen ouster this go-round.

Of course, Jeremy is the big “Keep Stephen” advocate, and he does have two immunity idols, but he hasn’t talked about them at all this episode, so what are the chances he’ll play one to save Stephen tonight.

If this is Stephen’s time to go, we got a great Tribal Council for it! Again, it’s not “Jeff Varner” exit level of good, but it’s up there! We dive once again into the dilemma of the immunity challenge, where people once again explain the idea of the Prisoner’s Dilemma much better than I can. Since this leads to a lot of “People playing are selfish.” level talk, St. Joe wisely steps in, pointing out that had he given up immunity, he’d be gone tonight, which is a fair assessment. this then brings us around to why Keith competed, and whether this makes him a target. Spencer assures Probst that Keith isn’t getting blamed, and so talk turns around to how bad it would feel to go home after effectively saying “I don’t need immunity.” Sure, we’ve heard that kind of talk from Tribal Councils after the “eat or compete?” twist, but here it takes on an added measure of hurt, since at least eating food rather than playing a challenge gives some personal benefit. Here, you basically sacrificed your chance in the game to make those still in the game more comfortable, which stings extra. Great sound-bytes, great debates, just an all-around awesome Tribal Council.

The votes are case, but just before we get to that, Jeremy decides to make use of Val’s idol. Or, as I suppose it must be called now, Stephen’s idol, since Stephen is the one Jeremy plays it on. Since Jeremy correctly guessed that Stephen was the target, the seven votes for Stephen get nullified, so Ciera goes home. An awesome idol play, and certainly made for an exciting finish, but much like Jeremy’s own exit on “Survivor San Juan del Sur” I don’t entirely feel it was earned. Sure, the Ciera vote was a blindside of both her and the audience, but I feel like it wasn’t earned, since we never got a HINT that Jeremy would use his idol. Granted, that’s more the sort of thing you NEED to keep hidden, rather than a counter alliance like the one that got rid of Jeremy, but even with Kelley’s idol play two episodes ago, we got at least a hint that it was a POSSIBILITY! Here, it comes out of nowhere. Not an unsatisfying exit, but one that doesn’t feel earned.

All that said, I’m not too sorry to see Ciera go. True, she played hard, which I respect, and was certainly an interesting character, but she was getting pretty repetitive after Kass left, just urging people to make big moves, but nothing much beyond that. It was probably about her time. As to whether this was the smart move? NO! Much as I love Stephen, everyone made a good point that his advantage makes him a threat, certainly more so than Ciera. Granted, you don’t want to give Ciera too much ground, else she’ll run away with the game, but she wasn’t at the point of overtaking you just yet, and Stephen is therefore the more immediate threat. You could say that it was in Jeremy’s best interest to save Stephen, since Jeremy has made it clear that he wants Stephen with him at the end as a goat. I would argue, though, that by being so inflexible, Jeremy cuts himself off from potential other alliances, and should probably have just gone with the majority on this one.

Oh, and Stephen’s look when the idol is played on him? Priceless.

While it’s better that Stephen stays in the game, one thing this idol play does is ruin Stephen’s chances at the end. He can’t really say he got to the end and did stuff without the aid of an alpha male anymore, since he’d be out of the game at this point if not for the protection of an alpha male. Not that you’d think Stephen knows that, as he swears up and down to Jeremy that he owes Jeremy his life. Don’t get me wrong, Stephen, you’re right to be grateful, but this is taking it a step too far. You’ve been doing some stuff more overtly this time around, but if you want to win at the end, you’ll have to ax off Jeremy at some point. Giving him all this life-swearing is only going to make that hurt more, and lose you his vote in the end.

But who cares about that because we’ve got to talk about THE MOST KICK-ASS REWARD CHALLENGE OF THE SEASON! It’s definitely a reused challenge, but this one has been long-forgotten, and deserves better. This is the challenge where Probst tells the contestants some local history or legend (in this case history), and then send people off into the woods to booths to pick an answer to a question about the story. If they get it right, they hang something (in this case, medallions) at their station, if not, they go back and try a different question. First one to get five right answers wins. This challenge is an amazing one, and I always looked forward to it back in the old days. It really gives a feel to the local culture, is easy to play along with at home, and is one of the most deceptively difficult challenges out there, since a lot of the questions are pretty tricky, and require finer knowledge than one might be able to remember after a month in the elements. Plus, while it is a reused challenge, it’s been FOREVER since we’ve seen it. There were challenges on “Survivor Cook Islands” and “Survivor China”, but the last time we really saw this challenge was on “Survivor Guatemala”, 10 years ago. That’s far too long for a challenge this cool. And, to add on to all of that, this one is at night, with everyone carrying torches, making it all super atmospheric.

Determined to impress, the challenge gives us a lot of fun moments. There’s Keith being our resident “Guy who’s bad at the questions”, and getting a number wrong, a fire duel between Stephen and Spencer at the end, and (my personal favorite moment), Stephen and Abi-Maria ending up at the same station, only to have Stephen trick the undecided Abi-Maria by picking up the wrong answer lid, letting her take the wrong medallion, and then grabbing the correct answer for himself. Comedy GOLD!

But what’s that? This is not enough awesomeness, you say? Very well, how about AN IDOL CLUE HIDDEN AT THE CHALLENGE?! Yes, as they show us before the game begins, tied to one of the medallions is a clue to a new hidden immunity idol (presumably the one that Jeremy used last Tribal Council). I complained last episode about how idols were being hidden post-merge, and wished for something better. I got just that. This is about the fairest way to change up how idols are hidden for the merge. After all, no one has a particular advantage or disadvantage in finding the clue at the challenge, it’s just luck. This would be bad if it was the IDOL that was hidden at the challenge, since it would reward luck rather than skill, but just a clue is ok. The idol is hidden at camp, and while it’s hiding spot is tricky, as we’ll see, theoretically, anyone can still find it. And regardless of all that, it’s just a nice, innovative way to hide the clue, while simultaneously adding a new layer to the game.

About the only complaint I have about all this is that, while it gave an opportunity for new people to get idols, Kelley ends up being the lucky contestant to get that particular edge. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like Kelley. I’d just rather see idols in new hands than old.

With Stephen’s win, we get the first instance of someone picking their reward-mates. Stating that he wants to mend broken fences, Stephen chooses Tasha. This makes since, as Tasha voted against him last time, and she’s usually open to talking. Then comes his second spot, which causes a bit more controversy. Stephen picks Jeremy, but Spencer insists that it should have been him, since Stephen also needs to mend fences with him. Definitely a fair point, but I think Stephen here was in a lose-lose situation. Strategically, Spencer might have made the right choice, but after that last Tribal Council, and given the death glare Jeremy was giving him, I think Stephen would have looked like a huge ass if he didn’t take Jeremy. Plus, there was still reason for Stephen to suspect that Spencer would be amenable to Stephen’s case regardless of going on the reward or not, so I can’t fault Stephen’s decision.

Nor, for that matter, can I fault what he does on reward. Bonding more with Jeremy and Tasha, he shares what his advantage is with them. Frankly, I think this is a great idea. At the moment, what’s making Stephen a threat is the mystery surrounding his advantage. Taking that mystery away makes allies feel safer. My only quarrel here is that he didn’t do it sooner, and with Spencer, since Stephen purports to being close to Spencer.

New plots are hatching back at camp, though. Once Kimmi, who seems to still be tight with Stephen regardless of the Kelly vote earlier, leaves the shelter, St. Joe works his charms on everyone there, once again beating the drum of “Stephen’s Advantage” which everyone seems to just eat up. I mean, I’m all for having that as a fallback plan if St. Joe wins immunity, but do any of you remember that St. Joe is HUGE immunity threat? And yet, everyone he talks to seems to be swearing eternal loyalty to him. Everyone except Abi-Maria. Yes, after several episodes of relative silence, she speaks once again, to tell us that St. Joe is shady. And all without his ever writing her name down. How do you do it, sir? Might this be foreshadowing? We’ll find out later.

Right now, we turn our focus to St. Joe sycophant #3, Kelley. While she’s now loyally in St. Joe’s corner (despite saying she wanted him gone earlier), she still wants that immunity idol, and reads the note to find that it’s hidden under the floor of her shelter. This is a MUCH better hiding spot that before, with a lot more risk than Jeremy’s night walk into the jungle. Fortunately for Kelley, it’s a sunny day while Stephen, Jeremy, and Tasha are off at their spa day reward, so most everybody leaves the shelter. Save for Abi-Maria, who picks today of all days to just stick around for no reason. Kelley just lies around, hoping for Abi-Maria to go away on her own, but to no avail. Um, Kelley, here’s a thought. Tell Abi-Maria that, since Jeremy played his idol, there’s probably a new one out there, and suggest you both split up and look for it. Once you’r both out in the jungle, double back and grab the one from under the shelter. Abi-Maria’d buy it, and you’d be much less stressed. Well, brilliant plan aside, Abi-Maria does eventually leave, and Kelley manages to get her next idol, having a cute little celebration along the way. Good for her!

After establishing that yes, the weather in Cambodia does still suck, we get to our immunity challenge, once again from “Survivor San Juan del Sur”. This time, however, it’s not an endurance challenge, and much better overall. This challenge requires contestants to stack blocks using only their feet, with the first to place the flag in a complete structure wins. I’ve criticized this challenge before for not being epic enough, but looking back, it’s clever. Challenging in a different way than usual, leads to a lot of fun spills; I quite enjoyed it. Then again, perhaps I’m just riding the buzz of “Not another endurance immunity challenge.” again.

One nice thing about this challenge is that there’s a lot of back and forth with who’s in the lead. Nearly everyone’s in the running, save for Stephen, who’s feet are still in bad shape, or “Prehistoric” as Probst calls them. It comes down to a battle between Spencer and St. Joe, and Spencer dethrones the challenge king. Good for him. It was getting kind of old, seeing St. Joe be always immune.

You’d expect everyone to go for big threat St. Joe, but evidently the man’s more than just a pretty face and good muscles. To his great credit, he’s done a good job of convincing everyone that Stephen, of all people, is the bigger threat. They seem to have eaten it up hook, line, and sinker. It’s not a guarantee that St. Joe is going home tonight, which is what it should be. good for him, he’s developed a strategic game!

Whereas the first half of the episode seemed to have very little, understated misdirection, this one goes all-out with it. At first it seems like there’s going to be a 5-4 split against Stephen, but then there’s the question of Abi-Maria’s loyalties, especially given that Anti-St. Joe foreshadowing we had earlier. But THEN it seems like Stephen might split the vote, thereby dooming himself. But THEN it seems that he’s going to use his advantage tonight, meaning all the numbers are basically out the window, and everything’s hard to predict. He even tells Spencer about his advantage. As we see, it’s a bit late to bring Spencer in on the plan, but points for trying. At least it confuses Spencer, though that seems to be happening a lot this season. For a supposed strategic mastermind, he doesn’t seem to be able to quite wrap his head around the numbers a lot of the time.

Despite not being nearly as exciting as the earlier Tribal Council, this one still has its good points. We get some good discussion about the threat St. Joe poses, and Tasha brings up how we’re now moving into a more solid alliance phase from the previous voting blocks, and here I must once again express my objection to the whole “This season has been different” thing. the main difference I see is that people are using the term “voting bloc” rather than “alliance”, which I consider a distinction without a difference. True, one could argue that “voting bloc” has fewer connotations of permanence, but I point you to the innumerable examples of impermanent alliances, with “Survivor The Amazon” giving us many prime examples.

But, for all that this Tribal Council might be the lesser of the two, it makes up for it in that the advantage is finally played. Stephen uses it to steal one of St. Joe’s votes, which is a smart move, as St. Joe is likely to go tonight, and therefore the most solid vote against you. This also makes for the first canonical instance of someone voting for themselves, as Stephen uses Joe’s stolen vote to vote for Joe. Once again, hilarious. Stephen, as per his role this season, is providing comedy gold, though intentional comedy gold this time.

And, for all that, it doesn’t matter. Splitting the vote between Joe and Abi-Maria does him in, as the four remaining votes he did not steal send him home. As you might expect, I’m sorry to see him go. While he was the goober of the season, and really had very little shot at winning, Stephen was improving and was certainly entertaining. Also, while it’s better that Stephen go out having played his twist, like with Dan Foley on “Survivor Worlds Apart”, it ended up not making a difference, and that’s disappointing. I’d like to see the twist brought back again, if only so that it would make a difference.

As with the first half of the episode, I must once again express the fact that this was the wrong person to vote out. Yes, Stephen and his advantage are a threat, but St. Joe is a bigger one! You can’t give him any ground once he loses immunity! Plus, once Stephen played his advantage, his threat level goes down significantly less. Definitely would have been better to get rid of St. Joe. Like I said earlier, though, credit to St. Joe for convincing people that he was not that big of a threat, such that they went out of their way to keep him around. Kelley even volunteered to play her idol for him, meaning that we got more talk about the idol from the person who DIDN’T play it than the person who did.

If it isn’t clear right now, these were two fantastic episodes. We’re back up to the bar set by the start of the season, and I love it. Excellent strategy, new innovations, fantastic blindsides, and a lot of unpredictability. If this season can keep that going until the end, you’ll have one fantastic season!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 9: Fish-Come-Bach

At first glance, the title of this blog might seem to indicate a cry of remorse for the demise of my favorite remaining contestant this season, but quite the opposite! Stephen Fishbach has finally managed to shake off his goober edit. And it only took him NINE EPISODES to do it. “Survivor” Mastermind, everybody! Nothing can stop this blog now…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

Consarn it, three in a row?! I’m really losing my touch. Last blog, I made fun of Keith for being unable to correctly say “Tuk-Tuk”. Evidently, I AM Keith, because I misremembered it as “Tau-Tau”. Yeah, that’s definitely a low point for me. Also, while celebrating the demise of Andrew Savage, I neglected to give due props to Kelley Wentworth. While I’m always one who advocates hiding the hidden immunity idol unless you have good reason to share it, it’s difficult to do. About the only thing more difficult is knowing precisely when to play the hidden immunity idol. Kelley did both to perfection, and deserves much praise for her efforts.

The start of the episode alleviates my guilt somewhat, though, as Kelley gives herself plenty of praise for her move, to the point where she becomes a bit of a braggart. Look, it was a good move, and I won’t deny that Savage being out of the game instead of yourself is cause for celebration, but she just takes it a bit too far. It’s a shame, because I’ve come to like Kelley Wentworth a lot. She takes a lot of initiative, has a good wit, and for once is a person on “Survivor” named Kelley who is not, as I once described, “As bland as beige wallpaper.”, so this little bit of tarnish is disappointing, though not fandom-altering.

We also see the drawback to Kelley’s idol play shortly after this. While hiding your idol pretty much guarantees you can make that clutch play with little interference, it only saves you one vote. Case in point, Kimmi comes in to rally the troops, wanting to get one of the three out again. She compares them to the witches from “MacBeth”, although with the ferocity with which everyone’s against them, I think more of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”. Not to say that the three haven’t done anything to EARN their witch hunt (Ciera and Abi-Maria, at least, voted out Woo, who could be considered part of the current dominant alliance), but I just see more parallels there. Point being, despite her masterful idol play, Kelley is still in trouble.

The next morning, we see that Kelley’s move DID shake up the alliance somewhat, but not quite in the way she was expecting. With her idol gone, most everyone surmises that a new idol must be in play, and set about searching for it. It’s mostly standard fare, but we do get Abi-Maria doing one of the oddest jobs of tailing another player ever. She meets up with Joe and, not wanting him to have the idol, insists that she needs to use the bathroom, and demands privacy. There’s two problems with this plan. One of them is that Joe is still on his own, just not in the are you are, and more importantly HOW DOES THIS PLAN POSSIBLY WORK? You have MILES of empty beach, why do you need that one specific spot? And why does Joe just up and give it to you? this scene makes no sense!

Jeremy is also concerned with this new idol, since with Savage gone, he feels vulnerable. I just have to ask, though, doesn’t Jeremy already have an idol on him?

*CRASH*

ME: Oh, great, here we go again…

JEREMY: You don’t understand, man! I gotta have two idols! One for me, and one for Val!

ME: Val isn’t even on this season!

JEREMY: Ah, but I think about her every day, and I want the money to be used for her and our child. Plus, I get a really sentimental crying scene later on that totally justifies it.

ME: Yeah, ok, I guess that makes sense. Just saying, you’re being a bit paranoid.

JEREMY: Maybe. But after what happened on “Survivor Dan Juan del Sur”, can you really blame me for wanting double protection?

ME: I suppose not. Just remember what happened to the last guy who had two idols on him. James from “Survivor China”?

JEREMY: Don’t worry, I’m much smarter than him. Sorry about the wall, by the way. I’ll have it repaired tomorrow.

ME: Cool, thanks man! Now I won’t have to strangle you with my nice, new Bayon buff.

JEREMY: Uh… cool… I guess…

(JEREMY exits awkwardly out the hole in the wall)

Following Jeremy’s paranoid episode, we cut back to “Survivor Cagayan”, where we’ve eliminated the pointless “Beauty” category, and made this a sheer test of Brains vs. Brawn. Right now, we’re in the middle of an “individual” reward challenge. Each team of five will have to assemble poles of various lengths into holes, climb over what is effectively a jungle gym, and slide down a rough bamboo slide. One person then maneuvers a key through a stick-and-rope maze unlocking wooden rectangular puzzle pieces. After the rest of the team races through said maze, two team members work together to assemble a puzzle that will reveal three numbers of a combination, which, when entered, raises a flag conveniently titled “Reward”. Winning team gets a good, old-fashioned spa day, complete with over-the-top Probst description. Apart from my usual gripe with “individual” reward challenges being changed to team competitions, I don’t have much of a problem with this one. There’s a lot of cool elements, and a good mix of the physical and mental components.

Our purple team, the “Brains”, consists of Tasha, Stephen, Joe, Ciera, and Spencer, while the green team, or “Brawns”, consists of Kelley, Kelly, Jeremy, Keith, and Kimmi, with Abi-Maria not fitting into either the “Brains” or “Brawns” category (good call there, everybody!). Now, this may seem a bit odd to people, since 9 of these people weren’t even on “Survivor Cagayan”, but I mean, look at the breakup of those teams. Tasha clearly chose smarts more than strength, while brain-trust Kelly picked all the strong physical players. And it shows. The Brawn team gets past the first puzzle part, but just barely. It’s an embarrassment, but frankly, it’s fun to watch.

Since Ciera is on this particular reward, you can be sure she’ll try and talk up a big move this time around. She chooses to do so while Joe is in the shower, which you think would mean that Joe is about to be targeted, but soon enough Joe is out of the shower, and everyone is listening to Ciera, discussing about the threat posed by Jeremy and Kelly. First point: why is Tasha listening to this? I get why everyone else is, since they either want to make a move to get off the bottom, or are scared of a blindside, but Tasha is sitting pretty comfortably at this point. Granted, it’s usually good to listen to all sides, to make sure you’re taking the best possible option out there, but Tasha is maybe ignoring a threat here, a threat that could (and will) depose her place in the game. Second, I get that Jeremy is a threat, even if you don’t know about his idols, but Kelly? I don’t like her this season because she hasn’t DONE anything, but I also acknowledge that this makes her non-threatening. Admittedly, the arguments they make about Kelly do make sense, mainly that she’s a social threat who hasn’t offended anybody. However, with the amount that she’s being targeted, having seen virtually NOTHING of her this season, it just feels kind of rushed.

Oh, and while I’ll be praising Stephen a lot this episode, I do have to point out here that his justification for strategizing is that nobody wants to be on the bottom of the obvious hierarchy. I would have no problem of this; it’s fairly logical; but it was STEPHEN who only last episode said that “This season’s different, there’s no hierarchical structure!”, and is now blatantly contradicting himself.

Back at the camp, everyone is understandably down, but Jeremy’s really been the major debbie downer of the group. An idol hunt is just what he needs to bring his spirits up. He searches for a bit around tree mail, before stumbling upon the clue within the big tree by tree mail. Um, did NO ONE think to look in that tree? It’s fairly well-hidden in said tree, but I feel like someone would have thought to look there by now. Perhaps the difference this season is not so much that they’re hiding clues in different places, but they’re justing hiding them more thoroughly in obvious places, so you can’t stumble across them accidentally.

Thus far this season, hidden immunity idols have been hidden at challenges, to make them harder to pick up, and as I’ve stated, it’s a twist that I like. The flaw in it, though, is that it’s only fair at the tribal phase of challenges. Once you hit individual challenges, you would be hiding the idol on the specific part of the course that individual would be on, giving them an unfair advantage in finding it. There are many creative and exciting ways to solve this problem, and we go with… just hiding it far away from camp at night. Yeah, kind of a letdown in my opinion. It’s basically just giving people a clue runaround that’s only present at a certain time. Very atmospheric, but not very difficult. The clue even says to wait until people are asleep, you know, the time when it’s EASIEST to get an idol without being seen! A bit of a cop-out for this season. Jeremy even takes a leaf out of Abi-Maria’s book, and claims to be off using the bathroom when his tribe does not fall asleep immediately. And it works. Are bathroom breaks just this tribe’s blind spot. If someone were to say they were going to use the bathroom at the immunity challenge, would only they show up?

This is also where we get the aforementioned Jeremy emotional moment. Like I said before, it’s a nice moment, but I don’t feel the need to dwell on it too much.

Evidently, this episode is meant to be a tribute to “Survivor Cagayan” (not that I’m complaining, mind you, since it’s a great season), as our immunity challenge comes courtesy of that season as well. It also come courtesy of “Survivor Caramoan”, but since no one is on from that season, it doesn’t exist in Probst’s mind. Each contestant will stand on a small triangular prism in the middle of the ocean, on increasingly small ridges, last one standing wins. Simple and insidious, but also not a very spectacular-looking challenge. On top of that, while I enjoy endurance challenges, we’ve had NOTHING but endurance immunity challenges this season, and it’s getting old really fast. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of this challenge, but can’t say I hate it either.

Really, there are two things that make this challenge fun for me. I’ll discuss the second one first, because it requires less discussion. We eventually move to our final round, where everyone can only use one leg. Take note, Andrea and Brenda, your rule from “Survivor Caramoan” got added to the challenge! St. Joe is in the finals, as you’d expect, but who’s his opponent? Abi-Maria. True, it does make sense, as this is a challenge that favors the petit. However, St. Joe nearly loses on a number of times. And I know that St. Joe is not actually infallible, and that losing is not humiliation, but to have potentially lost to Abi-Maria? That’s hilarious! Sure, it doesn’t ultimately come to pass, but it’s a hilarious concept. How could anything top that? You’ll see…

So, most of the way through the first round, we hear some of the usual Probst banter, about the toughness of the challenge, how great this season is, etc. Like good contestants, everyone ignores him, until he talks about adding a twist to this challenge. Is it the usual food offer for a quit that we usually get? Unless the food is underwater, no. Probst chops a rope on his platform, sending colored buoys up to the surface, one for each player. He announces that the first person to touch their buoy wins an advantage in the game, keeping mum about what that advantage is. The catch? The buoy is too far away to be reached, so one must give up immunity to get it. This is a GLORIOUS twist, and a highlight of the episode. It’s mysterious, it’s something new that we haven’t seen before, and it has implications beyond just giving someone an advantage. Do you go for it? How eager do you seem if you do? Will this only put a bigger target on your back? Can you even win immunity? Is it even worth trying? This turmoil makes for great, tense television, and I enjoy the hell out of it!

Of course, even a great twist can be ruined if no one bites. Thankfully, that’s not the case here, and the result of the twist is, if anything, more exciting than the twist itself. After a few seconds of hesitation, two people jump in and swim for it: Stephen and Spencer. I can’t fault either of them in this case. They’re unlikely to win immunity, and are both potential swing votes who could use some extra power in this game. For everyone else, they either need immunity, or have a decent shot at winning immunity, or are just so not involved in the game at this point that going for an advantage at this point is a waste (Kelly and Kimmi, I’m looking at you!) Maybe Tasha should have jumped, but I don’t think it’s a game-breaker. Oh, but it gets better! In a rare moment of “Oops!” for Spencer, history repeats. Like with the reward auction on “Survivor Cagayan”, Spencer risks it all for an advantage, but comes up just short. Stephen, in the most athletic feat we’ve seen from him all season, wins the advantage, a bamboo shoot with a note in it.

What does this note say? Well, with most known immunity idols in play, it’s most likely the “Extra Vote” twist from “Survivor Worlds Apart” that I wasn’t overly fond of. That conclusion is partially correct, but they’ve improved it immensely, in my opinion. Now, instead of adding a vote to the Tribal Council, one person gets an extra vote at the EXPENSE of someone else’s vote. A bit unfair to the person, since they could go home without any say, but, as I’ve said before, since when is “Survivor” about fairness? Furthermore, this solves the problem I had with how the extra vote was done on “Survivor Worlds Apart”. My problem there was that it was too simplistic, too easy to get around, with no really strategy added to it. This way, though, strategy becomes paramount. Who do you use you vote steal on? How will everyone else take it? And once it’s known, what can people do to counteract it? There’s more possibilities this way, is what I’m saying.

Possibilities we won’t see tonight, as Stephen says he’d rather use his intellect to force a flip, which I don’t entirely agree with. I’ll get into this more in a bit but the only person for whom I really think a flip this episode is NECESSARY is Stephen. Tonight’s really the last night he’ll have the numbers, but everyone else has other options. Rather than try and convince others to flip, use your advantage to shake things up, and make people more likely to flip. Further, it helps you avoid the “Dan Foley” pitfall (“Survivor Worlds Apart”), where you become a target thanks to people fearing your power.

Still, Stephen does have a massive intellect, let’s see what he does with it. With St. Joe immune, Kelly is the next obvious target. To cement this idea, we get a scene of St. Joe and Kelly bonding, which would have a lot more impact if we’d had any indication of this bond BEFORE TONIGHT! Was the scene of Keith on reward more essential than building up Kelly’s relationship building? Again, I do not understand how airtime is decided, but it seems to me that, for all the random buildup of Kelly’s social skills we’ve been getting this episode, we could have been laying it out earlier.

Stephen chance comes when Kimmi, arguably the most staunch member of the majority, insists that one of the “Witches” has to go. Look I was ok with Kimmi before now, but tonight she really got on my nerves. While she’s certainly playing a more proactive game than she was on “Survivor The Australian Outback”, she hasn’t evolved much beyond that season. I’m not sure I’d say this is a new “Evolution of the game”, but it’s true that having one solid majority that Pagongs the minority doesn’t really work anymore, and certainly isn’t working this season. Yet Kimmi, rather than adjust her strategy, tries to ride that cart to the end. It’s a bit frustrating from someone I expected more of.

In any case, Kimmi suggests they split the vote, five for Kelley, three for Ciera, which is admittedly a pretty smart move. All Stephen needs to do is be one of the Kelley votes, and get another Kelley vote to flip. Spencer is probably his best bet, as Spencer, being definitely on the low end of the totem pole, has the most incentive to flip. So, naturally, Stephen talking to Spencer doesn’t surprise me. What DOES surprise me is that Jeremy is also in on the conversation. What incentive does Jeremy have to flip? He talks like he’s on the bottom with everybody, but everything we’ve seen indicates that he’s on the top of the alliance. Why screw that up? He says he wants to work with Stephen, but both he and Spencer make the fair point that nothing guarantees that Ciera, Kelley, and Abi-Maria will stay loyal after this vote, plus it pisses off Kimmi, Tasha, Joe, and Keith. It does do a good job of creating uncertainty, though, and we head off to Tribal Council a bit unsure of what’s going to happen.

Tonight’s Tribal Council is certainly a memorable one, but more for how extreme the weather is than anything that actually happens there. The trouble is that it’s mostly retreading the same ground as the last Tribal Council. Kelley and Ciera talk about how screwed they are, and Stephen gives his “Non-hierarchical” speech again, and we have a vote.

While the votes are being cast, let me say that I’m not buying this whole “New evolution, non-hierarchical” thing Stephen is spouting. This season is more chaotic than other seasons, I’ll grant you, but it’s just expanding upon the basic “Don’t let the same majority run the whole game” idea that’s been around since “Survivor The Amazon”, and arguably has become the norm since then. On top of that, there clearly IS a hierarchy to this alliance, or Stephen wouldn’t be trying to flip the game. I don’t know what he’s selling, but I’m not buying it at all, and I’m growing really irritated by it. It’s like the show is trying to force it down our throats that this season is different, this season is special. Not to say that it isn’t those things for a number of reasons, and I stand by my conviction that this is a really great season so far, but I wouldn’t say it’s bringing about a new evolution of strategy or anything.

When the votes are tallied, Stephen’s intellect gets its wish, and Kelly gets sent home. I am not sorry at all. Kelly brought NOTHING to the table, either as a strategist or as a character. The only thing she had going for her was the novelty of seeing an “Original Contestant” brought back after all this time, and even then we didn’t get much of that. I’d almost say Kelly will be the forgotten contestant of this season, but because of her “old school-ness”, she does stand out a little bit, and so that reward probably goes to either Peih-Gee or Monica. Point being, Kelly is not a huge loss from a fan perspective. It cuts the fat off an already stellar cast, which can only improve the already great.

As to whether this was a good move? Tough to say. I’d definitely say it was for Stephen, since I think he doesn’t have the social connections to make a big move much later than this, but it’s harder to say for Spencer and Jeremy. I guess I can see why Spencer would be tempted, since his value is as a swing vote, and so as many blindsides as possible is good for him. Jeremy, though… I fail to see the upside. For a man so paranoid about never being a threat, he’s bound to make a fe enemies with this move. On top of that, if this alliance of six stays together, he’s the biggest threat. What happened to your strategy man?

About the only harder question is whether this was a good episode. Nothing particularly bad or stupid happened, but it did retread of lot of ground from the previous episode, which got old fast. And while I can certainly say I enjoyed it, it just lacked that spectacular air that’s been going throughout the rest of this season. By any other standards, a good episode, but by this season, ok at best. Still an improvement, though. Lets hope the trend continues.

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 8: First We Kill All The Lawyers

Let me take you back, at the beginning of this blog, to another time. A time specifically one year ago. A simpler time. A time when “entertainment” meant slack-jawed yokels mispronounced foreign words for your amusement. A time when the audience was blindsided along with the cast. A time when we had to wait several episodes to get a competent strategist to root for. Yes, it’s the oh so “Meh, it was ok, I guess”-ed season known as “Survivor San Juan del Sur”. History repeats itself here, in almost exactly the same episode, but for once I’m not going to rage and storm about it like I did then. Does this show incredible bias and favoritism on my part? Yes. But I’m on the internet, so what do you expect?

Before we hop into our TARDIS and begin our voyage through history in the present day, it’s time for another edition of…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

Two in a row! Truly, we are setting a great trend for this part of the season! Through all of my “Kass is Gone” tears, I completely forgot to talk about the individual immunity idol this season, which is a real shame, because it is premium-grade, heavy-metal AWESOME! While it could be argued that it’s similar to a few other individual immunity idols (the one from “Survivor Nicaragua” springs to mind), this one manages to be unique in a good way. We’ve never really seen red as a primary color in an individual immunity idol, and it plays really well with the gold bits to give it a distinctive look that feels “idol-ish” if that makes any sense. Bottom line, you BELIEVE that this idol really grants someone immunity, and that kick-ass look makes it a nice addition to the season.

Entering the episode proper, now, I’ll admit I was worried about the probable Kass-bashing that was going to happen, presumably courtesy of Tasha and maybe Savage. While I’m sure it still happened, we are fortunately spared that unpleasantness, and instead go to Savage and Jeremy congratulating each other on an alliance well-brought-together, which admittedly they’ve earned. I’m unhappy with the outcome, of course, but to get a majority in this large a tribe, and in fact a plurality? They deserve much praise. In particular, I’d say Savage deserves props for bringing everything together, as he seems to be the binding agent for the alliance. Take careful note of this praise, Savage, you’re going to be getting very little of it tonight.

The two then discuss who they want to get out next, and agree that the “three girls”, being Ciera, Abi-Maria, and Kelley need to go next, presumably in that order. I’d normally be against voting out unthreatening swing votes at this phase of the game, but for this pair, I’d say it actually makes a lot of sense. I’ll be talking about this in a bit more detail later, but for people who could be considered physical threats like Savage or Jeremy, a “Bro-Down” is actually a pretty good move. Plus, since those women are on the bottom, they’re likely going to stir up trouble.

Sure enough, the women (or at least Ciera) are at the center of oncoming trouble, though they may not be the cause. No, after lying dormant for an episode, Stephen’s Protestant Reformation against St. Joe continues, as he talks to Ciera about the possibility of voting Joe out. And, like for Jeremy and Savage, what Stephen is saying makes sense for him. He’s weaseled his way into the Bro-Down somewhat, but he’s still probably low man on the totem pole there, particularly given Savage’s earlier crusade against him. True, I’d argue it’s a bit early, since betraying an alliance now means more people on the jury who hate your guts, but Stephen’s correct in that, if he wants to win this time around, he needs to correct his mistakes last time around of not being seen as enough of a mover and shaker and going to the end with an alpha male. Since I’m rooting for Stephen at this point (even if the edit indicates that he has no chance at all of winning this time around), I gladly accept this turn of events.

Today’s reward challenge involves two teams of six rowing out in a criss-cross pattern to pick up colored crates, which they must then bring to shore and stack so that no color repeats on any side to win a trip to a cafe. While the puzzle hails from “Survivor Samoa” originally, the crate-pulling and criss-cross rowing comes courtesy of “Survivor Blood vs. Water”. Naturally, since Ciera was on “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, and her tribe lost that challenge, we chalk this up as a second chance for… KELLY! It’s just so logical, right? I mean, how ELSE are we going to get her any screen-time? In all seriousness, while the call-back to her being beaten by Gervase on “Survivor Borneo” was hilarious, I personally feel like it was a little bit forced. It’s common knowledge by now that Kelly wasn’t at all interested in giving the producers good sound-bytes, or really playing anything resembling an interesting game, and so she’s been getting the shaft. I also understand that, as the player from arguably the most popular season of “Survivor” ever, you’d want to play her up as much as possible. But when you just sort of haphazardly shove her in there, it just feels forced. Mostly because it is. The only similarity the challenges have is that they involve rowing. A better connection than some, but kind of flimsy, in my opinion.

As to the challenge itself, it’s pretty good. A bit basic, and we once again have a team challenge post-merge, but it’s definitely a tough one, has a good balance of physical and mental components, it makes for an ok competition. It helps a lot that the teams are pretty even at this point. The purple team has Kelley, Kelly, Ciera, Kimmi, Joe, and Keith, while the green team has Stephen, Jeremy, Savage, Spencer, Abi-Maria, and Tasha. All have their physical strength and their dead weight, and all have their puzzle-solvers. Plus, this is the sort of challenge where come-from-behind victories are easier, due to the puzzle. It seems like we’ll get that, when green falls behind due to paddling trouble. Then, however, Stephen FINALLY steps up and does a puzzle, calling the shots and sending green team to the mat first. Then you remember that this is “Survivor Cambodia”, where Stephen seemingly cannot do anything right, and so he has the puzzle wrong, meaning purple team wins anyway. Probst plays up Kelly’s supposed “redemption”, and Stephen curses the fact that the main people he wanted to swing to his Protestant Reformation are all off on reward, while he’s stuck at camp.

Also, I quickly wan to bring up here that Probst, in hyperbolically describing the reward, says the winners will “Overdose on caffeine”. Um, Probst? You do know that can kill you, right? Not a good thing to say there, man.

We get our requisite “This reward is so awesome” sound-bytes from Kelley and Kimmi this time around, Kimmi in particular complaining about getting no food rewards from her season. Actually, Kimmi, as I recall, your tribe DID get food rewards. It’s just that said rewards were chickens, and you’re a vegetarian.

The cheery atmosphere doesn’t last long, as talk quickly turns to strategy. Ciera apologizes to everyone there for potentially implying that they weren’t playing at the last Tribal Council, diplomatically stating that she was merely trying to say that they should make a move while they still have the numbers, avoiding her mistake on “Survivor Blood vs. Water”. Of all people to chime in that they agree with her philosophy, it’s St. Joe, which strikes me as very odd. You see, I’m normally in favor of people questioning the status quo, but of all people present, St. Joe has the LEAST reason to question the Bro-Down. For St. Joe, as well as for the other strong alpha-males, a Bro-Down is really their best chance at survival. It’s been established for a while now that alpha males become the targets post-merge, if not sooner. The trouble for the alpha male is that, barring that they’re really charming (see J.T. of “Survivor Tocantins”) or the people around them are idiots (see Tom Westman of “Survivor Palau”), they’re too obvious a target, and there’s no incentive for them to be kept around. With a Bro-Down, however, there is a SLIGHT incentive to be kept around. There’s always going to be a “Top alpha male”, like St. Joe is in this scenario, who’s a target above the rest, but each alpha male beneath him knows that if he’s gotten rid of, the target moves to THEIR back potentially. Thus, a Bro-Down is a form of mutually-assured destruction. Every alpha knows that taking out another alpha only increases the target on their back, and thus they don’t do it. Does it make for boring, predictable tv? Sure. But it’s smart.

But enough with the engaging strategy talk, let’s all watch Keith mispronounce foreign words, and generally be stupid and ignorant! Seriously, this isn’t as bad as some other times I’ve seen him, with Keith simply riding the Tau-Tau used to bring them to the cafe, and calling it a “Toto”, but I don’t see what’s funny about this. Stupid people aren’t funny. They’re just stupid.

We head back on over to Orkun, following a shot of their frankly BEAUTIFUL tribe flag, where Stephen is still upset. Trying to have another breakdown moment like he had two episodes ago, he talks to those remaining about how he partially lost his last game due to not going on a reward, specifically the river rafting reward that J.T., Brendan, and Debbie went on. Stephen does have something of a legitimate point here (after all, this is the reward where Brendan declared “J.T. winning this game is like me winning this game.”), it just comes off as a bit flat to me, particularly compared to Stephen’s other breakdown, which was bigger and much more heartfelt. And of course, Abi-Maria brings her usual charm to this scene by telling Stephen to just “Get over it.”

Not wanting to waste an opportunity, Stephen decides to talk with some people about his Protestant Reformation plan. While most of the people he wanted to bond with are off on reward, there are still a few people at camp Stephen can talk to. He starts off by making his pitch to Spencer. Pretty good choice. Spencer admitted himself last episode that he was something of a free agent this time around, and he seems receptive. Next, Stephen talks to Jeremy about the idea. Ok, a bit riskier, since Jeremy wants to use Joe as a shield, and is just generally close with Joe, but Jeremy seems to be on board, admitting that Joe needs to go at some point. Then Stephen talks to… Tasha? Ok, what’s your deal here, Stephen? The other two were at least semi-logical, but Tasha’s in tight with Joe. Why would you think she’d be at all into your plan?

It is this chat that does Stephen in, but not due to Tasha spilling the beans, but rather due to the stealth skills of Savage. Savage overhears their conversation, and immediately returns to his anti-Stephen plans, basically calling Stephen a deceptive scumbag, and saying that he has no time for liars in this game. I’m REALLY starting to question whether Savage knew what he was getting into when he applied for “Survivor”. You don’t like liars, Savage? On “Survivor”? Have you ever SEEN the show? I’m really not sure, at this point.

And here’s where we get into why Savage rubs me the wrong way. The man expects people to play the game in a “fair” way, or rather a way that gives him an easy victory, and then gets mad when they act in their own self-interest, which is a PART OF THE GAME I might add. Worse then that, when someone even TALKS about voting apart from him, he goes on an all-out character assassination of that person. You DARE to go against the great Andrew Savage? You, my foe, are the scum of the earth! I sort of have a similar problem with Tasha, since she seems to get mad when people don’t do thing exactly like she wants them to, but Tasha at least keeps the personal attacks to a minimum (that we see on screen). Savage, on the other hand? He insults people for playing the game of “Survivor”, a game he purports to respect. Get a life Savage. And, while you’re at it, get over yourself.

Following the reward, Savage continues his anti-Stephen plans, informing St. Joe of the forming Protestant Reformation. Joe is naturally worried about this, since people are coming after him sooner than expected, but that has to wait as we head to our immunity challenge. Coming courtesy of “Survivor San Juan del Sur” (told you we’d be seeing weird parallels before too long), this challenge has people balancing a ball on a disk that is suspended between two ropes. Last person with a ball left on the disk wins. I wasn’t a fan of it then, and I’m not a fan of it now. It’s another boring ball-and-disk endurance challenge, and not even a tough one. Where other endurance challenges go out of their way to make things uncomfortable, this is just standing there, keeping tension on ropes. Not remotely exciting, and not a good challenge.

To this challenge’s credit, though, it does have some fun moments. Props must be given to Kimmi for a number of spectacular saves she has, before falling out in the second phase. Also, when Savage drops out, he shows himself to be the epitome of maturity by giving the ball the finger. Keith won this challenge when it was last played, and appropriately enough it comes down to a battle between himself and challenge wizard St. Joe. In the end, even Keith cannot overcome the will of the lord, and St. Joe makes himself immune once again. And now I quake in my pants, since the only other target we’re presented with is Stephen, and his going after Kass would be a 1-2 punch for me. Similar to “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, when Josh and Jeremy left one right after the other. Granted, this season has other people I actually like, unlike “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, but it would still hurt.

Back at camp, Joe sets the “Vote out Stephen” plan into full swing, even informing Kelley (who by extension informs Abi-Maria and Ciera) that the plan is to go against Stephen tonight. Naturally, the women just accept this gracefully, since it means they aren’t going tonight. To seal the deal, Savage gathers his minions around him, and discusses with them the possibility of getting Stephen out. It seems, though, that Stephen is not as much of a goober as this season has led us to believe, as both Spencer and Jeremy come to Stephen’s defense, saying that he’s just talking, and that the women are bigger threats right now. To his credit, Savage says that while he doesn’t trust Stephen, he’ll go with the group consensus, which seems to be get rid of one of the women, presumably Ciera. Joe goes back and informs said women, and Kelley starts talking about potentially playing her idol, though I don’t see why. Granted, I’m not privy to everything that goes on out there, but due to how the vote was split last time, I’d say Ciera is more likely to go before you. Still, just to be safe, the three agree to vote together, debating whether to go for Stephen or Savage. This is really a no-brainer. You go for Savage. Stephen doesn’t have nearly as much stock with everyone else, and is much less of a threat overall. Plus, no Savage might send the dominant alliance into chaos. It’s not going to happen, though. Savage hasn’t had NEARLY enough screen time to merit getting voted for, and while there’s been some decent misdirection, it feels like Stephen is still the way to go.

A predictable vote doesn’t mean a boring Tribal Council, though! Getting rid of all pretense this time around, Kelley and Ciera throw out who the top four are (Savage, Jeremy, Tasha, and either Stephen or Joe), and rightly point out that that solid four leaves five other people on the bottom, who therefore have a reason to vote one of them out. Not to say that there aren’t good counters to this. Joe has a line about perception being reality on “Survivor”, which is apt, and Stephen points out that the frequency of tribe swaps this season, coupled with relationships from other seasons, means that the dynamics are different. All that said, though, their point is still valid. Regardless of how crazy the bonds are this season, there’s still going to be a top three or four or whatever number you choose. That needs to be broken for anyone else to win. Add to this a lot of eye-rolling, snarking, and a flipping of the bird from Kass (hopefully a tribute to her actions on “Survivor Cagayan” and not actually a mean-spirited gesture), and you’ve got a pretty great Tribal Council. Doesn’t quite match the enjoyment of the Jeff Varner Tribal Council, but it’s up there.

So we got to vote, and Kelley plays her idol. Well, that was somewhat unexpected. While it was brought up this episode, it wasn’t something that was emphasized, like idols usually are. I get it, though. You want to hide an idol play to make it all the more surprising for the audience, and the inevitable Stephen boot implied that such a thing might happen. Also, it’s good that Kelley did that because, well, everyone voted for her. Not Abi-Maria or Ciera, of course, but everyone else.

Now we get the departure of… SAVAGE? Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic, but much like the Jeremy boot on “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, it feels a bit out of left field. Savage’s name came up once, and most of the episode was the Stephen-Joe-Three Women show. Unlike Jeremy’s boot, however, I’m more ok with the Savage boot being kept in the dark for the audience for a few reasons. First off, while Jeremy’s boot was due to organizing an alliance we didn’t see, Savage’s boot was due to an idol play. This means foreshadowing has to be limited somewhat, to keep the idol play a secret, and also that we didn’t miss out on vital strategy conversations. The other reason is that, where Jeremy was the one bastion of strategy left of “Survivor San Juan del Sur” when he was evicted, here there are other people to like, and Savage was a pretty poor player.

In case you can’t tell, I’m not sorry at all to see Savage go. He pretty well deserved it, in my mind. Apart form my problems with his philosophy towards playing the game, he really wasn’t playing it well for me. For your second chance, you have to be willing to change up SOMETHING about your game to make sure you can win. Savage really didn’t. You look at “Survivor Pearl Islands” and he played pretty much exactly the same game, only there he was an underdog and so more sympathetic. Plus, maybe this eviction will take his ego down a few notches and show him that being the overt leader is NOT a good way to win “Survivor”, nor that he in any way “deserves” it.

And how does Savage go out? The classiest way possible, of course! He gives everyone the finger. Not since Jonny Fairplay (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) have we had so many middle fingers shown in an episode.

Definitely an exciting last third, but sad to say this breaks the streak of good episodes. Not that this one was awful, but at best, I can only call it “ok”. the trouble is that when you pack all the best stuff into the last third of the episode, the first two thirds just feels wasted, devoted more to Keith being his usual “charming” self and similar matters rather than anything of substance.

Exciting finish, but the beginning needs work. Perhaps next week can do better.

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 7: The Needs of the Many

The merge episode. It’s always supposed to be a bit chaotic and exciting, and yet we were promised more than that this episode. Everyone from the teasers to Probst promised us greatness. And we got a lot of good stuff, don’t get me wrong, but this episode feels lacking, just due to not living up to the hype. Admittedly, part of the problem here is that the hype was so huge that it’d be hard for anything to live up to it, but that doesn’t change matters. Don’t mean to knock this episode, though, still a lot of fun. But, before we get into the details, we have to deal with…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

Just a lapse in memory this time around. Last blog, I erroneous claimed that Keith was the only person who had never been to Tribal Council this season. I was wrong. Keith hasn’t been to any Tribal Councils so far, but neither has Joe. I’ve so inextricably linked Joe and Kass in my mind, due to the cute relationship you see develop in the deleted scenes, that I kept thinking they’re on the same tribe, meaning that I thought Joe went to this past Tribal Council. But no, St. Joe has never attended Tribal Council. He is too holy for such things.

Unsurprisingly, we start off at Ta Keo (though the morning after, rather than the same night, for once), where Savage, true to character, is pissed off. Not that he doesn’t have reason to, the man just got blindsided at a vote. The last time that happened, he was the one the vote was for, and so didn’t have a chance to react. We see that when he does react, he’s actually pretty good. Don’t get me wrong, he’s pissed as all get out in the confessionals, but he handles things very well to everyone else. To quote Savage himself, he had his diplomat hat on, and basically just says “I wish you’d told me.”, and then talks Spencer, Kass, Ciera, and Abi-Maria into letting him make the merge, claiming that’s all he wants. Of course, that really ISN’T all he wants, but people seem to buy it anyway. Oh, and this also cements the brilliance of Ciera from last episode. Who does Savage blame for the flipped vote? Kass. Granted, Kass could have made it go either way, but it was really Ciera who organized that vote, Ciera who was to blame. We’ll see later that Savage hasn’t exactly forgiven Ciera either, but at the moment, she’s not his primary target. That’s pretty good gameplay, where you get the strategic chops, but not the flak.

Speaking of the merge, Bayon gets mail telling them to head down the beach, and await visitors. While not in rhyme, I have to say I like the mystery of this tree mail. True, we know that it’s the merge, due to the previews for this episode, but the notes vague enough to mean anything. Maybe the green berets from “Survivor Borneo” are coming back. Maybe Da from “Survivor Vanuatu” is coming to make camp life easier. Heck, maybe Paul and Joe from “Survivor Palau” rowed all the way to Cambodia for this special occasion. After all, it’s improbable. Tasha voices what everyone in the audience is thinking, pointing out that it’s kind of too early for the merge, with 13 people still left in the game. But nope, going back to Ta Keo confirms it, as they’re told to pack up their belongings and move to the Bayon camp. Savage praises both the rain and the merge, swearing revenge.

Sure enough, everybody finds some good food awaiting them, as well as bright orange buffs for the new merged tribe, which will later be named Orkun. For the first time in a while, I like this name. True, it would have been nice to find out who suggested the name and why, but it’s not a combination tribe name, and sounds pretty cool. Things are all copacetic at the merge feast, with many people, notably Kelley, praising the fact that they finally made the merge this time around. Kass also takes this time to gossip about the Woo vote, which would seem like something that would get talked about as a bad idea, but nothing really comes of it. Of course, it would be this season’s goober, Stephen, to break the tension, noting the obvious tension beneath the surface, and how once the feast ends, it’s on. Truly, he is our Jeff Varner this season. Even though we actually had Jeff Varner on this season. Weird, huh?

Still embittered, Savage is the first one to start scrambling, pulling Jeremy aside to find out if they’re still tight. Jeremy, wanting to keep his options open, assures Savage that they are, and the pair try to figure out how to get a majority of seven. They quickly conclude that they, Tasha, Kimmi, and Stephen are tight, and it’s a mark of how mad Savage is at Ciera and Kass that he’s willing to work with Stephen, the man Savage was on the warpath against from the beginning, in order to get the numbers. While Savage might get a bit whiny and preachy at times, the man demonstrated this episode that he really knows how to get down and diplomatic when he needs to. My kudos. They still need two more, and quickly realize that Kelly will fall in line, since she hasn’t had much thought since this game began, and fits in better with the more old school players, like Savage, than anyone else. That leaves a seventh, and suddenly St. Joe becomes a swing vote. But of course, there wouldn’t be much tension if the other side didn’t want St. Joe as well. Kass and Kelley Wentworth reconvene, trying to pull the new Ta Keo five of those two, Ciera, Keith, and Joe in together again. Kass is convinced that, after saving Spencer’s butt, he and Abi-Maria are firmly with them, giving them a seven majority. Kelley wants to talk with them individually, but seems to think this is a good plan, and like I’ve said before, it’s pretty good for all involved. It’s a solid enough alliance that it can get you a majority, but fractious enough that there’s room to maneuver even for those on the bottom. Plus, not as physically threatening as the bro down happening on the other side. Spencer, despite Kass’ certainty, is undecided about the future vote, and so he and Joe sit down to discuss things. Lest you think the arrogance of Spencer was completely gone, he gets a sarcastic confessional about having to speak a simplistic “Joe language”. Look, I think Joe’s pretty bland and all, but the guy’s not a complete idiot. Talk to him like a human being, I think he’ll understand. All this really does is reaffirm that the two are the swing votes, and probably going to stick together for a vote, at least. Joe has been talked to by Savage, while Spencer has been talked to by Kelley, so we’ll see how it shakes out.

Our next day begins with a veritable downpour, and all four people huddled uncomfortably in a small shelter. After Kass makes a joke about it being similar to being grounded, Stephen decides to bust out his Benjamin “Coach” Wade (“Survivor Tocantins”), and recite some poetry. Um, Stephen, are you SURE Coach is the person you want to emulate on “Survivor”. Not the best track record there, buddy. Actually, it makes for a nice little scene where, despite the vitriol that can come from a show like this, everyone bonds together and gives Stephen some nice snaps of appreciation.

Too bad old habits have to come in and ruin our mood. Kass, thinking it might be good to feel out some people on the other side, tries to talk to Tasha about her strategy currently, pointing out that it’s shaking out to be two sides squaring off. Tasha, not trusting Kass after “Survivor Cagayan”, spins her a line about the old Bayon being dead in the water, which Kass rightly picks up on as being bullshit. They’re both a little harsh to one another in the confessionals, but it’s pretty much just your average strategic scene. If only it had stayed in the confessionals.

Yes, Kass has decided that, since regular strategy talk seems to be getting her nowhere, it’s time to officially bring out “Chaos Kass” once again, which I have said all along is a bad idea. As Kass herself has said, you need to change to win this game, and Chaos Kass is the antithesis of change. Nevertheless, here she comes. She confronts Tasha about her lie, which Tasha claims Kass should have known was a lie. Oddly, despite this supposedly being a “Chaos Kass” move, I’m actually on Kass’ side here. While you may not like it that she’s calling you out, Tasha, you did spin her a lie, and obviously Kass realized it, since she’s confronting you. True, this ends any working relationship with Tasha, and Savage, as noted previously, is out the window, but that’s only two people you’ve ruined. You can salvage the rest.

That is, unless you bring the whole thing to the rest of the tribe. In an attempt to get the seemingly solid majority to turn on each other, Kass talks about what Tasha said to her, which Tasha vehemently denies. Strange part about all this is, Kass is telling the truth. Tasha didn’t mean it, but she did say those things. But that really doesn’t matter. The trouble here is that Kass, already on somewhat thin ice, looks bad. Thankfully, Ciera is there to compound the problem. Did I say “Thankfully”? I meant “Unfortunately”. Unlike Kass, Ciera spins actual lies about Savage, that go over about as well as you’d expect. The end result of this tidbit? The sides are where they are, and Kass looks bad. Yippee. Truly, we needed two segments to fully absorb that.

It’s time for our first immunity challenge, setting the bar for post-merge challenges, and it kind of a letdown. Coming from “Survivor Cagayan”, this is the “Hold a ball on a disk on a pole on an increasingly small balance beam” challenge originally won by Tasha. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a difficult endurance challenge, which is always a plus, but it’s just not that exciting.

Ciera talks about the merge being chaotic (there’s a shock), and we get into the challenge proper. People fall, it’s funny, but I must give particular mention to Stephen, the first one out of the challenge. Not so much that his fall in and of itself is funny, but he was also the first one out of the immunity challenge post-merge on “Survivor Tocantins”. Glad to see the years haven’t changed some things. In the end, St. Joe wins, which is actually a bit of a surprise. Not so much that St. Joe isn’t a “Survivor” God at every challenge, but that a woman didn’t win this one. Like it or not, challenges favor someone, and both endurance and balance challenges tend to favor women, so I’d have said someone like Tasha was going to win.

You’d expect the talk back at camp to just be your traditional one side versus the other sort of thing, but at first, it seems like a majority has been decided. Kass’ old habits have come back to bite her dearly, and Joe has decided that the other side is too unreliable. Joe is ready to bro down, and despite Savage’s vendetta against Ciera (having realized that Woo’s blindside was really her doing), pretty much everyone else wants to go for Kass, due to causing too much drama. Heck, even Keith, displaying as much brainpower as ever, opts in. So, it should be straightforward, right? Wrong. While no one thinks that Kass has an idol, there’s talk of splitting the vote just to be safe. As Jeremy says “Splitting the vote is never a bad idea.” Uh, Jeremy, yes it is! It can make a majority a minority, and with things so tenuous as is, I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. Still, with Kass, Ciera, Abi-Maria, and Kelley on the outs, something needs to be done. Rightly recognizing that the majority will split their votes, Kass talks to Spencer about voting with her and the girls to get rid of Tasha, since she’s a challenge threat. Kass banks on her showing loyalty to Spencer last time to keep him on her side, which is not a bad idea. Spencer certainly seems to be considering it.

Sadly, we know it will come to naught. If the target had been Savage, things would have been up in the air, but between the screentime Tasha has been getting versus Kass, there’s no question that Kass is going. Granted, it’s not as though Tasha’s been invisible this whole time, but what with Kass falling back into her old habits, plus the old Bayon majority seeming fairly solid, there’s not much question that Kass is going. Is this the smart move for Spencer? Probably. While I still think that the new Ta Keo alliance would have been a better one to stick with overall, with the way things have shaken out, you offend fewer people by getting rid of Kass, and it’s not as though there aren’t other people you could take to the end as a easy opponent. There’s upsides to both, but getting rid of Kass is the smart move, and Spencer is nothing if not smart.

As if we need more evidence of Kass’ ouster, Ciera pleads at Tribal Council for people not to be content with the bottom of the alliance. These are not the words of someone who has the majority. These are the words of someone desperate to get the majority. Not to say that Tribal Council is boring, by any means. There’s a decent spat between Kass and Tasha, some good facial expressions all around, and enough of a split vote to make one question who is really going home. In the end, though, Kass is out, though thankfully the first member of the jury. While I’m sorry to see her go, since she was overall playing a better game this time around, I can’t say she didn’t earn her exit. She herself said it best. She slipped back into her old patterns, and got the same result: a loss. I do hope she gets to come back sometime, but even if she doesn’t, I hope the first few episodes of the season showed people a different side of Kass, and that she CAN be a good player, when she doesn’t try to cause chaos.

Oh well, Kass is gone. So much for my theories.

Well, like I said, this was still an exciting episode. Some good gameplay, a lot of bad gameplay, and many exciting moments. I’d still say this season is seven for seven with good episodes. My problem here is not with the episode itself, but with the marketing. We were promised new craziness, stuff we’d never seen before. Apart from the 13 person merge, which I’m not happy about, and the orange merge buff, which hasn’t been seen since “Survivor Vanuatu”, there wasn’t a whole lot that was new. It was exciting, but we’ve seen split votes and flip attempts before. This was really nothing new. Not knocking the episode, of course, just wish the marketing toned it down a little.

But, as it’s the merge, it’s time for another:

TOP 5 and BOTTOM 5!

In honor of my personal favorite contestant this season, we’ll be talking about my favorite and least favorite first jury members from each season. Pretty self-explanatory. Let’s begin.

TOP 5

5. Coby Archa (“Survivor Palau”): While maybe not the most memorable juror ever, I do love how Coby basically played himself out of the game. He seemed to take the whole thing with good humor as well, so that’s always a plus.

4. Kelly Goldsmith (“Survivor Africa”): I’m a bit hesitant to put Kelly on this list, since she’s always been more of a “What might have been” character for the show, rather than an actualized character. Still, she brought a fun attitude to her jury question, and I do admire her spunk, so I’ll put her on the list.

3. Josh Canfield (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”): While I don’t think “Survivor San Juan del Sur” is the best the show has to offer, one of the better things about it was Josh. You might think this puts him on the bottom list, as it’s the loss of a great character. It made for a memorable boot, though, and was certainly exciting. Plus, once again, good humor about the whole thing, which I like.

2. Eliza Orlins (“Survivor Micronesia”): Yeah, you all knew this was coming. Those expressions, man, those expressions. And we got to watch them all throughout the rest of the season. Quite enjoyable, to say the least.

1. Lex van den Berghe (“Survivor All-Stars”): While Lex wasn’t a patch on Eliza for facial expressions, he held his own pretty well, with a lot of good smirks augmented by his mohawk. Plus, I just feel like Lex brought more strategically, both to the season and to the jury, than Eliza did, so he just edges her out.

Honorable Mention: Kass McQuillen (“Survivor Cambodia”): Since I haven’t seen how Kass will behave on the jury and at the Final Tribal Council, I can’t in good conscious put her on the list. But I’m optimistic. She’s quite fun to watch, quite intelligent, and I look forward to seeing how she spices up the jury.

BOTTOM 5

5. James “Rocky” Reid (“Survivor Fiji”): If you didn’t like this guy, you were mad that he got to stick around for the jury. If you liked this guy, you were mad that he didn’t stick around in the game proper longer. Either way, not a very good jury foreman. I fall into the former category, and found his antics more annoying than anything on an already weak season, and thus had to put him on the list.

4. Sarah Lacina (“Survivor Cagayan”): Another good person who was arguably gone too soon, Sarah really brought nothing to the jury, and was overall not the right decision, which is why she’s on this list. Kind of like Kelly on the other list, but with less of an enjoyable vote to get her out. Kass’ flip still brings me pain.

3. Erin Collins (“Survivor Thailand”): Erin could basically be a stand-in for all of the bland first jurors that “Survivor” has had over the years, but I find Erin to be a particularly egregious example. The woman wasn’t memorable, and being out before the merge on a season that was lackluster at best is a sure ticket to being forgotten, and ending up on this list.

2. Greg Buis (“Survivor Borneo”): Don’t get me wrong, the guy was entertaining as all get out. However, his antics went a bit too far at the Final Tribal Council, and the fact that his flip-flopping means people still, too this day, debate the legitimacy of Richard Hatch’s win, makes him too frustrating to put anywhere else.

1. Erik Cardona (“Survivor Samoa”): Yeah, he started out not seeming too bad. A little egotistical, and with now screentime compared to Russell Hantz, but not a terrible guy. Then came his speech at the Final Tribal Council. Don’t get me wrong, he had good points. It was just SO pretentious that it drives me insane, and lands Erik in the #1 spot!

Honorable Mention: Bobby Jon Drinkard (“Survivor Guatemala”): Less because he was a bad juror, but more because it was kind of an odd spot for him to go out in. After building him up as a returning player, Bobby Jon just kind of fizzled out. Not enough to put him on the list proper, but definitely not a stellar first juror.

And there you have it. Enjoyable episode, hope to see you next week. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to cry myself to sleep over the ejection of Kass.

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.