Episode 1.5

So, it looks like this blog of mine might prove to be more interesting. Well, maybe not. I find it interesting that I just posted the third episode’s blog post and I’m starting on this one. But I believe that my posts of this season can only be posted on Sundays. I also believe that I shouldn’t have multiple posts on the same day. Well, I can do that if I’m editing two different blogs on the same day, but I typically don’t do this. So, I have things written in advance for the future and this could wind up happening a lot with this season or any other old season that I’m blogging about. This means that, unless a new season is currently airing on TV, you typically won’t see Wednesday posts unless a Sunday post is missing. Although, there is a vacation I’ll be taking some time during the summer which might reinstate some Wednesday posts. Did you know that you can tell blogger to post a blog post at a future date instead of immediately? I’ve never done that yet, but I might try that out soon. I just need to write some random blog posts in the meantime. (I am aware of Caleb’s death and I will talk more about that in a later blog post.) But enough of my ramblings.

On 6-19-2014, I rolled Survivor again so I get to watch Pulling Your Own Weight. I also get to eat breakfast in the typical confusing way like on Thursdays during Lent. The Pagong tribe was feeling bad as usual. At the Tagi tribe, we see them using the parachute that they got at the last reward challenge that they ended up winning. Even though the parachute wasn’t actually a reward, they could still use it. I’m not sure that the parachute can still be used like that anymore. But that might be why that type of challenge doesn’t appear anymore. Although, you’d think that it might have been changed. Sue is looking for tapioca, although you wouldn’t think that it is important in any way. Jeff talked to Tagi about the challenge. Both tribes prepared for the reward challenge.

They call this challenge the first annual version of this challenge. I’m not sure if that’s exactly what it became, although I’d have to look up more information about the challenge. I think that the point of this is to get your weapons to hit various fruits and you would win the fruit that you can hit. The final round determined the challenge winner and ultimately, it was Pagong that won. The names of the chickens were given by Jenna or Colleen and they were named breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My aunt typically names her cows after the food she plans to turn them into. One time, their names were t-bone, sirloin, and hamburger. Tagi was still happy (for the most part) despite losing the reward challenge. The role of leader is debated at Pagong. Greg is considered the leader, although he doesn’t like the idea of doing that. Greg and Colleen typically are together when they sleep. Many people wonder if they are romantic or not. While they probably aren’t, they sure like to fool people with their behavior.

Richard talks about snakes, which is interesting because Sue would later famously compare him to a snake. Sean gives a bit TMI to the camera that they decided to put in the final edit. Am I glad that he had a bowel movement? I don’t know. I like it when people don’t talk about that sort of thing. People were concerned about health issues that Dirk might have. Richard considers his alliance and this is the first time they would all vote together in this episode. The choice is between Sean and Dirk. Unfortunately for Dirk, they would be voting out him in this episode. Tagi talks about how Gervase can’t swim. It’s widely debated if he can today or not. He seemed to do poorly in the first challenge of Blood versus Water, but he did better at a future water challenge. Greg randomly and meaninglessly burst out into song before the challenge started.

Since everyone knew that Gervase couldn’t swim, he was the one that was decided not to do the swimming part of the challenge. The challenge had a rower going out to rescue various people in the water. So it’s sort of like a water version of a previous challenge from this season. There wasn’t much talk before Tagi went to tribal council, which seems to be a common edit in this season. When we got to the vote, Sean voted for Rudy, Dirk voted for Sue, while Richard, Sue, Rudy, and Kelly all voted for Dirk. They kept the torches of all the eliminated contestants at tribal council, which I’m pretty sure isn’t done anymore. Typically, only certain quitters get their torches left at tribal nowadays. I think that Dirk might qualify as the first ever viewer blindside. This episode marks the first of only three times that Sean would vote with the minority this season. He would cast nine total votes in the game, ten if you count his jury vote, which was in the majority. The next Survivor would cause chaos at Pagong and get the wrong person voted out because of it. But, we’ll get to more of that later.

Dirk is a pretty interesting contestant. I don’t know what the odds of him returning are, but as usual, I will make something up. He was the first contestant to talk about God a lot so you have him to thank (or blame) for any other contestant to do that. He wasn’t really that stand out of a contestant outside of that. But I could see him returning to the game again. I give it a 66% chance that he will play the game again. I hope that he does, actually.

Total confessional counts: Gervase- 20, Jenna- 13, Sue- 16, Kelly- 14, Rudy- 15, Greg- 15, Gretchen- 14, Dirk- 9, Joel- 8, Sean- 14, Colleen- 10, Richard- 20.

New confessionals this episode: Richard- 3, Gervase- 3, Jenna- 4, Sue- 5, Kelly- 7, Rudy- 4, Greg- 3, Gretchen- 3, Dirk- 4, Joel- 2, Sean- 8, Colleen- 2.

It’s interesting how Kelly’s confessionals got doubled in a single episode. Now the only person left in the game without at least ten confessionals is Joel, which seems appropriate since she gets voted out in the next episode. If I’m counting right, Gervase and Richard are currently tied for the highest confessionals at the moment. But I remember that CBS tricked people into thinking that Gervase won so that might explain why they are given him this edit. Well, I’ll get started on writing the next episode’s blog post even though it will be a while before you see it. At least you can enjoy my TV blog in the meantime. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.4

I’m already worried that I won’t be able to finish posting this season’s blog posts before the next season starts. I’m even more worried that people aren’t reading this blog. While I’ve always been sure that no one reads this, information on blogger tells me otherwise. When I said that I would be doing a look back, I began with a post that said to ignore this post. But most of what I said there was a joke. Basically, after reading something like that, I’d hope that people knew that they were in for something good. Only a great blog post would begin in such a crazy way. But I don’t think people understood that. Plus, that was only about that particular blog post and not any other ones regarding the first season. I told people that I would post during the summer too! So people should be reading this and maybe they are. This post could be old. But the point is, I hope that people read this or I do this blog for no good reason. Since that’s the point of blogs anyways, maybe I shouldn’t complain about that. I just find it odd that out of all the things that I’m rolling for, I only seem to get Survivor once a week. And I should probably be more surprised that people have read this blog then wondering why people would stop reading it.

My OCD kicks in a lot. The fact that I have a list of shows on DVD that I can only watch when I get a corresponding number on a die is proof of it. But I have to stick to the rolling list. On 6-12-2014, I rolled the number for Survivor. But, this roll was also for something else as well. So I didn’t actually watch the next episode when I rolled for it. But I will watch it, of course. I just don’t know when, yet. If you read my other blog relating to TV in general, you will notice a new blog post there with the corresponding dates mentioned here, provided that day was not a Wednesday or Sunday since that’s normally the time for this blog and yet another OCD rule of mine says I can’t update both blogs on the same day. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first part of the show, Pagong suffered from the storm during the night, but things improved when it became day. People liked Greg on the tribe and considered him the leader, even though Gretchen is like that too. I think that every episode this season has Jeff explaining the challenges for some odd reason. At the reward challenge, Jenna was the representative for Pagong and Dirk was the representative for Tagi. They get an explanation before the Distress Signal challenge. I’m surprised that this challenge isn’t still used in the show anymore, because it is one of the better challenges. Oh, and Sean was annoying some people at Tagi. In this season, it seems like being the leader isn’t a bad thing as it normally is today. This is the episode where Richard starts cheating, I mean, developing alliances in the game. That’s so commonplace in today’s game that you have to wonder why people thought such a thing would be cheating. But we’ll get to more of that later.

It seems like we are seeing very little of the actual challenge that the contestants are doing. In fact, it seems like barely anything important is actually being aired. Jeff, as usual, seems to be doing dangerous things whenever possible. How has he never gotten hurt doing stuff like this? Tagi won the reward challenge. Pagong seems only slightly disappointed that they lost the challenge. Richard’s alliance is already started and he gets a core group of four: himself, Rudy, Sue, and Kelly. Well, at first it didn’t actually have Rudy, but he would join later. Ramona seems to be getting better along with her tribe and she feels healthier, but, as some of her tribe mates put it, it might be too little too late. In fact, the name of this episode (Too Little Too Late?) might have been referring to Ramona since she gets voted out once Pagong loses. A bunch of confessionals all air at once, which is hard for me to keep track of. But, like I’ve stated during every season which I’m kept track of confessionals, I don’t know if they are accurate or not. The immunity challenge is a rally of some sort. I’m not sure if it’s the type of thing that still appears, although it should. Different contestants do different parts of the challenge. Only the contestants are making noise during the challenge which makes you wonder why Jeff feels the need to talk a lot during the challenges of today.

Gervase was probably the reason that Pagong lost the challenge since he failed and the jungle part of the race. I’m not sure that it mattered anyways. Pagong reflected on the loss of the challenge. Not much (if any) strategy was shown among the tribe before they got to tribal council. The tribe seemed to like each other too much at Pagong, although that didn’t prevent them from voting someone off (although they didn’t really have a choice in the matter anyways). Jeff feels that Gervase isn’t doing that well in the challenges. In the end, the votes were scattered. Gervase and Ramona voted for Colleen. Greg voted for Jenna. Colleen, Gretchen, Jenna, and Joel voted for Ramona and that’s how she was voted out of the game. In the end, her overall not coping with the game is what got her voted out. This is the first tribal council where only women got votes against them. I’m not sure how often this has happened again. But it seems sort of sad that this fits into the weakest part of the tribe edit, the whole only women getting votes against them thing.

What happens on the next Survivor? Greg and Colleen start their showmance in ways we don’t typically see. Well, they said that they had sex, but they probably didn’t. And we’ll probably never know since they definitely wouldn’t show us something like that on network TV. Greg will joke about this later in his exit confessional. I don’t think that they did. I’m pretty sure that Colleen was just joking about her and Greg hooking up on the island. But I’m not sure that I care anyways.

So, Ramona was an interesting player in the game. She may not be the only player to not like the conditions in the game, although she was the first to be notably negatively affected by it. I don’t think that she liked the game that much. But I don’t know if she’d ever return to the game. She might since this was a long time ago. She might not since she didn’t like it. I give it about a 40% chance that she will return to the game again. Maybe it should be lower, but I think that I’ll stick with it at the moment. I’m not sure what she’s doing nowadays, because like many other players, she seemed to disappear from the world after she played. She’s still alive, of course, but she isn’t that notable outside of this part of the game.

Total confessional counts: Gretchen- 11, Dirk- 5, Joel- 6, Sean- 6, Ramona- 11, Colleen- 8, Richard- 17, Gervase- 17, Jenna- 9, Sue- 11, Kelly- 7, Rudy- 11, Greg- 12.

New confessionals this episode: Greg- 6, Gretchen- 3, Dirk- 2, Joel- 2, Sean- 1, Ramona- 3, Colleen- 3, Richard- 3, Gervase- 8, Jenna- 5, Sue- 3, Kelly- 1, Rudy- 1.

So, Gervase is catching up in confessionals for the moment, but I don’t think that I counted him right. Ramona got more than ten confessionals throughout the game, but it helped that she was voted out in this episode. I don’t know what prejury boot had more than ten confessionals altogether in an episode that they weren’t voted out in. If it has happened, it hasn’t happened yet. Gretchen is technically prejury, although she does make the merge. I don’t know if Dirk or Joel will make it in the next two episodes, but prejury boots tend to not be shown as much, with some exceptions, of course. Meanwhile, I should stick to calling them premerge boots so autocorrect doesn’t think I’m talking about a crime people commit in court (perjury). But it doesn’t matter anyways, even though there’s a person who typically makes the merge but not the jury in these old seasons. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.3

What a strange and unusual season this is thus far. Many people, including Jeff Probst, think that the first season was the best season they ever did. Now I have heard that the postmerge part is the better part, so I might still have to wait and see what is so great. It just seems so strange at the moment and I’m not sure if the ranking will change. But at the end of the season, I will tell you where it stands. I’ve already dreamed about later in the season. The vote out of Gretchen is so confusing, that I dreamed about it. But, I’m hoping that I’ll understand it when I watch it. Otherwise, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, it might be something that happened that I’ll never understand. While these two events are nowhere near the same level of importance, I still think that it makes a good example.

There’s an update that I (don’t really) need to tell you about. One of my TV shows on DVD is no longer on the list of things to roll from. Invader Zim, one of my all time favorite shows ever (occupying my list of top ten TV shows, along with Survivor) has only one episode left for me to watch. This impromptu series finale is a Christmas episode so I think that I’ll wait for Christmas to happen before I watch it. I don’t know if it will reappear on my TV show watching list again or not. Maybe if there’s a shortage of other shows to watch. But, the soonest it can reappear on the list is in 2015, if it reappears at all. But since it is such a great show, I might as well watch through it (yet) again. Since Invader Zim is no longer on the list, I have found a different show to replace it. Futurama moves from one to two. Charmed is now number one on the list. Everything else, including Survivor, is in the same place on the list as it was before.

Now, I’ve had a strange history with the show Charmed. I’ve watched it in a crazy order. I first got into it with its eighth and final season was airing on the WB. For some odd reason, they started showing reruns of the fourth season that same night. I watched a lot of the fourth season reruns and they even started airing the fifth season. It was shortly into the fifth season when it was removed from the schedule. I don’t know why it was removed, but it probably had something to do with the WB merging with UPN and becoming the CW network we know of today. With no more WB, I had to find other ways of watching the rest of the fifth season. So I did something simple: I bought the season on DVD. The fifth season ended on a cliffhanger. Later, I wound up getting the first season. Then, I got the sixth season. I decided that I should finish filling in the gap before getting the last two seasons and inevitably got the second and third season. I found the fourth season very hard to get, but I finally have it now and that is where I’m going to start watching again. I just need to rewatch the third season’s cliffhanger first. A while I have yet to roll that series, on 6-11-2014, I rolled Survivor again and get to watch it with a snack. But enough of my ramblings.

In the recap, Jeff said “tonight one more will go” instead of the more common “who will be voted out tonight?” The Tagi tribe had trouble fishing and Stacey wasn’t getting along with the rest of her tribe mates. The Pagong tribe had fun with stuff near camp. Dirk’s Christian ways annoyed a lot of his tribe mates. The tribes then get ready for their reward challenge which, while not the first one in Survivor history, it was the first one aired. Jeff doesn’t say his usual phrase which would have sounded like “Tagi getting your first look at the new Pagong tribe,” he just points out who was voted out by saying that they were missing a member and who it was. The reward is actually inside the chest that was part of the challenge which is weird. I do believe this will remain the weirdest season that they ever did. Tagi puts their fishing gear reward to good use. Richard uses his good fishing gear to his advantage by telling them that without him, they couldn’t keep eating this well. I don’t know why none of his tribe mates were helping him fish.

Since Tagi was getting all the hunting done, Pagong went with their own style of meal. They decided to eat a lot of rats. This is a test to everyone who wants to a Survivor contestant. If you can eat a rat, then you can probably be on Survivor. Well, there’s a lot of other stuff you’d have to do to, but this is one of what you can probably do beforehand to know that you can accomplish living on Survivor. Greg is a lovable type of strange in this season. I’d list him as one of the possibly autistic contestants. As usual, something related to the challenge is something that doesn’t typically happen anymore. This time, it regards the prep for the challenge. Certain members were already whisked away when doing the challenge. Pagong gets a victory walk which is also something that they don’t do anymore. Tagi closely loses the challenge.

Rudy and Stacey have a rivalry. And it will be Stacey who loses that rivalry tonight. Tagi goes to tribal council and it is between their most annoying member (Stacey) and their oldest member (Rudy). Survivor decides to add more elements from Lord of the Flies, which is partial inspiration for this show. They can only talk with they have the conch shell, which happened in the book. This is the only time you’ll ever see it happen. This only further solidifies my idea that this season is so weird. It also seemed brief, although I’m pretty sure Palau’s tribal council where Ian was voted out was the shortest one ever. I’m not sure if that record could be broken. A terrible rainstorm affects the tribal council area. Kelly and Stacey voted for Rudy. Richard, Rudy, Sue, Dirk, and Sean all voted for Stacey. That means that Stacey is the one voted out. As she gets voted out, she talks about how people switched their vote. I’ll get to that pretty soon. Jeff lets the tribe stay at tribal council until the rain clears. The next episode shows Pagong affected by what is presumably the same rainstorm. There’s also other stuff happening that’s hard to sum up.

Now we get to Stacey. She was the first contestant to be blindsided (I think) and she didn’t really take it that well. She sued the show. She believed that producers convinced certain members of her tribe to vote for her instead of Rudy. To this day, she remains the only contestant to have done that. She’s the only person to have said that the show was fake in some (illegal) way. It’s unknown what became of the lawsuit since whatever issue she had was settled out of court. I just know that Mark Burnett countersued her, although I’m not entirely sure what that means. I’d say that she was probably overreacting to getting voted out and nothing had actually happened besides what normally does when a person is usually voted out. Now this gets to the chances of her coming back to the game. I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again. They wouldn’t want her back. In fact, if there’s a list of Survivor contestants banned from reappearing on the game, then she would have started it. The slim chance I give her of returning to the game is 3%. There’s a chance since she isn’t dead, but a highly unlikely chance.

Total confessional counts: Richard- 14, Gervase- 9, Jenna- 4, Sue- 8, Kelly- 6, Rudy- 10, Greg- 6, Gretchen- 8, Stacey- 9, Dirk- 3, Joel- 4, Sean- 5, Ramona- 8, Colleen- 5.

New confessionals this episode: Colleen- 3, Richard- 5, Gervase- 4, Jenna- 2, Sue- 4, Kelly- 3, Rudy- 2, Greg- 3, Gretchen- 2, Stacey- 6, Dirk- 2, Joel- 2, Sean- 2, Ramona- 0.

Rudy now has ten confessionals and Richard is even higher. Now I don’t think my confessional counts for any season will ever be right exactly, but this should at least be close to what the true number is. This season is very different, even in terms of editing, so that might explain why my numbers are off. Tons of people keep getting confessionals in the game, although it seems to be scattered everywhere instead of certain ones getting a lot. We’ll find out what changes in future episodes. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.2

Sorry that it took so long for me to finally post about this season. I’ve had the first season since Christmas, but I didn’t start watching for a long time. Maybe this is a good thing since I wouldn’t end up confusing this with the season that was currently airing. Readers of my blog may think that’s actually a very good idea. I’ve wanted to see the first season for a very long time and it was put on my wish list after B. B. Andersen’s death (since it is what could be defined as a morbid reason, I’ll only get seasons of Survivor on DVD if a dead contestant is in it. Speaking of dead things, I recently visited the graves of my father and his father. Maybe death in the family is why I think about it so much about death and getting a DVD of a Survivor season that has a now dead player on it seems, in my mind, at least, more like getting it in memory of them. But B. B. gets voted out in this episode and a long time from now, you’ll probably see a special post gathered from his time on the show. Now, as I was saying) before I got it as a Christmas gift. My birthday is during the summer and I would have originally liked to get this season then, but it seems to work out for the best to not have this blog be dead air for a while like it was in the hiatus between One World and Philippines before I got the tenth season as a birthday gift and started blogging about that until the end of the summer and the beginning of the next season.

While I hope that this season will be done being posted before the next season starts, I can’t actually promise that. Sometimes plans change. I’m just glad that I’m able to talk about this season as early as I could. I just watched Titanic for the first time (seeing the whole movie in its entirety, that is) which was actually supposed to be the special on this season. That means that my blog about this season wouldn’t have started yet and I’d be waiting to put it on my rolling list. At least, that way, you’d see many different posts about random randomness until then, but it doesn’t matter anyways. Rain Man has now replaced Titanic on the list. Today is 6-3-2014 and I rolled a four which means I get to watch the next Survivor episode. But enough of my ramblings.

When the show begins, we get to see Tagi after their tribal council. People aren’t really getting along and Stacey’s future fate in the game might have already been sealed. But we’ll get to her later. At Pagong, we get to hear a lot about B. B. You see, there might be action figures of him, but their probably aren’t. I’d like it if there was. B. B.’s work ethic is annoying people. Back at Tagi, Richard wonders what to say or do regarding him being gay. He doesn’t think he chose to be that way, although you’d think that a gay gene would have died out by now. He decides that he should go around telling people that since he figures that he doesn’t have much to lose. Rudy’s opinion about homosexuals changed. Him are Richard are really good friends, but not in a homosexual way. Back at Pagong, we get Ramona who isn’t very good at the survival aspect at the game. This may affect the chances that I give her for returning to the game. But we’ll see what happens regarding this later.

This episode has something unusual about it that no other episode that I know of has. They edited out an entire challenge. It was just a reward challenge, but no other challenge that I know of has ever been found entirely on the cutting room floor. Pagong won the challenge. Back to the game, Greg and Colleen started their legendary showmance, the first in reality TV history (to my knowledge, at least). I think that I might have missed a confessional here. B. B.’s work ethic at camp continued to annoy everyone. Joel said that he’d disagree with things that are obviously right just to disagree. It seems appropriate, based on information that I know of, that he’s a Republican. Now I don’t know if Republicans have always been like this, but they’re sure like that now. People are annoyed even more by B. B. As you might have guessed, B. B. is the one who is sealing his fate in this episode. He seems to butt heads a lot with Joel and Gervase. I might have missed another confessional.

So we get to the immunity challenge. They are doing the now famous Survivor Smorgasbord. B. B. wants an escape route from the game and he doesn’t seem to understand it. This is when he gets to doing in now infamous “quit” of the game. The rules of the challenge seem very different back then. Gervase ate the grub after almost costing his tribe the challenge. Everyone on the tribe has to eat the food instead of certain people eating certain foods. Gervase and Stacey face each other in the final round that’s a tiebreaker. Stacey easily wins the challenge for Tagi. This means that Pagong will have to go to tribal council.

Pagong gets ready for their first tribal council. Nobody is really sure who to vote for, although B. B. is certain that he’s one of the people that they might be choosing from. I don’t think that he really chose to quit, but it is hard to tell with all the unofficial quitters in the game. They have Sonja’s unlit torch at tribal council still which is something that doesn’t really happen anymore. In fact, I don’t know if it’s happened in any other season. Does everyone get their torch left at tribal council this season? I know that in some seasons with quitters, they have left the torches of them laid down at tribal council. Greg and B. B. vote for Ramona. Everyone else (Colleen, Gervase, Jenna, Gretchen, Joel, and Ramona) vote B. B. out of the game. He probably had it coming anyways. This would mark Gervase’s only time voting with the majority this whole season.

On the next Survivor, we get some people annoyed at Dirk. We also see some rat eating. I’ll tell you more about that episode later. I need to get to other things right now. I need to update the confessional count, which might be totally wrong since I might have over counted the real numbers.

Total confessional counts: Greg- 3, Gretchen- 6, Stacey- 3, Dirk- 1, Joel- 2, Sean- 3, Ramona- 8, Colleen- 2, Richard- 9, Gervase- 5, Jenna- 2, B. B.- 10, Sue- 4, Kelly- 3, Rudy- 8.

New confessionals this episode: B. B.- 8, Sue- 2, Kelly- 1, Rudy- 4, Greg- 3, Gretchen- 5, Stacey- 2, Dirk- 0, Joel- 2, Sean- 2, Ramona- 6, Colleen- 2, Richard- 5, Gervase- 5, Jenna- 2.

Well, a lot of people get more confessionals in the game and things get higher really fast. I guess that B. B. was the first contestant to get a lot of confessionals, but still not make it very far in the game. He’s the first “show ‘em while you still can” contestant. Believe it or not, a lot of players are like that. Every contestant now has a confessional in the game right now. And true to my theory that may not actually be true, the contestant eliminated in this episode got a confessional.

With B. B. out of the game, one wonders what his chances are at returning to the game. Well, like Jenn before him, he’s now dead. While it’s assumed that real quitters would never be back, the only people with absolutely no chance of returning to the game are the dead players. And he’s one of them. He has a 0% chance of returning to the game in the future. I’m not entirely sure what actually killed him, but at his age, it was likely to happen. I don’t know if we’ll ever see more of him in a special about him, but I guess that we probably wouldn’t. I’ll give my notes about him in the future.

Before he died, he did an interview with Survivor Oz. Now I can’t tell if the interview is strange because of his old age or if they somehow interviewed a person merely pretending to be B. B. Andersen. But since I’m probably the only person who thinks that it could be a fake, then it probably isn’t one. Besides, they’d be too careful to fall for stuff like that. https://survivoroz.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/bb-andersen-interview/ That link has the interview of him. I don’t know any more that he might have done. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.1

So I’m finally able to see the first season. I had missed it when it first aired. I started watching sometime into the second season after I had missed a little bit of the beginning. Now it’s around fourteen years later and I’m finally able to watch it for the first time. Keep in mind that I will only post updates about this season on Sundays, even though I will get to watch the season whenever I roll the right number until the season is done. What is the number that I have to roll? You see that depends on what show I’m watching gets off the list. Currently the list has six different options of stuff to watch with each number representing a different option. The numbers must correspond alphabetically with the shows that are on the list. Therefore, number one must be the soonest alphabetically. Number six is weird because it is for random shows that I recorded on VHS to watch later. While I know and you might know that I can record shows on my laptop, that doesn’t help me when there are three great things on TV to watch all on at the same time. So while choice six is perpetually catching up on recorded VHS shows (at the moment at least), the other five choices make sense alphabetically. The numbers must be rearranged should one be removed from the list and the next addition to the list is in another place alphabetically. You see, each number I roll means that I watch this particular show at this particular moment.

You might be wondering what the rolling list is. Or you might not care at all and wonder why I’m even talking about it can boring you to death. (Is it even possible to bore someone to death? I’d like to know if that can even happen.) You see, I want to post something in this blog before the actual post begins. I don’t know why I do this, I just know that I like doing this. You see, if I haven’t told you before, I am OCD about a lot of things. You see, there are six TV shows on DVD that I’m watching right now. I can add Survivor: Borneo to the list as soon as one of the current ones comes off for some odd reason. Each of the six things to watch is decided by the roll of a die. If I roll a one, I get to watch Futurama. If I roll a two, I get to watch Invader Zim. If I roll a three, I get to watch NCIS. If I roll a four, I get to watch Stargate SG-1. If I roll a five, I get to watch VeggieTales. And, as I’ve told you before, the number six being rolled lets me watch an old (by the time I’m able to watch it) episode of a TV show that I like to watch but aren’t able to tune into sooner until I can watch it when I find it on VHS. It can take a long time to catch up on it, but I will tell you that it gets a special exception sometimes where I’m allowed to watch it without having to roll for that option. And Survivor gets even more of an exception since I’m always making sure that I’m caught up with at least the episodes (even though I typically suck at doing various online Survivor things when the show is airing) of the current season.

(I switched this with the next paragraph so hopefully that doesn’t end up causing confusion. If it does, then read the next paragraph and then read this one.) Now, this list came with many problems. You see, I give some special priority to the shows on VHS that I want to watch. You see, when I get backed up, I really want to see what I missed. There are some very old programs on this list. Here’s a quick lesson into what is put there. Priority one shows are ones that I typically watch live. Priority two shows are ones that I typically record on my laptop. Priority three shows are ones that I typically record on VHS. I have to get caught up on the two recorded things as quickly as possible. You see, there are different rules with what I have to get caught up on. And there are different ways to ensure that I get caught up. Here’s the problem. I get bogged down with many of the recorded shows on VHS. When I have too many VHS tapes to get caught up on at once, I can’t watch any of the other five shows and thus cannot get done with one to have it replaced with Survivor: Borneo. I am also burning through all these jump aheads that I have (or used to have) for these TV shows on VHS because I feel that I shouldn’t be able to watch them all for nothing. So I have to get caught up on all of this so there are a more manageable number of VHS tapes to watch before I can go back to the random die roll list. And I really want to get back to the list. It bugs me that I want to watch this season for the first time and it is still on standby instead of on the actual list. But I’ll let you know when the problem is resolved because you’ll be seeing this when I actually can post it based on these crazy rules of mine (sorry for the long wait) and hope that it isn’t long after the 28^th season finale, if it is after it at all. Besides, the posts being during the summer may be less confusing to everyone. But we’ll see what ends up happening.

Since even an old Survivor season gets some sort of precedence on the list, I will cheat if needed to make sure that it can be placed on it. You see, for the moment at least, I’m forbidding the same letter from appearing at more than one number. But, I don’t have to have Survivor: Borneo listed as the letter s should Stargate SG-1 not be taken off of the list. It is currently set to be sent in at the letter b should s not be available when a show gets taken off of the list. These Survivor seasons don’t have to be the letter s rule is in place should I have to watch more than one old season at once. It’s only a matter of time before the next player to die has played more than one season. I hope that I wouldn’t get confused with all the various seasons that I could potentially be watching at the same time. I just hope that the letters don’t conflict with each other and all of their seasons are out on DVD (even though waiting to watch it until later when the set actually comes out may not be a bad thing). So, ultimately the thing on the list that ended up being removed first was Stargate SG-1. On 5-16-2014, I rolled the last item off of the list and it was exactly what I wanted to get off the list. I just have to roll a four whenever I want to watch Survivor: Borneo.

I’ve decided that with these old, first season blog posts, I am going to post the date that I’m doing things. I believe that I told you that I was so far behind on recorded shows on VHS tapes that I couldn’t role from the other things on the list. Well, on 5-13-2014, I was finally able to start rolling from the list again so I could work at having a choice removed from the list before I can replace it with the first season of Survivor. I’m dying to watch it and I’m sure that the few people that Google tells me reads my blog are probably interested in my thoughts on the first season. I really want to start watching the first season so I can finally find out all the stuff that happens in it, even though I already know most of what happens already. Every new blog post will come with the date that I watched this episode. When was I finally able to watch the first episode? That happened on 5-26-2014. Now let’s see what the first episode of the show is like.

In the first segment of the show, we get a brief introduction that’s nothing along the lines of what they’ve given any other season of the show. It’s so simple and brief. We then get to a ship that looks like a pirate ship. Jeff Probst introduces more activities during the mad rush of the beginning of the first game. We then get to a brief bio of each contestant. This is something that you really don’t see much anymore. It would be nice if they still did stuff like that, but it’s understandable how things change over time. But that show seems so different back then. Am I really watching Survivor? The Pagong tribe started to find life at camp difficult. The Tagi tribe started fighting amongst themselves pretty much when they first game to the beach. So between not surviving at camp and fighting within the party, which one would be worse for a tribe this soon in the game? Apparently, fighting amongst themselves was bad for the Tagi tribe, but just at the start.

B. B. and Ramona looked for a water hole and after an hour of searching, they found it. Not much was revealed there, but a longer edit of that search would be a good idea if they ever do a special DVD of B. B.’s time on Survivor using the extra footage of each season that they might still have. Rudy doesn’t know what MTV means. Nobody does. It used to be a music television channel but then they decided to replace the music with incredibly lame reality shows that aren’t on the same level as Survivor. Sonja gets a confessional in this episode which may help confirm my theory that the person who is voted out or otherwise leaves during an episode always gets a confessional. There is a rat race, or rat hunting, going on at Tagi. This caused some controversy when it happened among animal rights people. B. B. is a bit of a character when he’s on the game.

We get to the first challenge ever done in Survivor history. Jeff gave it an introduction which was probably needed the first time. Pagong already got fire at camp. Tagi tried to make it, but failed. They have to light every bit of fire that is there to help with the challenge. They also have to keep a hand on the thing with the fire on it. The challenge seems very short compared to what it becomes later. Pagong won the challenge. It looks like Gervase is already doing some of his showboating ways at the very beginning. Instead of fire in the form of flint, as we know it today, fire came in the form of waterproof matches. They then show the Tagi tribe after they lost the challenge. We then get to focus on Dirk reading a bible. He was the first contestant to be religious so you can thank or blame him for any other contestant being that way, depending on what your own beliefs are. People wonder who will get voted out tonight. Sonja thinks that she’s in danger since she was the reason that they closely lost the challenge. She was right. Jeff gives an introduction to tribal council and even sizes up how some of the contestants are faring in the game at this moment. I do wonder why he doesn’t still do that, since it can be a nice help to the game. But, you can see that other contestants size things up better in future seasons than you can now. Tribal council is different. Everyone is talking at once and they have to hit a dong when they enter the area. Jeff is actually terrible at tribal councils back in the day. We then get to the voting at tribal council and I get to hear the great classic tribal council music. Sue sort of quoted the weakest link game show when she voted against Sonja. Did that game show even exist yet? The votes were a bit scattered and random. Richard voted against Stacey. Stacey, Sonja, and Kelly all voted against Rudy. Everyone else (Rudy, Susan, Sean, and Dirk) were the majority that happened to form and voted out Sonja.

Now Sonja has earned the infamy of being the first person voted out of Survivor. Many people want first boots back because they never really got to play the game that much. But what are the chances that she returns to play the game again? I give it about a 45% chance that she’ll return to play the game again, since she is kind of old. I don’t know if she’s ever been considered as an alternate or not. But those are the odds that I’ve given for the moment.

Total confessional counts: Colleen- 0, Richard- 4, Gervase- 0, Jenna- 0, B. B.- 2, Sue- 2, Kelly- 2, Rudy- 4, Greg- 0, Sonja- 2, Gretchen- 1, Stacey- 1, Dirk- 1, Joel- 0, Sean- 1, Ramona- 2.

So, what can I make of the confessionals so far? Well, it looks like the Tagi members got more confessionals because they went to tribal council in this episode. I know that we’ll be seeing a lot more of some of these people in the future. Nobody had that many confessionals, but that’s to be expected at the beginning of the game. We have yet to see how the game will unfold since I heard that the postmerge is much more interesting than the first part of the game. I’ll let you know if the ranking of this season ever changes, since it isn’t listed that well at the moment. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.