Survivor: Gabon - Ep. 1 (9/25/08): "Want To See The Elephant Dung?" [SPOILERS LIKELY]

Cafe Society
1

So … now is the time on “Sprockets” when we dance. No, wait … now is the time in the sort-of-weekly-ish “Survivor” thread where I post spoiler boxes and links to what TV Guide and Yahoo! TV have to say about tonight’s episode and stuff, but … ok, is it just me, or did the Internet go butternuts crazy when I wasn’t paying attention? I … can’t work anything. Can’t find any episode descriptions, even on CBS.com, even though there is a metric ton of “Survivor”-related content on the network’s official website. Just nothing about tonight’s premiere. Weird.

Anyway, here is what we know so far:
[ul][li]18 contestants – 9 male and 9 female[/li][li]Range of occupations and backgrounds including “professional gamer,” “pin-up model,” and grumpy old man[/li][li]Two-hour season premiere, and entire season is in HD[/li][li]Someone will be eliminated tonight[/li][/ul]
No editorial comments from me yet, since I have not taken the time to form an opinion on anyone yet. (I know, I am a complete and total slackass. I’m sorry, really I am.) Also, I put “spoilers likely” in the subject line even though I, personally, did not include any. I am assuming that the standard “please-use-spoiler-boxes-until-it-has-aired-in-every-time-zone” rules apply.

2

Would you like to touch my monkey?

Anyway…I really haven’t looked the new survivors over too closely yet, but the superficial skimming I did of the official website indicates to me that we have the usual mix of mostly douches and a couple of cool people, with a few possible certifiable nuts in the meuslix, so to speak. I think the actress/pinup girl is a flake, the British “genius” is an asshole, and the gay lawyer is kind of cute.

Is it really two hours tonight? shudder I love Survivor, but the thought of two consecutive hours of television viewing makes me itch. It’s bad enough I’m forced to do that for the finale (the farthest into the reunion show I’ll go after a previous two consecutive hours of Survivor is the three minutes it takes them to announce the winner).

3

I hear you. Recording it and using Mr. Fast Forward as my friend is the way I generally do this show lately. Particulary towards the end when my favorites are gone I’m all: FF to end of first challenge, FF to end of second challenge, FF to final vote. There, that took ten minutes. :slight_smile:

4

I’ve never watched Survivor but I’m at least going to be exposed to it this season. Marcus is the son of my teenage daughter’s favorite teacher. Hmmm…good looking guy.

5

Why, yes. Yes I would. Tee hee.

Heh. This is why I love you.

For a while I did this also, but I am trying to watch “live” as much as possible this season. Mostly what I have been doing is having the TV on in the background while I do other stuff, like play WoW or something.

He is a hottie. I am afraid he is the one who has been acting like a tool in some of the commercials I’ve seen … but then again, editing can always be deceptive. So if he turns out that he is not actively jerkassish, I will adopt him as my very own. However, that almost guarantees that he will finish no better than third.

6

Hey, I’m just in it for the elephant dung. If he does act like a tool, I get to embarrass my kid about it. Win/win! :stuck_out_tongue:

7

This is off-topic, kinda, but…

Oh, rockle…I have six magic words for you…

Countdown to Phil in T-3 days
I am actually more excited about that than about Survivor. But shhhhh…don’t tell anybody…

8

Ooh, yeah. i don’t participate in the threads too much, but I watch my Phil of that one.

9

I KNOW. But it’s too early to start that thread, isn’t it?

10

w00t! rockle returns to the Survivor threads!

On spoilers, there does seem to be a relatively tight lockdown this season… it’s the first that I recall not being able to find out the tribe names, which I like to have by now for my office pool duties. (I’ve drawn Bob, the 58-year-old physics teacher on the, uh… “Yellow” Tribe. You go, Bob! I need the $90.00.)

11

Well…YEAH! That’s why I only posted that as a teaser in THIS one.

Sheesh!

:wink:

12

I’ll be watching with my little Cupcake this evening. The way I see it, this is “educational” television, insofar as it represents “nature programming” as well as “sociological experimentation.” Why, yes, I do want my child to grow up to be just like me. Why do you ask?

13

Okay, that was good! I’m really liking the venue this time. Elephants! Hippos! Big red piggies! Funny-looking cows! Crocogators! MONKEYS!

Poor Ken…Nerdy-nerd’s got his dream girl right there, she’s actually paying a LOT of attention to him, and of course they vote her out.

Randy reminds me of my aunt’s husband. In looks and somewhat in personality…that snarky curmudgeon thing.

Bill Nye has really aged since his show ended, hasn’t he?

Gay lawyer is kinda hot…I was worried for a little bit there at TC. Eye candy remains! Yay!

Oh, Charlie. Poor, poor Charlie. I, as a fellow fegelah, recognize what you’re going through. We’ve ALL had straight-boy crushes. I know that feeling like your stomach’s going to turn inside out every time you look at him, especially in a venue where he’s only about 1/4 dressed most of the time. But, Charlie, please listen to me…you DON’T TELL HIM! He’s a straight man…you know that. There’s very little possibility there, even though your gonads are screaming “MAYBE HE’LL LET ME DO SOMETHING EVEN JUST OUT OF PITY!” No, no, no…oh, Charlie, have some dignity!

I kind of like Marcus. He’s really good-looking and has a great body. I think he’s going to ride Charlie’s crush as far as he can take it, as far as having a devoted ally goes. And while that’s slightly scumbaggy…I can’t blame him. He’s not leading Charlie on…he has laid his orientation out there as clearly as he can. He’s not lying to Charlie…Charlie is lying to himself if he thinks there are possibilities. So I can’t get too worked up about it.

Ace. Ace, Ace, Ace…you’re a tool. But you have a great ass. Why do you have to make me so ambivalent?

Gillian reminds me of a certain kind of woman of a certain age that you find concentrated in university towns. They’ve lived in Africa and Australia and sometimes China or India, they’re former Peace Corps, they collect native African folk art, they speak about six languages, only three of which are European. They’re absolutely fascinating to talk to because they’ve DONE so much. But in a game like Survivor, they’re the popped nail. They stand out, and that means they get hammered down quickly.

G.C. seems to me to be reacting to his own insecurities…he’s a maintenance supervisor (read “janitor/handyman”) and he’s thrown in with these doctors and lawyers and high-pressure salespeople. I’d feel kind of out of place, too, I think. If he can hold it together, he should be okay for a while. If he lets the insecurity take hold, he’ll be out soon.

Everyone else is kind of a blank so far. Of the ones I haven’t mentioned, I like Crystal and Matty. Anyone else I just have nowhere near enough exposure to to be able to say anything.

14

This may be the first time in history that I am rooting for Jeff. (Can’t remember; I’ve seen waaaaaay too many of these.) Although Ken gets points just for being himself. It is refreshing to see honesty (naivete?) like that: actually honest, without being condescending or mean, and without saying “With all due respect …”

Even so, it will be kind of funny when we all get to shout “You killed Kenny! You bastards!”

15

Watching Fang choose players, I thought they were actually trying to put together the crappiest tribe. Well done.

16

I like Ken. I’d actually heard of him before Survivor (I play that video game that he’s a master at, but nowhere near as good) and I’m amused by him, especially considering he’s so klutzy. He’s like the Curly of the Fang tribe. Which, by the way, I swore I heard Jeff say was the “Thong” Tribe when he first announced them.

I also like Randy, the smartest person on the Fang tribe. I hope he doesn’t get into too much trouble next week as he was probably the most entertaining on the show.

I’m also sad that

Michelle (just in case)

is gone. Where’s my eye candy now? :frowning:

17

Yeah, I was pondering the dynamics of that. Fang’s [I keep thinking of Phyllis Diller now, great] founder picks, unbeknownst to her, a former Olympic gold-medalist* in track and field, who in turn picks… a chubby, older wife/mother/PT hairdresser. Who in turn picks… [I don’t remember, but time and again, these turned out to be pretty poor picks.]

It’s like some inbred Old Testament genealogical tree in which A begat B who begat C… and by the time you get to Q, they’re all worshipping a golden calf and/or raping their cousins. :wink:

  • Crystal, whose performance in the first challenge was mind-bogglingly pathetic. Used to running but not climbing hills? Sneakers too heavy? Oh, please… maybe the IOC or the USOC is powerless to strip her of her medal [and that’s a good thing], but she’s losing her O-game street cred with each failure to win a damn challenge.
18

I swear that the gay guy has already been on the show. He looks, sounds and acts just like someone else. I thinkthe guy I’m talking about was Morman?

19

Todd from the China season. He’s got the same smile.

20

I’ve only watched up to just after the Tribal, then noticed there was 37 more minutes and gave up for tonight, I’ll watch the rest tomorrow.

Random thoughts:

  • The look on GC’s face when he got voted leader was just awesome TV – you could almost hear his internal “oh, god… I am SO SCREWED! Jeff!! You bastard!!”. Sweet.

  • Apparently the ability to run and win an Olympic 400m relay confers no other athletic ability whatever. That, or Crystal sandbagged the big O race, and the other 3 members of the relay team picked up the slack. If Crystal wants to keep her Big O cred secret, I doubt anyone would ever catch on, nor believe her if she confesses.

  • I was loving the HD. Awesome location, the animal life was great. That pullback at the beginning from Jeff on the hill out to infinity was a great shot. However, I thought the color treatment was kind of marginal – all the daytime, outdoor shots were over saturated to the point of looking neon. You could tell that the locale was overcast for some or all of the shoot, so perhaps the producers were trying to brighten things up, especially for the first episode. If so, they overshot a bit. I was expecting better fidelity, but I know that overcast days look really flat and washed out, so I’ll give them this for now. I hope this improves.