How to Improve Redemption Island

Okay, I promise that until Survivor: San Juan del Sur premieres, I will post information about the first season of Survivor. I will post these updates every Sunday, although I can watch these episodes at any point in time, should I roll a number four when rolling for something to watch with a meal or whenever I’d watch some sort of TV show on DVD. And, this is the part of the promise that applies to this post at the moment, if there is not a post on Sunday or I know that I won’t be able to post as usual, I will post a random Survivor blog post full of random information about Survivor. I have brainstormed the names of many future blog posts that you might see in the future, whether it is during the summer hiatus or the winter hiatus. I want to keep doing this blog to keep people entertained and you’ll find out what these random blog posts are should I ever write them. But, for now, I should get to the real point of this blog post. And I should tell you why I’m saying it.

Redemption Island is a revolutionary and underrated twist in Survivor history. Instead of the boring great players being voted out and that’s that, we get to see voted out players fight for a chance to get back in the game. They compete in challenges known as duels where the winner stays to see if they can get back in the game and the loser is permanently eliminated from the game (although, for better or for worse, they can always become a returning player in the future). There have been three seasons so far with Redemption Island in it and the twist had varying degrees of success depending on the season it was used it. The blood versus water twist made it work better to some people and it is already confirmed that you will see it in the upcoming season. And while a lot of it makes sense in its current form, there are some things that still need to be changed.

What needs to be changed? Here’s my list: 1- Reedit the episode so that the Redemption Island duel is the very last thing in the episode. That way, episodes still end with a definite elimination. 2- This goes more into number one and is a nitpick more than anything else: give the losers of Redemption Island an exit confessional. To not do that gives these players a disservice. 3- Give contestants on Redemption Island more airtime. If you don’t, it just seems like a waste of a twist. 4- Another nitpick, but can Redemption Island be an actual island? Exile Island was normally its own island and if contestants still have to walk there, you can make tribal council its own island area. 5- This one is important and I can’t stress it enough so I’m going to make this one as obviously stated as possible: BETTER CHALLENGES ARE NEEDED AS DUELS! Blood versus Water made this more evident than it might have already been, but don’t use challenges that don’t work. Keep two way duels as simple two way duels and if a challenge doesn’t work with certain number of players, then don’t use it. Some challenges have failed as Redemption Island duels and shouldn’t be used again. (We can bitch and moan as much as we like, but it’s ultimately the producers who decide which challenges to use in each season. I just hope that they use common sense with what’s failed so far.)

The list continued: 6- Since we are on the topic of needing good challenges, I might as well bring up the fact that no new and untested challenge should ever be a Redemption Island duel. They’ve done this before, but it would be nice if they didn’t do this again. Just because it works for the dream team doesn’t mean it will ever work otherwise. The final immunity challenge in Palau taught us that what the dream team says may not be what actually ends up happening. 7- Do the contestants in the game need to know what happens on the island? I still don’t like the idea of that. 8- Explain whether or not throwing a duel here is considered quitting since some people want to know. 9- Replace the buff burning with something else since buffs are a great thing to have and burning them seems kind of unneeded. 10- Avoid the first impressions twist sending someone there. 11- Have challenges that aren’t Redemption Island duels be two-part: one for reward and another for immunity. Although, now that I’ve reached this point, I think that I’ve run out of things to say regarding this topic. So, for now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Survivor: Cagayan finale

One of my old blog posts between the hiatus between Blood versus Water and this season was an assessment of the cast of this season before it aired. I predicted whether a person would be a premerge boot, jury member, or finalist. I have decided to go back to the predictions of all of the contestants to see if I was right with any of them. I notice that my assessment page was read by a lot of people, according to what Google tells me. In my mind, ten or more people reading a blog post of mine is a lot. So I might as well do a quick run through of everything, since you can read the whole blog post on your own. Tasha: guess- jury, actual placement- jury, accuracy- right. J’Tia: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- right. Garrett: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- right. David: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- right. Kass: guess- finalist, actual placement- currently unknown, accuracy- currently unknown. Spencer: guess- juror, actual placement- currently unknown, accuracy- currently unknown. (I wish that I had put him as a finalist, but he could easily be the last one voted out.) Morgan: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- juror, accuracy- wrong. L J: guess- finalist, actual placement- juror, accuracy- wrong. (I might have mistakenly thought that I had Jeremy as a finalist instead of him. Regardless, both of them are on the jury. This is what I had posted originally so I must have forgotten that I had L J as a finalist instead of Jeremy.) Jeremy: guess- juror, actual placement- juror, accuracy- right. Jefra: guess- juror, actual placement- juror, accuracy- right. Brice: guess- juror, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- wrong. Alexis: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- right. Tony: guess- juror, actual placement- currently unknown, accuracy- currently unknown. Trish: guess- juror, actual placement- juror, accuracy- right. Sarah: guess- juror, actual placement- juror, accuracy- right. Cliff: guess- premerge boot, actual placement- premerge boot, accuracy- right. Woo: guess- finalist, actual placement- currently unknown, accuracy- currently unknown. Lindsey: guess- juror, actual placement- premerge boot (quitter), accuracy- wrong.

I had a dream or two relating to this season. If some of you remember the editing for the third season, then you’ll remember that during the premerge part of the game, whichever tribe they showed first in the episode was the tribe that won the immunity challenge. I don’t know if obvious edits like that exist in other seasons of Survivor. But in this dream of mine, a season that I was watching (supposedly earlier this season) showed a tribe at the beginning of the episode and I knew that since it was the tribe that would go to tribal council in the same episode. That particular editing rule doesn’t apply anymore since they always show the tribe that had went to the previous tribal council at the beginning of the new episode. But there are still other editing rules. My other dream that might have been part of the same dream was that someone was talking with me about this season. He hoped that someone from the beauty tribe would win. I told him that they had all been voted out of the game. Apparently this dream person wasn’t keeping up to date with the game.

So, promos have revealed more information about this episode. This episode will feature the return of the final two. Now, technically, the final three is still there, but someone will get voted out there so two face the jury instead of all three people facing the jury. Now, in the future, stay tuned for more blog posts from me about various Survivor things. Primarily, I’ll be posting information about the first season of Survivor on Sundays. If I’m not able to do that (I have at least one planned vacation for the summer) then you’ll see a random post of randomness on Wednesdays, when I normally post. So you’ll continue to see blog posts from me in the near future. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Jeff Probst does an introduction live from Los Angeles for some odd reason. I wonder how long the recap will be. I think that I will tell you the candidates for the awards that I give this season. There might be new confessionals during the recap, but I’m not going to count them. The recap lasted 7 minutes and 14 seconds, according to my count. Tony thinks that he had to oust one of his allies and since he’s allies with everyone but Spencer, he thought correctly. But why get rid of Trish? Weren’t there other people he could have gotten rid of instead? Tony’s idols are now useless which means that he got to keep both of his like James from China, only he didn’t need them like James from China. Unless I missed something, once again, we have no full version of the opening theme this season. The theme is called Ancient Voices and sounds like it consists of only vowels. Maybe they just don’t want to spend time on new themes. I mean, if they can’t afford loved ones challenges anymore, then a theme song would slip through the cracks too. And there’s good news for Survivor fans. Gabon and Tocantins are now released on DVD. Maybe it won’t be so long before my sister has the DVD of Caramoan that she needs.

In the second segment of the show, Kass is complaining about Tony. A boat comes to the camp and suddenly loved ones appear at the final four which happened in a dream of mine. Only, this isn’t a loved ones challenge. They automatically get them at this point, it seems. Will this happen to affect the immunity challenge? Using them for a reward challenge can be bad enough at affecting the game in a way it shouldn’t. Although, it doesn’t always do that. I just remember Chris lying to his loved one about getting voted out that night after she visited, when he made it all the way to the end. That should teach contestants not to tell people about what has happened in the game, although telling false spoilers are perfectly fine with me. Woo is surprised about the challenge being for immunity. He might propose in the end. We get a little insight into what goes on at the reunion show. I’m not sure what’s with the difference in the finale format, but they might be trying to forever avoid the disaster of the Caramoan reunion show happening again. I don’t hate it at the moment, but it does seem kind of random. We’ll see if this format, which has actually appeared a long time ago, will be often used.

In the third segment of the show, the contestants and their loved ones arrive at the challenge. The loved ones are only watching the immunity challenge happening, it appears. This challenge might be misnamed Perch, when it isn’t the Perch that we know from other seasons. This version has only appeared in Panama before. I forget if it had the puzzle element at the end. Kass is failing at the challenge. If she’s like Shane was in Panama, then she’s getting voted out tonight. Maybe she has a strategy, but it sure doesn’t seem like that. Tony seems to be doing well in the challenge. Spencer starts coming in second. Woo then comes in third at the perch part of the challenge. This means that all the men are at the final phase of the challenge, the puzzle part. Now Kass is totally failing at the challenge. I can’t tell if she’s normally this bad or not, but she probably is. Now that everyone is at the puzzle part of the challenge, it is hard to tell who will win. I think that they have different puzzles. Somehow, Kass wins the immunity challenge. Now, does this mean trouble for Spencer or Tony? The loved ones now leave the game as we wait to see what happens with the final four.

In the fourth segment of the show, Kass is pretty sure that Spencer will be voted out next. But is that’s what’s going to happen? I think that some people think that’s it a final three, but Spencer is quick to learn otherwise. He’s right too. Spencer knows that it’s a final two. He might also be trying to work people and not actually believe that a final two is happening. Woo is confused about what happens at a final four tie. I don’t know what will happen, but I believe that a tie is likely, given the possible edit of Spencer being a “surprise” winner that they’ve been showing us. Kass is glad that she pulled a come from behind win. I don’t think that I’ve seen something like that before, although I might have. Spencer seems to be playing to the jury and giving everyone a show. He might be hoping that Kass would turn on Tony if she wins the next immunity challenge. Kass reveals that she thinks that she couldn’t win against Tony. I’m starting to wonder if Tony will be voted out instead of Woo. I just know that if a tie happens, a commercial break will probably happen before the tie-breaker challenge. Tony makes a speech about how his idol is useless now. The votes are read and Spencer gets voted out. Sad day indeed. L So it looks like Tony really will win the game, unless it’s a Kass/Woo final two. Honestly, with Spencer out of the game now, I would want Tony to win before anyone else did. I might get distracted texting my uncle during the finale.

In the fifth segment of the show, the tribe gets back from tribal council and reacts to the fact that a final two is happening. Kass believes that she might be a goat to take to the end. People talk about how stupid it would be to take Tony to the end. Will he win the final immunity challenge? We’ll see. The final challenge is an awesome maze. I would love to play Survivor just for the hopes of doing a great challenge like that. But I have never done any applications to be on Survivor. Now many fans would know that I don’t have to do that to get on Survivor. I could get recruited. But, probably not. Kass is green in the challenge. Woo is purple. Tony is orange. The dream team had green winning the challenge. If you remember what I’ve said before in the past, they typically show the loser of the challenge as a fake winner. Now green could win the challenge, but we have yet to see if the edit is fake, as it normally is. Could Kass win again? Will Tony get his most important win last? Will Woo win the challenge? Woo narrowly wins the challenge and Kass loses in the same way Vytas was eliminated from the game last season. But, will Kass survive the tribal council vote? Will Tony remain in the game? I don’t think that Tony will lose, but if he’s voted out, then he obviously won’t win. Does Woo have a chance at winning? Maybe I should have kept rooting for Kass from the start since it looks like she might pull a come from behind win. It’s not the same as Spencer winning, but can Tony really survive the vote? I guess it all depends on how dumb Woo is. He might not realize that he’s voting for the person he wants out of the game and instead votes for the person he wants to take to the end, thus eliminating the wrong player. It would be like how a jury vote was messed up in Canadian Big Brother.

In the sixth segment of the show, Tony tries to convince Woo to keep him in the game. Will it work? Will Kass be a finalist or will Tony squeak his way to the end? Kass also convinces Woo to try to keep her in the game. She compares him to Fabio from Nicaragua who ended up winning after winning the final immunity challenge. Can Woo actually win in any setting? It could wind up like when Danielle won the final immunity challenge in Panama and was guaranteeing a win to whoever she brought with her. The final vote may all come down to loyalty. What will Woo do? He decided to vote out Kass. Well, I guess that Tony is probably going to win the game. I will have to do a quick summary of my predictions again for this season.

Kass: guess- finalist, actual placement- juror, accuracy- wrong. Spencer: guess- juror, actual placement- juror, accuracy- right. Tony: guess- juror, actual placement- finalist, accuracy- wrong. Woo: guess- finalist, actual placement- finalist, accuracy- right.

In the seventh segment of the show, Woo’s big power move is taking the obvious winner to the end with him instead of the not so obvious winner who would probably still beat him. Meanwhile, I have to update my list of Survivor: Second Chances contestants. Kass is totally worth of the list and should probably replace someone else on the list. Typically, they haven’t done final twos (in my opinion, at least) because the third place person is screwed in some way. (Look at the last three seasons before Cook Islands, if you don’t believe me. Plus, people keep bitching about how Cirie would have won Micronesia when they aren’t even sure that there would have been a final two that season in the first place.) I think that Kass can replace Kourtney on the list of players that I have there. So, the final two arrives at tribal council and the confessionals are set in stone. I will also do a rundown of how things work for the contestants at the reunion show.

Total confessional counts: Tony- 55, Spencer- 40, Woo- 24, Kass- 39. New confessionals this episode: Kass- 5, Tony- 5, Spencer- 3, Woo- 7.

In the eighth segment of the show, we get to the jury statements. Sarah is the first person up. As usual, we get to a never write your vote down promise that means that she could vote for Woo out of spite. Jefra is the second person up. She fights with Tony and wonders if Tony really deserves to win. Morgan is the third person up. She seems to favor Tony. Jeremy is the fourth person up. He doesn’t know if he can trust Tony. Tasha is the fifth person up. She has some interesting questions for both people. L J is the sixth person up. He only speaks to Tony. Kass is the seventh person up. Kass wonders why she was the one voted out instead of Tony. Woo feels that he took the person that deserved to be there instead of who he wanted to beat. Trish is the eighth person up. She wonders who was behind her getting voted out. She seems bitter at Tony. Tony feels that it was worth swearing on his father’s grave. I do wonder if his father is really dead or if he’s pulling a Johnny Fairplay. Spencer is the ninth person up. He wonders if Woo made the right choice by taking Tony to the end. Spencer is telling people that they should probably vote for Tony to win. But will it work? Now I’m wondering if they are running into the time for the reunion show since there isn’t much time left.

In the ninth segment of the show, Spencer votes for Tony to win and Tasha votes for Woo to win. They only showed two votes so you might have a win in a landslide. I’m so nervous! What’s going to happen? I guess that we’ll find out soon. Tony won the game, true to edits I’ve seen in the past. Now we may have less airtime at the reunion show than usual. He truly deserves the title of better Russell Hantz and is a better villain than anyone else who has played the game before.

In the tenth segment of the show, Tony talks about how his crazy strategy won him the game. I’m finally able to eat supper which is finally ready now so my posts during the reunion show may not be the best that they can be. I think that Tony deserves the win. A lot of random things happen, as they usually do during the reunion show. Remember that you want to have more than 0 points at the reunion show to have some airtime.

In the eleventh segment of the show, Woo would have probably won the game against Kass. When people cheer for Woo, I can’t tell if they’re just saying this name instead. He stands by his decision. Tasha likes her time in the game, even though she didn’t make it as far as she wanted to. Spencer thinks that changing things with Jefra might have won him the game. Jeff Probst wrote a letter to himself to give to Spencer because he thought that Spencer wouldn’t win.

In the twelfth segment of the show, Tyler Perry talks about his “new” idol in the game. This was pretty much a waste of a segment. Tony was ultra powerful with his idols, but he still deserved the win that he got without them when it mattered.

In the thirteenth segment of the show, we got to tons of updates from random contestants in the game. They know that they are running out of time and want to talk to as many people as possible. But it looks like, unless the show is overrun, they will not get to talk to a good chunk of people.

In the fourteenth segment of the show, we get to see where Survivor is going for the next season. I’m not sure where this location is, but it sounds South American to me. Now, is this a newbies blood versus water or much like the first one, with returning players? I don’t know yet, but I believe that I will find out more about it soon. At the very least, I’ll know who’s in the cast when they announce who the cast is. Upon a quick search at www.google.com, I found out that San Juan del Sur is located in Nicaragua, where they filmed the twenty-first and twenty-second seasons. I do wonder that since they release new Survivor seasons on DVD in pairs (typically) if that means that Samoa and Nicaragua will be released at the same time or if Samoa will be released all by itself since Heroes versus Villains is already on DVD. But I should get to the point of the rest of this blog post.

Points at reunion show: David- 1, Garrett- 1, Brice- 0, J’Tia- 1, Cliff- 1, Lindsey- 0, Alexis- 0, Sarah- 1, Morgan- 1, L J- 1, Jeremy- 0, Jefra- 0, Tasha- 1, Trish- 1, Spencer- 1, Kass- 1, Woo- 1, Tony- 3.

So, being overrun on time with a shorter reunion show may have given less people airtime. Brice, Lindsey, Alexis, Jeremy, and Jefra all didn’t get to speak. Anyone they talked to in the last segment before they end almost didn’t get to speak. This might be the first time that a quitter got no airtime at the reunion show. I wonder if that will happen a lot in the future. Maybe it has happened before and I just can’t remember it. But it’s time to get to the awards for this season.

So, there are different dumb moves from this season and I really hope that I can limit myself to just three choices. What are the candidates for dumbest moves? Well, I’ll tell you- 1: After an open forum where you tell the target that you are voting against them, you get voted out instead after not playing your hidden immunity idol, 2: J’Tia for overall being unbearable and more or less causing people to turn against her, 3: L J for not sensing that he’s the target and getting voted out, 4: Kass’s questionable game play, 5: Woo for taking Tony to the end instead of Kass. Well, I might as well tell you starting with third place and going all the way up to the dumbest move of the season. Who gets the award for third dumbest move? J’Tia gets the bronze. She brought her downfall on herself. What’s the second dumbest move? Well let’s say that you have a hidden immunity idol and you know that someone else is the target. Is it a good idea to tell everyone that you are voting that person out and then leave your idol at camp when you go to tribal council? No. Garrett wins the silver award for dumbest move of the season. Who wins the dumbest move of the season award? That would easily have to go to Woo for bringing Tony to the end of the game.

Now we get to the award for most memorable moment of the season. Here are the candidates- the very first episode, Tony and L J wasting idols on each other, the mad hunt for hidden immunity idols, and the whole finale episode. I would have to go with the mad hunt for hidden immunity idols being the most memorable part of the season. We then get to the breakout character of the season. The candidates are Tony, Sarah, and Spencer. I would have to say Spencer deserves that title the most. Where would I rank this season among all the seasons? Well, with one being the absolute best and twenty-eight being the absolute worst, I would give this season an eleven. There may be ten seasons that I rank higher, but that’s a pretty good place for it to be since it is still with the good seasons. I have also ranked this season’s tribe swap as eighth out of the seventeen that they’ve had.

So, a great Survivor season comes to a close. I’m about to start watching another season known by many for being great: the very first one. I have been wanting to see it for a long time. I got it for Christmas but still haven’t watched any of it yet. Well, this summer you can expect to see posts in this blog about the first season. But I have other things planned as well for when I can’t blog about the first season or should it not last until the twenty-ninth season starts. You will only see season one posts on Sundays, regardless of when I watch it. But, I have the season on DVD and I will spend time watching it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.12

If there is a loved ones challenge this season, it will happen in this episode. But, I’m pretty sure that they always promote when one is going to happen. What gives? Why is there not a loved ones challenge this season? It seems like Samoa when they didn’t have the loved ones challenge for unknown reasons. There were loved ones in the game with the players last season so it makes that it didn’t have a loved ones challenge. And there were political problems in Fiji that prevented that type of challenge from happening that season. So why isn’t there one this season? I don’t know. And I don’t really care either. I mean, the loved ones challenge isn’t that good. I know that tons of people love it, but it can be kind of unnecessary. Do we really need to see people get all emotional and take away from the true aspect of the game just to see people do what they can always do when the game of Survivor isn’t happening? I don’t get it. Maybe this has something to do with what happened in Caramoan. But that’s just me potentially looking at something that actually isn’t there. They don’t have to make an offer to the winner of the challenge like they did with Brenda. So the loved ones challenge isn’t happening and I don’t know why that is. And, honestly, I don’t care. Maybe they just can’t afford them anymore. Maybe we’ll never know what happened to them. (there was a blog glitch. sorry for the format of this first paragraph.)

You know, sometimes random comments online by random people can influence my mind for a very long time. I had a dream relating to one of those comments. This person was ranking the various Survivor theme songs. Now I’ve rated a lot of Survivor stuff besides the seasons as a whole. But I’m not sure that I’ll share with you what these ratings are. I know that I’ve rated the tribe swaps as part of a previous blog post relating to the Blood versus Water season. I have since added this season’s tribe swap to the list and will tell you of its ranking in the next blog post. But this dream had me ranking the various theme songs of Survivor. I don’t think that I could ever do that because the different theme songs sound so similar and are hard to tell apart from each other. But this person could tell a difference and listed the theme songs from best to worst. But, like I said, I probably will never do that. I could wind up owning every Survivor season eventually, so I might be able to tell the differences. But I don’t care, just like I didn’t before in the previous paragraph. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, we get to the usual tribe coming home from tribal council. Spencer was upset that his final three deal didn’t work at the moment. Tony is considering getting rid of Woo because he thinks that Woo can get a lot of jury votes if he makes it to the end. Is Tony too good a player whose game play wouldn’t be rewarded if he makes the final tribal council?

In the second segment of the show, the reward challenge happened already. It’s a very muddy one. They need as much mud as possible to win a reward of food. Looks like that there is no loved ones challenge, just as I suspected. Maybe CBS can’t afford that anymore. Maybe loved ones typically know too much about what’s happened in the game and wind up revealing spoilers. The contestants look like mud monsters. Maybe a loved one couldn’t make it so nobody got any. Tony won the challenge of pizza. He chose Trish to go on the reward with him. The reward is at camp while those who don’t win the reward will have to watch the other two and not be able to eat the food.

In the third segment of the show, people talked about Tony and Trish making one wonder if there really will be a final three of Spencer, Woo, and Kass. Tony is wondering who to take to the end. Can he coast all the way to the end of the game? Will his hard playing ways catch up with him? Tony just might have ended up doing a Matt Elrond. But, he still has hidden immunity idols that can help him. Chaos Kass, whoever that is, continues to be a part of the game. Tony thinks that Kass is troublesome. Is she a goat or can he get rid of her?

In the fourth segment of the show, things continued to unravel for everyone as things tend to do at the end of the game. Spencer wonders if he can fight the cracks in the alliance, regardless of whether or not he wins immunity today. Once again, this isn’t the normal postmerge immunity challenge since they aren’t just standing around during the challenge. A lot of puzzles are involved in this challenge. Tony gets done with part one of the three part challenge first. Soon, everyone is working on their ladders. If Tony is doing well in this challenge, does that mean that the editors are faking us out as usual with the whole “we got to get rid of Tony” thing? Tony continues to dominate the challenge while Spencer is second, fighting him for first. Suddenly, Woo and Kass make it up to the second level. Tony might end up losing it at the sliding puzzle. I know how to solve them. And so does Spencer. Spencer pulled a come from behind win. Tony is now wondering who he has to get rid of on his alliance. And might someone want to get one of his idols to use?

In the fifth segment of the show, they got back from the challenge and Spencer felt pretty good. Trish got mad at Kass because Kass was gunning for her earlier. Woo, as usual, talks game, but can he actually make a move? Tony uses his spy shack to hear Woo talk about getting rid of Trish. So, tribal council happened next. It is very hard to understand what to tell you about tribal council. I find it very hard to paraphrase anything. “Isn’t this awesome?” said a player about the great tribal council. Tony revealed both of his hidden immunity idols. We then got to the voting. Apparently Jeremy did know of Tony’s special idol. Tony played his idol on himself. So Trish ended up getting voted out of the game. Tony should have played his idol on her.

On the next Survivor, things boil at the end as usual. The finale is a week from now meaning that I’ll have to miss the SVU finale. But I’ve already given up Revolution which is now cancelled that I probably won’t get back into. There are a lot of TV shows I have to watch online now. Thanks a lot, ABC and your lack of good reception in this area. Why, of all times, must you do that during May sweeps? Now I’m missing a lot of your great show’s season finales!

Total confessional counts: Woo- 17, Kass- 34, Tony- 50, Spencer- 37, Trish- 20. New confessionals this episode: Trish- 3, Woo- 3, Kass- 4, Tony- 4, Spencer- 4.

So, it looks like I can finally stop my sort of rooting for Trish to win. She followed me on twitter; I rooted for her to win. Well, not really, but I felt that I might have owed her something. But it turns out that she didn’t make it to the final tribal council. Kass might have followed me as well, but I have the feeling that I want Spencer to win. I’m really hoping that he pulls a Fabio. Some of us still haven’t figured out if it will be a final three and day 37 reward challenge or if it will be a final two. If it’s a final two, then Kass and Woo could be the two finalists. If it’s a final three, then we are guaranteed to have at least one wonderful person in there. Will Tony win? Will Spencer win? Will someone less likable and likely to win pull out a come from behind win? Stay tuned for the finale, a week from now. All your questions will be answered then. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 28.11

So, with this being very close to the end of the season, I have to wonder if there is actually going to be a final two again or if there is a final three. I don’t know if Survivor might be skipping a week before its finale. Or we could be treated to another day 37 reward challenge for the third time in the four most recent seasons. I hate those types of challenges. But something interesting could be happening or they could just be casually doing a final two for some odd reason. At least two episodes will air before the finale meaning that four people will be in the final episode instead of five. The math is weird. I just realized what might be going on in recent Survivor future. Also, I’ve finally found out information about the 30^th upcoming season of Survivor and it turns out that it’s not what I expected. SPOILER ALERT! Apparently, the 30^th season will have all new players. The 29^th will as well. Now the 29^th was already rumored to be an all newbies blood versus water. I’ve heard that the name for the 30^th season might be legends. Not sure what that might mean. I still don’t know what type of players might be in the 30^th season. I still wonder if they might do a bunch of new contestants who were are related to former contestants. But that would be speculative at best. And this information was only on two people’s twitter accounts that I saw and might not actually be true. END SPOILER. Sorry for the possible spoiler information, but I’ve warned you about it so you can skip it if you so desire. Besides, I don’t know if it’s true and just as easily might not be.

With Jefra out of the running to be a Survivor winner, you may be wondering who in the game is next in line in alphabetical order. Turns out, it’s Kass. Kass joins Tony and Woo as a possible winner of this season of Survivor based on random order. I’ve also used the supposed winners for reordering the information in the confessional count. The supposed winner is the person now leading the name count. I still don’t know if this season is a final three or final two but I’d love it if it were a final two and jury of nine. But, it could just as easily be a final three with only one person eliminated in the finale. I don’t know what will happen at the finale. But, I will know what will happen in my blog. There are certain awards this season that I will give out that I typically like to give out every season. They are the three dumbest moves, the most memorable moment, the breakout character, and the ranking of the season. I still haven’t ranked this season, but I will soon, probably at the end of this season. I think that, for the first time, I should list my candidates for each of these awards instead of just the winners of them. But I don’t know yet if I will.

I just know that I might have to do more random blog posts until I’m finally able to start watching the first season of Survivor for the first time. I think that I told you that the replacement for the first season special is now on the list to be rolled from. The replacement is Titanic. I have never seen that movie in its entirety yet. I had a dream that I was watching, not the movie, but the Cinema Sins video that made fun of the movie. That video is at www.youtube.com. I promised myself that I would never watch a video of theirs for a movie that I haven’t seen. But, because I love their videos so much, I already have a list of things to roll for and half of them are just because Cinema Sins did a video of everything wrong with that movie. Just go into that youtube channel with an open mind if you do plan on watching any of their videos. If you already like them, that’s great. If you don’t like them, then there’s nothing wrong with you, you just like different things or don’t like what they have to say. If you’ve never seen them, then type in Everything Wrong with (insert whatever movie name you want to see keeping in mind that they haven’t done every movie, you would want them to say whatever they don’t like about it, and that much of what they say isn’t meant to be taken seriously) and you’ll enjoy a nice, funny video. There’s one on the movie Frozen that isn’t actually done by them, but I haven’t seen it since I haven’t seen Frozen. (I have the feeling that I might never end up watching it because it isn’t done by the people that I know and love.) To my knowledge, they have never done an animated movie. When it comes to animated movies, I wonder if anyone knows or cares that traditional animation is a thing of the past and the last movie (American movie, if you want to get technical) made with that format (Winnie the Pooh) came out in 2011 which was three years ago. I’ll admit that they have done anime movies originally in Japanese, but in my mind, at least, that’s a completely different style of animation. I miss traditional animation. I hope that they make another one eventually.

A lot of weekends are going to be busy in the near future so I won’t be able to watch any movies on either Saturday or Sunday in the near future. But, for readers of this blog, the main problem for you right now is that I need to get caught up on old VHS tapes so I can roll for various TV shows to watch so I can finish watching one and add Survivor: Borneo to the list. In fact, there are some movies that should automatically be added to the list once summer starts since I have much more free time then and have a certain set of movies that I watch every year. Since I am no longer in school, some of them might not be watched since they relate to the school year. Well, I thought that until a dream made me want to watch certain movies again. There should only be one movie list but there were too many choices of movies to watch that I added the Sunday list. I really hope that I don’t have to add another list, although the summer is the best time to do stuff like that since there isn’t much to watch on TV during primetime when I normally watch shows. And I still don’t know if I’ll have to think up off random blog posts until I can start posting about the first season. But I promise that barring some terrible, unforeseen event, I should be able to post about it sometime. I am updating a will but I don’t know who I’d have continue this blog for me if I were to die before it could be finished. I could auction it off, but I don’t think that I can legally do that with a blog. Regardless, I will post updates on Sundays and watch the episodes whenever I can roll for them. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, the alliances were crazy this season. It reminds me of the crazy post merge of Philippines and why that season is so great. So the tribe gets back from tribal council. Kass is mad at what happened. Tony voted out Jefra under false pretenses. Spencer lied to him when he said that Jefra wanted to vote him out. But he didn’t know that at the time. The Kass and Tony rivalry is happening a lot in this episode. In a rare moment, Tony is telling the truth and Kass misunderstood what the conversation really was about.

In the second segment of the show, the drama from the morning continued. The people from this season are always so civil with their fights it seems. I have the feeling that this could be Kass’s end this episode. Maybe it’s not, but who knows? Tony tells everyone that he has a special idol but Kass doesn’t believe him. We then get to the reward challenge. This challenge seems very similar to build it up, break it down, which you can find out more about at www.survivor.wikia.com. One team is supposed to break down the other one’s wall. They then have to rebuild it. The first to rebuild it wins the challenge. Maybe a more accurate name for this challenge is break it down, build it up. The orange team’s wall broke first. The brains from both tribes are rebuilding the puzzle wall. Once again, there seems to be a stupid rule of only one person being able to do the challenge. What up with that? That’s a very stupid rule. That rule should only apply at a Redemption Island duel. The purple team of Spencer, Kass, and Woo win the reward. The reward is a meal and mission trip. It’s common for Survivor to do things like this and the reward isn’t usually that great in the end. But we’ll see if it actually is great.

In the third segment of the show, the winning team gets to the reward. I’m missed some of this while I prepared a supper of leftovers in the microwave. Even something as simple as that can make me miss some of the show. Woo gets some airtime this season for a change. I used a gift card to have lunch at Subway so I would ideally not have any problems with supper. A spilt the votes plan is coming up again. Will it be a success? Regarding supper, the leftovers are ready and I need to start eating them. Spencer does a good impression of Woo and his indecisiveness. Does anyone remember what got Christy voted out of the Amazon? Woo lies to his (former?) allies about the two brains trying to get rid of Tasha. Unfortunately for Woo, Tony is able to see right through it. Now, I will grab my supper from the microwave and start eating it.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to what was promoted as a crazy immunity challenge. The challenge involves counting things in various stations and putting them together in a combination lock. This doesn’t seem like an immunity challenge since they are just standing there. Some people are not pulling the thing to check it before they go back to count which seems dumb. The challenge is taken a long time as evidenced by the fact that they are doing a time lapse thing in this challenge. 25 minutes have passed. I wonder who is doing estimating of the items. Spencer finally pulls a win again after the long challenge. I wonder what would happen if a challenge couldn’t be won by anyone. But I doubt that would ever happen.

In the fifth segment of the show, people devise a plan to get either Tony or Trish voted out of the game. Trish doesn’t have a confessional which is unusual if she is the person voted out. Will the spilt vote be successful? I don’t think that Trish will be voted out yet. But who will Trish and Tony vote for? Finally, people inside the game realize that he’s the next Russell Hantz. Kass is considering not voted against the Tony alliance as she feels that he would not win at the final tribal council. At tribal council, Tasha tries putting the target on Tony. Tony talks about his bag of tricks. A blindside might happen tonight and probably will. I have no idea what will happen. Tony does not play his regular hidden immunity idol. He didn’t need it. Tasha was voted out of the game. I have the feeling that only her and Spencer stuck to the plan since they would have shown another vote for either Trish or Tony.

On the next Survivor, Kass continues to be chaotic and Trish starts to confront her. I have the feeling that for some odd reason, there isn’t going to be a loved ones challenge this season. That’s weird. And I was right. Only Spencer and Tasha stuck to the plan of splitting the votes.

Total confessional counts: Kass- 30, Tony- 46, Spencer- 33, Tasha- 18, Trish- 17, Woo- 14. New confessionals this episode: Tony- 4, Spencer- 4, Tasha- 2, Trish- 0, Woo- 2, Kass- 6.

Wow. Half of the contestants have less than half of the total confessionals that Tony has. And that half includes the one who was voted out. How are people in the main alliance not having the highest confessionals? Does Spencer pull off a Fabio and find a way to win every remaining immunity challenge to win the game? Is the winner clearly Tony? What is going to happen? And, more importantly, what awards will this season win? Who gets the three dumbest moves of the season? Who is the breakout character? What is the most memorable moment? What is the ranking of this season among the 28 season? Where do I rank the tribe swap this season? And just why is the finale airing on a Wednesday for the first time in Survivor history? Well, I will answer some of these questions soon. I will also come up with random blog posts topics should I not be able to blog about the first season for a while. (Let’s face it, only my OCD is preventing me from watching it at the moment. But I have no reason to confuse it with another season that is currently airing right now.) I will come up with some solution to what to do on this blog, even though I don’t have to do anything when the show is not on. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.