Don’t Hate the Player

Survivor S38E13

Here we are folks! The season finale of Survivor: Edge of Extinction. Survivor has been putting out some fantastic seasons as of late and this one is no exception. On our trip to D.C. last week I missed the live viewing of Game of Thrones and Survivor. I knew social media would be spoiling things so I had to stay off until the following  mornings when I had time to watch. Believe it or not, it was much more difficult to avoid Survivor spoilers than Game of Thrones. Guess that kind of shows who I follow on social media… This was a long episode so the post will probably reflect that, sorry in advance! I won’t be writing about the reunion because the way Survivor does their reunion show is crappy and useless.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION COMPETITION

So the episode technically starts with Jeff talking to the viewers in front of the live audience back in the States.Then he follows up his introduction with a bit of a recap of the season and the remaining players. Boring for our purposes here though, so jumping right in to where the episode actually starts!

Opening shot we see is of a challenge all set up. Jeff brings in the remaining contestants, then brings in the EoE group. It’s time for someone to come back into the game! It’s a long obstacle course that ends in a table maze. It’s neck and neck for most of the challenge, with Aurora, Joe, and Chris all looking like they could win. Finally Chris, who was voted out 3rd and been on EoE for a long ass time, wins and is back in the game!

Back at camp, Chris is telling everyone he feels out of it and needs to recuperate. He is intentionally trying to downplay his game to reduce the size of his target. He tells everyone that if he goes home tomorrow it’s cool, he is just happy to be back. Victoria in a confessional right after this line tells us she knows Chris is full of it and that you wouldn’t hold on that long at EoE to just be happy going home.

Devens and Chris go to talk on their own. Devens hopes that Chris is more in the game than he is leading on. Chris says he wants it to be them until the end, that he wants to work with him from here on out. Devens is a bit nervous since Devens stabbed Chris in the back weeks ago, but is hopeful that Chris isn’t playing a revenge game. Chris asks Devens to confirm the idol is real, which Devens is a little hesitant to do, but does tell him it is real. Right after this conversation, Chris talks to Lauren. Chris tells Lauren that Kelley told them about her idol, but he wants to work with her. They seem to make a bit of a connection, but Lauren doesn’t know if Chris is being real with her or just looking around for the best option. At this point we are kind of on the edge of our seat regarding whether Chris is going to team up with Devens or Lauren, and they leave us hanging as we go right into an Immunity Challenge.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

This challenge was a pretty complex one. It contained an obstacle course, balance beam, combination lock, and circular puzzle. It also wasn’t just an Immunity Challenge, but a reward challenge as well.

Julie was pulling away with the competition and Lauren started rooting for her. Devens reminds her that they weren’t rooting for her when they were going to split the vote between the two of them. Julie is close to winning when her puzzle starts to fall over and almost falls apart. Chris, who was right beside her, started coaching her through it. He was nowhere near winning so wanted to help her out. Devens was pissed about it, but I think it was a pretty good idea when you are just coming back to try  to make any connection you can, and helping her is a good case for getting chosen to join in on the reward.

Julie wins and is able to bring two people. She first picks Chris, which is a good easy choice. Her second pick is Lauren. Devens is visibly upset about this and Jeff asks him about it. He says he’s gone to bat multiple times for Julie and she never does it for him. Also, Lauren has been on more rewards than anyone.

At the rewards, Lauren and Julie are talking to Chris about Devens. They are all talking about the idol and if it is real or not, which they ask him directly. He says he wants to feel out if it’s real or not. This was reassuring that he is truly working with Devens, because at this point he knows for a fact the idol is real but isn’t exposing him. Chris pitches splitting the vote between Devens and Victoria just in case the idol is real, and the others seem in agreement. Victoria and Gavin are talking back at camp about going after Chris and propose the idea to Devens. Devens listens, but doesn’t commit to anything.

When they get back from reward, Chris and Devens talk again. Chris again tells Devens he is 100% loyal to him. He says yes, he was betrayed by Devens in the past, but Devens was voted out right after. They made amends on EoE in a genuine, true way and now they are completely even. Devens wants to believe it but he is still nervous. Chris asks what he can do to prove his loyalty to Devens. Devens asks what he got in his bag when he got back. Chris keeps a straight face for about 3 seconds, then cracks a smile. He pulls out the same idol Devens got, where you have to give half to someone else and after the next tribal council, when the sides are reunited, it becomes one idol. He gives the half to Devens.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

Not a lot of interesting talk at this tribal. Asking Chris how it feels being back, talking to Julie about who she chose. Nothing that crazy or fun. Victoria did say Chris is an easy vote but they have a target who they have been gunning for all along, so why rock the boat?

While the talk was boring, the things happening after the vote, were not. Devens plays his idol, which is real. Lauren looks upset. There is some hesitation, then Lauren gets up and plays her idol…ON CHRIS! It ended up not being needed as Victoria was voted out with more votes than Chris had against him.

BACK AT CAMP

In the middle of the night, Devens gets up to go Idol hunting again. Before he begins hunting, he hides two idols that he has been making the last couple weeks, which he wrapped in the parchments of his prior idols to make them seem more real. It doesn’t take long for everyone else to join him and shadow him. Which it’s about fucking time, but a few weeks too late. It actually didn’t even matter because Devens still found the idol, right in front of everyone! Everyone is really bummed and it’s hilarious.

Lauren and Julie are talking about Idols. Lauren is still mad she played hers for Chris and regrets doing so. In a confessional, Julie says since two of them were played last night, that must mean two have been rehidden. Julie keeps looking and she finds one! She is yelling for Lauren and running to her. They are hugging and all excited. Devens is sitting with Chris when this happens and can hear them in the distance. Devens tells Chris that he thinks she found his fake idol. A little bit later Lauren is walking and sees the parchment saying there is an idol hidden above the camp. She goes back and finds it and is ecstatic. The whole time she is searching Devens is peeking around a tree laughing and shocked his second fake Idol is working so well.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

As usual, they are really amping up these final challenges. This is a giant platform above the ocean that has 6 different obstacle course paths to get puzzle pieces. It was a really fun competition to watch, which is a lot coming from me. Devens wins another immunity, his 4th, and he came from behind to do it! Devens has been getting unwarranted criticism for playing the idol hunting style that got Ben Driebergen his win. For the record I loved Ben, and I was so glad he won. A huge difference between the two though is that Devens didn’t just rely on finding idols. 4 times, when he was target number 1, he won immunity and was able to keep going.

Devens can’t use his most recent hidden idol as they become obsolete at the final 4. He is going to be able to use his idol on someone else, but his ally Chris already has one too. He approaches Gavin and says if he uses it on him, and Gavin wins the final immunity challenge, will Gavin promise to take Devens to the final three. Gavin agrees, but in confessional says that it would be a terrible plan to take Devens to the final and if he has to go back on his word, so be it.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

All the talk at this tribal is about who has the best chance to beat Devens. Jeff asks Devens how it feels to have all this attention on him. He said he would have thought that it would be cool, but it’s not at all. So many people became laser focused on getting him out that they let the game go right by them. They show Kelley rolling her eyes at this, which is kind of silly, because he was right. So many people trying to get him and not work with him is what made him so fun to the Jury and such a force that he can’t be beaten if he got to the final.

Votes are placed and Jeff asks for Idols. Julie plays hers, Jeff reveals it is fake, and she just hangs her head in her hands. Lauren plays hers, but it is also revealed as fake. Lauren’s response is “That’s amazing”. Devens plays his for Gavin, and Chris plays his for himself. The Jury is going bonkers here. Lauren gets the boot.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Very difficult final 4 challenge, which is par for the course in the past seasons as well. It is a  rocking balance beam where they have to stack 6 boxes on the end. Chris wins it, not easily, but he seemed to struggle the least with it.

Back at camp, Devens and Chris are talking. Devens asks if there is any chance he will take him to the final. Chris asks if Devens has practiced fire. Devens said yeah, which Chris tells him he should keep practicing. Very clear that Chris isn’t taking Devens, in fact Chris goes to train Julie and Gavin since they will need to go against Devens. Chris says whoever can make fire best will be the one making fire against Devens.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

There was a move that was teased to us in Ghost Island but Dom didn’t end up going through with it. Giving up your final 4 idol and making fire yourself against someone to secure your place in the final. Chris does exactly this by giving his immunity necklace to Julie and saying he and Devens will be making fire against each other. They have to make fire up in the voting booth because the wind is so bad. Devens struggles a bit getting his started. Chris got his going pretty quickly. If Devens had another 30 seconds he likely could have won, but it was too late and Chis won the fire making challenge. Devens was finally fully eliminated from the game after so long and so many people failing to do so. While watching, I knew that his was a game winning move by Chris.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

After the last tribal, they go back to camp and they each give a monologue, but there isn’t anything exciting in them so we are going right to the final Tribal where the jury gets to ask questions. There are a lot of questions that are asked and I don’t think it would be fun reading for you to have me go over all of them. Instead I’ll just give my impressions of how the 3 answered their questions.

Chris stumbled at the beginning when he asked Gavin an aggressive, defensive question and the Jury wasn’t feeling that. They wanted him to leave the questions to them. After that, Chris answered all the questions really well. Very clearly painting the picture why he should win. He had very little time to play the game but he did every possible thing he could have to win the game in that short time.

Gavin played a pretty solid game and I think deserved to be in the final. He really botched his questions though. He spent a ton of time talking about how unfair it was for Chris to win. His point was that Chris hadn’t been in the game long. Sure, mention it once, but maybe a majority of your time to talk should be spent on why you should win, not why someone else should lose. He was trashing how unfair Edge of Extinction was and how it was an easy route, to a bunch of people who had been living on EoE for the whole game fighting to stay in. Perfect way to sour jury members on you.

Julie was…a non-factor. At the beginning she tried claiming that her getting emotional and having breakdowns was an intentional game move to manipulate people. Which, just to be clear, absolutely was not. Her freaking out after being left out of votes had no impact on how votes went after that. The most it did was show she was a weak player they could keep around and not worry about winning. This bull shit answer told the jury right away she had no business even being considered for votes, and she pretty much received no questions after that point.

Everyone votes, Jeff leaves and we go back to the live audience show. First vote is for Gavin, then Chris, then Gavin. After these I knew that Julie wasn’t receiving a single vote since Jeff would have read it so each were tied. It goes back and forth between the two guys for the 8 votes where they are both 4-4. We get 3 additional Chris votes for him to win the title of Sole Survivor!

I have no issues with Chris winning. As he pointed out in his jury questions, he played really hard in the short time he had. He didn’t get to coast to the end. It’s not like Edge of Extinction was Ponderosa and he just got to chill and stay strong in comfort. He was playing hard, even out there surviving every day, in arguably more difficult conditions than the people still at camp. It is such a lazy take to criticise him winning because he played in the confines of his seasons theme. This goes for any season or twist in any show. Chris didn’t CHOOSE to be voted out, he didn’t CHOOSE to play on this season, they don’t know the theme when they get taken out there. He was presented with the rules, and he played within the confines of them and won the game. Literally the whole point of the phrase “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”

Thank you so much for reading along everyone! This was a blast and I hope I provided some entertaining writing for you throughout this season of Survivor. Big Brother starts soon so that will likely be my next big show but we shall see, maybe I’ll write about The Bachelorette! Until next time…bye!

Hide and Seek

Survivor S28E12

Changing things up a little bit and writing this on a Friday night. I know, it’s a wild way to spend the first night of the weekend. It’s really my only chunk of time I will have to write it though since I’ll be on vacation next week. Already going to be challenging enough to watch the finale and The Bachelorette premier, so my goal was to squeeze this in before. Luckily, it was a pretty straight forward episode, with a solid chunk of time waste on Edge of Extinction.

After tribal, everyone is asking Devens about where he got the idol from. He lies and tells them it was sent to him from EoE, which I thought was brilliant to get people to not look around camp for them. That got sussed out pretty quickly by Lauren, since she found her idol around the camp back at the beginning of the game. Lauren confronts Devens, trying to get him to tell her it was around camp, but Devens sticks to his story. Not really sure why Lauren was trying to joke around with him to get info and thought he was going to tell her. She has lied to him too many times for him to trust her.

Devens gets up in the middle of the night, when everyone else is sleeping, and starts looking for the idol. He does it all night and into the morning. Everyone else is awake and knows that Devens is out there searching, but no one is shadowing him. This might just be editing, it’s hard to tell, but after someone just used an idol why would they not be stuck to him like glue? Of course, later in the episode they do shadow him, but it’s too late since DEVENS FINDS ANOTHER IDOL THE FIRST MORNING AFTER TRIBAL!

REWARD CHALLENGE

There is a boring reward challenge that Gavin wins. He gets to pick two people to go with him to partake in the reward. First he chooses Victoria and says it’s because she has gone the longest without some sort of food reward. He then picks Lauren with no explanation. Aurora visibly reacts, upset. Jeff asks about her reaction and Devens says it’s because she has gone without food as long as Victoria has, which Gavin kind of shrugs off.

At the reward, Gavin, Victoria, and Laurn discuss whether they should be concerned with Aurora being mad at them for not being selected. Gavin says Aurora still has a better shot with any of them than going with Devens to the end, so she should make the smart decision and stay with them. They agree that Devens is the first target and Julie is next. We see a Lauren confessional where she is resistant to getting rid of Julie because they have a good connection. When they get back to camp, Victoria speaks with Aurora to reassure her nothing has changed. Aurora is thankful and says the logical choice is to stay with them. Except one thing, that is isn’t logical at all. The game goes to the final 3. Gavin exposed the pecking order right there. Logically, it would be better to go with Devens and at least get to the final 3 with him to have a shot to plead your case. The route she is going will cause her to have to make fire at the final 4 and being against the group of 3.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION

EOE was so stupid this week. Eric walks up to the group with a box and everyone gets excited thinking they were getting info on the competition to get back into the game. NOPE, they get letters, that they wrote to themselves before the season started filming. We got a lot of dramatic shots of people sitting reading letters. Great use of time.

AT CAMP

Normally I wouldn’t have hopped back to camp after EOE there since the Immunity Challenge happens here pretty soon. However, the segment before the challenge was so hilarious it needed to be included. Devens goes searching for the idol again, even though he already has it, to keep up the illusion he doesn’t have one. FINALLY people shadow him and join him in the search. Gavin is hanging around Devens and at one point he turns his back to look up in a tree and Devens just full sprint runs away. The afternoon turned into a big game of hide and seek where Devens was fake looking and people were looking for him looking for idols. It was a great moment.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

The challenge this week is different sorts of things put together that end in a word puzzle. Almost everyone starts groaning at the mention of the word puzzle, especially Aurora. Aurora says she is awful at them. Devens says he likes hearing when people say they are awful at things because it means he only has to be mediocre to win. He showed that he can be mediocre at word puzzles, because Devens wins himself another immunity challenge.

Back at camp we see a Devens confessional. It becomes pretty clear since he is safe, the next obvious target would be Julie. He wants to try to keep her because the other 4 are too tight for him to try to infiltrate, but he can hope to work with Julie. I was terrified  that he was going to give Julie his idol. Devens pulls Julie aside and they agree to vote for Aurora.

Julie approproaches Lauren to talk to her about what she can do to stay. Julie points out that Aurora has a better chance of winning immunity than Julie does and that Julie is a safer bet to take to the final 3. Earlier on the reward challenge we already saw that Lauren is more inclined to keep Julie because of their connection. Lauren said she would talk to Gavin and see what they can do. Gavin seems on board with the plan but only wants to do it if Victoria is in, so he will go talk to her about it. Victoria doesn’t think it is a smart move, she thinks it is too soon to go after Aurora. Gavin just tells her that he is with her whatever she wants to do.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

So much of this Tribal revolved around Devens, even though he was the only safe person. Everyone was talking about the effects of Devens winning immunity and what it did to the plan, because it was very clear Devens was the target. Julie talks about how she knew the attention was going to shift to her as soon as he won. Jeff essentially goes person to person and has them talk about how much they want Devens out. Jeff asks Devens how he feels about this, and he just starts talking about everyone being paranoid and shadowing him and how they lost him. Devens says that when he was hiding, he found some interesting things. Aurora is asked what she thinks of that and she says she doesn’t even listen to 90% of the stuff he says.

Jeff asks Devens what he thinks of all this attention. Devens says there is all this talk about the tight 4, which it is actually a tight 3 and even if Aurora doesn’t want to admit it, she is on the outside of that 3. His point is that there shouldn’t be so much attention on him alone, but this strong 3 that are going to get to the end if unchecked. Devens decides to stir things up by pulling out his hidden immunity idol. He tells everyone he is going to use it on Julie and the two of them are voting for one of the 4. Everyone is rolling their eyes and Aurora says she doesn’t even know if it’s a real idol, or if he is going to play it. Also, even if he plays it, it still would be 4-1 odds. Devens makes a declaration in front of the Jury that it could very well be 3-3 with EOE coming back, extending an alliance offer to the EOE member before they are even back in the game.

Jeff’s last question is to Devens, asking him about his bravado, that if getting voted out once has brought this on. He says absolutely, that he went out so quietly and quickly the first time, but that he will go all out this time. Now it’s time to vote! Devens of course doesn’t use his idol, and it actually doesn’t matter because Aurora gets the axe. She is shocked and asks “How do you all fall for reverse psychology!?”.

Now…there is a lot of poo pooing Devens because the last couple weeks he didn’t actually control the vote or anything, but it looks like he is making great moves. The theory is the vote was going to be Aurora, not Julie, coming into Tribal. If I remember right, the name of the show is Survivor…and the goal is to survive to the end. Who gives a fuck how it’s done? Devens won immunity, and found an idol, which then forced the Aurora vote. Regardless of how Aurora was out, it was a direct cause of his actions. Just like the elimination next week will be a direct cause of his actions. Putting on the show for the Jury is part of the game and how you get the votes to win. If you are a purist and don’t like how he is using idols, be mad at the producers introducing them into the game, not Devens using the tools provided to him. Also, if you are coming up with conspiracy theories that production is giving them to Devens, just stop. People who think production cares or manipulates the winner are irrational and really overestimate production’s stake in who wins as opposed to having a good show. Which by the way, having a popular person get cut is good content.

That’s all for this week everyone! Hope everyone has a great weekend. Do some fun stuff and get ready for Game of Thrones on Sunday…bye!

The Mastermind’s Collapse

Survivor S38E11

I can’t believe how close we are to the finale! It feels like this season just started, and here we are with two more episodes left. I’m actually going to be in Washington D.C. on vacation the week the finale is airing, so that’s going to be challenging to watch and write about but we’ll see how it goes!

Another week, another Devens blindside. Devens thought Wardog was going to be safe next week and Ron lied to him, again. Ron recognizes everyone is happy with him at this point, except Devens, and he needs to do something to try to fix that rift until they vote him out. He does this by giving Devens his expired advantage menu that has the immunity idol as an option. Of course this expired weeks ago, but Devens doesn’t know this. Ron is hoping that it makes Devens feel at ease and not search for any hidden immunity idols.

REWARD CHALLENGE

Really quick challenge for us this week, maybe 3 minutes into the episode. It is the Loved Ones visit episode. I’ll be honest, the Loved Ones episodes in these shows usually fuck me up and get me feeling emotional. Something about pure unfettered happiness really gets to me so when the contestants break down, I feel things. Get off me.

They bring out everyone’s loved one, one by one, so they can hug and cry and what not. The challenge was a pretty exhaustive one where the survivors run down to the water, scoop a bucket, and toss the water to their loved one’s bucket where they catch it and pour it into a pail. First to fill the bucket wins. I explained this challenge when I normally don’t because I wanted to show that while it seems simple it is pretty exhausting to have these starved people run a decent distance to the water, scoop, and run back. Viewers who didn’t watch the older seasons probably think people like Victoria are weak competitors because they gassed out in this one. We get almost no camp life shown in the seasons anymore so it’s hard to tell just how little food they are working off of. But enough reminiscing about old seasons…

Ron and his husband win! Ron gets to pick a couple pairs to join them on their reward. He picks Julie and her husband, and Gavin and his wife. I’ve already made it known I wouldn’t want to accept any family visit, aside from the initial hugging and what not, in order to garner favor with other people. It just needs to be mentioned again that winning the Loved Ones competition can only hurt you, you also immediately make the other people you didn’t choose feel bad. Life is just a lot easier to not rock the boat unnecessarily like that. For example, Victoria says in a confessional that she is rethinking her connection with Ron since he didn’t pick her.

Everyone hanging out at the reward are having a good time, and they all agree that if Devens doesn’t win immunity, he is gone. In private, Ron is bragging to his husband about how he is running the game by cheating and manipulating people. His husband reassures him that it’s okay and he can do whatever it takes to win the game. Womp womp, here is that foreshadowing of someone saying they are running the game, pretty much saying they are a puppet master…lets see what happens!

Devens goes out looking for the idol, the rest of the people at camp are all against him, and someone half jokingly says they should look through his bag to see if he has the idol. Aurora grabs his bag and starts looking, while Devens walks back into camp and catches her. Instead of owning it and saying sorry, she overcorrects and becomes an asshole, not caring that she was caught and trying to act tough about it. Devens says he will be bringing his backpack with him everywhere.

Devens is looking all over and no one is shadowing him, which is strange since these people would have seen Ben Driebergen’s idol streak, but whatever. It pays off for Devens as he finds a clue to an idol! He is so pumped that he is ready to go get the idol and says he doesn’t even care if the other people see him get it, luckily he takes a beat and says he will sneak and get it. This  turns out to be pretty challenging as it’s in a tree really high above the shelter. He waits until everyone is asleep and in the pitch black night, shimmies up the tree that is supporting the shelter, rubbing the beams together, making noise, but is able to get the the idol with no one expecting anything.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Time for another endurance immunity challenge. Devens drops in about a minute. It’s a really difficult challenge so it makes sense if he accidently fell, but it seems it would be beneficial to try to get the immunity necklace to extend the idol. Devens calls out that he knows he’s being sent home, and tries taking a shot at Aurora saying she would be the next target with two immunity wins, this is mostly ignored by everyone. Gavin wins the immunity.

Everyone back at camp is largely ignoring Devens. They are all sitting around a fire eating and he’s trying to talk to people about random stuff and they appear to all be ignoring him. Eventually in private, Ron, Julie, and Devens are talking and they tell Devens the plan is Aurora, and Devens asks Ron if the idol is real, he looks him in the eye and says yes. Ron and Julie leave and Julie is telling Ron how awful she feels about doing this to him and Ron says the game is called Survivor for a reason. Ron explains the master plan of everyone voting against Devens and Devins voting against Aurora, this way if Devens does have a real idol, Aurora is out.

Just going to say it now, Victoria and Lauren are geniuses. The two get together and realize they are both free agents at this point and why not work together? They are able to recognize Rons plan with no clues and propose a plan to foil it, both of them vote for Ron. That way if Devens gets the most votes, and Devens votes for Aurora, then their 2 votes would send Ron home. Lauren and Victoria bring Aurora in on the plan, then they approach Gavin. Gavin is resistant since Ron gave him the time with his wife but is still listening. To try to win him over Aurora gives Gavin her second vote.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

Jeff asks Devens about dropping out so quickly in the competition. He says it’s easy when you know you’re the target (I don’t really understand this logic). The whole Aurora digging through Devens bag comes up again with the same annoying reaction from Aurora, the jury is floored by this news. Jeff asks Ron about his choices and he says he feels bad for not picking either of the Father/Daughter options because he knows that bond is important. Lauren and Victoria both roll their eyes and Lauren says it’s really telling about who he picked.

Jeff asks a bit about alliances and how they are going. Julie says she has multiple alliances because this season with all the blindsides, the alliances are always shifting. Jeff asks Devens if this is reassuring since he feels he is on the outs. Devens says not really since no one is listening to what he has to say so the alliance formations don’t matter.

It is time to vote! Jeff tallies them and asks if anyone has any immunity idols. Devens announces he will try to order something off of the advantage menu and tries Ron’s idol. The way Devens is wording it, you can kind of tell he doesn’t 100% think this is a real idol, but wants to try anyway. Jeff announces what the advantage is, but says it expired on day nine and has no power. Devens looks back, calling Ron and Julie villains, saying he was already going home, and did they just want to make him look stupid so his kids think he’s an idiot? Then BAM! He says “Except…. You’ve proven time and time again you’re untrustworthy and disloyal, and Julie has proven time and time again she loves lying to people’s faces!” as he is walking back to his bag to get his real immunity idol. He ends his speech with “You guys are gems.”

Jeff starts reading the votes. Devens gets the first four and Aurora gets the next one. Things seem to be going Ron’s way and then Jeff reads a Ron vote which surprises him a little bit. Jeff reads a second and Devens starts clapping. Jeff announces one vote left and Devens says “Peace Bro.” Ron is gone. As great as Devens is with these Tribals, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Victoria and Lauren came up with this move and deserve most of the credit for figuring out two peoples plans and coming up with the best plan to deal with them.

I have never seen such a emotive Jury and I’m absolutely loving it. They are all freaking out, clapping, and making noises with everything Devens does. They love this guy, and if the other people still in the game are seeing how the Jury is eating up everything he does, they have zero chance at beating him in the final. I’d love this since I’ve been unabashedly rooting for him since day 1, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which he can get there. I’d have to imagine next week will be an EoE person coming back into the game, and likely going right back out, unless the Devens target is just that large.

That’s all I got this week! I have been thinking a lot the last couple days about how close we are getting to Big Brother time and I am SO PUMPED! I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with 3 episodes a week and trying not to spam everyone on my social media with articles they probably don’t care about…but we’ll see what I come up with! Until my next post…bye!

Battle

Game of Thrones S8E3

Wow…what an episode, what a battle! I had an exhausting Sunday full of big fights. I went to see Avengers: Endgame earlier in the day, then ended the evening with The Long Night. There was so much carnage and death. I did my rewatch during the day so it was more difficult to see anything. The only complaint I had of the episode was a common one, it was so damn dark! I was concerned my TV was trash and I was going to have to get a new one until I saw all the tweets after it ended, so that was quite a relief. Other than that it was an amazing episode, and if someone thought it was bad, that says more about that person than the episode…

There was a lot of fantastic camera work in this episode, very cinematic. We start from Samwell’s perspective as everyone is preparing for battle. Samwell is handed his weapon and walking through the grounds. As he passes Tyrion the camera switches and follows him preparing as he grabs a weapon and a sack of wine, war essentials. We get a few more camera hops following others as they prepare for the big moment all building tension. We pan up and see the dragons flying above to find Jon and Daenerys.

Daenerys’ big armies are lining up at the front, the Dothraki and Unsullied. Jorah is leading the charge with the Dothraki army and we see a lot of big players like The Hound, Gendry, Edd, Samwell, Podrick, Brienne, Jamie, Tormund and his wildlings. Melisandre randomly shows up and lights all the Dothraki’s swords on fire using the Lord of Lights power. It’s really funny to me to think of people back on the wall in Winterfell who have no idea why these swords are now on fire and just cool with it, since no one was expecting Melisandre to show up. After this spectacle, Melisandre enters Winterfell where Davos is waiting for her. He had previously told her if she ever comes back, he will execute her. Melisandre tells him he doesn’t need to do that as she will be dead by dawn, he lets her pass.

The whole purpose of the flaming swords from our perspective was to create an amazing visual of all these flames flying across the land to meet the army of the dead, back from Jon and Daenerys location. We never got to see anything past the initial clash but they were wiped out really quick. This was shown by each sword’s flame going out from a distance. I think it’s worth mentioning we spent 2+ seasons trying to get this army across The Narrow Sea and they were completely wiped out in 33 seconds. A few moments after all the lights went out some of the Dothraki survivors, horses, Jorah, and Ghost come running back past the Unsullied line to regroup.

Shortly after this the noises the army of the dead make can be heard as they are charging. The two lines crash and it turns to chaos pretty quickly. All sorts of shots of different people killing, and being killed. Jon, riding on Rhaegal and Daenerys, riding on Drogon are torching the horde from above. While this is going on Jon sees the other White Walkers and flies Rhaegal over to try and attack them. A big snow storm rolls in, presumably caused by The White Walkers and Jon loses them.

As the storm comes in Arya tells Sansa to go down to the crypt with the women and children, which she refuses to do. Arya gives her a dagger and tells her to go. Sansa says she doesn’t know what to do with it. Arya tells her to “Stick them with the pointy end”. This is the first instance, that I noticed at least, of moments and phrases coming full circle from the beginning of the entire series. This is what Jon told Arya when he gave her Needled and she said she didn’t know how to use it.

After this exchange we see more random cuts of battle. Samwell gets tackled to the ground by a wight (Wights are the name for the reanimated dead army). Edd saves him and as he pulls Samwell up from the ground, Edd is stabbed from behind and drops dead. We officially have our first “notable” death. Edd wasn’t a big character by any means but he has been around a long time and wasn’t just a rando soldier.


It doesn’t take long for the army of the dead to overrun the Winterfell forces; they start falling back to fortify inside the gates. Unsullied show how they are badasses, they sacrifice themselves to protect the retreat and will fall back when all other forces are safe. The plan is once all the troops get behind the wall and spiked trench that is surrounding winterfell, they will light the trench on fire and hold off the dead with that. When they get all the troops behind they can safely get back, Greyworm yells for trenches to be lit, Davos up on the wall lights two torches and waves them signaling to Daenerys. The problem is the snow storm is to heavy and she can’t see the signal. They try lighting with arrows and torches but it doesn’t take off. Melisandre walks out of the gate, puts her hand on a spike and says a prayer. The Lord of Light inflames the trench with fire and the dead stand along the other side of the fire motionless. Clearly the Lord of Light exits, it’s not some hokey fairytale or anything like that.

We get our first look in the crypts as we see Sansa and Tyrion discussing the situation. They reminisce on their marriage when Tyrion says maybe they should have stayed married. Sansa says he was the best of them (Lannisters) and he says that’s a terrifying thought. Sansa says it wouldn’t work between them since Tyrion would have divided loyalties with the Dragon Queen and her. Missandei overhears and says if there were no Dragon Queen they’d all be dead already and walks away angry. Tyrion and Sansa just getting their flirt on and Missandei has to rain on the parade.

We get our first look at Winterfell’s Godswood this episode where Bran is being protected by guards led by Theon. Theon tells Bran they lit the trenches and apologizes to Bran for everything. Bran reminds Theon that everything he did brought him to where he belongs “home”. Bran then says “I’m going to go now” and peaces out Warging into some ravens. Camera follows the ravens as they search for the Night King. The Night King reaches out to the camera “Bran’s perspective”; which cues the dead around the trench to start creating a dead body bridge over so the rest of the horde can cross. Everyone behind the trench runs into Winterfell as the dead pile up against the wall to climb over the top.

Soldiers and big players are defending the top of the wall for as long as they can, inevitably the dead breach the top. We have all sorts of great scenes of people fighting, including a cool one of Brienne and Jaime fighting back to back. Arya jumps in kicking ass with her staff, which we find out is meant to disconnect in the center and give her two weapons. While this is going on The Hound is having a moment where he is standing hiding in a doorway just zoning out, overwhelmed by the war. Arya is eventually overran and trying to get away. Beric is yelling at The Hound to snap out of it and help. The Hound tells Beric to fuck off, that they can’t win this. Beric points out Arya and tells him to tell her that. We see Arya run into the castle and The Hound looking concerned chases after to help.

Alright, this is may be my favorite scene of the episode. A giant wight bursts through the front gates smacking Lyanna Mormont to the side and is killing everyone around it. After a bit of that Lyanna gets up and screams charging at the giant. The giant picks her up and puts her in front of its face, while also crushing her in his hand. With the last bit of strength she has, she stabs the giant through his eye with a dagger killing it. They both fall to the ground dead.

Really neat scene comes up here that has very strong “Final Girl” horror movie vibes. Arya is in a library and there are a bunch of dead stumbling about as she is trying to make her way through the room undetected. The whole thing feels like a zombie movie. While it was a fun scene to see, it seems like they sacrificed a lot of character building for the sake of a “cool scene”. They have spent so long showing us how collected and calm Arya is, no matter the circumstance. All of that gets thrown away when they have the idea to do this scene and show her terrified and panicked. I’m not saying that it’s not a scary situation; but the way they have built her character doesn’t fit with this reaction. Alright, I’m done nitpicking! She eventually gets through the room and is still being chased through the halls when she runs into some other wights.

The Hound and Beric are walking through halls trying to find Arya. It doesn’t take them too long since a wight tackles Arya through a door. Beric throws his flaming sword at it and it lets Arya get up and run. When Beric is helping Arya up, he gets stabbed in the leg. He quickly turns into a human pin cushion as they are running through the halls as he gets stabbed multiple times. Beric puts his arms up in a doorway holding back the dead as he is being stabbed over and over. There is definitely some Jesus imagery in the way that he is standing with his arms outstretched like a cross, and having been resurrected multiple times.

The Hound and Arya get Beric into a room where he dies. Melisandre happens to be there and tells them that Lord of Light brought him back for a purpose, now the purpose has been served (again, seems very Jesus-y). Arya and Melisandre talk about when they last met. There was some serious foreshadowing the last time they met as Melisandre told Arya she would close many eyes…brown eyes…green eyes…blue eyes (hello Night King). They repeat this conversation now. For another call back Melisandre asks “What do we say to the god of death?” Arya says “Not today” which is an exchange she had with her fighting teacher Syrio Forel back in the first season.

The Night King breaks down the walls of winterfell with Viserion’s blue flames and the dead can flow in even easier now. They start attacking Theon and his men in Godswood around this time as well. Jon and Rhaegal swoop in and they all start fighting in an epic dragon “dog fight”. Eventually the Night King and Jon both fall off their dragons. Daenerys on Drogon try to destroy the Night King with dragon fire. After the fire fades the Night King is standing there smirking (Interesting how the Night King can ride dragons and not be hurt by fire, things only Targaryens are capable of). He throws an ice spear at them and luckily Drogon gets away. Jon witnessed this from a distance and after the fire didn’t work he started charging at the Night King to face him head on. The Night King turns around and raises all the newly dead soldiers.

The new wights raise all over winterfell. Outside surrounding Jon, inside the grounds, and who would have guessed it…the bodies in the crypts with the women and children! Chaos is breaking out everywhere, especially in the crypts dealing with the new wights. While we are jumping around seeing people fighting we see the rest of the White Walkers walking into Winterfell. I can’t believe how underutilized these guys were in this battle. There could have been some awesome lesser boss battles and they were like “nah, we will hang in the back”.

Jon is pretty separated from everyone now out on the grounds. He is completely surrounded by wights trying to fight them off the best he can, suddenly Daenerys is there and all the wights around him go up in flames. For some reason Daenerys and Drogon land on the ground while Jon runs to the castle to try to get to Jon. The dead start crawling up Drogon’s back and stabbing him all over, it looked really cool with all the wights looking like ants trying to take down a much bigger enemy. Daenerys gets thrown from Drogon as he flies off to get rid of the wights all over him. Daenerys is surrounded by Jorah is out there and begins protecting her.

Back in Godswood, Bran is still zonked out while Theon and his men are overran. It comes down to only him protecting Bran. The wights all stop as the Night King and his White Walkers come into Godswood. Bran calls out to Theon and tells him that he is a good man, and thanks him. Theon charges at the Night King, who grabs the spear and snaps it, then kills Theon. The Night King approaches Bran slowly as they stare at each other.

While all this is going on we are seeing cuts to the battle not going well for the living. Brienne and Jaime pinned against a wall fighting the dead together. Samwell stabbing everything around him ferociously. Jon is pinned in the courtyard by Viserion blowing his blue flame all over. Jon comes out from hiding and screams at Viserion out of desperation. Jorah becomes a human shield for Daenerys taking all kinds of stabs while they are killing wights. The war is looking very bleak.

The Night King is right up beside Bran at this point. He reaches back to grab his sword WHEN OUT OF NOWHERE ARYA COMES LEAPING IN! The Night King turns and grabs Arya by her throat and the arm she has a knife in. Arya pulls the ol hand switch and drops the blade in her left, catches in her right, and stabs. The Night King shatters into shards of ice, along with the other White Walkers. All the wights die, just as Viserion is about to blow fire on Jon (which isn’t as scary when you think about how he is a Targaryen and fire doesn’t hurt them). Arya looks at Bran who you’d think would be happy…but nope, just staring emotionless like a weirdo.

A couple shots are shown to wrap up some immediate situations. Jorah dies in Daenerys arms as Drogon comes and wraps his body around the two of them. We see shots of everyone who is alive, which is surprisingly a large amount of the main players. We really only lost like 3 notable people. Melisandre walks out of the room she was in with The Hound and takes off her cloak. She walks out of Winterfell and takes off her necklace, aging rapidly and collapsing out into the snow, cut to credits.

The longest continuous battle in film and tv did not disappoint. It will be really fascinating to see how the living can regroup to now go and fight Cersci and be done in 3 episodes. I have to say, I’m shocked they didn’t kill more notable people in this battle. I mean, I knew Jaime was safe due to the prophecy he will kill Cersei. There was no way they were going to kill The Hound because they want the Cleganebowl with him and The mountain. Other than that there was nothing surprising, maybe they are saving the surprises for the battle for King’s Landing. Still no idea how to sign off from these things so…bye!

Back to Earth

Survivor S38E10

I’m having a hard time concentrating to write this post. I’m going to see Avengers: Endgame in a couple of hours and the big battle in Game of Thrones is tonight. I never want to skip an episode of a show I’m writing though so here we are with a new Survivor recap coming your way!

The last couple weeks have had some epic episodes, it was only natural that they would come back to earth at some point. This episode wasn’t bad by any means, it just was a good straight forward classic episode with a pretty predictable result.

After tribal, everyone gets back to camp and Lauren is still shocked. We see a confessional where she doesn’t know who would be best to go after: Wardog and Ron to avenge Kelley, or Devens because he is such a threat. Gavin and Wardog start bickering. Gavin really hates how Wardog was talking to him like a dog, which really struck a chord with him since he mentions it multiple times throughout the episode.

Gavin is forced to jump alliances quite a bit since everyone is blindsiding everyone in any alliance he is part of. He approaches Victoria and Ron, wanting to come back to them; they seem to accept him. Later on, we see Ron apologizing to Julie about leaving her out on the vote. She says it’s okay, it’s better to not always vote together. Seems like a strange thing to say when she had a meltdown a couple weeks ago when she was left out of the vote…but whatever.

The next morning there is a conversation between Devens, Wardog, and Ron, all discussing how they are such biggest players in the game. They are each other’s biggest threats and greatest hope. They discuss how it will be tempting to take each other out but if they can resist that then they can get to the end together. This kind of conversation in an episode is never a good sign; almost always foreshadowing someone’s doom.

Reward Challenge

WHAT!? WE HAVE A REWARD CHALLENGE! I was kind of hoping survivor eliminated them because they are so boring and inconsequential to viewers. I get they are huge for the contestants to get the food and comfort to survive; but rarely do the results impact anything. Julie, Devens, Lauren, and Wardog win the reward. It doesn’t matter what the actual comp was; some sort of race, obstacle course, and puzzle.

The winners got to go to a mud bath spa place. Had some funny scenes of Wardog and Devens rubbing hot mud all over each other. Pretty stark contrast from Devens and Wardog being aggressive to each other after Devens got back in the game. I was happy to see Devens making changes and playing less emotionally. It can’t all be good for Devens though, they show us a confessional where Devens says he isn’t wanting to talk strategy with Julie and Lauren since they aren’t even playing the game. Of course this is immediately followed by Julie and Lauren on their own plotting to take out the two men. Lauren pitches Devens, Julie pitches Wardog; we don’t see their final decision at this time.

Back at camp, the reward challenge losers are hanging out. Ron is bummed after losing the reward but happy to have alone time with Gavin, Victoria, and Aurora. They are trying to figure out who to target. The consensus lands on Devens; Gavin wants Wardog but is willing to vote with the group that has the numbers. They also show us that Ron gives back the extra vote to Aurora to garner trust. I don’t get it, but if he thinks it will help, good for him I suppose.

There is a scene that is shown that felt really weird and out of place and it took me awhile to figure out why. Aurora is making rice, and Ron and Aurora start arguing about how much to make. Aurora says they are both drama queens and she isn’t going to give up an argument. Ron calls her the Rice Nazi; which is a fantastic Seinfeld reference. The scene seemed so out of place and random, we don’t usually see things like this on episodes. Then it hit me what it reminded me of. The way Survivor is currently played  is all politics and game play; you get almost no actual camp life and survival. I’m currently watching Season 13 Cook Islands right now and back then there were decent portions of episodes showing camp life and daily annoyances that they had to deal with. The Ron Aurora fight was a good throwback to that.

Edge of Extinction

Man, EoE is pretty damn boring when there isn’t a hidden advantage being hunted down. Kelley is struggling with EoE life and getting voted out with an idol in her pocket. Joe and Aubrey are comforting her and bonding (Where you at David!?). Reem tells us how she is really happy Kelley is finally out and calls Kelley out to her face how she ruined Reems whole survivor experience voting her out first. This was actually not boring at all and pretty funny to watch

Immunity Challenge

It’s the first non endurance individual immunity challenge! It’s an obstacle course with a puzzle at the end. It was a pretty exciting comp resulting in Devens winning again! I was so pumped when it happened that my cheer caused my cat to bolt away and hide on the other side of the room. This was a must win for Devens as it seemed everyone was on the same page to vote him out. I really hope Devens is searching for hidden immunity idols now and production just isn’t showing us because he doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.

After the win, everyone was scrambling for a moment to find who they would target instead. They pretty quickly settle on Wardog. Ron is a little apprehensive because after Wardog, he thinks he will be the biggest threat. Which is a little bit of ego because on the threat level he was 3, behind Wardog and Devens. Wardog of course isn’t going to take this lying down and is trying to get numbers for Aurora. Julie seems to possibly be considering it and Lauren is okay with Aurora going home over Wardog as she states, “I know the Devil I’m working with”. Meaning she knows Wardog more than Aurora and can try to read him better.

Tribal Council

Jury comes in and Kelley looks at Wardog, shaking her head, he smirks at her. Jeff asks how things are going at camp as there are less and less people. Wardog says it’s tough as everyone is talking to everyone. Gavin reacts surprised which of course Jeff calls out and Gavin says Wardog hasn’t spoken to him since right after the Kelley vote where Wardog spoke to him like a dog and he doesn’t like being spoken to that way.

This whole tribal has one buzzword that is used a million times…”Threat”. I was tempted to rewatch tribal and count up how many times it is used and then changed my mind because the number would be so high. Jeff basically goes person to person asking everyone about who they see as a threat and how much a threat they see themselves as. No one is directly naming anyone, which is a smart move. Wardog acknowledges he is the biggest threat after taking out David and Kelley. He groups Ron in here saying THEY did it which made Ron’s eyes get real wide. Jeff calls this out and Ron does accept responsibility for his part in it.

Vote time…and Wardog is gone, shocker! Kelley is ecstatic and mouths “I love you” to Lauren. Which is funny that she loves her so much even though she outed that Lauren has an idol to the EoE group, which means one of them is coming back into the game. Wardog tells them on the way out that they all made the right decision, and that he will be back. I really think Wardog is confused about what the word  “threat” really means. Sure, he is a wildcard and would turn on anyone at anytime, but that’s not strategic or anything. It really just puts a huge target on you because you prove no one can trust you. Threat is someone who can strategically take out people and smooth it over after, or make moves to protect you. Wardog burned all of his bridges until he was reliant on two other big threats to cover himself. Also, Wardog can’t win any competitions so that is a huge portion of being a threat he just isn’t capable of doing.

See, it wasn’t a bad episode, but a pretty straightforward one with a predictable ending. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be writing about Devens elimination next week which a pretty big bummer but what can ya do. I really wish the alliance between him and Victoria worked out. There is still time though! I really feel like a floater is going to win this season which will be quite the disappointment from the last few great winners. Well, I have to go get ready to be blown away by Avengers: Endgame and post a bunch of spoilers for everyone…bye!

Before the Afterwards

Game of Thrones S8E3

I really need to get better at writing about shows after they air sooner. The most important show on TV had an episode 3 days ago, and here I am FINALLY writing about it like a bum. Finding time to write about shows, while also keeping up on all the other shows you watch, is proving to be more difficult than I expected. I’m 7 episodes behind on other shows that have new episodes out, and when I could be catching up on them I’m writing. What a rough life I have, right? Feel like this is as good of an intro as any…let talk some Game of Thrones!

This episode is pretty much a straight continuation of last week’s episode. It’s all conversations, moving those chess pieces together for the big battle next week. Of course anyone in the future watching is just going to binge the whole season together, so it’s all going to feel like a 6 episode episode. In terms of live viewing though…episode one and two were definitely meant to be one block, with Battle of Winterfell next week, then “Afterwards” for episode four through six.

Show opens with Jaime on trial in front of Daenerys, Jon, and Sansa. Daenerys is pretty pissed off at Jaime killing her father The Mad King Aerys Targaryen. This is wild to me. She knows her father was insane at the end of his reign going around killing everyone for no reason. If my dad was going around setting people on fire and murdering them because he felt like it, someone stopping him probably wouldn’t be too upsetting to me. Daenerys seems all about punishing him, likely dragon fire because that’s her whole thing. Sansa appears to be in agreement too, until Brienne stepped forward to vouch for him. Making a really good point that Sansa wouldn’t be alive now if Jaime hadn’t sent her to defend Sansa based on a promise he made to Catelyn Stark. This changes Sansa’s mind and she is pro-Jaime. Comes down to Jon being torn between his sister (actually his cousin) and his lady (actually his aunt) and he sides with his Sister/Cousin, so Jaime is pardoned. When the meeting ends Jon is really cold to Daenerys, which she doesn’t understand; Jon still hasn’t told her about him being Aegon Targaryen.

We get a half episode rift between Daenerys and Tyrion because Jaime reveals in his trial that Cersei has no intention of sending her army to the north to help defeat the army of the dead. Daenerys is mad that Tyrion, who is Hand of the Queen because of his brains, was easily fooled by his sister. A little later we get a scene where Tyrion and Jaime get to talk in private. Tyrion thought Cersei’s pregnancy would change her, hence his trust in her. Tyrion wonders if the pregnancy was a lie too; which Jaime assures him it is not. The Daenerys being mad at Tyrion situation gets squashed when Jorah who would have been the Hand of the Queen if he had been around advises her to trust Tyrion, even though he has Jorah’s job.

I’m not exactly going chronological through this, mostly I will, but I’m going to group together pairings so this isn’t all over the place like the episode is. Which, for the record isn’t a criticism. This works well in the show to go around and see how these things develop, but will be easier flowing here grouped.

Here are a couple Arya/Gendry scenes. The sexual tension in this scene is just spilling all over the place. Arya comes to Gendry asking for the weapon she asked for in the last episode. Gendry brushes her off that she should be in the Crypt with the other women and children, which I’ll touch on later is a stupid place to keep non-fighters. To prove Gendry wrong Arya throws some spear heads across the room into the wall very threateningly. She asks about her weapon and he quickly says he will get right on it. Later on Gendry shows up and gives Arya her weapon. This better have some hidden power, otherwise the weapon she is so concerned about is the exact same spear head he was making attached to a staff. Gendry reveals to Arya that he is the bastard son of Robert Baratheon. Some chit chat and Arya casually asks how many people Gendry has slept with. This is all lead up to how Arya wants to fuck someone before she dies, and they do it; Much to the delight of all the fanfic nuts out there.

A pretty constant thread through the episode is AFTERWARDS. A good amount of the conversations in this ep are initial planning to what will happen after the war with the dead. This kicks off with Jaime talking to Bran in the Godswood. He apologizes for what he did, which Bran excuses by saying he did what he needed to do to protect his family. Jaime asks why Bran hasn’t told them what he did to him in the past. Bran says Jaime couldn’t help fight if he let them murder him first. Jaime asks what about afterwards (meaning after The Battle of Winterfell) which Bran answers with a how do you know there is an afterwards?

Daenerys finds Sansa to have a talk about their relationship. They seem to patch up their differences bonding over both being women leaders who have to work harder to garner respect. Sansa reveals she is hesitant of Daenerys because men are easily manipulated by women they love; meaning Jon being manipulated by Daenerys. Daenerys explains that her whole goal in life was to win the Iron Throne and she has paused that to come fight Jon’s war, then asking who manipulated whom? This seems to make everything better, and they are even holding hands smiling. Then the “afterwards” strikes again. Sansa asks what will Daenerys do after the war. Daenerys says she will take the iron throne, which Sansa asks what about The North? She explains that they lost The North once and took it back and they would never bow to anyone else again. Daenerys lets go of Sansa’s hands as tension is building. They are interrupted by the arrival of Theon who request to fight for the Starks.

The most hilarious example of afterwards is a conversation between Greyworm and Missandei. They agree they don’t want to grow old in the cold foreign land and want to go back to Missandei’s homeland of Naath and will sail there together. This is pretty much guaranteeing that Greyworm will die; or if they feel extra spicy Missandei will. DON”T MAKE MEANINGFUL PLANS BEFORE A BATTLE, YOU WILL DIE.

We know the battle is happening soon because Tormund and Beric return to tell Jon about Umber being murdered by the NIght King and is close to Winterfell. All the major players are involved in a battle plan meeting. Jon believes killing the Night King will cause the rest of the dead to no longer be able to animated and end the war; but others point out the Night King won’t expose himself to risk. Bran volunteers to be bait, telling everyone the Night King always knows where Bran is at and wants to kill him because he contains all memory of man. The endgame for the Night King is to erase all memory of man from the world. Jon’s brilliant idea is putting Bran in the crypts with the women and children to keep him safe. Let’s think about this for a second. A bad guy…who has the power to reanimate the dead…is coming for Bran, and the solution is to put him in a basement that is full of dead bodies? Sounds like a fool proof idea…. The actual plan is made to have Bran in Godswood with Theon as his guard to lure the Night King there to be killed.

Spread throughout the episode is what my cousin Andy, who I watched the episode with, called “A bottle episode”. We get six rando’s who at one point or another were all fighting against the Starks, now protecting their home sitting by a fire drinking. It’s a weird mix, but led to a number of great interactions. Tyrion, Jaime, Brienne, Podrick, Davos, and Tormund are all in this hang session. Best moment of the first scene is a story about how Tormund got the name Giantsbane. Just watch the episode for the story because reading about it won’t do it justice. We come back to the bottle episode later to what is probably the most heartwarming moment of the episode. Tyrion is saying how he thinks they will all survive the battle (guaranteeing they all won’t) and when everyone is laughing at this he lists everyone’s resumes of prior battles. When he gets to Brienne he calls her “Ser”, the name for knights. He corrects himself and Tormund is surprised thinking she was already a knight and doesn’t understand why women can’t be knights. We know Jaime has tremendous respect for Brienne as earlier in the episode he asks to serve under her as she is commanding the left flank in the battle. He mentions that you don’t have to be a king to knight someone; that a knight can also knight someone. He has Brieanne kneel before him, which she is reluctant to do. Having your life’s goal that previously was thought to be impossible presented before you can be a difficult thing to jump right into. Jaime knights her and everyone claps enthusiastically while she is tearful and smiling ear to ear. The last time we return to this scene is the setup for a montage of everyone preparing for the upcoming battle. Tyrion asks for a song, and nobody is volunteering. Podrick begins singing and we get cuts to Theon and Sansa talking, Arya and Gendry lying in bed together after getting it on, and Greyworm and Missandei kissing goodbye.

One last important moment squeezed in before the end. Daenerys finds Jon down in the crypts in front of Lyanna Stark’s statue. Daenerys says she can’t believe her brother raped her after all the stories she heard about how great he was. Jon reveals that her brother didn’t rape Lyanna, that he loved her, and they had a son right before she died. The child was given to Ned Stark to protect and that he is Aegon Targaryen. Daenerys looks pissssssed. She asks how he knows and he says Samwell and Bran told him. She is resistant to believe this because the source is his best friend and brother. Jon tells her he knows it’s true. Daenerys says if it were true, it would make him the last male heir to the house of Targaryen and he would have a claim to the throne. This shows that all her bullshit selflessness about her family name isn’t really true. While she does want the Targaryen name back on the throne, she wants it with her name, not Aegon/Jon. They are interrupted (another common theme this episode) by battlehorns. Last scene is the Night King and the other White Walkers with their army behind them standing across a field from Winterfell about to start the battle.

This episode a lot better to me the second time I watched it compared to the first time. I thought it was a whole lot of nothing before but you can really see the meaning and masterful writing when watching again. I’m pretty sure I said this last week too, or something similar, so the key must just be watch it all multiple times and revel in the brilliance of it. My top people who are going to die: Greyworm, Tormund or Brienne (not both), also Jorah doesn’t stand a chance. I’m a coward picking only secondary characters but whatever. I JUST finished this article two minutes before the new episode of Survivor is starting so going to have to cut it off here. Everyone enjoy the Battle of WInterfell next week, it’s going to be amazing!

Lets Play Two!

Survivor S38E

I thought I for sure was going to miss this week’s episode when it aired. I went to see Shazam! after work and had to rush home to watch Survivor. Luckily, I made it home JUST in time to catch the episode! Which for purposes of this article don’t really matter because I usually don’t write until Saturday, but whatever, I like following along on Twitter and hate spoilers!

The tribe gets back from Tribal Council last week where Devens turned everything upside down. Everyone is reeling and already politicking the next morning. We see what looks to be the next strong majority alliance when Wardog proposes Lesu3 (Wardog, Kelley, and Lauren) combine forces with Gavin, Julie, and Ron. Gavin already made it clear he is on board to work with Lesu3 so Wardog is planning on making pitches to Julie and Ron since they announced last week they were free agents.

Aurora gets a little dragged to start this episode, and rightfully so. Aurora acknowledges in a confessional how badly she messed up, saying she put her foot in her mouth and ruined the whole plan. She said she feels all alone now and after growing up in the foster system, she is good being alone. My ears perked up when she mentioned being a foster child. There is a common misconception in Survivor that making big moves is how you win. Making random haphazard big moves doesn’t hand you a win in this game, it’s the story you build. Your backstory helps you a lot if it’s something sad or brave, like being a foster child or a veteran (Hello, Ben Driebergen). Mix this with being in an alliance and it all falling apart, followed by being alone and making the right game moves to get to the end. Aurora is following a similar path to Driebergen and it gives me similar winner vibes.

Immunity Challenge

Yeah…10 minutes into the episode, we get an Immunity Challenge. Felt very similar to last week with the long ass Tribal Council. Apparently Survivor now hates Reward Challenges, which is cool with me, because so do I. I’d rather watch someone competing to stay in the game than people running and solving puzzles to win coffee and pastries. Unless it’s one of the comps where you have to eliminate players from the challenge, those are fun and essential in shaking up the security of majority alliances, developing a pecking order.

In this Immunity Challenge everyone has to crouch and balance long handles on their shoulders which are balancing a pot full of water. If you move too much it falls and you’re out. Jeff brings out a bunch of pizza and says if anyone feels safe they can sit out and eat a mountain of pizza. Kelley, Victoria, Lauren, and Ron all sit out. 3 of these guys are in the newly formed 6 person alliance (no name yet…), so them sitting out makes sense. Victoria sitting out is a little surprising to me but she is floating so far under the radar that I didn’t think it would hurt her much to get some energy from the food. If you’ve been reading my posts, I’m sure you’ll notice that I can’t write about the competitions themselves. It doesn’t make for interesting writing to go: this person fell, then so did this one! Anyway, Aurora wins, which puts my favorites, Devens, David, and Victoria in danger.

Back at the beach, it’s that good ol’ politicking and plotting time. The new big group wants to target David. David wants to go after Wardog. Devens recruits Victoria to work with them, which made me a happy camper, since I love them both so much. David knows they need to get Julie and Ron on their side to get the numbers. David approaches Julie with Devens and does almost that same speech he did with Devens a couple weeks ago about “this being one of those conversations you think about long after the game is over” blah blah blah. Love David, hate canned speeches. I mean if they work, all the power to ya. For viewers, it’s not interesting. Julie brings David’s pitch to Ron and he doesn’t know know what to do. He doesn’t want to work with David or Wardog. They leave his decision in the air for that Tribal drama!

Tribal Council

At this point it was pretty obvious we were getting a double elimination, because there is far too much time left in the episode. I don’t remember seeing any advertisement that it was one, so it was a pretty nice surprise! We get a Tribal about 20 minutes into the episode.

Devens, this season’s king of Tribal Council, comes right out of the gate talking about how important loyalty and trust is. He says that he started the game being disloyal, owns himself backstabbing Chris, and then the following week getting voted out. He ends with saying that now that he is back in the game, he’s playing a loyal game.

Wardog tries really hard to take Aurora’s “Foot in Mouth” award from last week’s tribal council. Wardog says Devens may talk about loyalty, but who has more loyalty than Wardog, Lauren, and Kelley? He reminds everyone that they have voted together every time for every tribal and and that nothing  demonstrates loyalty more than that. Devens chimes in with, “Does that seem like a group that will be easy to infiltrate?” His point is that as the game gets closer to the end, when people outside the majority alliance can make deals to break up them up, this will be impossible because the Lesu3 are tight. Kelley looks horrified by what Wardog just said and tries backtracking it by saying that no one knows the dynamic in the group, which is ridiculous and clearly trying to imply weaknesses in order to keep them around. No one else is buying this.

David tries using his line, “My brand is loyalty,” and everyone groans. Wardog and Lauren go after him about how David said he would never write down Lauren’s name, but then immediately wrote her name down. Wardog calls David a squirmer, that he goes person to person trying to stay in, and he’s good at it, and that is why he has to go. Wardog’s target is backed by everyone else and David is gone.

Edge of Extinction

I don’t usually write much on EOE because it’s relatively boring and nothing really happens game wise, EXCEPT THIS WEEK! Everyone gets a message in a bottle with a clue for the next advantage. Everyone goes scrambling, looking in different areas. Chris initially goes with David to look over by the rocks, but gives up in that area to go look with Joe by the white flag mast. It’s a good thing David didn’t leave the area, because he found the advantage. We get a bull shit confessional about how he can send the advantage to someone and make them feel good about him if he comes back in the game…David is without a doubt sending that advantage to Devens.

Immunity Challenge

We cut from EOE to the tribe walking onto the challenge grounds. There was still a small chance this was some out-of-order Immunity then Reward challenge. Jeff ends that by asking for the immunity necklace, which means we are getting our 3rd straight immunity challenge. Shocker coming…Devens reveals he was given an advantage for the challenge. Something I’m curious about is that other advantages typically aren’t revealed in terms of who sent them to the person, but Devens knew that David sent him this.

All the players have a long paddle that they need to use to roll a ball down the handle and then balance the balls in the little dimples. Everyone needs to get 5 balls, except Devens’ advantage means he only needs 4, which is actually huge. With this advantage, Devens wins!.

Politicking twice this episode! Huge twist this time, though…right after we see Wardog preaching the loyalty of himself, Lauren, and Kelley…Wardog is going after Kelley. He has quick 30 second conversations with Victoria, Devens, and Aurora individually because he can’t be seen talking to them alone. I’m on record saying I don’t like Wardog…but do I…do I possibly like Wardog!? Probably not, but I live for chaos and he is a walking chaos machine. I had completely forgotten that Aurora had an extra vote, but she reminds us of it and then immediately makes a stupid decision with it by giving it to Ron. She wants to earn trust with him, and if she survives this elimination, then they can share the extra vote and have it be a team decision when using it.

Tribal Council

Jeff talks mostly about blindsides in this episode because there have been so many this season. Ron talks about how some people are obsessed with the blindside *Cough Wardog Cough*. Jeff points out how only 1 idol and 1 advantage have been played this season; usually a lot more have been in play so far. Devens talks about how the group consensus is that all the advantages come from EOE. This is obviously wrong since Lauren and Kelley both have idols that haven’t been played. This Tribal was pretty short and sweet. For the double Tribal episode, we got both the remaining returning players out of the game. Kelley is gone with an idol in her pocket! Aubrey sums it up well over on the jury: “Holy shit, Wardog”

I don’t normally write about the Next Week On segments. I don’t understand the need to tease and spoil things by TV shows that you’re clearly already invested in if you’re watching episode 9 of a show. This week’s had something that we may not see on next week’s episode, or maybe we will. Either way I want to touch on it just incase. We see Kelley arrive at EOE and immediately spill the beans that she had an idol, and Lauren has the other. She must think that Lauren conspired against her with Wardog to spoil it to a possible returning player that her closest ally has an idol. Still working on a sign off so this is going to end abruptly….BYE!

Reunions Galore!

Game of Thrones S8E1

Alright…I know…Survivor isn’t for everyone. I’ve been meaning to branch out and write about some different topics, but didn’t know where to start. Since my last post got a whopping 4 views I figured why not go big and write about the show that almost everyone watches…GAME OF THRONES! If you’re not a fan or not interested, to each their own! However, If you’re one of those people that brag that they’ve never watched it and you think that makes you unique…just go away. Taking a hard stance against something you’ve never seen that is popular doesn’t make you a more interesting person. Alright, enough of being a dick, let’s talk about the show!

Honestly writing about this show isn’t going to feel TOO far from Survivor or other reality competition shows for me. So much plotting, strategy, and making alliances! There are even eliminations, except the eliminated players aren’t going to a Ponderosa or an awesome Jury Mansion, it’s…well…you die. The characters in this show have no idea who is alive or dead. They can’t just do a quick drop by, unless they start using travel mechanics from the last couple seasons, and they aren’t sending text Ravens to follow up. The first episode of this season starts with an impressive set piece of the Unsullied army, led by Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, entering Winterfell. We are standing with Arya Stark who arguably has been one of the most secluded characters in the series thus far. As we stand with her she is seeing for the first time some characters who she assumed dead, were in fact still around. She sees Jon, The Hound, and Gendry; all of which she had connections with in the past and not knowing if they were dead or alive.

Bran is clearly growing as a central character. He has a couple heavy hitting scenes in this episode. The first is an “on the nose” reminder to the viewers that he is mythical. We see Jon and Bran’s reunion; Jon hugs him and exclaims “you’re a man!” Bran responds “Almost” and gives this creepy dreamy stare he has really honed in on. First this seems like a comment on him still growing, but since you know; he’s the Three Eyed Raven, it refers to the fact he isn’t just a man/human. I’ll touch on Bran’s other big scene later. Side note about Bran; it makes no sense whatsoever that he is the Vegas favorite to win the crown at the end. Everything about his character has shown he doesn’t care about the dealings of men and the power, he only watches. I think the rumor of him being the Knight King is more plausible than him being King of the 7 Kingdoms.

A decent amount of Sansa’s screen time this episode is dedicated to cementing how little she likes Daenerys. Sansa gives those icy glares to Daenerys the whole episode, literally looking down her nose at her when first introduced. Later in the lords meeting that takes place at Winterfell, Sansa is taking shots at how they are supposed to support the Queen’s army and dragons. Jon and Sansa have a conversation towards the end of the episode where he pleads with her to trust his faith in Daenerys. It appears she may come around, but can’t resist taking one last stab at her, asking if Jon bent the knee to protect The North, or because he loves her; scene ends.

In the lords meeting we get a lot of Jon and Tyrion pleading with the northern houses to follow Daenerys, that everything is for the good of The North; to which they are not convinced. Before these speeches we get a short, seemingly inconsequential, request from Lord Ned Umber (who is only 11) that he needs horses and wagons to get his people to Winterfell. Sansa grants this request and Ned Umber runs off. This is important later, mostly for establishing who Lord Umber is.

Couple short, but essential scenes to touch on, both a couple of reunions. First Sansa and Tyrion meeting for the first time since Joffrey was killed and she fled King’s landing. Pretty icy conversation, but respect for one another. Tyrian delivers a great line about Sansa: “Many underestimated you, most of them are dead now.” We also see Arya and Jons reunion which is much warmer and touching! They recreate the scene from the first season where Arya runs and jumps into Jons arms showing how much they care for one another. Arya shows Jon her sword Needle. He asks if she has used it, she says “Once or twice”. This really shows how far removed Jon and Arya were; actually how far Jon was removed from all of his siblings…er “siblings”.

We go to warmer weather after this meeting. Down to King’s Landing to hang out with Cersei Lannister for a bit. All Cersei knows how to do is plot and backstab. Which one might think I would be all for, but I can’t stand Cersei. She is just too much a monster to like. The Hand of the Queen Qyburn advises that the dead have broken through the wall. Her only response is “Good” because she is an asshole. We see a lot of Euron Greyjoy and Cersei interaction. Euron transported the mercenary troop Golden Company to King’s Landing. Cersei is REALLY upset she didn’t get those elephants that Golden Company has in their arsenal. She mentions it a few times, it’s a sore spot for her I suppose. Euron wants to cash in on helping out Cersei, basically he wants to fuck. She was going to make him wait until after the war but he slyly said he was going to stop helping unless he got what he wanted. Cersei, who is going to do anything to keep power, does the deed. After sex, and some snarky banter, Euron rubs Cersei’s stomach and says he is going to put a baby in her belly. She goes through a range of emotions on her face after he walks away, you can see the gears in her mind working. It seems to me like she is going to try to sell her being pregnant from her brother, as Euron’s son.

Couple quick notes that I don’t want to ramble about here, but will come back big in later episodes. Qyburn pays Bronn a lot of monies to make sure Jaime and Tyrion don’t survive the war with the dead, on Cersei’s orders. Theon rescues Yara from Eurons boat. Yara wants to go take over the Iron Islands so Daenerys has a fall back place, and she lets Theon go fight with the Starks. Blah blah blah. Oh, also Davos is shipping the Jon/Daenerys incest thing to win over loyalty of The North.

Gendry, who is technically the legitimate heir to the throne after Robert’s Rebellion, is a skilled blacksmith and is tasked with creating Dragonglass weapons to kill the undead. He makes a badass axe for The Hound. The Hound can’t help but be an asshole to him and Arya comes to break it up. This is a double reunion for Arya with the two guys I mentioned at the beginning. Tension but respect from The Hound, friendship with Gendry. Arya asks Gendry to make a weapon that she sketched up for him. Not sure what it is, but I’m sure it will be quite important later.

Daenerys and Jon ride dragons together, it’s his first time. Riding a dragon looks good on him, I’m sure it’ll be back. We also found out the dragons are perverts who like watching their mom get it on…BUT before all this incesest grossness…we get some intense groundwork for foreshadowing. Daenerys tells Jon that Sansa doesn’t like her, he says not to worry about it, that she didn’t like him either growing up. She says she doesn’t need to be her friend, but she is her queen and needs her respect. Jon looks slightly concerned but then there is a distraction that breaks up the conversation. Remember this, it will come back in this episode.

After the aunt/nephew loving Daenerys and Jorah find Samwell Tarly and thank him for saving Jorah’s life from greyscale. In the conversation it is revealed she had to execute Samwell’s father and brother for not respecting her rule and bending the knee. HUH SOUND FAMILIAR? (See above paragraph).

Samwell is emotional after learning about his father and brothers demise and needs to get some air. He runs into Bran, who tells him that it’s time to tell Jon the truth about who he is. Samwell looks terrified of having to tell Jon and counters with telling Bran that he is Jon’s brother. Bran, coldly but logically, tells Samwell “I’m not his brother, he trusts you more than anyone, now’s the time”.

Samwell finds Jon down in the crypt paying respects to Ned Stark. Samwell blows it alllll up. Samwell tells him that he is the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, that his birth name is Aegon Targaryen VI. Jon is pissed! He says that his father (Ned Stark) was the most honorable man he had ever met and asks if Samwell is saying that he lied to Jon his entire life? Samwell tells Jon of the promise Ned made to Lyanna to always protect Aegon/Jon. Which to keep this promise Ned betrayed Robert Baratheon, who was his best friend and who he helped lead a rebellion with, all to keep a promise to his sister.

After the big reveal we have a couple more scenes to wrap up the episode. The first one is one of the creepiest scenes I’ve seen in Game of Thrones. Tormund Giantsbane(Ginger wildling) and Beric Dondarrion(Eye patch dude who has died and been revived 5 times) are leading a group through a destroyed castle. They run into another group who shows them a body who we realize is Ned Umber who we saw earlier asking for the horses and carts. He is pinned to the wall limbless and dead. He is surrounded by legs, arms, feet all creating a spiral. House Umber was attacked by the dead and Lord Umber was left as a message. Lord Umber comes back as an undead and starts screaming and scared the hell out of me. Beric stabs him with a flaming sword creating quite an amazing visual.

The last scene we get is a hooded figure riding into Winterfell. The figure dismounts his horse and pulls down the hood…Jaime Lannister. He looks around Winterfell and makes eye contact with Bran….AWKWARD. The episode ends and now I’m stuck waiting 6 more damn days until I get another new episode. I don’t know if it was the hype, or what but I loved the first episode. I thought it laid a lot of groundwork that I can’t way to see come back up as the season goes. I would definitely recommend a second watchrough of the ep if you haven’t yet, I found a lot of benefit in it.

Devens Blowing Shit Up

Survivor S38E7

What the fuck…? I sat down with my adult beverage and my computer ready to watch and take notes, not thinking anything out of the ordinary was coming my way. The episode starts and talking happens blah blah blah. I was taking my notes on all the post tribal council conversations not realizing what was about to happen. We had an Edge of Extinction drop by, but who cares now?

About 13 minutes into the episode, they walk up to the challenge area and Jeff says  they are doing an Immunity Challenge. Again, please remember we are only 13 minutes into the episode, and we have an immunity challenge, not a reward challenge! Gavin wins and the rest of the challenge doesn’t matter  with what is about to come.

Alright…I suppose a little context is warranted. It will help knowing where the alliances are sitting going into Tribal Council. In the beginning of the episode, Gavin approaches Kelley, Lauren, and Wardog to align with them. He said he would be able to get the other Kama people together and they want to take out David. After tribal the target shifted for the rest of Kama to vote out Kelley, which Gavin didn’t want to do. So going into Tribal, the two likely targets are David or Kelley.

Tribal Council

Yeah, this whole post is just going to be about Tribal Council. We hit the half hour mark with them walking into Tribal and I was shocked, and wondering what the hell was going on as I looked over to my girlfriend, Alli. What came next was one of, if not the most, crazy tribal councils ever. Half way through, as I’m vigorously typing down notes, I tell Alli that my post is going to be like 8 pages long with this episode and she proposed the idea of just writing about Tribal. So we all need to thank her for the brilliant idea to save on the read time on this one.

Tribal opens innocently enough. Jeff asks about being on the right and wrong side of a blind side to Julie, she says how she doesn’t trust anyone at this point since she was left out. She  and Ron both felt betrayed by Kama due to the Eric blindside last week. Aurora gets the next question from Jeff. He asks her what the fall out was from the blind side. She goes on a rambly answer about how you have to leave people out of a blindside sometimes, and how these people who feel left out had  left people out the time before. This is her first of two missteps that alert everyone to what is going on. Aurora almost single handedly ruins the entire Kama plan with her long answers. Wardog’s ears perk up as she’s finishing. She says “It’s not about each move that you’re left out, it’s the final goal you want together.” Jeff notices Wardog’s reaction and asks what’s up. To which Wardog says “we need to use a few people to take Eric out, this week we can maybe take out those same people we used to take Eric out.” Kelley agrees  with Wardog, and puts it out there that she thinks the Kama group are back together.

David is an analogy machine and it’s fantastic. Before this, he had the Pilot and Passenger Analogy. This week it’s the Shark and Minnows. He talks about how this morning he saw a bunch of minnows and eventually a shark came through and ate a bunch of the minnows, and with the reconstituted Kama Alliance, It’s likely one of the Lesu is a minnow. Jeff asked if that really happened and David said “Yeah!…while I was taking a poop, but yeah!” and I fucking died. Jeff jumps to Devens and asks where Devens is with the Minnow or Shark Analogy to which he answers that he might be the poop…again, dead.

At this point, you can kind of feel the tension building, but not anything out of the ordinary to Tribal Council since everyone is afraid of being voted out. Devens blows the entire thing up this episode a couple of times. He answers Jeff’s questions very direct and honest instead of playing word games, and it freaks everyone out. After the poop jokes, Devens talks about how the “hot dates” at camp were Gavin, Aurora, Julia, and Victoria. They told him they would get back to him about a plan but intentionally let the clock run out. Jeff tosses out a few other questions but they aren’t adding to the ticking time bomb of chaos. The next one to add to the timebomb is to Julie,who has an emotional breakdown because she is physically and emotionally exhausted. During her breakdown, she says that she feels like she has been left in the dark about people she trusted and no matter how much they tell her she can trust them, she doesn’t think the plan she was told is actually going to happen tonight. She thinks it’s going to be another blind side. Kelley panics at this and looks over at Julia, asking if they are still good. Julia chuckles and says “we’re good, we’re good,” and we get a nice quick shot of a Jeff side eye catching that exchange. Julia says she is a free agent at this point and she can’t trust anyone. Julia is full on laughing and Kelley looks shocked. Ron, who was also left out last week, like Julie, says this vote will let them know if they can trust their people or not.

Jeff is one of my favorite hosts in any reality competition show because he will straight up call your shit out. If he sees or catches something said and he knows it will be interesting he will bring it up in front of everyone. Jeff’s side glance mentioned before…yeah, he wastes no time bringing that back. He points out how while Julie is crying and pleading her case, other people are almost giggling and he asks “Julia, I know you have empathy for how she’s feeling, but from a game point of view, what did you find some interesting from what she said?” Julia says what she was laughing at was Kelley asking if they were still good. Devens immediately lets out an “OH!” and says that Julia just gave the game away, and hat he guesses the Kama’s are going with the Lesu3 (Kelley, Lauren, Wardog). This exchange brings out a long, rambling, nonsensical statement from Aurora. I wanted to try to write a short gist of what it was about, but I can’t…it starts going one way, then turns into something else entirely. The important part is it gets all the Lesu tribe, even David and Devens, annoyed with her.

It’s probably pretty obvious by my other posts, but Devens is clearly my favorite, and everything he did tonight reinforced that. In the middle of Tribal, in front of everyone, he throws out how there is a strong Kama group that doesn’t want Lesu people messing with them. He then says there are 5 Lesu and 2 Kamas that were left out (Ron and Julie), thats 7 people, and that those 7 can do whatever they  want, if Aurora really wants Lesu to work together. It was interesting to watch just how quickly Julia became unhinged. She was calm and collected, and as soon as Devens tossed this likely tongue in cheek idea, she got really aggressive, asking why Devens is putting this idea out there. Devens says, “No, I think Aurora put it out there, I’m just on board.” Julia calls him asinine and says “You are such a passenger”, while waving him off, to which he responds, “I’m a passenger!? I feel like I just laid out the GPS.” Julia chuckles and just keeps saying, “Rick, come on, come on.” Rewatching this now as I write this post, it’s wild to see how much she is clearly in panic mode, trying to save her plan but overcorrecting WAY too hard.

This part now would be harder to write about, and if I included everything we would still be at 8 pages. This upcoming point is where I referenced above about how I have no idea how to write this episode up. Devens essentially is on the fly, in the middle of Tribal, politicking like they normally do on the beach after, but everyone is together in front of everyone. Julia and Aurora are dumbstruck about how this is falling apart in front of them, still taking jabs at Devens trying to stop this from snowballing. Conversations are breaking out all over. Jeff says at this point he doesn’t even want to ask a question, he just wants to watch. The Tribal turns to chaos. Almost everyone leaves their seats to talk to other people. Leaving your seat and whispering is something that is becoming more popular in the show, but nothing on this level. Jeff lets everyone get up and talk for roughly 8 minutes. Jury is freaking out, jaws dropped and asking where the popcorn is. David asks Kelley what the original plan was and she straight up tells him that it was him. Aubrey is about to have an aneurysm over on the jury.

Everyone sits down again and things seem settled. Wardog says “Let’s vote!” and Julia is in full temper tantrum mode because she knows her plan is shot. She shoots back telling him to shut up. Some more chatter…and time to vote! Jeff asks for any hidden immunity idols. My running theory while Devens was blowing all this up was that even if he couldn’t get all of Lesu and Julie/Ron to go with him, he would draw the majority of votes to himself by playing so aggressively, then he would play the idol and he and David would control the elimination. Devens still used the idol, but for David, just for good measure, since it was outed that David was the plan tonight. David only got one vote, but I still think the immunity play was a safe idea, a good insurance policy. It didn’t matter though, because Julia was sent packing. Wardog leans forward and says the name of the MVP of the episode, “Rick Devens”.

What an episode…I feel like we are going blind into next week. No idea what alliances there are now, outside of Devens and David, then the Lesu3 will also be together still. The fractured Kama group will all be free agents. My guess is Aurora will be an easy vote out next week as it was a coin flip as to whether she or Julia were going home this week. I’m lowkey excited that we got rid of one of the Julia/Julie because that probably gets confusing to read.

Alright, that’s enough Survivor. I’m going to wrap this up and enjoy some of the NBA playoffs, not wondering about how these alliances are going to shake out.

“Puppet master” curse strikes again

Survivor S38E7

Thanks for everyone who checked out my post last week! Please let me know any feedback you may have. I do this because It’s fun to write about, but also don’t want to torture anyone with terrible writing. Now onto the show!

Last Week Tribal Aftermath

Once again we start the show with no “previously on” or title sequence. I really don’t mind actually, I always find both unnecessary and would rather see more of a show anyway than the 7th time listening to some music and clips of the contestants.

After an episode of pushing Kama Strong so heavily, the rest of Kama kind of poo poo’d that by excluding one of their members in the plan to vote out Joe. Aurora, who  was very close with Joe, had no idea he was going to be cut. I have no issue with not telling her; she can say in hindsight all she wants that she wouldn’t have told Joe if that was the plan, but how many times have we seen in the past where someone close to the target was let in on what was going to happen and blew it all up? Regardless, Aurora was very betrayed by being left out and we can now clearly see a rift between her and the rest of Kama. After we are shown Aurora dealing with the hurt of being left out of the blind side, we cut to people already trying to jockey for position in the game. There are a couple important conversations back to back with Ron, David, and Devens and another one with Wardog, Lauren, and Kelley.

We get a confessional from Ron about how David and Devens owe him one now and they will trust him and are loyal to him now. Cut back to this 4 way conversation and Ron blows up Lesu’s plan to vote one of them, making sure to toss in how they were “evil about it” in regards to the way Lesu wanted D&D out. Ron made a great move by working to make the rift between these two and the rest of Lesu as wide as possible. Which we soon find works for one of them, but not the other. We also get the first mention of the apparently coveted Family Visit in this talk, that’ll come back later, many…many times.

Wardog is perplexing to me. I hate his nickname so much, that when talking about the show, I refuse to use it, but will use it here for clarity.  I question how much he actually strategizes versus just throwing out every idea until one finally lands. ANYWAY…Wardog throws out the idea of trying to win D&D back to the Lesu side. He wants to tell them they they can be mad Lesu voted for them last tribal council and get revenge, but be at the bottom of Kama, or they can work together and pull in Aurora and take Kama to rocks.

Reward Challenge

My least favorite part of Survivor is reward challenges. I don’t really care about challenges much, aside from their ramifications to the game, and this early when it isn’t a “pick who you like more” reward, they don’t hold much weight to overall game play. Aurora, Eric, Devens, Julie, Wardog, and Victoria win and the biggest effect this had was that Kelley and Lauren could approach and convince David to go with them against Kama6 and also that David needs to convince Devens to join (which David thinks should be easy to do).

NO ONE should ever call themselves a “puppet master,” or they WILL be cursed. The moment you feel confident that  you are running everything, you will lose it all . Around the point in the episode where Ron called himself a puppet master, I figured  that something was going to happen to Kama.

The best moment of the episode was Devens and Wardog walking through the jungle. It was an overly aggressive and not well thought out conversation by Devens but it was hilarious to watch. Wardog pitches the old Lesu and Aurora plan and Devens is saying how much he’s dying to get back with them now that he knows he can trust them. When I was hearing this, I thought I heard some sarcasm in his voice, but brushed it off because  no one is that overtly sarcastic when talking to other contestants. I was wrong. Devens finishes by saying “I really wanna get back with you all…except that I don’t fucking want to get back with you guys at all.” I thought Wardog was going to shit himself. He looked hurt and thrown off that someone would call Lesu out for backstabbing them. Wardog tells Devens that if he stays with Kama, it will only get him 8th or 9th, but with Lesu, it will get him further. Devens makes the great point that he knows it will get Wardog and Kelley further, but he doesn’t know it will get him further. Although I don’t agree with how Devens handled the the situation, I agree with his point. He will be at the bottom of the resurgent Lesu since they already went after him twice, or he could go with Kama and be at an unspecified rank, but not guaranteed bottom with them.

We were able to witness what seems to be the  beginning of the end of the D&D partnership. As mentioned earlier, Devens is all for Kama, David is with Lesu. They seem to be at an impasse regarding  a plan. The craziest moment is when Devens says he thought David would have given him back the half of the idol and David says he is going to hang on to it for now. It really sounds like David might be looking for a new ally.

Time to check in on Edge of Extinction. They all received messages in a bottle as clues to find a hidden advantage. Everyone goes looking, but Aubrey finds it! She gets to practice for the challenge they will have to do to come back into the game. To me, practicing a challenge isn’t a great advantage. I get that it does help, but if I’m finding an advantage, give me an extra vote or an immunity idol, something big. Lucky for Aubrey, this practice advantage also comes with an extra vote she can give to anyone, which she ends up giving to Aurora.

Immunity Competition

We have another endurance comp this week. Everyone stands on their tip toes and pins a block between their head and a bar above them. There is a scary moment that happens during the competition that may  expose how big of an asshole I am when it comes to these games. Lauren is still in the comp and mentions that she is getting dizzy, but stays in. She ends up saying that she can’t see anything and is about to blackout, when she suddenly drops to the ground. Jeff and medical rush to check her out. People out of the competition tell Victoria and Aurora that people are taking care of Lauren and to keep going. While Lauren is being checked out, Aurora starts talking to Victoria, trying to convince Victoria to drop so she can win immunity and feel safe after being left out of the loop last week. Julie and some of the other players are upset that Aurora is talking game while Lauren is passed out. This makes NO sense to be mad about. I’m sorry…I thought the point of coming on this game was to win a million dollars. EVERY win, regardless of what is going on, matters. What happens if Aurora drops and goes home because she was being nice and didn’t make an effort to get the win. She would have literally given up 1 million dollars for someone who ended up being fine anyway. It’s the perfect time to have this conversation because you’re down to one other person you need to convince, and maybe their emotions are high due to what happened, making them more vulnerable. WIN IMMUNITY CHALLENGES. Victoria doesn’t end up giving in, but it doesn’t matter because Victoria drops and Aurora gets the win.

After the challenge, we get back to camp and all the Kama people are talking, planning what to do for tribal council. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I can’t remember seeing people in a group pushing “get to the loved ones” this strongly, but there is Eric and Ron tossing that out over and over to try keeping Kama6 in line to go after Lesu. Again, the point of this game is to win a million dollars. I love you mom and dad, but I’d be in the game to win the money, not see you guys on an island.

For sake of the length of this post, I’m not going to go into all the politicking that happened after the Kama meeting. Many different ideas were tossed around and it wasn’t clear if and how much the plan was going to change. One particularly important exchange was Wardog making a great move by first recognizing what Eric and Ron were doing with Derek and Devens, but then relaying that to Julia so she was aware of the backup plan in their own group.

Tribal Council

It was very interesting how in private meetings last week, the group was called Kama6, but in tribal council in front of everyone, the name switched to Kama7 to include Aurora. Devens goes as public with his Kama support as Ron did exposing and bragging about the Kama allegiance last week. Devens says he was out of the Lesu allegiance when they voted him out of it and will do whatever he can to show he is loyal to Kama.

Second week writing, second blindside! Julia and the other Kama members turned the table on the “Puppet master” and his partner and voted out the partner, Eric. Watching Eric’s face as the votes were read was hilarious, as you could see him doing the math in his head and then when the number got high enough to mean his own tribe turned, you could see the shock in his eyes. We get reaction shots of others and Ron “Puppet master” looks livid and Devens looks upset since he is immediately back on the bottom after connecting himself with Ron and Eric.

I’m torn on how this has been going, with Kama members getting voted out even with the majority. I like a lot of the members of Kama more than I do old Lesu. However, I really don’t understand and have always hated the “stick with your old tribal lines” bull shit. If there is a better game move and you can build a relationship with someone, it shouldn’t matter if they were arbitrarily  placed on a different tribe at the beginning of the season as you. With these Kama’s being picked off, hopefully it will encourage more formal tribal mixing, making everything all the more interesting.