“Survivor” - Love is in the Air
The good thing about Survivor is that just when you begin to get bored with how the season is playing out, they change it up on you. Now this episodes turnabout was no surprise, they gave it all away in the previews. But it’s still nice to know that even a season that was turning out to be semi-predictable could still become exciting again. More after the jump…
The show starts out with the Jaime and Erik in the Garden of Eden. It’s sweet and adorable, almost a bit too PG (not as in Peih-Gee, mind you). It fits in with the fact that now that Dave is gone, their team is almost too likable (and overly dimpled, might I add). A note comes to both camps, informing them that they will be able to pick two members of the opposing side to be their new tribemates. Fei Long knows right off the bat that the Zhan Hu is going to capture James (their alpha male) and Aaron (their leader). At Zhan Hu, the group isn’t smart enough to realize that both teams will be taking on two new members. They giggle as they think of how advantaged they will be when they kidnap Aaron and James and become a team of 7, instead of 5. Not so fast brainiacs, as the boat pulls up to “drop off their new members”, they find that the natives have actually come to pick up Sherea and Frosti to take them to Fei Long. Bummer dudes!
Jean-Robert is in a bind. He sucks as a human being, and now he just lost the only alliance that he had really made in James. He’s working his butt off . . . or really just waking up early to boil rice before he has the chance to tell everyone else what to do. J-R is supposed to be the smartest man on earth (at least according to his resume), but apparently he never learned the art of human interaction. The group is not ready to embrace him as their new leader. This makes new Fei Long tribemember’s Frosti and Sherea very happy as they see a target flashing bright-as-day on the back of J-R.
Cut to the immunity challenge, where each team needs to release a group of underwater puzzle pieces and then fit them into the right places on a board. It’s neck and neck as Erik and Aaron for Zhan Hu and Jean-Robert and Frosti for Fei Long dive underwater to grab all 12 of the pieces. Erik and Aaron pull out a head a bit and make it back to the mat before the other team. This is where the game gets interesting, no hilarious, as Jaime and Peih Gee have already decided to throw the challenge to save one of their kidnapped former tribemates from getting their torch snuffed. As James hands the pieces to the girls, Jaime throws one of them off into the grass. James tries so hard to get the pieces in place, but Peh-Gee and Jaime just loll about, trying not to smile as Probst points out that they are supposedly good at puzzles. “I’m good at Su Doku”, says Peih Gee, with a sudden ditziness to her voice. Fei Long runs away with this one. James is pissed!
Back at camp, Erik is suprised to find out the ladies of his alliance didn’t even try to win the challenge. He’s shocked that anyone would willingly lose, but tribal (and hormonal) concerns keep him faithful to the original Zhan Hu.
So now the question is, who goes first? Do they pick the stronger James, or the craftier Aaron? James makes it quite obvious that after their performance in the last challenge, he is not interested in being a member of this tribe. He flat out states that he is ready to go home. So going into tribal council, Aaron is fairly confident that he is going to be around for at least another week.
Not so much . . .
Aaron . . . wipes out! The vote is 3- 1(James) - 1 (Peih Gee).
Questions for the week-
- Could the (seemingly) smart move of throwing the challenge, be a major turning point for the game?
- Will the producers change the game around so that throwing the challenge was a bad move (as Probst seemed to foreshadow, they really hate it when people give up/lose on purpose)?
- Will they vote Jean-Robert off the first chance they get, or was this pre-merge change up J-R’s best hope to make it to the merge?
- Doesn’t it seem that the previews are giving away way more plot information then they have in past seasons? What’s up with that?
Thoughts for the week-
- This was a mighty nice change around, and I think it will make things alot more interesting (and even) as they go into the merge. Since I think that this is probably one of the strongest strategical groups of Survivor history (they have all done their homework), a 5-5 merge could be pure craziness.
- I think this was a either a really good, or a really bad week for the Todd-Amanda alliance. I think that Aaron was a dangerous person to get into an alliance with. Although obviously they don’t want to go into the merge with J-R as part of their alliance (even though he would be a great person to take to the final
three, I would not trust him for a second). - Once again, how stupid was Zhan Hu to not even think that they were doing a swap? That was the first hint that they weren’t very good at puzzles.
