Survivor: Borneo- A Look Back

WARNING! This blog post is a long and rambling blog post that is filled with a ton of intricate detail. This may have a lot of information that actually has nothing to do with Survivor: Borneo, although I am working on that. This should have some sort of information about Survivor: Borneo, but I’m not sure that it will at the end. In fact, I highly recommend ignoring this blog post completely. Go ahead and cut your losses. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. It’s not like you’re reading this anyways right? Are you reading this right now? Are you ignoring my advice and continuing on this dangerous road that nobody wants to go down? Please stop reading this. Have you stopped yet? You’re still reading this, aren’t you? Well, you’ve been warned that reading this might be a huge waste of time that you’ll never get back. At least reading this blog post isn’t as bad as writing this blog post. Trust me, I have wasted more time on this then you ever will. I’ll let you know in big letters when and if I get to the point. For now, my horribly long, rambling blog post that has almost nothing to do with the first season of Survivor is about to begin. But, at least my other blog posts after this should be more normal. Seriously, though, stop reading this. Please stop reading this. Trust me, it’s not worth your time. If you don’t stop, at least you’ve been warned. END WARNING

The first season of Survivor was legendary. It went down as a great show in reality TV history. Some fans say that there could never be a better season then this, the first one. I’m going to blog about it now. There are a bit of confusions with the name of the first season. Some call it Pilau Tiga based on the island where it was filmed. Wikia claims that the first season was universally known as that until the eighth season called players from it Borneo, but I was a fan starting into the second season and I always remember the first season as being called Borneo. I’ve even heard some contestants refer to the first season as Malaysia based on yet another name of the location where the first season was filmed. So the season has three names, although I always knew it as Borneo. Thus, the blog posts will simply be named after the way I normally do them for a season that’s currently airing.

Also, the posts may seem strange depending on if I’m going back to the old way of doing it or not. I think that I’m going back to the old ways, so look for blog posts older than episode 25.2 and you should be able to see the difference. I think that I’ll blog about the special about the season before I watch the whole season, although I’m probably going to watch the special again once I’m done to see the major differences. I’ll let you know sometimes how the die roll goes and hopefully there won’t be any problems with my crazy OCD schedule that I have to be a bit annoying. The only real problem would be the movies. I’m not sure that Survivor even has to be on the TV show list. But at least there are currently no other TV shows that start with the letter s that I plan to watch at the moment. In fact, Survivor is the only show that I own that starts with the letter s because I’m borrowing the other one (Stargate SG-1) that I’m watching. I probably won’t watch the episodes only on Sunday, if I even watch it before that summer. I might have said that I would in the past, but I decided to change my mind about it. But I will only post the updates to that old season on Sundays if I do end up seeing it before the summer, but it is very likely that I wait. Besides, the likelihood that I roll an s on either day is 11 out of 36 (if I’m doing the math right, that is) so it could take a while before that happens if it happens at all. I might have to make exceptions the moment that the finale of Cagayan airs, if it hasn’t already by the time this is posted online. Besides, if I post this sooner than the summer, than what am I supposed to post about during the summer?

Maybe the first time I watch it should just be for fun and to write about B. B. Andersen’s influence on the game, listen to the commentaries, and save the full fledged blog posts for when I watch it the second time. And I could end up watching it a lot and only post one update a week because that’s the limit that I’m planning on doing. But whether that even happens or not has not yet been decided while I’m writing this, but has been probably by the time you are reading this. So this might be a pointless conversation that I’m having right now. But, since nobody reads my blog anyways, I figure that I have nothing to lose. I like to say random and interesting things in my mind, but if anyone else enjoys it is anyone’s guess. You’ll see it at random times during the summer if that’s when I’m posting it. Just keep in mind that it won’t be posted more than once on the same day. And you might not see anything else during the summer at all. Plus, there are only a certain amount of shows that I can watch if they are limited to the die roll list. I’m not certain yet if this will be limited. But don’t expect anything else out of me during the summer break if I do end up posting this season there. I am thinking of posting an elaborate fan fiction of some sort relating to a new Survivor season, but I more than likely never would do something like that at all. If I had suggestions for what I could do in it, then I would. But since nobody reads this blog, that will pretty much never happen. If I’m wrong and people do read this blog, then comment and point out what I should do with this heading in the comments: Survivor fiction idea. Or just continue to ignore this blog of mine. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this considering how you are just ignoring this blog post anyways.

So, as usual, I know that I can cheat with the random die roll list. Neither the special on Borneo nor the episodes even have to be on the list. I could watch them whenever I want to instead of limiting myself to only a one in six chance of rolling it. I mean, I do have only one last Christmas special to watch, but since it is on the random die roll list, then it might take a while to watch it. Although, I probably already have watched it by the time this is posted. I also have to wonder if I will have started an OCD blog of mine by the time this is posted as well because I really want to post about my random OCD habits and I might as well have a blog to do that in. Regarding the list, I notice that I could also cheat with the names on the list as how they are labeled alphabetically. Winnie the Pooh, for example, is on my TV watching list despite the real name of the show being called The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which starts with the letter n and not w. But since NCIS is already on the list and will be there for quite some time, I decided to cheat with the names.

I should be lucky that I even have a tape of recorded episodes of that show anyways since as of the time I’m writing this, there has yet to be a DVD release of any complete seasons of that great TV show. In fact, a lot of the recordings that I watch are not released otherwise. For example, The Wish that (or which) Changed Christmas is on a VHS recording originally labeled X-mas (hence the way I’m able to cheat once again by putting it on the list since w was already taken but x was not and probably never will be unless I watch something that starts with x). As I was saying, if I didn’t want to wait until s was off the list to watch either TV shows or movies, they I could cheat and put p, m, or b on the list based on the three season’s names. This could, however, lead to even more problems.

While I currently have no problems with the three alternate letters for the list of TV shows, since I want to watch a movie first, I have the problem with the letter b. The number associated with each movie cannot be changed. I cannot, for instance, move a c movie to the number two if it is already at number one and I haven’t watched through all of these movies installments (it’s actually a concert series and c is the letter that starts the group’s name. It will probably always be on the list because the group is that good to always watch it, which is another problem which I will get to) it must remain on the list at that number and thus I cannot add any other letters before or with that same letter alphabetically, then b cannot be added to that list at the moment. That list is Sunday movies by the way. Keep in mind that one of the many problems with this is that I’m not even sure that I’ll be able to watch a movie on that day anyways since other things happen during my life and I’m not a faceless nobody, despite the fact that I have this blog where I ramble a lot about things that have nothing to do with Survivor that probably bores my readers to death or at least forces them to skip certain parts of my blog. But enough of my ramblings.

Tricked you, if you thought this was the beginning of the part of this blog post that you would like. Unless, of course, you’ve been generally amused by the post thus far. The highest letter for the other number 1 choice is h, which will have to stay there for three movies and which point it will probably be time to add my favorite movie trilogy, Back to the Future, to the list since I watch it every summer. (I know that I could watch it any time of the year, which is why I’m not even sure that I’ll wait that long, it just might take a while with the other choice being three movies long as it is another trilogy that I was wanting to watch again.) After Back to the Future is done being watched, then the summer might be over as I only watch a movie like this only once during a week (this list being Saturday). And since the other movie list is a different day in the week and only that day, I will have problems unless I am somehow able to combine the list and use them any day of the week since there are typically boring stuff during suppertime during the summer when I’m normally devoted to watching other things. With b off of the list, then only m and p are left and I don’t think that either of those count as real names for the season so I won’t consider either of those as alternate letters anyways. And I do want to combine the lists at some point, although I’m not sure that I will ever be able to, although I probably will or at least want to. So we’ll see what ends up happening, although with all the other screwy rules that I haven’t even told you about yet, I might end up rolling that desired letter s in good time. I’ll let you know and hopefully avoid trying to constantly repeat myself. I also realize that I could add the letter f representing the word first and Survivor: Borneo was the first season of the show.

Speaking of constantly repeating myself, I think that I have already mentioned what was in some of this blog post earlier. I know that the format of this blog, for instance, is already mentioned on the show. In fact, this is more of a new format than a reverting back to an old format. I just wish that Word didn’t decide to randomly stop posting my blogs online from it. I don’t even know what I did wrong. In fact, I’m guessing that it was probably not my fault as I never did something that I think could have changed why I’d be able to do that. Did Word do it or did Blogger do it? Oh, well. I guess this is just one of those things that you’ll have to live with sometimes. Hotmail, for example, still says that you can reply to an email to comment on a status on facebook, but I haven’t been able to do that for quite some time. Is that Hotmail’s fault or facebook’s fault? Did I do something wrong? Why can’t I reply to an email notification from facebook to comment on something as if I was on facebook? I used to be able to do this, but not anymore it seems. I wonder if it is actually both of their faults.

You know, I forget if I’ve already mentioned this or not, but not every Sunday can I watch a movie on my Sunday movie watching list. I can’t watch a Saturday movie every Saturday. I don’t always have the option of watching one of my six TV shows on DVD (or other random thing to watch) every time that I want to and almost never am I able to watch something with breakfast on Sunday because I’m a good Christian that goes to church and can’t afford a potential delay like that to slow me down. Plus, there are other issues with the Sunday list such as only being able to watch half of the things on this list do to the strange way of listing things there and not being sure how to order if or if doing something strange such as getting rid of half of the options that I should be able to choose from. So, to put it simply, half of the six movies on Sunday can’t be considered to watch thus increasing the odds of everything I want to watch going up to 1 in 3 instead of 1 in 6. But when I am finally able to watch Serenity, I will have to have the option that I want to add (Survivor: Borneo- the Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments) be unable to be chosen from for three weeks. Ultimately, due to all this confusion, I have the feeling that I won’t be able to start watching the show until after Survivor: Cagayan finishes airing and I’d finally start watching the first season by default. I hope that no other contestants from other seasons die yet as they will only further complicate various issues. Plus, they could be from seasons that haven’t been released to DVD yet and won’t be for some time. Just as long as they don’t die during the season they are filming, no serious problems will have happened yet. Well, besides someone dying.

Well, I’m glad that I finally get to see the first season even if I did miss it when it first aired and I do have to watch it a full fourteen years later. I’m also sorry for the fake out earlier as my ramblings are far from done. If you don’t want me to ramble, then don’t read this blog. I have the feeling that many of you are already feeling that way in the first place. I’m glad that Survivor, at the moment at least, is still going very strong. Not much information has been released yet on the upcoming 29^th and 30^th season besides the possible twist for the 29^th season that might not even be true. And although I want a “normal” season to happen again, with the greatness of the seasons that we’ve had that aren’t the “normal” seasons, I’m perfectly fine with not having a normal season for a while, even if the highest ranked season of mine is a normal season. In fact, a season that wasn’t normal hadn’t happened yet at the time of my favorite season, that like many, is underrated, although I haven’t heard enough opinions about it to know for sure. I’m sure that I’ll tell you someday what the season is in due time, but for now, I will not change it, although I was tempted to twice. Believe it or not, it was actually both Nicaragua and Redemption Island that I considered being the best at some point, although I still leave it to this mysterious season from early Survivor history. Although, with the seasons post Heroes versus Villains being as good as they are, maybe “normal” seasons are overrated. For the record, these are all the seasons that I consider to be normal: Borneo, Australia, Africa, Marquesas, Thailand, Pearl Islands, China, Gabon, Tocantins, and Samoa.

Even if this is just a season watched during the summer, regardless of if it is on the list of things to be rolled on the die, I have come up with a way of watching various Survivor seasons and posting them on this blog. So you will only see these blog posts on Sundays. I will post an episode each Sunday, although I can’t promise you that it will happen every Sunday once it finally starts. Once I’m done with the season, the Sunday posts will eventually stop and I’ll debate whether or not to continue blog posts before the twenty-ninth season starts depending on how late you are actually seeing this. I don’t know yet if any other former Survivor contestants have passed away by the time I start seeing this for the first time, but I hope that none do as it is always sad when someone dies. And that even happens when they go to heaven, which is where we hope that a lot of them go, but we might never know for sure. I would rather not judge people because only God decides who goes to heaven and hell, although the person chooses for themselves what they believe first before they die. But I shouldn’t get religious here because this is not a religious blog. And I really shouldn’t think about death as often as I do. Regardless, you will see blog posts about Survivor: Borneo on Sundays alone so when the Cagayan finale airs, you might not see it until the next Wednesday because that’s when I chose to post it. Things could get even crazier should more seasons of Survivor come into my possession based on the only rule I have for buying it. But now you’ll know what will happen for future seasons.

I’m actually not sure what the point of this blog post is anymore. It’s okay with me if you ignore it. I will post when and if I ever get to the point of it. I’m pretty sure that I was just going to blog about the season as a whole based on what I saw from the Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments special. While the specials have never really quite worked long term, I’m surprised that they haven’t done something like that for dead contestants at the moment. It would be nice if some people got a DVD like that made in their memory. B. B., for example, would really benefit from something like that since he only played six days of the game before he was voted out.

I hope that there is enough general information about all the series in this special so I can post stuff about it here before finally seeing the first season the way one should be able to see it. I might be able to cheat at this list I’ve been bringing up a lot. Should I not have access to a movie on the list, I might as well watch this special I’ve been wanting to see since October of last year. The Star Wars movies I’ve been watching, I had to borrow from my brother who actually possesses the movies. I am waiting to borrow the original trilogy from him. I have finished watching the prequels. Since only Revenge of the Sith didn’t come out on VHS (until the sequel trilogy is made), Revenge of the Sith is the only one that I actually have on DVD (although it is more of a family owned movie to be precise). I would love to watch that with commentary. I have strange order of the six movies in terms of which one I like the most and which one I like the least. Don’t hate me for this, but while it is a great movie, Revenge of the Sith is my least favorite Star Wars movie. If you rewatch the light saber duel on the lava planet, you will notice a lot of strange and ridiculous things happening. For instance, you’d think that a lava planet would be built with more lava resistant material. If you are not familiar with the youtube channel, Cinema Sins, please go to www.youtube.com and look them up sometime. They are quite good at respectfully making fun of movies, both good and bad alike. They have not yet done any of the Star Wars movies, but I’d love to see what they have in store for all of them. In fact, I wonder how they haven’t done Revenge of the Sith yet because of all the things they could do with it.

Back to the random topics of this blog post, how will I deal with the different letters that this season has on the place on the list should another season be able to be watched by me? Am I making sense to anyone? The point is, as I’ve already discussed, the letters that I can choose from are the most of any seasons. Keep in mind that important letters in this paragraph will be underlined. I could go with the first season of Survivor that was on the island of Pilau Tiga which is in the region of Borneo in Malaysia. My conflict would be with any season that has any of those five underlined letters. Obviously, since they all start with s for being a season of Survivor, I would run into problems with the second season, the sixth season, the seventh season, the sixteenth season, the seventeenth season, Samoa, South Pacific, and possibly any future season that starts with s. The only other season that I’d have to worry about that starts with the letter b is Blood versus Water. Other seasons that start with the letter p are Pearl Islands, Palau, Panama, and Philippines. If I’m worried about the letter f, then I’m worried about the fourth season, the fifth season, the fourteenth season, the fifteenth season, Fiji, and potential future seasons. This leaves the letter m with the seasons of Marquesas, Micronesia, and future seasons that might be made during that time. So there are a lot of seasons that could work like that.

Well, it finally happened I was all prepared to watch Serenity with commentary and then something strange happened. Well, I’m not sure if it was strange as much as it was unplanned. You see I was certain that the copy of the movie was actually here. But, wouldn’t you know it, the DVD isn’t there in its case. I could have sworn that it was. But it seems that I’m being messed with in some sort of way. Not sure how or why this happened. But I guess that someone else has the Serenity DVD, but I could always borrow a different copy if I needed to. This then leads into very great news for me and everyone else who reads this blog (so just me, I guess). You see, since Survivor: Borneo- the Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments was only going to be added to my random die roll list after I watched Serenity, I can now watch the special that I’ve been wanting to see for quite a while without having to watch Serenity and then waiting for a certain number to be rolled in order for me to watch the special. I can even add the episodes of the old season’s DVD as a different blog post for each episode. I can save money on a new DVD box set, for the moment at least, by adding this old Survivor season to the list of six DVDs (or stuff close to it) the moment something else (preferably Stargate, since it starts with the same letter) is off the list of random die roll.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! THE IMPORTANT IMFORMATION IN THIS BLOG POST FINALLY STARTS NOW! I HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN TO MY POINT! You will see me post updates on the first season on Sundays. Here are the rules that I have about it: Basically, this is the rule for watching only one old season. The first old season must be posted on Sundays. For all old seasons’ posts, you must only post one episode a week. You cannot post any more even if you have already watched them. If you have not seen enough, then you must not post anything that day of the week. You do not have to post something that day even if you are ready to. This could delay me posting the finale of the show’s current season. But I hope and plan to be back here every Sunday as often as possible with a blog post of an old episode of the first season. So without further ado, I will now post information about the first season.

Here’s what I’ve learned from watching the special: One of the weird things right off the bat was how the contestants were allowed to talk to each other on the boat ride there to the beach. They have never allowed the contestants in any other season to talk to each other before the game officially began. This will be the last time that I watch this special before I’ve seen the season as the way it was meant to be seen. I will start pretty soon with watching the episodes of the first season as a whole. The marooning was very interesting and I don’t think that they’ve done this the same way again. That happens with a lot of things in various Survivor seasons.

You know, I’m eating a nice lunch with this movie. Richard laid out a bunch of strange rules and quickly became the cocky player that we know him to be today. Sean thinks that he’s always right. One of the female contestants on Pagong built a place to go to the bathroom. I forget what the official term for that is. (I didn’t actually forget, I just can’t remember how to spell it.) I wonder why they never show the bathroom aspect of this show anymore.

We get to Sonja, the first person voted out by learning about some of her life in the game. She was the first person voted out because they cost their tribe the challenge.  She is a cancer Survivor. We get to B. B. next. He’s the reason that I wanted this season on DVD. He was the first person voted out for being an unbearable person. Some say that he actually quit, but I haven’t seen enough of it yet to know what happened for sure. It’s interesting how they had the gong to symbolize the players at tribal council. That would have been a good thing to still have in the game, but I can see why they got rid of it. It was corny after all. But he probably did ask to be voted out although Jeff from Palau is considered by many to be the first real person to quit that way.

We get to Stacey, the only player to have sued the game and claimed it was fake. If there’s a list of contestants who are banned from playing the game again, she would have been the first person added to that list. There was simply an alliance in my mind that got her out. But she’s convinced that people switched their votes. Someone from off camera talked during what I believe to be Stacey’s extended exit confessional, although I don’t know what the one they showed us in that episode is like yet. I just know that based on this movie or special or whatever it is, they show us a lot of information that we good to be cut from the episodes. This supports my theory that in every Survivor episode, the most interesting parts of it are the hour that airs. While I’d like to see more of the unused footage from various seasons, should they still exist, I still don’t think that most of it was worthwhile. We get to Ramona who was the first person who wasn’t Caucasian who got voted out. She didn’t grab her stuff until after her torch was snuffed which is something that I don’t think I’ve seen other contestants do.

The contestants were trying to cook something very strange and weird. I don’t think that anyone actually ate it in the end. We get to Dirk who had one of the more interesting audition tapes. You can tell that this is one of the earlier seasons since everyone had one and I don’t know when they started using recruits in the game. It was probably before All-Stars and might have been as soon as the third season. Dirk brought a bible as a person item. He wasn’t the only person to do that. Nobody really explained why they were voting off Dirk from the game during their voting confessionals. He was probably the first contestant to use religion a lot on the show. So if you don’t like it blame him. But I’d rather thank him for giving the other contestants an excuse to do the same. Rudy says he’s religious but would only bring a bible as a personal item for toilet paper. No offense to any of my readers, but I’d rather bring something like the Book of Mormon instead. Is it supposed to sound made up? I’d bring any book that I’d consider crap to be good toilet paper. So the works of Shakespeare and the Scarlet Letter would make great person items for me. So I’ll learn more about why him and other contestants were voted out when I watch this season. I just hope that they didn’t edit out the real reason why any of the contestants from this season were voted out. We get to Joel who was probably the first person voted out over a battle of the sexes. True to their natures, a man was being stupid and a group of women were smart enough to get rid of a sexist person like that. He’s the only person successfully voted out by Greg Buis.

At the merge, many revealing stories were told that apparently aren’t appropriate for the military. We get to Gretchen who was voted out in the most confusing vote in the show’s history. I, for one, would really like to know, if I can, what happened at that tribal council that caused such a confusing vote to happen in the game. She was the first one voted out after the merge in the history of the game. There was a voting strategy that got her voted out although none of them really explained why they were voting her out. I guess that the age of the great voting confessionals happened later. After she was voted out, the next woman to be the first one voted out after the merge was Michelle in Fiji, some thirteen seasons later (although in Thailand and All-Stars, if the merge occurred normally, the lowest placing member would have been a female instead of a male). Interesting enough, both of those contestants are considered great potential players for a second chances season and yet neither of them have even received offers to return to play the game again. We get to Greg who is one of the most liked contestants in the game. He may have been a little nutty, but that’s why people loved him and he was such a great fun to the game. People are disappointed that he has never returned to play the game again, although he doesn’t really want to. He burst into a lot of fake crying when he was voted out of the game that might have fooled some people but mostly just amused us. He might have been the first person voted out of the game because he’s crazy. Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t last very far in the game myself.

We get to Jenna next. We didn’t see her audition tape, but since she did interviews to be on the show, then she probably did audition like everyone else. If not, then she might have been the first recruit to play the game of Survivor. Jenna didn’t get a tape from her loved one at a reward challenge when everyone else did. I don’t think that they’ve had this problem in other seasons. They might have in Gabon, but the player in question who wouldn’t have had a loved one was the one who was voted out of the game right before it happened. If you ask me, the time that this could have happened was in Samoa because they didn’t end up having a loved ones challenge that season for reasons unknown (although Russell Swan’s evacuation might have had more to do with that). Sean cast a “useless” vote against her that got her eliminated from the game.  Jenna told people when she was voting against them which is not the best strategy. Sue and Kelly were the best of friends but that quickly changed for the worst at the final four. We get to Gervase who I only know from the 27^th season and not the first one that he did. Nobody knew how to spell his name when he was voted out the first time. Apparently, the torch was either mistakenly referred to as a staff when he was voted out or torches originally had a different name entirely the first season. I’m going with the first one.

They show a sort of reward that may not have been a real challenge, which marks the only time that that might have happened. I don’t know for sure if that did happen in the final edit yet or not. But like many things in this blog, I’m sure that I’ll find out more information about that once I actually watched the season. So I don’t really know why this is in the game for that one moment. Richard thinks that he lost a lot of weight before he first appeared on the show which makes something that doesn’t usually happen anymore, although it’s rumored that Malcolm, originally from Philippines, lost ten pounds before doing Survivor. Colleen won the sort of challenge and shared her reward, a piece of chocolate, with the rest of the tribe. We get to Colleen next. She had a showmance with Greg, possibly the first in reality TV history. It’s probably safe to guess that they did not have sex there since they’ve only joked about doing it. We get to see some of the reasons why she didn’t like the game and why it’s safe it assume that she won’t be coming back. She might have been the first person voted out of the game since someone else had immunity. They wanted to get rid of Kelly who had flipped on the alliance. She does talk about the possibility of returning when she originally played, but even though ten years have passed by now, I still don’t see it as happening, although I’d love to be proven wrong. Meanwhile, I think that I use too many commas all the time. We get to Sean who is notable for his alphabet strategy of voting people out that many people wrongly think was a poor way of voting. But he’s not dumb since he didn’t do that the whole game and only three of his votes were in minority. Plus, the opposing tribe just happened to come alphabetically before the members of his tribe did meaning that he’s guaranteed at least five (potentially successful) votes before he has to turn on members of his own tribe. In what seems anticlimactic, his torch was already out before it was snuffed. But he still cast ten votes in the game (nine if you don’t count his jury vote) where seven of them were successful in what they did.

We get to Sue who butted heads with almost everyone. She did the famous rats and snakes speech at the jury even though she said in her exit confessional that she didn’t like snakes. We get to Rudy who might have been a homophobe under some circumstances but ended up bonding (not in THAT way) with Richard who is gay. This shows that sometimes people can get over the prejudices they have and be friends with people that they wouldn’t normally be. Of course, since this is Survivor, after all, most people just fight with each other over things like this which is why they typically why they put people like that on a tribe with each other. Rudy messed up at the final immunity challenge, the first to do this, like many others have since, and was voted out as a result. I even read online that some people who worked for Survivor thought that once his hand was accidently removed from the idol, that there was no way that this show would live to see a second season. They ended up being wrong, which was a great thing to be in the end.

That’s when we get to the final two of this season. Kelly and Richard were the final two. Richard had the idea to form an alliance in the first place so without seeing the season, he seemed more deserving to win then the person who flipped. Nobody really seems to give most flippers crap, but if Kelly hadn’t flipped, she might have actually won the game. Sue says that she hopes that her vote costs Kelly the game, which it did. Many people think that Greg was the real swing vote, but he wasn’t. If Kelly and Sue were able to maintain their friendship, then Kelly would have won, simple as that. Well, that’s my opinion at least. It might change once I watch this season, but I don’t think that it will. The jury has interesting things to say about all the players and why they voted the way that they did. In what seems strange now, they didn’t reveal the winner live. Kelly would become the only runner-up to have an exit confessional (in the season they were a runner-up, at least), although I don’t know exactly yet if it airs. But, as usual, I’ll know more when I watch the episodes themselves. Kelly stated that she would never want to play a game like this again.

So the special is now over, although I’m sure that I’ll watch this again. I can get rid of my old VHS copy of the special since I don’t need it anymore since I have the DVD box set. If you want it, let me know, although I plan to give it away at the end of May to some unknown person at my church’s rummage sale (whoever buys it once I give it away). Besides, I don’t know how you could tell me if you want the VHS copy without giving up too much personal information about yourself, which I’d rather you not do. Of course, nobody reads this blog anyways so I shouldn’t really mention it in the first place.

I’m watching certain special features that come with this DVD. It’s amusing that you never see the top of the tribal council area so they don’t show you the studio lights and other fake aspects of the area. There are, of course, some ways that they have to trick the people that are on the show with what they do there. There are always great behind the scenes stuff going on that we might never know a thing about. And Survivor is a TV show in the end where something like it wouldn’t happen in normal life. At least, I hope that it doesn’t happen because some of that stuff is just crazy.

So, I apologize for the last time about this blog post of mine. There came a point in it when I just mentioned so many different things that I had to go back and add the first paragraph to better explain myself. I know that I could have edited it some, although I spent too much time on it already for me to think that cutting stuff out would have been a disappointment. Well, kudos to you if you actually read this whole long blog post of mine. Stay tuned for more information about this season and hopefully everything will get to be “normal” in the future. So you should be seeing season 1 posts mixed with season 28 posts. I just hope to see a lot of season 1 posts in the near future. Hopefully, things will be more normal in the future. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.5

You know, before I do anything else, I have to talk about more firsts from this season. I’m wonder if this is the first season where a tribe failed to throw a challenge after attempting to throw a challenge. I know something like that might have happened in China, but I’m pretty sure that it was something else. I think that what happened in China was a tribe failed to win a challenge after trying to come up with a great plan to idol out a member of the opposing tribe. So I’m not sure if that’s what I’m thinking about or not. This could be the first season where a tribe failed to throw a challenge and if it isn’t, I would like to know which one is.

Something else interesting this season is that Sarah is the only player right now who has not gone to tribal council. This has happened before, but it is very rare which makes sense. How often does a single player who is still in the game be the only player to have not gone to tribal council? To my knowledge, the first time it happened was in Pearl Islands. Due to a kidnapping twist, Rupert was able to skip Drake’s first tribal council which would have been his first had the twist not made him immune. Bruce did this in Exile Island. You see, he was not at the first tribal council and only joined his new tribe after they attended tribal council. Thus, he did not actually attend that tribal council. And the other tribe attended tribal council before he would go for the first time. Candice was also exiled when she would have attended her first tribal council in Cook Islands and didn’t end up going until every other contestant from that season did. Sylvia sort of did this Fiji. She was exiled after choosing the tribes and came back after everyone else on her tribe had attended tribal council. But since the other tribe had not gone to tribal council, that doesn’t really count. Laura Boneham sort of did this last season. But that only counts if you count the returning players’ visits to tribal councils in previous seasons. So this season marks the first time that only one player hasn’t gone to tribal council yet and this person was not chosen by the other tribe at some point.

Before I forget to post about more dreams that I’ve had, I might as well tell you about one of them. So I will first give you some set up behind this dream. You see, there’s a rumor that if there was ever a tie at the jury voting for the winner of the game, that the producers of the show would go to each jury member and ask them to possibly change their vote. It could be how tie-breakers work, but is just an unfounded rumor. And what I’m going to post here about that possible rumor was just a dream. I hope that what they do for tie-breakers isn’t what I just described because that would literally be jury tampering. That doesn’t seem at all far to the finalist or finalists who could potentially get screwed by the changed vote. If a more far method exists, I’d like to see it. But in this dream of mine, it turns out that a jury member changed their vote in Micronesia. In the dream, I was really upset to learn this, even though I’m not sure that I was that big an Amanda fan. Basically, someone who had originally voted for Amanda to win changed their vote so that Parvati got it instead. Parvati was thus able to win the game because of it when a tie-breaker could have happened between her and Amanda. I would like to point out again that THIS WAS JUST A DREAM!

So let’s do some thinking as to who this jury member could have been. First off, we know that it wasn’t Ozzy, James, or Erik because they were all on the record as voting for Amanda to win. It probably wasn’t Cirie because of Amanda voting her out at the final three and Cirie probably just didn’t like Amanda as much as she did Parvati. I’m not sure if Natalie would have voted for Amanda or not. It’s possible that she would have, but I doubt it. Alexis more than likely would have not voted for Amanda since Amanda was mainly the reason she was voted out. Parvati may have also voted against Alexis, but I really don’t think that would have changed Alexis’s mind about it. Jason probably would have still voted for Parvati in any situation as I don’t think that he really wanted Amanda to win. This leaves Eliza as the last person left. Would she have voted for Ozzy’s lover considering how much she wanted Ozzy out of the game? I don’t think so. So, basically in my prediction, none of the players would have changed their votes since it wouldn’t have been a tie in the first place. And since it was just a dream after all, there were probably no switched jury votes in this or any other season. Although you do have to wonder about China since that’s the only season where CBS said the jury votes were originally the wrong way before they corrected themselves (as for every other season, they simply revealed the right votes in the first place and never had to change them).

I have no idea what to make of the contestants so far this game. I don’t see a clear person as making it that far in the game. I will regularly check back to my predictions to see if they accurate or not and I’m pleasantly surprised by how many of my picks are accurate so far. I have one thing wrong so far (I put Brice on the jury), but the rest of the premerge boots that we’ve seen thus far were all predicted to be just that, premerge boots. But I have no idea who is doing the best in the game based on confessionals alone. I’m glad that I have not heard any winner spoilers this season and hope that I don’t find out until they air the jury votes live in the season finale. Please be a good one. The way I see it now, Tony and Sarah have an alliance to the end. Are they both finalists? I don’t know. They could wind up like Vytas and Aras did last season. If you don’t remember, they were both out early into the merge. L J and Kass are close enough, at the moment, to be the third potential finalist.

It looks like Kass is doing well in the confessional count so far.  She’s one of my two favorites to win since I’m strange and if a contestant just follows me on twitter, then I will root for them to win the game. Trish is the other person who followed me and I’m rooting for, although she doesn’t seem to get the much of an edit on camera so far. It looks like she’s having a fight with someone in this episode. I still don’t know if Woo should be called by that name or not. I might have to, but he’s one of the people getting an invisible edit this season. But if Jennifer Lyon taught us anything, it’s that even with an invisible edit, you can still get pretty far in the game.

Back to the contestant analysis, I had predicted that Yung, Jeremiah, and Kass were the final three. I don’t have much of a hope in all of them making it to the end anymore. But, I will remind you of the “winners” of this season, based on where they are on the list where the contestants are at. This, of course, is complete coincidence during a season that is still airing that doesn’t have any of the contestants in order of elimination yet. The winner is always at a certain place in all of these lists should the season have already aired. It is like this for every former season. So the supposed winners that I’m talking about have nothing but lucky placement in their names that put them where a winner should be. The three winners are Alexis, Yung, or Jeremiah. They will remain those three until one of them is voted out and gets replaced by whoever is next alphabetically, should they still be in the game.

I’m still hoping that we see more of Yung just so I know for sure if I should call him that or Woo. I know that with the other two people, you should call them by their nicknames, but I’m just not sure about him yet. My mom says that I’m in for another good episode today (does she even know that they make bad episodes?) so hopefully, she’s right. Hopefully, breakfast won’t be a problem, although I’m making sure not to eat something that involves a lot of my hands since that would be problematic to try to use the keyboard of my laptop with messy hands. This then comes into another problem since I don’t want something messy that could spill near my laptop. Hence the reason that I mostly do the blog writing during the commercial breaks that I don’t fast forward through. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Solana got back from tribal council. And the drama at camp started immediately. Trish and Lindsey had a fight over simply not liking each other for seemingly no good reason. At least I finally know of a good rivalry from this season, although there are probably others that I don’t know of. For some odd reason, Jeff Probst is called to camp over Lindsey’s issues. Apparently, she’s quitting the game for some odd reason. This is so weird. Why didn’t she give herself a moment to consider about it before just leaving? She just left! What happened? And I thought that Colton quitting from last season was for a strange and no good reason. She shouldn’t be admitting defeat. And no Solana is down two members instead of just one. She didn’t even seem to be at a low point or anything. Am I the only one who finds this to be incredibly strange?

In the second segment of the show, the reward challenge happened and Aparri learned of Cliff getting voted out and Lindsey quitting the game. The reward is a camp raid and this challenge first appeared in Philippines as a reward challenge. Solana won the reward challenge. That’s probably good for them since they just lost two members very quickly.

In the third segment of the show, Aparri got back from losing the challenge while Tony and Woo prepared to raid their tribe. Jeremiah was disappointed that the clue was to the other tribe’s hidden immunity idol. Tony and Woo got back from the raid and explained what they did by targeting Jeremiah on the other tribe. “In order to prove that he is trustworthy, Tony told us all that he lied,” said L J who was confused about this person’s strategy in the game. Jeremiah explains how his tribe was dubbed with a clue to the other tribe’s hidden immunity idol. Spencer doesn’t believe his true story, which is very typical in a show like Survivor.

In the fourth segment of the show, the immunity challenge happened. Is it bad that I’m rooting for Solana just because of them being unfairly down a member? The challenge sounds fun since it starts by building a staircase out of some sort of wooden material with a small platform on top. They then have to go through some sort of maze that is mostly vertical. They then have to take a key through the challenge which they then use to unlock a machete to unleash puzzle pieces. Then, they have to solve the puzzle to find a combination. After solving the combination, they win the challenge. So it is a bit complicated. In the end, Solana won the immunity challenge. This should even things out at the moment. Appari lost the challenge and has to go to tribal council. This means that Sarah will have to go to her very first tribal council, but I’m not sure if the fact that she hasn’t gone yet will be mentioned or not.

In the fifth segment of the show, the commercial ends before I can finish breakfast. The people on Aparri were disappointed that Tony on Solana thought that everyone on his tribe was going all the way to the end. People think that turning on Jeremiah was a good idea. Kass thinks that everyone on the former brains tribe is sticking together. Are they? We don’t know yet, although they might be. Sarah does get to light a torch when she gets there. She obviously would either way, but we did see her do it now for the first time. I’m fairly certain that Morgan is not getting voted out tonight due to her lack of confessionals. Sarah doesn’t think that she’s part of the group although her name doesn’t seem to come up on the chopping block. Everyone, including himself, thinks the Jeremiah is a target. He might get voted out tonight, but I can’t tell who will be. So the voting happened next. It is either Alexis or Jeremiah who will get voted out, in my mind at least. Jeff asks for a hidden immunity idol even though none exists on this tribe. Guess that he has to do this no matter what. The person voted out was Alexis. I guess that this makes Jefra the next supposed winner since Alexis isn’t no more.

On the next Survivor, the merge happens and some woman is apparently a swing vote. I don’t know who it might be. But I guess that I’ll find out in the next episode.

Total confessional counts: Tony- 15, Jeremiah- 7, Jefra- 5, Spencer- 11, Tasha- 9, Trish- 10, Yung (Woo)- 6, Sarah- 13, Alexis- 9, L J- 10, Morgan- 8, Kass- 10, Lindsey- 5.

New confessionals this episode: Kass- 1, Lindsey- 1, Tony- 3, Jeremiah- 2, Jefra- 1, Spencer- 4, Tasha- 1, Trish- 2, Yung (Woo)- 1, Sarah- 1, Alexis- 2, L J- 1, Morgan- 0.

I have decided that from now on, Woo is going to be called Woo instead of Yung. For some odd reason, he only seems to get one confessional each episode, but at least he’s not getting no confessionals a lot. Not quite sure what to make of this high number for Tony. He could be going far or he could get dethroned pretty soon. I’ll just have to watch more of the Survivor Live After Show since at this point, Parvati starts saying who she thinks will win and she’s typically right. So we’ll see how crazy the merge is probably going to make things. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.4

So a tribe swap is going to happen in this upcoming episode. And I do have the feeling that my episode number count is off, although I don’t really care enough to fix it or rename it. As usual, the switch happened at a predictable part of the game, to the viewer at least. Will they remain three tribes or go down to two tribes? What will be the tribe that gets dissolved? Will it be chosen at random? Will it be one that loses a challenge like Saboga did? Will it be one that is doing poorly thus far in the game like Matsing did? Will it be pretty much random like when Bayoneta and Viveros were dissolved in Panama or when Puka Puka and Manihiki were dissolved in Cook Islands? There are rumors that before Matsing went on its horrible losing streak and perfectly had just two members left for one of each of the remaining tribes to get a new member and switch to two tribes that Kalabaw would have been the tribe dissolved in Philippines since the challenges were supposedly set up and painted for the other two tribes with their yellow and blue colors. This has not actually been confirmed by anyone, so it might not actually be true, but we have no other alternative guess as to what might have happened besides that. Like I said before, Survivor Wikia is a great site full of great Survivor information that you can’t find elsewhere. And other Wikia sites are good too if you have more interests than just this show.

Do you hate to when you have a Survivor dream and can’t remember what it is later? Well, I’ve had that problem sometimes. Just recently, I had a dream about supposedly Survivor that was supposedly Survivor in a supposedly Survivor based world. But, obviously, it wasn’t since it was a dream, it seemed to get it messed up with something else. It seemed like it was combining Big Brother and Survivor. As a Pirate Master fan, I know quite well what that looks like. I’m even watching it online sometimes since somebody posted it to youtube. This makes me quite happy and I’m sure that other people feel that way too, as long as the videos stay up for a while. I’ve even added it to my random die roll list which I’ve believe that I’ve mentioned before. It replaces Big Brother on the list since I’m done watching Hayden Moss’s season of that show. I’ve revised that part of the list as I see fit. I was able to remember most of the dream, to my knowledge, and it had a tribe of new players dominating against a tribe of old players. This happened, in the dream, before a tribe swap, by the way. I would love to see a season like that and don’t know why we haven’t seen that yet. It just seems odd that the sixteenth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh seasons were all pretty much returning players versus new players with the returning player tribe mostly dominating before the swap, the other tribe doing well after the swap (although most of the new players are still the ones getting voted out) and a whole bunch of crazy shit happening after the merge with the only regrettable part being that the returning players are in the finals and the last of the new players, or at least the threats to win, are the last ones voted out of the game in the finale episode of the season.

I have a lot of ideas for reality shows somewhere in my head. I probably wouldn’t make a lot of them since they could be rip-offs of something else, too high concept to work, or merely wouldn’t be made like I want them to be. But it doesn’t matter as I’d actually like to do something that I could legally write and reality TV isn’t one of them. Well, the respectable reality shows that people want to watch without losing a piece of their soul isn’t one of them. (I know that I am exaggerating there, but that’s how most people, or at least me, feel about some reality shows that aren’t competitions such as any show that begins with the words The Real Housewives makes me and others like me ashamed that this has to be associated with what is otherwise associated with the same type of reality that a good show like Survivor is. There’s a reason that the less respectable reality shows have such low ratings on the internet movie database.) This paragraph may not make much sense any more since I took out something that would inspire a new reality show of mine. But I decided not to tell you any part about it, like the original dream that I was going to post. I’ll leave you in the dark about what this dream might have been and even though you could have gotten a completely different show from the one part of the dream that actually inspired it, I’ll still leave it a mystery unless it is actually made.

You know, one of these days, I should tell you about my history of being a Survivor fan. As usual, there are many things I want to talk about but haven’t talk about yet. And I shouldn’t promise to do anything in the future, but you might see it, I just can’t say for sure if you will. Like what are the ten worst challenges in Survivor history? What are the ten best? And what other things could I come up with in the future? Also, there’s a potential location spoiler that you might want to know regarding the 29^th and 30^th seasons. But I will not talk about that until a later blog post.

It turns out that the tribe swap has been revealed more of in later promos for the episode. Some people wonder if the green tribe was really green or if it was teal. I am a bit bummed out that the three tribe seasons so far have been pretty boring color choices of the starting tribes. In All-Stars, they went with the colors of traffic lights. In Philippines, they went with the primary colors that also happened to be the three colors of the Philippine flag. This season, they went with secondary colors, provided that they did use green for the brains tribe instead of teal. But I need to start learning what the tribes’ actual names are.  Luzon is the green tribe, former brains tribe, and tribe that will be dissolved in this episode. Solana is the former beauty tribe and a purple tribe. Aparri is the former brawn tribe and an orange tribe. But enough of my ramblings.

My mother saw the episode before I did and said that I’m in for a good episode. Let’s see if she’s right. In the first segment of the show, the brains tribe came back from tribal council. Spencer is glad that he is still there in the game and Kass is glad that they voted out J’Tia at last. The brains tribe gets treemail for a reward challenge. I have the feeling that a commercial will happen pretty soon at the moment he announces the tribe swap at the challenge. Call it. Now I get to eat breakfast while the commercials are airing.

In the second segment of the show, each of the remaining contestants chose a new tribe buff. By random chance, a lot of the new tribes are formed by the old tribes. I hope that I don’t have to rewind the tape a lot to see who wound up on each tribe. I didn’t have to do it that much, although I did have to keep track of what the new tribes are. I did have the one tribe down so I didn’t really need to write down the other tribe, but I did. The challenge has appeared a lot in seasons past. The reward is a bunch of sweets. Knowing what might happen, I’d have to say that Aparri will lose the challenge simply because whatever tribe the brains tribe has been on, they have not won any food. Turns out, I was right. Solana won the challenge.

The new Solana tribe: Woo, Cliff, Trish, Jefra, Lindsey, L J, and Tony. The new Aparri tribe: Sarah, Spencer, Morgan, Kass, Tasha, Jeremiah, and Alexis.

In the third segment of the show, Solana came back to their new camp after winning the reward challenge. L J thinks that he and Jefra might be at the lower end of the tribe based on an alliance that I don’t think that most people would know that they have. But L J seems to get with Trish at the moment. Cliff is worried about the same relationship. We then see Aparri get back from the reward challenge with their new tribe members. Sarah feels on the outs because she’s the only person from her old tribe to remain on her tribe. Spencer is amazed at the beauty tribe’s lack of social skills. I missed a lot of information here because I couldn’t catch who was doing what. I might have missed some confessionals here at this point.

In the fourth segment of the show, the immunity challenge happened. “We’ll keep momma, or daddy, I’m not really sure,” Jeff said of the idol they were keeping. The challenge is fairly simple in theory. The tribe has to smash through different walls with a log and then taking the log through a maze of some sort. Here’s a fun fact: did you know that despite popular belief, that a labyrinth isn’t actually a maze? There are no dead ends or alternate paths in a labyrinth; hence it is not really a maze. But people believe it is wrong and they will for quite some time. There is guaranteed to be a person attending tribal council for the first time in this episode. Aparri won the immunity challenge that was pretty close throughout it.

In the fifth segment of the show, Solana prepared for tribal council. As usual, a lot of drama started to unfold. A lot of people will be attending their first tribal council in this episode. It’s hard to tell what exactly would happen next. Many names come up and this makes me think that this could be a repeat of what happened at Solana’s first tribal council where you don’t know who will be voted out until their torch is snuffed. Many potential flipping was proposed and it looks like we will be in for a great tribal council as usual. The targeting of the vote seems to be going towards L J who has a hidden immunity idol. Hopefully, he’s smart enough to bring it to tribal council and play it. So the voting happened next and I still don’t think that it’s clear who will be voted out. I’m really hoping that L J plays his hidden immunity idol at tribal council tonight. Does he? He does not. Does he get voted out? He does not. Somehow, the people voting against Cliff had the majority. They got to vote him out since they were unable to last episode.

On the next episode of Survivor, a bit feud is about to happen and it looks like I can finally find a rivalry from this season. There might have been others already. In case you didn’t already know, I like to keep track of the memorable rivalries of each Survivor season. When I finally blog about Borneo, you might see me post about the different rivalries there which I’d like to know about.

Total confessional counts: Yung (Woo)- 5, Sarah- 12, Alexis- 7, L J- 9, Morgan- 8, Kass- 9, Lindsey- 4, Cliff- 6, Tony- 12, Jeremiah- 5, Jefra- 4, Spencer- 7, Tasha- 8, Trish- 8.

New confessionals this episode: Tasha- 2, Trish- 3, Yung (Woo)- 1, Sarah- 2, Alexis- 1, L J- 4, Morgan- 1, Kass- 1, Lindsey- 1, Cliff- 2, Tony- 2, Jeremiah- 0, Jefra- 1, Spencer- 3.

So I might have messed up the confessional count again. Still not sure if it should be Woo or Yung since he is still not seen that much through the episodes. I should call him Woo since that’s what everyone else is calling him. Kass and Tasha were easy to chance to their nicknames since that is what they were called after being featured a lot in these episodes. I might change it to Woo soon and I hope that I can figure this out before he is voted out of the game. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.3

I just now realized that due to the first episode of the season being a double episode in a way where what normally happens in one episode happened in just half of the episode leaving the usual second episode of the season as part of the first. So this might actually be 28.4 instead of 28.3. Since the number of episodes this season is a bit unusual, I will just post it as normal and forget that it might actually be one episode later than it should be. Also, eating breakfast was very complicated and will probably always be complicated to do with this Survivor blog as I only ate last week during the commercial breaks which I did not even bother fast forwarding through. I still wasn’t even finished when I posted the blog, but hopefully things will be better now. I doubt that this challenge in the episode will result in a medical evacuation. It hasn’t in the past. It might be a time when they are randomly promoting an injury for no good reason as nothing bad will result in it. But I thought that I’d bring it up since I mentioned it in the last blog post.

So I mentioned how in Survivor history that the first three people voted out has never been three men in a row. So I started wondering what the record is for women and I found out something interesting by referring to the notes that I’ve written from various Survivor seasons. I’m not sure how Redemption Island complicated things last season affecting the elimination order and the order people were voted out meaning that they are not the same in any way and I can’t count the four women who were voted out first from that season. Those women who were voted out in this order were Laura Boneham (who was saved by her husband switching places with her), Candice, Marissa, and Rachel. Caramoan also messed up the order with Shamar’s medical evacuation. The women from that season who were the first four voted out were Francesca, Allie, Hope, and Laura with Shamar’s evacuation happening before Laura was voted out.

In terms of more unofficial records of this occurrence of four women being the first four voted out, in Fiji, Jessica, Erica, Sylvia, Liliana, and Rita were all voted out before a man was, but Gary was removed from the game before Liliana was voted out, thus messing with the boot list. So when it comes to real and true boot lists where nothing was messed up, Panama and Gabon were the only two seasons where this happened. The first four people out of Panama were Tina, Melinda, Misty, and Ruth-Marie. In Gabon, like the other seasons I’ve mentioned, the women were eliminated in this order: Michelle, Gillian, Paloma, and Jacquie were all voted out before a man was, and he was only voted out because they were honoring his wish of wanting to be voted out. Since there are more contestants than sixteen this season, if a woman is voted out or otherwise eliminated in this episode, they will not be the highest ranking person to be the lowest ranking woman, but they probably did come close enough and closer than any other person who could have held that record was. My thoughts on the record are merely that I wouldn’t mind either this happening or not happening but it is nice to see a new record happen even if it is this far into the show’s history. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’m only glad that it happened to see it happen once, although I really don’t care one way or another about man’s fate in this season of Survivor. It would just be retaliation for all those times when women were always out first to see the tables finally turned on men. We deserve to be low ranking for a change.

I promised that I would start talking more about my Survivor dreams in this blog of mine. A recent one that would make sense in this blog post is that a fourth man was voted out in this episode. While the episode has aired, I have not yet seen it so I don’t know if it was true. The dream, as usual, was vague on certain details such as who this man was and which tribe he was on. Like I said, I don’t know yet if that happened, although I will by the time I watch the episode. So I hope that it continues to be interesting, although I don’t really care which gender gets voted. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, the beauty tribe got back from tribal council and Morgan was disappointed with Jeremiah’s decision to vote against her and she felt like she was the lowest person on the block. But will she escape death by either her tribe winning immunity or by the ever sly Jeremiah getting voted out instead?

In the second segment of the show, the brains tribe gets the treemail for what is probably just a reward challenge because it seems way too early to do an immunity challenge this soon in the episode. The brains tribe prepared for the challenge in advance. I don’t know if they are the only team doing that, but it seems pretty smart of them. You’d think that the other ones might be doing that, but I don’t know for sure if they are because they aren’t showing it if they did and they aren’t showing that they aren’t doing that either. For those who like physical comedy, there is a lot of that in the challenge, but I don’t find that to be all that funny. The challenge is mostly neck in neck between the beauty and brains tribes with the brawn tribe with a close third. Only this season, third isn’t close enough. With the challenge neck in neck, it was hard to see who would win until the beauty tribe won the challenge first. The brains tribe is fighting for second. Will they win or will the brawn tribe pull yet another come from behind victory? It turns out that the brains tribe would lose the challenge and still has to suffer at camp without food. The brawn tribe did come in second.

In the third segment of the show, the beauty tribe got back from winning the reward challenge. Apparently, the whole tribe found the clue to the hidden immunity idol. I wonder if L J will plant a fake hidden immunity idol, but I don’t it. Alexis was never taught about how chickens reproduce. Does she know that they can still lay eggs without there actually being a chicken instead it? L J incorrectly thinks that the egg came before the chicken, but I and other people know otherwise. The chicken came before the egg. Trust me. The book of Genesis backs up my beliefs. And if you don’t believe that the bible is true, that’s your own opinion there. So we see more of the brawn tribe who are considering voting out a threat. Just remember that other tribes (like Zapatera) have done that and regretted it by not having the numbers at the merge. Tony is now the first player this season to have ten or more total confessionals this season. He and Sarah are part of an alliance called cops r us, because apparently alliances nowadays have to be something r us. That’s strange, if you ask me.

In the fourth segment of the show, the brawn tribe wants to get rid of a threat which they consider to be Cliff and we are at part of the show that I accidently saw earlier by not rewinding the tape far enough. Yet, I have the idea that because we haven’t seen enough of the brains tribe this episode, that they will be the ones to lose the challenge, although I have yet to see what will happened and missed the potential dream team part of the challenge that would either mislead us by saying that a tribe wins that doesn’t or mislead us by not tricking us like they normally do. It is hard to make sense of this challenge early into it. It seems like the brawn tribe is doing a good job at throwing the challenge but the brains tribe might ruin their chances at that by generally sucking at the challenge as they normally do. It looks like the beauty tribe will be the obvious winners of this challenge. Spencer is proving himself to be a useful part of the brains tribe which makes me think that he’ll be safe if they don’t actually win the challenge. The beauty tribe won the challenge and it once again becomes a race for second between the brains tribe and the brawn tribe. Unfortunately for the brawn tribe, this might be the part of the challenge that they can’t throw anymore. Brawn does actually come in second and fails at throwing the challenge. But it’s not their fault that the brains tribe sucks so much. Will Spencer not be voted out since he helped dominate at the challenge or is he still the lowest person on the totem pole?

Now with breakfast all finished this time, I will be able to fast-forward through commercials and not have to worry about when I’m going to eat and when I’m going to blog. In the fifth segment of the show, the brains tribe got back from losing the immunity challenge and having to go to tribal council. I will see if my prediction that the person voted out always gets a confessional the episode where that happens. J’Tia hopes that her tribe sticks together to keep her in the game. I’m not sure what will happen and I wouldn’t be surprised if they drew rocks. So it looks like either J’Tia or Spencer will get voted out and with everyone on the brains tribe getting a confessional, then it seems that anyone is fair game. Jeff communicates nonverbally with the tribe at the beginning of tribal council. Not sure what he meant by that. I’m hoping that J’Tia gets voted out, but I don’t know yet if she will be. And will there be a tribe swap in the near future? It might happen, especially since we are in episode off due to the double length premiere. Spencer pretty much points out that viewers love the drama that is happening, but the players don’t. So the voting happens and I wonder if there will be another tie. Well it looks like J’Tia finally got her just deserts and was voted out of the game. Thankfully, Spencer lives to see another day in the game.

On the next Survivor, the brains tribe is doing poorly, but a tribe swap will happen to shake things up. I wonder which of the three tribes will be dissolved. It would be funny if it is the brawn tribe. It would be interesting if it remained three tribes. But I think that it will more than likely be switched to just two tribes. Will that happen? We have yet to see.

Total confessional counts: Cliff- 4, J’Tia- 6, Tony- 10, Jeremiah- 5, Jefra- 3, Spencer- 4, Tasha- 6, Trish- 5, Yung (Woo)- 4, Sarah- 10, Alexis- 6, L J- 5, Morgan- 7, Kass- 8, Lindsey- 3.

New confessionals this episode: Lindsey- 0, Cliff- 1, J’Tia- 2, Tony- 1, Jeremiah- 2, Jefra- 0, Spencer- 1, Tasha- 1, Trish- 0, Yung (Woo)- 2, Sarah- 3, Alexis- 2, L J- 1, Morgan- 2, Kass- 2.

So, with high confessional numbers this early into the game, it is hard to tell if that means that they are going far, they want to show them while they can because they aren’t making much further, or they are very important and could wind up winning the game. Last season told me (although maybe not other people who were already tracking it) that high confessional counts early into the game is an indication that they are merely showing this person while they can and they don’t make it that far. However, last season had returning players, so that could change things. This looks like Tony’s game right now although we have yet to see if it will be. Sarah also has a high number of confessionals as well and got ten like Tony does. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.2

This season is already quite a crazy one and possibly had the best season premiere in Survivor history. With both Kass and Trish still in the game, I will root for them both in a way. I’m hoping that the brains tribe does better in future episodes. I think that they will hide the idol that was left at camp of the brains tribe so an idol should reappear on their tribe at some point. They are such an interesting tribe and so ironically named. I wonder if the other tribes will disprove their stereotypes, although you’d think that the brains tribe would be the least likely of the three tribes to not want to be known by a different label. But the two people voted out so far didn’t do well in the game and none of the other tribe members seem to do that well either.

Meanwhile, I still don’t know why only one person could do the freaking puzzle part of the second challenge in the last episode. The other contestants just have to stand around and look like a bunch of idiots while their designated puzzle solver has to either solve or fail to solve the puzzle at hand. I should do both a list of ten best challenges and ten worst challenges at some point. I will be disappointed if there are no tribal challenges for just reward this season. What’s with all the combined challenges over the course of the game? For goodness sakes, if Redemption Island isn’t a part of the game, then other challenges can be used as often as you need to. Do you want a contestant like Abby who can coast to the merge part of the game and almost never have to do a challenge? With no back to back challenge rule, the same person could be sat out as much as they want to. And that isn’t good. And you don’t have to give the second place tribe a lesser reward if they get immunity as well. Just give the first place person award and immunity while the second place person gets just immunity and what should the last place tribe get? Tribal council of course. Here’s hoping that the rest of the season has less combined challenges throughout it. I know that more tribes could lead to less airtime, but if there weren’t all these combined challenges in All-Stars and that was a pretty good season for the most part. So here’s hoping for challenges for just reward that don’t have to do with immunity this season.

So, like many people in the world, I am celebrating Lent this year. It is customary for people to give up something that they do a lot during Lent. This year I am giving up three things. The great website that I told you about by the name of www.wikia.com will not be visited by me during this time so any possible part of that site that it has, whether it is Survivor or something else, will not be visited by me during this time. I am also giving up the website www.twitter.com for Lent as well. Since I can’t live tweet during the show anyways, there’s really no point or fun in me visiting it at the moment. I could do it for other stuff, but since I’m on there for too much when I am there, I figure that I might as well not do it during this time as there is no point in giving up something for Lent that you don’t already do on a regular basis anyways. Lastly, I am giving up www.wikipedia.org and its great and useless information for the moment. There is no reason for me to go there as often as I do so I might as well give it up.

I will also be inadvertently be giving up other great Wednesday shows for the moment such as The Tomorrow People, Law and Order: SVU (new ones, at least), and Modern Family. Keep in mind that those three are not always giving up, depending on how soon I can get back from church. And actually, I don’t always watch Modern Family in primetime during a Survivor season anyways. Like the Middle, it typically falls from the waist side and I’m not able to either watch or record either one and only see it during the break between the fall and spring season of Survivor. I would watch it during the summer, but apparently as some of you might already know, ABC doesn’t believe in summer reruns. It could help their shows ratings to show reruns of them during the summer instead of crappy one season shows that other people don’t like and typically always get cancelled anyways. At least I can record Survivor to watch and blog about it later. In fact, you might not even know about the change in my blog post if I didn’t post it until later and have possibly weirder than usual information. I do hope the best for breakfast and that there are no cats distracting me from eating it and blogging about the show at the same time. I get distracted often enough from my blog as is so be warned that as usual, the confessional count might not be accurate. Hopefully, there won’t be long periods of time where I am not able to write part of the blog. I should actually keep a tally mark of each player and their number of confessionals, but I won’t as I feel that to be unneeded as I can keep up with the count as best as I can the way I’ve been normally do it. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Spencer got back from tribal council and was shocked about what happened there and was feeling on the outs with his tribe. Things changed for Tony and Sarah as he decided to finally tell the truth about being a cop to Sarah. Apparently, their cop alliance is making them “partners in crime,” as Sarah puts it, which isn’t exactly the best term for that sort of an alliance. The opening segment seems unusually long until we finally get to the opening credits. Now I need to stop neglecting breakfast and eat it.

In the second segment of the show, we see a horrible storm at the brawn tribe’s camp. It’s probably at every tribe’s camp, but we are just focusing on them for the moment. All this random focus on this one tribe makes me think that the brains won’t be going to tribal council at the moment. At the beauty tribe’s camp, they were also suffering during the storm, but much worse than the brawn tribe was. L J was concerned about the lack of work ethic on his tribe and he decided to look for the hidden immunity idol where Morgan was earlier since he has the brains to know that’s where it might be. And what do you know? L J found the idol. That means that every idol so far this season has been found by a man. He says that he’ll keep it a secret as countless others have during the past so we’ll see how long that actually lasts or if he does end up keeping it a secret.

In the third segment of the show, the challenge is happening and, unfortunately it is a combined reward immunity challenge. What’s with you people! We want straight reward challenges! Come on! You even had separate reward and immunity challenges in four tribe seasons! So the brains tribe might have actually been using their brains for once by practicing for the challenge in advance. Does that mean that they won’t do as bad in it? We’ll see what ends up happening. The dream team shows the brawn tribe winning so I’ll now predict as usual that they will lose. Don’t believe me? Watch old seasons of the show to check to make sure. While I’m not sure that they always do that, it is a bit strange that they do since I remember seeing that a lot in Caramoan. I need to pay attention to that a lot more often as I seemed to not notice as much last season, although I should be able to pay attention from here on out. The beauty tribe finishes the maze first and the brawn tribe finishes it second. Maybe my prediction about the brawn tribe losing will be wrong. Jeff continues to annoy everyone with his endless commentary of the challenge. It turns out that the brawn tribe actually did win the challenge after all. The brain tribe comes in second and finally shows some working together. This means that the beauty tribe loses and has to go to tribal council. This makes you wonder if the beauty tribe will become like Chapera and end up dominating throughout the game like they did in All-Stars. I should have seen from the edit that with more airtime needed for the beauty tribe that they were going to lose the challenge. Oh well. I’m getting better at this, but I can’t be accurate the whole time.

In the fourth segment of the show, the brawn tribe loved winning the challenge. Tony wanted to make sure that nobody else knew about the clues to the hidden immunity challenge. So the beauty tribe got back from tribal council and, as usual, was sad about losing. I predict that whoever does not get a confessional from their tribe will not be voted out tonight at tribal council. The tribe wanted to vote out Brice for some odd reason, although I really don’t know who they would vote out and nobody really cost them the challenge, no one has done anything crazy or stupid, and nobody seems to be on the outs on their tribes. Jefra thinks that someone will get blindsided so I guess that she’ll be the one voted out tonight.

In the fifth segment of the show, people talked about splitting the vote for some odd reason. There are multiple alliances formed, all of them just merely the possibility of one instead of a real one. At tribal council, lots of discussion happened and you wonder what really is going to happen. Are they stereotyped being on the beauty tribe? So I’m not really sure what will happen yet except that I’m no longer sure that Jefra will be voted out of the game. None of the votes were revealed as they were being cast. L J doesn’t play his idol, so I hope that he doesn’t look stupid tonight. The votes are scattered all over the place and it looks like a three way tie will happen as it does. So the revote happens and this time, the tribe agrees on voting out Brice. So I’m not really sure why he was voted out but Survivor history was just made as the first three people voted out have never before been three men in a row. I wonder if this will continue in the near future.

On the next Survivor, the brawn tribe is focused on for a while as if they are already announcing that they are losing a challenge (which would be a first for a three tribe season to have all three tribes attend tribal council before a tribe dissolve of some sort). The challenge banged people up, but we have yet to see if a medical evacuation will happen because of it or if it is just people hurting themselves as usual. I don’t think that there will be one, but who knows?

Total confessional counts: Yung (Woo)- 2, Brice- 5, Sarah- 7, Alexis- 4, L J- 4, Morgan- 5, Kass- 6, Lindsey- 3, Cliff- 3, J’Tia- 4, Tony- 9, Jeremiah- 3, Jefra- 3, Spencer- 3, Tasha- 5, Trish- 5

New confessionals this episode: Brice- 2, Sarah- 3, Alexis- 2, L J- 2, Morgan- 1, Kass- 1, Lindsey- 0, Cliff- 0, J’Tia- 1, Tony- 3, Jeremiah- 2, Jefra- 2, Spencer- 1, Tasha- 1, Trish- 1, Yung (Woo)- 1

So, Tony seems to be getting the bulk of the confessionals right now. That might not mean a good thing since there were many premerge boots or other non-winners who got a lot of confessionals early into the game last season. I might be wrong, but who knows? Maybe Tony could be the winner this season because with just one more confessional he will have ten confessionals or a double digit amount, although some people aren’t that far behind him getting a lot of confessionals as well. I still haven’t seen enough of Yung to know whether or not I should refer to him by his real name or nickname. So I look forward to another good episode even though the flame may have flickered a little in this one. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.