Survivor: Guatemala - Ep. 2: "Man Down"

I’m just glad Bobby Jon finally got to win an immunity challenge

I agree it will bite him in the ass.

I disagree that he is denying his NFL days out of a sense of inflated ego. He (rightly) surmised that most people assume NFL players, particularly starting QBs, are rich and have no need of a million bucks, and so would be considered expendable at the first opportunity.

I was sad. :frowning: More Judd’s non-pixellated hairy ass, please! Pleeeeease?

Seriously. I would pay money to see him in the altogether. Doing…stuff…

Does anyone else think this was a setup by Burnett? That sportstalk host had to have been in her teens the last time Hogeboom threw a pass in the NFL. Unless you are a fan and live in the city the guy works in, most people couldn’t pick an NFL quarterback out of a lineup. They are mostly seen with a helmet on.

Plus, he looks now nothing like what he looked then.

Well, you never know . . . some sports radio hosts are trivia fanatics. She may be one of them.

Are you kidding?

I could easily (and instantly) identify the following QBs walking down the street, and I would bet that the vast majority of NFL fans and sports radio personalities could as well:

Donovan McNabb
Eli Manning
Drew Bledsoe
Brett Favre
Daunte Culpepper
Joey Harrington, Jeff Garcia
Kurt Warner
Jake Delhomme
Mike Vick
Tom Brady
Chad Pennington, Jay Fiedler (those ears!)
J.P. Losman
Ben Roethlisberger
Drew Brees (that giant birthmark!)
Kerry Collins
Jake Plummer
Peyton Manning
Steve McNair

And given the scenario of him being on a competing team that I keep seeing, it would nag at me until I would recognize them after several days to a week:

Mark Brunell
Marc Bulger
Matt Hasselback
Aaron Brooks
Trent Dilfer
Trent Green
Byron Leftwich

That’s 25 of the 32 teams, plus a couple backups. Remember, the QB is the guy who always does interviews, and unlike Ricky Williams, they don’t wear their helmets when the mic is in their face.

Also, the only ones not on either list are young guys in smaller markets or lower profile franchises. The Cowboys are pretty high profile.

That’s the first phrase that rolled out of my mouth when I saw the immunity challenge. :smiley: More bikini mud wrestling!

The look on Gary’s face after one of the other players confronted him about being a QB was priceless. One of the best ever Survivor moments.

I thought it was cool that Lydia the Fishmonger found a way to catch fish without a net. I’m glad she’s still around.

I too am very interested in seeing how Garygate plays out. I think he made the right choice by covering it up at first: an obvious millionaire shooting for a million bucks? Sorry, the cast wouldn’t – and won’t – let him close to it. But now that they’re on to him, he should have come clean. It makes a ton of sense for him to get a strong alliance together now – primarily with Stephenie, who’s got two strikes against her as well. And they seemed to bond in Week 1.

Despite Ellis Dee’s quarterback recognition, I wouldn’t have been able to pick Hogeboom out even though I remember his looks during his playing days. Any chance a Survivor crew member outed Hogeboom to Danni? If not, I thought she was great letting everyone know his jig was up.

Eh, it’s about whether most people could pick out most quarterbacks. It’s that if a person is semi-famous, there’s a decent chance that one individual out of a group would recognize him for one reason or another. Who knows? Maybe Danni’s gramma was a Cowboys fan and Hogeboom was her favorite player or something. Or maybe Danni is just really really knowledgeable in the subject. And we don’t just recognize people by their faces, but also their voices and bodies and mannerisms. So I think there’s a small but reasonable chance that Danni just plain recognized him.

The lying strategy sucks. I didn’t mind that he dissembled at first, but continuing to lie when he got outed? Not only is it bad from a game play perspective, but it also makes him look like an arrogant jerk. Maybe in Gary’s world, the peons bow and scrape before him, but in the rest of the world, a large percentage of the population doesn’t give a hoot about him or his ex-NFL status.

If he really thought that he couldn’t get a fair shake in the game due to his minor celebrity, then he shouldn’t have gone one the game at all. He had to know that there was some chance his cover would be blown.

No, I can hate men just as equally.

Re Gary: I also suspect that Danni was tipped about Gary’s background. Had he been using his real name, I’d have said that it’s possible Danni would have recognized him. But recognizing a second string player from 25 years ago, who looks completely different, with a different last name, from another town…fishy.

Not that it matters.

I think Gary had no choice but to try and lie about his career. Anyone remember S. 2 or 3 where they booted off the dentist for no other reason than he was wealthy?

And JayJay, I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he was struggling with his emotions. I think he admired Lydia for her work ethic but realized that the others had targeted her as one of two potential people to vote off. He didn’t want to risk going against the majority and Lydia was asking for his assurance that he wouldn’t vote her off. I honestly think that he didn’t know how to respond, because he didn’t want to lie to her nor did he want to form an alliance with her.

**

I agree that Rafe should have been voted off. I like him, but he’s highly emotional, which is NOT an asset in this game. Plus, he single handedly lost the RC for them. I can understand not being able to traverse a rope web, because it requires a lot of balance and upper body strength, but a vertical rope ladder??? P.S. In the one scene from TC, I was struck by how much he looked like Bruce Springsteen, complete with underbite.
**
I really like Lydia and hope she sticks around for awhile.

**

I thought the bellman was going to blow it for his team on the RC by spending too much time on the web rope, when you could tell the second he got on it that he’d never be able to finish the task. He should have dropped off immediately and let another, more agile, player take over.

**

I was also glad to see Bobby Jon win a challenge. He’s not all that bright, but I admire his no-complaints attitude and intensity. Good for him.

**

Blake did great on the challenges, but by not working around camp and being a pretty boy, he risks the wrath of the other players.

**

Go, Brandon! (I have him in the final 4). (Wouldn’t he and Dolly make a cute couple?)

Anybody else think Blake’s “difficulty breathing” is some sort of panic-attacking? Margaret had him blowing in a paper bag, which I recall is done if someone is involuntarily hyperventilating, which can be a sign of anxiety/stress. It’s difficult to understand what else could be affecting him – the “poison” thorn from last week? Allergy attack?

Disagree that Gary is unrecognizible from his earlier years. That picture posted above looks, to me, strikingly like the picture on the Survivor website, just less (ok, no) hair. Agree that lying when caught out was a bad idea.

Rafe was absolutely pathetic during RC! I thought he was one of the ones in who was holding up OK, unlike the vomiters in the other tribe, and he fell apart. Maybe ants will do that to you. And when did we find out he’s gay? One of the other tribe members mentioned it in a “look how diverse we are” speech near the beginning, or did I misunderstand?

It’s hard to believe Danni was a first-runner up for Miss USA, but I guess 9 years later with no makeup after a rough week won’t put one in the best light. I think it was stupid of her to “out” Gary so blatently. That information could have been useful later if she’d hoarded it, but she just blurts it out to everyone. I can see trying to disrupt the other tribe, but it seemed too early, and a better opportunity could have come along later.

How many of these guys would you recognise on the street today?

Mark Rypien
Timm Rosenbach
Frank Reich
Jeff George
Tony Eason
Marc Wilson
Mike Thomczak
Don MAjkowski
Bubby Brister
Jay Schroeder

It is not like Hogeboom is a current player. He is 15 years older than he was when he retired. He looks completely different. Above are QB’s from 1990 (starters, even). I am a NFL fan and I wouldn’t recognise any of them.

Hogeboom last played for Dallas when the sportstalker was 10 years old.

Yep. I was laughing my ass off at his “if they only knew how famous I am” schtick.

I’m enjoying this one quite a bit. My gal, Stef, is doing nicely!

That was a smart move by the NY Doorman guy in the tug of war challenge. I just knew he was waiting for the last few seconds to lean into it. A risky move, but it payed off.

Gotta feel sorry for Rafe… I couldn’t control my laughter as he struggled to get up that ladder. For a “Wilderness Guide” he seems hopelessly out of shape.

IMHO you’re misreading his intentions. He isn’t worried about being famous, he’s worried that they will think that because he used to be in the NFL that he is rich and doesn’t need the money.

Hadn’t thought about hyperventilation. I assumed there may be some association with the thorns.

If he’s having a physical problem, then I think the farmer and the doorman were out of line. ‘Man up’? Well, I guess if you’re the Black Knight from Monty Python And The Holy Grail you could say that. Bruises, cuts, and soreness are one thing. Not being able to breathe is another. (I had pneumonia and athsma as a child, so I know.) You can ‘man up’ to get through pain, but it’s different from a ‘systems fault’. And the nurse… Well, she’s a nurse! What do they expect her to do?

On the other hand, Blake did seem to have ‘miraculous recoveries’ in the challenges. (He did look winded after the RC though.) What to make of that? Is he faking his ‘illness’, ‘recovering’ so that he can show that even when he’s sick he can pull off the challenges? ‘Look what I can do when I’m sick! Wait until I get over this, and I’ll really win us some stuff!’ Or did the thorns freak him out? Maybe it is a panic attack. Or I suppose it’s just possible that the thorns were toxic, but that the adrenaline during the challenges masks the symptoms.

In other news: the KC hat. I hated those neon-coloured, bent-up straw cowboy hats back in the '80s. (I lived in the Antelope Valley until '87, and if you weren’t in aerospace or the Air Force you were in alfalfa farming.) I still hate them now.

I know what he’s getting at. And maybe, that would be a concern for the final vote of the last two standing, but no one bases a vote at this stage on who does or does not need the money. He’s just making such a big deal about how he’s pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, when in fact there isn’t any wool to pulled. Maybe he’d be more comfortable on SURREAL LIFE.

I got the impression Danni wasn’t trying to burn Gary.

She sounded like she assumed that Gary had told them he was a QB.

My guess is Gary was cast first and then Burnett cast someone who knew who he was (he may have even asked her).

All Gary has to do is stand up and say “look…is this the body of a professional athlete”? The guy’s a stick.

I’m just astounded at how, in the early stages, teams arrive at a consensus as to who should go. It looks like Rafe’s (that name! remorse! remorse!) name never came up, even though he had the most spectacularly bad RC performance I’d ever seen.

I never figured out the point of the IC; but decided I didn’t really care that much to rewind & listen to the rules again.

I figured also that Blake is panic-attacking. Or faking. He sure had a miraculous recovery for the RC.

rockle…“if you’ve a date in Constantinople she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.”

I also smelled a rat. Just the way Danni was talking about him seemed like someone had told her “Gary is a former NFL QB” and nothing else. She didn’t seem like she knew his last name, who he played for or any details. I know we only see a fraction of what goes on out there, but the whole thing seemed phoney to me.

Belive me, Hogeboom was no one’s favorite Cowboy! :smiley: