My first assumption is that I’m going blind, because it seems damned unlikely there’s no Survivor thread yet.
Good episode – I think this has the potential to be a good season. Loved the landslide vote against Candace, and loved how utterly gobsmacked she was by it. Plus it’s interesting that neither of the two people voted “out” in the first five minutes was actually voted out when the tribe made it to the first TC. Sierra I think has the potential to be a good player – getting prettyboy to do her digging for her was a good move. And good cover when they got caught digging.
The two people from opposite teams going to Exile Island was interesting – esp. since they took the oppty. to look ahead to a possible post-merge alliance.
As a wise man once said, “That’s what ballast is for.” Everybody believes that Sandy & Sierra are dead weight (in spite of any evidence, other than not being much good at the brute force challenges), and they’re comfortable in the assumption that they can vote them off any time they want to. People thought the same thing about Eliza, and she made it to the final 3(?).
A sterling testimony to the quality and strength of the modern bikini top. Dammit.
And I couldn’t believe the outright jocksniffing adoration of most of the guys.
“Wow! Your husband was a famous athlete!”
“This changes everything!”
umm, no, it doesn’t. Having the wife of a retired athlete on your team helps you about as much as collaborating with the husband of a famous author would help you write a novel. Which is to say, not.
I do love, however, that they assumed she was rich. That’s gotta count against her.
I just thought they were hoping they’d get to meet Eddie George after the season. And I feel it’s important to point out that he played for the Buckeyes.
I didn’t get the whole anti-Candace thing though. I know it’s all in the editing, but what I saw was (a) she was willing to cook the beans and rice, but not to take advice from someone who wasn’t willing to help and (b) she pointed out that Coach is pretty useless at physical challenges. And from that, she gets labeled a cancer in the group?
Boring season so far, IMHO. Having trouble finding someone to root for, but I did like the friendship between “Tom Sawyer” and “Angsty City Guy”.
I thought the firepit lie was transparent. the better move would’ve been to let their discoverer in on the secret and form a tight 3.
“Coach” is definitely a tool, and Candace’s only sin was pointing it out in front of people that told him.
Taj totally screwed up mentioning her husband. There’s always enough, “she’s rich and doesn’t need it” sentiment going around that it’s never a good idea to appear remotely rich. I had no idea who her husband was, but obviously he’s famous enough that some do. Should’ve gone the route that that former NFL player did a few seasons back and make up another job for him.
Very lame 50/50 shot at the exile clue, and a dumb clue at that.
I’ll keep watching because I always do, and maybe things will pick up, but so far, just as yawn inducing as last season, and with no Randy to spice things up.
Is the guy who went to exile island the same guy who told another survivor she could have grilled sea bass and lime for dinner? Because if so, I think he has a future in Survivor. He happily convinced everyone Taj got the HII clue and wasn’t sharing.
So Coach has been fired from his job as a women’s soccer coach at some rinky dink program. The school says he said he took a week off from work, mid-season. He says he told them he has cancer and would be away for testing for 8 weeks.
And, I don;t get some of the recent vote-off strategies, such as voting off the leader or voting off a strong player before the merge etc. Leaders and strong players make sure your team (thus you) get to the merge as intact as possible. Voting them off just means your team will go in with fewer players, thus the risk of being “Pagonged”.
God. Coach. I really don’t like that guy. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but he’s got to meet me halfway. He thinks the strong should survive, and he sucked at that challenge. What a smarmy bullshit artist. Judging from Probst’ comments linked in last week’s thread, he’ll be around for and will at least be entertaining (which is all Probst wants from a player).
OTOH, I wasn’t all that fond of Candace, either. Visually impressed, yes, but she was being a jerk as much as Coach was in that “beans & rice” clip. Coach was much much creepier, though.
From the comments you can tell he likes the guy, yet 19 times out of 20 if anybody sucked that bad at a challenge Jeff would have called him out on it. He played one round and was sucking air like he had run a marathon. Not my choice for alpha-male.
And that trying to lick Candce make up gesture. Too bad she didn’t lay him out cold.
This used to be the case, but nearly every season has a tribe shakeup now, so keeping the strongest players is no longer all that useful. Generally the most successful (for the tribe) early boots are ones like the one we just saw - get rid of a player that is causing tension at camp (whether deserved or not). The best way to survive the early votes to to “go along to get along” and not stand out in any particular way (bossy, overly strong, catty) and definitely don’t be the one person who is “targeting” anyone unless you know that every other player is doing the same thing. For example, in this episode, Candice violated at least two (and maybe three) of these rules. She wasn’t agreeable, she conflicted with a guy that is connected with most of the tribe, and she attempted to swing the vote towards someone that nobody else was talking about. If she had just kept her mouth shut she would be here and Siera would be gone.
Optimal tribe strategy would seem to be: minimize distractions and conflict, keep strong challenge players until you get to the merge, and if you do have to go to tribal on what will likely be one of the final two councils before the merge use that opportunity to blindside your strongest player (physical and/or socially).
Optimal personal strategy is even simpler. Be useful, compete your heart out in challenges, and above all be nice and as non-confrontational as possible. You can see this working well with “angsty city boy”. He worked his butt off in the challenge (making the winning shot?) and has gone out of his way to befriend someone that he could have ignored or belittled. This speaks pretty well of his chances in this game, IMO.
As far as Probst goes - yeah, he meddles way too much and his idea of a “good” survivor is not really in line with mine or with the reality of the game. Between that and the obviously heavy-handed editing that must have happened last season for Sugar to get no final votes it’s getting harder and harder to trust what we’re being shown.
Remind me. She wanted to cook the beans and rice together, right? I make beans a few times a year, but I use a crock pot. So it takes several hours to cook them. White rice takes 20 minutes. (Brown rice takes longer.)
How long does it take to cook beans on a stovetop?
Yeah, that was her plan. She was pretty wrong on this. Assuming the beans were raw and dry (pretty damn likely) then there is really no good way to cook them together and turn out decently. In her defense she seemed to realize it wouldn’t work well - I think she just wanted it to be quicker/easier.
I’m with you. Coach really is seeming like Ace 2.0. He’ll likely go just as far before someone turns on him.
Between Candace and Coach, I’d rather have Coach go, but that never seemed to be an option. I think Candace might have been able to get rid of Coach if she really pushed it. No one but Debra seemed that committed to keeping Coach.
She said in so many words, “this isn’t going to work, either the rice will be overcooked or the beans will be overcooked, or both” – and yet saw no reason to do something differently. That’s when I thought “fine, get rid of her.” You don’t waste food in this game, and you don’t go out of your way to prepare food badly.
