Predictable

Big Brother S21 E6-8

I feel like there were such high hopes for this season. Usually, we watch the pregame interviews and it seems like a bunch of turds were cast. I saw potential in almost all the houseguests, except maybe Kathryn. Here we are two weeks in and looks like we have a bunch of turds anyway. A problematic, toxic, offensive power alliance preying on the minority alliance and apparently minority people. Let’s get into this….

This week started with one of the lamest HOH competitions I can remember. They watched a “fireworks show”, which I mean a digital computer screensaver show. Then had to answer incredibly easy questions about the color patterns. You know that boring explanation you just read? That’s the feeling we all had watching it. Jack wins, wonderful.

That all wrapped up the live eviction episode. Starting the nominations episode we are shown a stupid long recap segment. By the time the recap and theme song was over we were past 5 minutes into the episode. In that same recap I heard Kathryn’s “Are you bitches conspiring against me!?” and I wanted to die.

Jackson is doing damage control with David. He knows David is a strong competitor and depending on the type of competition, has a good chance of getting back in the game. It doesn’t seem to work right off the bat, but at this point it doesn’t hurt having the conversation. Jackson goes on a PR tour and chats with Ovi. Tries patching things up in case he gets back in. Ovi seems too nice and innocent at this point and they are on good terms by the looks of it. This conversation is beneficial for us as well because we learn the Nightmare Power is not dead. It is dormant until he gets back in the house. The work by Jackson doesn’t last long as Nicole tells Ovi how Jack and Jackson were never behind him and the plan all along was to get him out.

Random little short paragraph here. David and Kathryn talk and she says how there aren’t any alliances. David gives her a hilarious “are you serious” look. He tells her there are alliances, and if she doesn’t think there are any, that means she isn’t part of a majority. She seems pretty shocked, but moves on pretty quick.

Wacktivity

*Summer camp horn plays here*

This whole comp is about matching snake colors. There are three snakes in boxes. The contestants need to look through all the released snakes around them and match the color/designs of the snakes. Jack wins seemingly gaining even more power in the week! Until we learn what the power is…Chaos Power: Until there are only 6 players left if Jack doesn’t like the people playing in the veto he can cause a redraw. Not pick who plays, but initiate another random draw. Almost a completely useless power, but good for you Aquaman.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m so sick of seeing Love Island bull shit stuff. We see it on commercials and ads constantly. What could be worse? It being in the show we are watching? Sure! Houseguests see a video of Brett, Winston, Swaggy C, and Bayleigh from Season 20 pushing the show and telling the houseguests whoever wins Veto gets a trip to Fiji. Thanks guys, bye!

To go along with the Love Island stuff, we get a Holly and Jackson showmance package. Which ends with Kathryn popping up and scaring the two of them while they are cuddling in the hammock and she awkwardly joins them. Kathryn is becoming an enigma to me. I don’t think shes playing the game, but she’s pretty funny. Safe to say Jackson is tired of her though and is considering pushing Jack to put her up to get her out of the house.

CREATION OF A NEW ALLIANCE: Black Widows. Jessica, Nicole, Bella, Kemi create an all women’s alliance. We know how well women’s alliances happen in the past. This might be a record for how fast one falls apart though. Bella goes right to Jack and tells him about he Black WIdows alliance. Bella says in a confessional if the Black Widows had a number she’d stay with them, but they don’t. “Floaters grab a life vest”.

Nominations

With the info of the Black Widows alliance it validates Jack’s already problematic plan of targeting Jessica and Kemi. Jack was able to use in his nomination speech that he was going after the Black Widows alliance that would be going after him. In the DR Jessica is rightfully pissed because she doesn’t know who she can talk to and trust. Kemi says he is an idiot and should have backdoored him because she thrives under pressure. Jack later on says how he didn’t want to risk backdooring her with Camp Comeback in play.

Now we are to the veto episode of the week. Bella tells Nicole she told Jack about the Black Widows. Says it was best for her game. Nicole is pretty shocked. Bella seems to tell everyone everything. She is truly a wildcard. She says in the DR how she wants to be in an alliance with everyone but she can’t keep her mouth shut.

David has only been in the house a few days now, and he already has the whole house figured out. In the DR he tells us how he knows Jack and Jackson are the big 2. Holly and Analyse are with them and he knows Christie and Nick are with them. Tommy is a likable guy who no one would put on the block. Nick and Bella are close so she is safe there. Cliff, Kemi, Jessica have no idea what is going on and Sam is a wild card, not part of an alliance.

Jessica and Jackson have a talk. She tells Jackson she didn’t create an all women’s alliance. She tells him that she didn’t even know about an all women’s alliance. Sometimes this move can come off as desperate and not believable. I actually think she did a good job selling it. I don’t think it matters in the long run but it was good hustle on her part.

Veto Competition

Players in the veto are Jack, Kemi, Jessica, Bella, Jackson, Sam. Jackson was a houseguest choice by Jessica. Just for the record that wasn’t a typo. Jessica picked Jackson. Jessica who could have picked Nicole who she has a relationship with, chose the guy who is BFF’s with the HOH who nominated her.

Tyler, season 20 runner up hosts this comp. The houseguests pull the plug on a “Aqua Clock”. They can fill up a container and if all the water runs out their time is out. While this is draining they need to take foam frogs to the other side of the course and stack them on their side. Whoever has the most frogs on their stand when the timer runs out wins.

Sam is the first to let his clock run out when he stacks 18. He knew stacking more would risk it falling. Great move by him, except winning the first 2 vetoes and appearing as a comp beast in week 2 isn’t a smart look. It’s guaranteeing a backdoor down the line. Jessica lets her clock run out at 13 and Kemi’s falls right before time is out at 4. I can’t fathom this. There is no set time on this competition. Only when you let it run out. If you know you aren’t winning, why would you not run back and put more water in your container to extend your time until you find a way to win. It’s the equivalent of giving up to me.

As usual after Sam wins he becomes Mr. Popular in the house. Kathryn is afraid if he uses the veto she will go up, so she talks to him about it. Jessica talks to him trying to get him to use it. An amazing moment happens when Nicole walks in on the conversation and they trail off awkwardly. She stands there sipping her drink when it hits her that they are talking veto and she apologizes a ton and leaves. The idea that Nicole is a very plausible replacement nominee is the extra fun in this. We round this out with Kemi talking to Sam about veto. Kemi makes a good argument that Jessica really is all in on the Black Widows and would put up 2 men everytime she is in power, where she would work in the game and promises not to nominate him. Sam says if he used the veto it would 110% be on her.

Big Brother goes a little off script here. Sadly, Sam’s grandfather passed away while he is in the house. They were close and production wanted to tell him. On a human level I have no issue with him being informed of this. It also created some heartwarming moments where the house rallied around him in support. I do think it would be a mistake to say this info didn’t effect the game. There is no way to tell for certain, but Sam seemed to consider using the veto on Kemi which would have kept a strong competitor in the game. However, the news of his grandfather passing reminded him why he is in the house, for his family, so he didn’t want to rock the boat and kept noms the same.

Eviction Episode

CREATION OF A NEW ALLIANCE: Fellowship of the Zing! So this is a partial alliance. Its Cliff, Nicole, and Ovi. The strength of this alliance hinges on Ovi getting back in the game. If he doesn’t make it out of Camp Comeback this is nothing.

More showmances are developing. Nick and Bella have been simmering for a bit so that wasn’t surprising. The other is Jack and Analyses. By the way, Analyses goes by “Sis” which I’m not cool with, so Anal Lice will stay as Analyse on my blog. Jack calls Analyse “Exotic” which I feel like has to be a little shade by production to include in this. Don’t use “Exotic” as a compliment, it’s outdated and problematic. Just goes in line with his already shown race issues.

Every morning sweet, fun, super-fan Cliff gets up before everyone else and does his “Cliff-Notes” talking to the cameras. He addresses his family, friends, fans about what is going on in the game. Talks about everything on his mind. The only issue with this is that he doesn’t appear to talk quietly, assuming everyone is still asleep. It didn’t take long for someone to catch him. Christie gets up one morning and walks by and hears him talking. As he is explaining Fellowship of the Zing, and the majority power alliance putting her and Tommy as a 4th couple. Essentially the worst timing possible for someone to overhear. Instead of using this revelation to her advantage and listening to future conversations, she goes right to Tommy, Jackson, Holly and freaks out about it and everyone finds out. Her loss for losing the well of information. Only a matter of time until it gets to other people not in Gr8ful.

Kemi knows she has a good chance of being voted out this week. She isn’t going out with a fight. She brilliantly, in my opinion, tells Jackson that Bella created the Black Widows and blamed it on the other girls. Jackson tells Jack about this, as well as the whole Cliff-Notes thing. News is spreading like wildfire at this point in the game.

Lets jump back over to Bella partaking in her favorite past time, telling people secrets! She tells Sam about the 8 alliance and he is on the outside at 9. Says sooner or later he is going to find out, might as well be from him. Sam seems mad about this. I get the initial anger, but if I was in the house I would LOVE to be the 9 in an 8 person alliance. There is no way the 8 will stay strong to 8. At 9 you become a chip that the fractured sides will be fighting over. Being fought over is one of the best places to be.

Not only does Bella blow up Gr8ful to Sam, but Jack fucks up too. They are talking in the pantry and Sam is pitching an idea of flipping the vote away from Kemi to Jess (if only he had won the Veto and would have been able to protect Kemi!). Jack says he is “good with whatever is best for Gr8ful..I mean…whatever is best for the 9 of us”. I’m warming up to Sam and I hope he can do some damage some day this summer.

Eviction

The ladies give their speeches. Jessica has a speech of rambling nothingness that I can’t believe didn’t get cut off sooner. Kemi went and blew up Nick and Bella’s spot. It was wonderful. They were pissed off and made it real easy to vote her out.

Kemi is voted out 10-1. Jackson threw out a rogue vote to keep Kemi. I have to say, with Camp Comeback being in play, the “goodbyes” after an eviction are quite awkward.

There you have it, folks! Week 2 in the books and evil still reigns. Jack was able to finish what he wanted to do with Christies HOH. There was a lot of information exchanged, but it was a pretty predictable week which makes it boring. I for one can’t wait to see the chaos that will happen when the 8 blows up. Kemi obviously put in a lot of work to put Bella and possibly Nick on the outs with putting Black Widows on her, and calling them out in the farewell speech. We need to hope the 8 crack sooner rather than later because this could potentially stay boring at this pace for a few more weeks. That’s all for this week!….Bye!

No Nightmares

Big Brother S21 E3-5

This post is so late…I’m finally going to churn it out, and stay more on top of things for this current weeks post! We have the first full week in the books, yet still have the same amount of people in the house, because…twist! Hookups, emotional breakdowns, no fights…let’s get into it!

The nomination episode is made up of a bunch of pieces falling into place. Mostly establishing the major alliance in the house. Previously we had the majority group at 6 with Jack, Jackson, Nick, Christie, Bella, Holly. Jack and Nick are hanging out and decide to expand to a group of 8. This is always a great idea and never goes poorly…The more people you have in an alliance, the more likely it’s going to fall apart. I was surprised Level 6 went so well last season, since 6 can even be too high of a number. Jack and Nick decide on Tommy and Analyse, both of which are ecstatic to join. They all decide on the name Gr8ful, which I’m not a fan of, but whatever.

At this point there is no clear target, essentially anyone not in Gr8ful. Kathryn, Analyse, Kemi, and Bella are all talking about how well they know the HOH Christie. Kathyrn is trashing Jack and Jackson saying how she can easily manipulate him since they have a relationship. Wort noting…Jackson and Kathryn had a prefeeds hookup. It had already ended by the time feeds started. They show us a package in the next episode of them being flirty but in the Diary Room (DR) that they aren’t in a showmance. Producers cut between them denying it, but still hooking up a few times for a humorous segment. Anyway, Bella immidly tells Christie, Jack, and Jackson what Kathryn is saying which inflates her target significantly.

Later on when Christie is planning out her nominations she pulls Cliff aside. She asks if she can put him up as a pawn. Of course “Pawns go home” but when someone asks if you want to be a pawn, you can’t really say no. After this we see Christie pull Kathryn aside telling her that if she is nominated it’s as a pawn because Cliff is an easy target. I really like this tactic especially early on when the people you are nominating aren’t really talking game to each other. This way regardless of which person survives the block, you can sell you were backing them.

It doesn’t take long for us to see our first slip up! When you’re talking game, just make sure the room is empty or talk later. Pre-noms there is nothing that is so important you need to risk talking in front of people not in your group. Tommy, Nick, Jack are cuddling on a bed talking about the group of 8…while Ovi and Cliff are laying in the room. Cliff is completely passed out so no risk there, but Ovi was awake and heard the mention of 8, and since he wasn’t in a plan with anyone, knew he was in the minority now.

I love Ovi, he seems like a great guy, and he’s clearly a Big Brother fan. He handles this knowledge of the 8 group SO badly its painful. He needed to sit with the information and observe, try to see who the 8 were so he knew who it was safe to speak with. Instead, he speaks to Analyse right away, and shortly after talks to Christie, Bella, Jack, and Jackson telling them all about the 8. Statistically, with 15 people in the house there is no way the 5 of them, and himself are all not part of this majority alliance. He let 5 of 8 members of Gr8ful he was onto them. Hello target. Oh…also we have the creation of the Fab 5 with Ovi, Jack, Jackson, Christie, Bella. Clearly a fake alliance to keep Ovi calm.

Wacktivity Competition

At some point throughout the week all the houseguests had to sign up for different “Wacktivity Competitions” without knowing what they were. The categories were Nightmare, Panic, Chaos. Each has 5 people and takes place over the first 3 weeks and the winner gets a special power.

A horn goes off to announce it is time to play the Wacktivity competitions. The first one is Nightmare that has Cliff, Bella, Ovi, Kathryn, Nicole. Each houseguest is in a little shack that looks like a cabin with 3 buckets in front of them. Each bucket has an awful smell. There are signs on the side of the cabin. They need to run out, smell different stations and match the smells There were 3 rounds. No one got all of them right until Ovi gets the W in round 3. He is pumped but knows he can’t react and needs to keep the power a secret.

Ovi is awarded the “Nightmare Power”. It’s one of the more powerful powers in all of Big Brother in my opinion. After the nomination ceremony, Ovi can use this power to wake up the whole house in the middle of the night and force the HOH to nominate two new people. The previous nominees are safe for the entire week, including from being renominated after veto.

At the end of the episode Kathryn and Cliff are nominated. No shockers there. Kathryn is pissed off at being used as a pawn (even though she’s the target at this point). She says “I don’t have the personality of a pawn, I have the personality of running this shit!” Which I don’t really know what that means, but alright!

Kemi and Bella are shown having a pretty close relationship. They spend a lot of time together and are really connecting over making great jokes at other houseguests expense. This connection is making some of the members of Gr8ful nervous that she is the weak link. Christie tries getting the group together to touch base and realized its nearly impossible to get an alliance of 8 together in secret (no shit).

It is decided that if veto is used, Kemi would be the backup nomination. It would cut that tie with Bella, also Kemi is throwing out a lot of peoples name acting like she’s running the game. We were shown a scene where Kemi is talking to Christie and Jack throwing out Ovi’s name as a nomination. Christie and Jack are pissed off about her name dropping people. The anger does seem a little extreme until you take into account Kemi was throwing Jack and Jacksons name out as nominees and it got back to them. They didn’t show that in the show though.

Veto

Players for this week’s Veto comp are Christie, Cliff, Kathryn, Sam, Jack, and Nicole. We have ourselves a guest host! Season 20 winner Kaycee! The house flips out. I was looking forward to making it through this season without hearing “lets go!” as a catchphrase. No such luck.

The competition is similar to the space invasion veto comp that Kaycee dominated last season. The houseguests need to catch things flying at them that’s mixed in with messy sludge and paint. Its pretty difficult and just an excuse for them to look stupid. No one did great at it this season. Jack asked Kaycee how did she get 37 points last year!? It helps being a professional football player. Sam ends up beating Jack by 1 point. It doesn’t really make sense for Sam to win this, but hey, it gets him involved in the game and he seems excited so why not?

It is pretty expected by everyone that Sam is going to use veto on Cliff. So Gr8ful plans on putting up Kemi and backdooring her. Jack comes up with a pecking order of Kemi, Jessica, then Ovi. Christie doesn’t understand Ovi before Sam. Jack made a really bad situation for himself here. It looks really bad that his biggest targets are all the people of color in the house (aside from Bella in his alliance). It might not be his point…but it still looks really bad.

Nick and Bella are cuddling (budding showmance) and Bella tells him that she doesn’t want Kemi gone yet. Nick says he will talk to Christie. Christie doesn’t want to get rid of Kemi either, that’s Jacks plan and this is her HOH. You mean there are already rifts in an 8 person alliance!? What!? Christie talks to Jack and says she isn’t putting Kemi up. Jack turns into a huge ass hole saying over and over again “The plan stays!” Like Christie isn’t her own person in charge of her own HOH.

Christie really comes unhinged the rest of the veto episode. Very emotional about being pressured to backdoor Kemi which she really doesn’t want to do. She seems to be turning on Jack really hard, getting to the point of threatening to nominate Jack in the DR. She really hopes that Sam doesn’t use the veto. She pulls him aside seeing if he will not use the Veto. He says he is going to, as Cliff has been through enough. They are trying to think of a replacement and poor Ovi comes up to tell them dinner is ready…looks like wrong place wrong time for him.

For some reason, Sam agrees to an awful plan of letting it look like he blindsided the HOH and going against her when he uses his Veto on Cliff. It only makes him look bad, and her a victim. Either way, Sam uses it on Cliff, and the replacement is Ovi. He is really hurt because he thought the Fab Five alliance with her was strong, so it was a blindside for him.

The target appears to have fully shifted from Kathryn to Ovi now. She is still using the tactic of telling the other they are a pawn, just like she did with Cliff. Poor Ovi is very emotional and scared over the nomination. Jack and Christie are consoling him but still heartbroken.

Kathryn did her damndest to try getting herself sent home. She was driving everyone in the house crazy. She went full paranoia and came up with a catchphrase “Are you Bitches conspiring against me!?”. There was a horrible montage shown where she just kept saying it over and over. It would have been tempting to vote her out just to not deal with that anymore. You know as soon as she is home she’s turning those into shirts and hats to sell in her 15 minutes of fame.

Ovi throws a hail mary. He sits Jack and Jackson down telling them about the Nightmare Power. I understand the desperation, but I still don’t like it. He is telling two very strong competitors who get to play for HOH next week that he has the ability to change their nominations. Ovi offers it for their use and protection to stay, but thats trusting someone. There would be a lot of incentive to just boot Ovi so the power is gone and can’t mess with their game. For what it’s worth, Jackson does consider flipping, Jack wants to stick with the plan though.

Eviction

Ovi did a great deal of campaigning when he was put up, and did almost everything he could to sway people. However, it wasn’t enough as he was voted out unanimously at 12-0. Its a shame he wasn’t able to use his Nightmare Power. That would have really shaken things up in the house. Everyone is saying goodbye as he is about to go to the door when the horn for the Wacktivity comp goes off. Everyone sits back down and we are introduced to “Camp Comeback”

The evicted houseguests don’t leave the house. They continue to live with the rest of the house and after 4 people, 1 gets back in the game. Camp Comeback members don’t participate in house comps, or ceremonies, but play the social game. Julie tells Ovi “but you won’t be alone…” then the door bursts open and David comes running in and everyone starts freaking out!

We are basically dealing with Edge of Extinction again from Survivor this season. I really like it so we can see more of David and Ovi. It does make the show a bit messy as we aren’t losing people so the screen time is still pretty spread out, but only a couple more weeks and we will likely be back to normal, but who knows!

I’m going to segment these from HOH to eviction. So even though the HOH comp is in this same episode that Ovi was voted out, I’m going to go ahead and save it for the next post. Again everyone, I’m sorry for the late post, I’ll try staying more diligent on it for the coming weeks! I’m gonna go now…..bye!

We are Back!

Big Brother S21E1&2

Many people look forward to summer for all of the outdoor activities and great weather. I however, love summer because that means it is time for my favorite TV show! BIG BROTHER IS BACK! I can’t wait to start writing about this season and talking about all the craziness happening in the house.

My plan is to write one post per Head of Household cycle (HOH, Nominations, Veto, Elimination). I don’t want to write about each episode individually. If I was posting that much, I’m sure I’d have no followers. Also, I should mention, I don’t watch feeds. I listen to podcasts and read the posts about what happened in the feeds so I’m generally caught up. I can’t watch the feeds because I enjoy having a girlfriend, friends, and a job. WIth my obsessed I get with TV, watching the feeds, I would neglect a lot of other parts of my life.

Episode 1

This post is just going to be about the first couple episodes since the first HOH cycle hasn’t been shown yet. Full disclosure, I did not take notes on the first episode since I watched it at a friends place and I haven’t gotten around to rewatching. The first episodes are usually pretty lackluster anyway. We had a pretty quick intro package for everyone thankfully, I’m not really here for the fake “finding their key!” that they film every year. I don’t think we learned a lot more than we could have found out in Jeff or Ika interviews.

We are shown everyone introducing themselves blah blah blah. Shortly after this, Julie gets the game started by announcing the role of Camp Director! The whole theme of the house this season is camping, and the house is decorated with that theme in mind and it looks really nice! Anyway, Camp Director, is position where the rest of the house votes someone into this position and they get unprecedented power in the game, the only one known to the houseguests at this point is they are immune for the first week. It doesn’t appear to be a clear front runner at this point until the idea is thrown out for people who want to volunteer.

We get 4 volunteers for Camp Director. Jackson, David, Cliff, Jessica. David fizzles out pretty quick, same with Cliff. Or I should say, we don’t see much of their campaigning. The episode mostly focuses on Jackson and Jessica campaigning. It appears that there will be a girl alliance putting Jessica in power, but that quickly fades and Jackson is ultimately the winner. The winner is revealed in a fun, messy way… everyone who didn’t win gets blasted with different color paints. Jackson is the winner, and Jessica is pissed.

Julie reveals the powers of the Camp Director, which is Jackson needs to pick 4 players to banish from the game, where 3 will come back in and one will be eliminated. Julie keeps saying throughout all of this that the 4 banished houseguests are “out of the game”. This doesn’t really make sense, because they aren’t out of the game, just in a different part of the game. I guess it just sounds more dramatic to say “out of the game”.

That was all in the first episode where I’m going off memory, sorry if it feels like I mailed it in a bit. The rest will be more detailed!

Episode 2

A majority of this episode was dedicated to people campaigning to Jackson to not be banished. Everyone except Kemi, who said she didn’t want to suck up to him, always a smart route to take…

We see the creation of our first alliance! Jack, Jackson, and Bella. This is the start of a snowballing huge alliance that we will touch on later. In this meeting Jack pitches the idea of putting up the other people who volunteered to be Camp Director (Cliff, Jessica, David). I thought this was a pretty good idea. It’s a good way to excuse why you are calling people out right off the bat.

Jackson has to go upstairs into the room they have been using as the “twist room” like the trending power twist from last season. He selects 4 people to be banished. Cliff, Jessica, David, and Kemi. Only 3 people, other than Jackson, had volunteered to be Camp Director. Kemi’s brilliant decision to not even talk to Jackson is what got her banished. The people who were banished were “taken” by a person in a creepy squirrel mascot. It was hilarious seeing everyone run away from the mascot as it carried a person sized bag around and put it over the banished peoples heads. Then made a quick cut to the squirrel carrying them out in the bag. It lowkey fooled me if the squirrel was really carrying the people out…it wasn’t.

The banished people are in a pitch black wilderness setting. They need to feel their way around a course to find the right hole to get back into the Big Brother house. If they go in the wrong hole they have to go through whatever that room is to get back to the main room and keep searching. The first wrong room we see is “Camp Bee Bee”. Jessica and David go in there and wade through sticky honey and fall into a pile of feathers, it was a pretty good sight. The next room is “Camp B-Ball” where Cliff enters and is pelted with basketballs and an air horn goes off in his face, poor dude.

Cliff is our first houseguest back from banishment! Some retribution for poor Glenn in BB19 for the older guys.

Kemi goes into “Camp Boo” and that is all terrifying clowns and a whole lotta Nope from me. She gets out of there quickly and she is the next to reenter the game! Jessica goes into “Camp B&B” which is all sticky syrup and pancake obstacles. Right after that room she also re enters the game! That is all of the returned houseguests and poor David is eliminated. Julie tells him that he is out of the game….for now. Leaving us all hanging.

WE didn’t really get to know David at all, he seemed kind of emotionless for the most part but he did show us emotion in the diary room. He was upset and said he wanted to be the first black winner of Big Brother. Apparently forgetting Tamar Braxton, though she did win Celebrity Big Brother, not Big Brother proper. These first night eliminations are so fucking stupid. Nobody wants them. They aren’t fun or interesting. Let the players play the game! Regardless of recruit or not, these people up-end their lives to come do this and they don’t even get a real fighting chance.

Everyone celebrates the returnees. Jackson immediately starts trying some damage control apologize to Jessica and hugging her. We get a couple quick conversations. One between Tommy and Christie where they acknowledge how they know each other. Also the previously mentioned alliance of Jackson, Jack, Bella gets a little bigger. It grows to include Nick, Christie, and Holly. More to come on that later still…

Head of Household Competition

For the HOH comp everyone is in pairs hanging on a log that’s lifted off the ground. Last person hanging wins. As Jackson’s last act as Camp Director he has to pick the pairs sharing the log. It really ended up being of no consequence since it was still an individual HOH comp.

The competition steps up a notch after everyone is hanging for a bit. Paint starts pouring on them making holding on even harder and vision is all messed up. Overall it was a pretty enjoyable endurance comp and the winner is Christie! It really worked out well that Jack, Jackson, and Bella included Christie in their growing alliance so they all could feel safe this week.

The first 2 episodes overall weren’t that fantastic in my opinion. It would have been better if it was a 2 hour episode on one night and we could get into it. Instead dragged out over 2 nights had a lot of unnecessary stuff. I’m still ecstatic we are back and looking forward to a great summer of Big Brother!…Bye!

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!

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!

“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.

This Might Be One of Them!…But probably not.

Survivor S38E6

After I wrote my intro last week I was excited for a new episode to air. The episode opened with an overhead shot of the challenge grounds and no “previously on,” so I knew something big had to be happening. I was a little surprised by how quickly they yada yada’d through the tribe merge that finally would give the poor old Lesu tribe members a fighting chance. Little did I know that we were about to witness THE MOST ICONIC REALITY COMP MOMENT OF THE DECADE!

Jeff begins explaining to the newly formed Vata tribe that certain moments in Survivor become iconic. Some take years (still trying to think of an example of this…let me know if you have any…) and some become iconic the moment they happen. Now while this shpeal is going on I’m thinking to myself, “HOW PERFECT IS THIS!?” considering I had just talked about how much I love iconic moments. Then Jeff is throwing this soft ball right over the plate ready for me to knock it out of the park.

This moment, however, fell flat after Jeff had just tried hyping it up. Jeff gives a shout to “come on out!” and all the previously eliminated Survivors come marching out of the woods.What we got was a Big Brother Buyback that we have been seeing for years. The eliminated players are going to get a chance to compete against one another to get back into the game. Now, the competition itself was a pretty good one : lots of different old comps put together, ending in a really neat curved dragon vertical ball maze. The challenge was pretty close between Chris, Devens, and Wendy. I was hoping it wouldn’t be Wendy, because I still can’t get over the ridiculous hypocritical sudden vegetarianism. Both Chris and Wendy almost pulled it out, but much to my excitement my guy Devens pulled out the W!

Jeff gets a little savage at this moment and went through the rest of the Edge of Extinction (EoE) tribe, giving each of them their big moment to say why Survivor is important to them. It absolutely felt like he was going to send all of them home with a big thanks for playing. Suddenly, BAM, he reveals they get to go back to EoE and everyone goes nuts screaming. Keith’s reaction of dropping to the ground is especially humorous coming up later in the episode, where he and Wendy almost immediately raise the white flag and leave the game. Wendy wasn’t particularly enthused when she was given the news, which is highlighted by standing next to Audrey who looked like she was ready to go through a fucking wall to get back in the game.

The most exciting part of this merge was that we are bound to FINALLY get some screentime with other contestants who we know almost nothing about. The new tribe is all getting to know each other when we get the first glimpse of Kelley’s concern that Devens is back. Which doesn’t really make sense since he was the only person who left Lesu on good terms. Almost everyone back on extinction hates her and would be gunning for her, so Devens was best case scenario for her. From here, we get to see some other “new” faces. Julie is making strong connections with Devens, which he desperately needs with the returning member target on this back. During this, she says in a confessional about there being no way she would want to send him back to EoE.

Now it’s the time for the politicking and getting votes, one of the best parts of a Survivor episode. This is the real game time: making deals, and getting your hands dirty. The first we see is Kelley working on Joe and the old Kama (majority alliance) to go after Devens. Merge episodes are a bit chaotic with the politics. Everyone is sending out feelers and the editing is jumpy, trying to fit it all in. We immediately follow up Kelley and Joe’s talk with an All Girls meeting. The connection Devens made with Julie is almost instantly paying dividends when Kelley and Lauren are pitching him as an easy vote for the merge, which Julie is not on board with whatsoever and eventually makes moves to derail this.

Devens gets a little help though when he is going through his bag and finds a secret advantage. It’s an immunity idol, but with a twist! He needs to give half of it to someone else, and survive this elimination, then if he does, the two halves will become one idol which can be used after this week. He of course gives the other half to his closest ally, David.

Immunity challenge time. I won’t go on too much about this one, partially for length of this unnecessarily long post, but also because nothing wild happens. It’s an endurance comp where they have to balance a statue on a pole while standing on a balance beam. People start dropping fairly quickly and we get down to Julie, Joe, and Lauren. Surprising I think everyone, Julie pulls out the win!

The politicking takes a turn after the immunity challenge when Julie lets Victoria know she wants to go after Kelley and get one of the returnees out. Julie also exposes everyone else’s idea to Devens: they want to go after him, but she isn’t going to let that happen. Basically everything is blowing up.

A majority of the group decides to try to capture the chickens that Wendy released. Joe, of course, couldn’t be bothered to do anything, so he was staying back working on the damn flag instead of being in strategic conversation. Ron asked him what the plan was and Joe decided to be vague and dismissive. No matter what, when someone asks you about a plan, if you don’t have some sort of confident answer, you’re immediately making them nervous and they are going to put a target on your back. Ron realizes that Joe is valuable since he is known to win many comps, so he brings the idea to go after him to one of my budding favorites, Victoria. Victoria brings the Joe idea to the Kama6 and everything still seems up in the air.

Tribal council was a bit aggressive this week. Ron was incredibly open about the Kama6 alliance, rubbing it in the face of the other tribe members that they have a majority. It was not tactful. Victoria makes a vague comment about going after a bigger target than Devens, and Captain Jack Sparrow…er…Joe, took immediate offense. Victoria tried to talk her way out of it, but the cards had already been shown. The votes seem scattershot as they are being read between Devens, Kelley, and David. Then the turn happens and Joe is given the boot! All the Kama6 members have big smiles on their faces while everyone else, including the EoE members who are sitting in the jury spot, are completely stunned. The funniest reaction is Reem over on the jury saying, “Lame”. Could be because she hates Kelley so much, she wanted her gone over everyone, or now she knows she needs to compete against Joey Amazing to get back in the show. Joe is quite angry about being voted out and makes the easy choice to go to EoE.

There has been a lot of criticism of voting out Joe and giving him a chance to come back into the game. I disagree with this. Yes, I’m aware it is highly unlikely that Joe wins every immunity from here on out. However, the longer he is in the game, the more chances he has to make a “Meat Shield” alliance with others. We saw it last season where Nick made it to a point where he could win multiple immunities back to back and he was nowhere near the comp beast that Joe is. It is a much safer idea to get him out now and risk only a chance that he can win his way back in.