Survivor: Guatemala Ep. 3: "The Brave May Not Live Long ..."

Full epsiode title (according to Yahoo! TV and TiVo): “The Brave May Not Live Long, but the Cautious Don’t Live at All”

The previews I’ve been seeing this week look interesting … might My Favorite Former Contestant have to give away his Corvette?

This week some of them go swimming (or bathing) with the crocs. Yikes!

Where is everybody?

My cable guide says one tribe is so hungry they eat termites. I’m guessing it’s Yuxha, since they ate ants last week. Yuk. I don’t think I could eat termites or ants, no matter how hungry I was.
Isn’t there any fruit around them? Shouldn’t there be something edible in the trees and bushes?

I’m here, Bibliocat, but I missed last week, so I have nothing interesting to say yet. :slight_smile:

Hmm. I guess moving people around is something of a quarterback specialty, isn’t it? That was the most efficient blindfolded-object-grabbing I’ve seen in Survivor history. Tent-building skillz could use some work, thought.

And I like it when you can tell it’s so hot that Jeff’s sweating just standing there. I certainly wouldn’t want to be there, but I enjoy watching other people do it. :slight_smile:

I wish Gary would get that crusty dirt off of his lips.

I laughed when Brianna kept insisting that she’d done her best out there. WHAT?! You stood on the edge of the net and leaned against a pole! You didn’t move one single step at any point in ANY of your matches! You contributed to the loss of immunity MUCH more than Lydia even dreamed of doing!

Totally deserved vote-off, in my opinion.

First, I would like to give a great big shout-out and YEE-HAW to the camerapeople this episode. My Other Favorite Reality Show gets all the awards and stuff (and rightly so, I usually think), but tonight I saw some truly impressive and awesome nature footage that must be commended. Particularly impressive were the images of the howler monkey sitting in his tree, resting his head on his hands, followed by the closeup of the giant disgusting bug thing on a tree, “watching” what was going on at the Nakúm camp like the proverbial fly on the wall (at 0:21). Normally I hate bugs and snakes and crawly things, but it was almost like tonight’s show was a National Geographic documentary with some yahoos tromping through it periodically. Bravissimo! Kiss kiss. Thanks for putting the “real” back into reality TV.

Beyond that, I thought tonight was decidedly meh, except for one thing (which I will get to shortly). These people are boring – like, Vanuatu boring. I know the Palau cast spoiled me a bit, but seriously. Is it from the heat or something? Hopefully soon things will get better, but for now I’m feeling very wishy-washy. Mostly I want to feed Danni, because she is far too skinny, and I want to shellac Gary in Chap Stik, because that crusty lip action is nasty, and I want to bathe the rest of them in Gatorade. And even including that, they’re all kind of a bunch of yawns with a capital “Y,” aren’t they?

Except for Brian … the Force is strong with that young padawan. He isn’t getting much screen time right now, but I wonder if he might be the Rob C. of Guatemala (or if he is being cast in that light for right now). I believe he might have single-handedly saved Lydia’s ass twice in a row – and why? (Brianna didn’t do herself any favors, but Lydia should have gotten more than one vote tonight, from the way they were making things look.) Please, Producers and Editors, show us what is going on there! That relationship is verrrrrrry intriguing. What promises are being made behind the curtain, and who is really the Wizard?

Mmm-hmmm…I liked the eyebrow thing from Brian after Lydia said her piece at Tribal Council. There’s definitely a fairly tight two-person alliance there.

They should have voted the woman with the sprained ankle out. I think Gary the fooball player just imagines she’ll play through it.

I thought Burnett was being silly when he lectured tribe members at the end about voting out non-athletic people. Most of the challenges so far have been about physical ability.

I think you meant Probst. Jeff’s the one who made that comment about voting out the non-athletic folks.

So far I’m lovin’ this season. If only because I get to see Stephanie lose two weeks in a row. And Bobby Jon is cute when he wins.

:smack: Oops. Even with the stupid remark I loved how cool he looked during the immunity challenge and how he knew everyone’s name.

I would like to punch Judd in the face. “That’s the most annoyingest sound you could ever want to hear.” What a big dumb clunk of a man.

I’ve become fascinated with Stephanie’s eyebrows.

Yeah, pretty boring tonight.

Yaxha loses four challenges in a row! In spite of Steph, in spite of Gary, in spite of a lot of things… they sucked. I think this tribe is in trouble. Having said that, they came this close to winning the “build some stupid tent” challenge, but they couldn’t overcome. But overall they just… suck.

Yes – what’s up with that? Does she shave them off and paint on new ones in a “I’m surprised!” pose? They’re unnatural.

I thought the crusty stuff on Gary’s lips was the result of being elbowed during the IC. In one clip his mouth was all bloody.

I think P&G ought to rethink their sponsorship and drop Pringles and bring in Tide or, better yet, Dawn. Dawn can be used to clean clothes AND hair. One pair of clothes in 114 degree heat. I can’t even imagine how badly these people smell.

Lydia dodged another bullet. Good for her. I had Brianna in my Pick Four Survivor Pool (along with Brandon, Danni, and some other female person whose name begins with “B” (boy, are these players boring)), but am glad she was voted off. “Lydia doesn’t like me. Why? I can tell. I told you I was good at reading people.” Apparently, not pole hugger.

The only person who looked worse than Brianna was the dude (Judd?) who said, “I like my women pretty and wild. Brianna is neither.” Uh, dude, I like my men interesting and athletic. You are neither.

In my other Survivor pool, I have Margaret. She’s not getting much pub so I have a feeling she’ll be around for awhile. Seems like the producers are desperately trying to conjure up some drama between the players. Stephenie is getting a lot of air time and frankly, I’ve seen enough of her whining that her team sucks. Instead of watching what was going on, perhaps they should have been huddling with the remaining players and talking strategy instead of trying to explain what a “pick” was in 20 seconds.

Ah. Possibly. In that case, I would like to substitute “Neosporin” for “Chap Stik” in Post #8. All the guys played fairly physically, considering that just a few days earlier, half of them were on the verge of death. And, ditto on the dish soap idea. Send 'em something. When Jeff said it was 114°F, I could smell them all through the TV.

Jamie. And I agree with you, except he is pretty athletic. He’s just also a world-class tool. It’s sad, because early on I thought I would like Jamie. Not that Judd is winning any popularity contests in my house, either (my cats are pretty partial to the howler monkey).

This I totally agree with. In Palau, her tribe did suck, and I empathized with her. This time the whining is not so cute. Look, Steph: either be a leader, or don’t, but either way, accept that just being a bad-ass is not enough in this game. It didn’t work last time for you, either. It’s not just the will to win, but also the will to prepare to win, that actually makes winners.* You have days in between challenges – why don’t you all work together to determine who is good at what, and try to improve where you can in the time you have? Building a game plan does not have to be labor intensive.

Right now Gary and Brian are my favorites, because they don’t say much to annoy me – mostly because they don’t say much. I kind of like Zookeeper Cindy, too, but I am concerned that she might have some Heidi Strobel-style implant action going on in her bikini top.

[RIGHT]* = Paraphrased from Bear Bryant.[/RIGHT]

That goes back to what I was saying about her last season–it isn’t just bad luck that put her on a “sucky” team, but that she is actually a cause of the suckiness. Or maybe that she just doesn’t contribute to the process that can turn any ol’ ragtag gang of folks into a functioning team.

On one hand, she can certainly be described as strong and bright and brave and personable, but really only in a limited context. Here are some of her relevant weaknesses:

–Lack of creative problem solving.
–Inability to foster team spirit.
–Unwillingness to take a public and possibly unpopular stand.
–Inability to make others feel good about themselves.
–General lack of strategical thinking.
–Inability to effectively allocate resources, human and otherwise.

As an illustration, let’s see how Tom in Palau did in these areas–We saw a ton of creative problem solving, like using a snake as bait to catch a shark. He made the group feel that Koror was a team, rather that just a bunch of people stuck together. (With Ian’s goofy help, of course.) When he insisted that the fresh “shower” water be used for drinking, he pissed some people off, but he took the risk and it paid off. He helped individually support each member, making Caryn feel important, and helping prop Janu up before she wilted entirely. We saw lots of strategical thinking, both in challenges and in camp, like when he had the latrine and the shower put in separate locations. And the use of the shower water is an example of him allocating resources. It wasn’t apparent who made the decisions about who was to sit out challenges, but those decisions paid off, and we can assume that he either had a part in making them, or at least didn’t object to them.

Now, Tom may be an exceptional player, but Stephenie is being touted as an exceptional player as well. She’s exceptional in some ways, but apparently not in the ways that really help you win Survivor.

Stephenie’s very athletic. Put her in a one-on-one with pretty much anyone from the other tribe (except maybe Bobby Jon) and I’ll bet on her. But she’s not really all THAT sharp upstairs strategically. I think this wasn’t really very apparent in Palau because most of the rest of her tribe were a bunch of yutzes, but it stands out with a new crop of contestants.

Stephanie is pissing us off at my house. She’s a whiner, for certain, which is irritating. The Police Sergeant with the sprained ankle (Amy?) has a much better attitude. She was bitching about the island conditions, but in a good-natured, jocular way. I have never seen Stephanie in a good mood, except right after a win. Also, Steph is a poor loser, which I hate. Finally, to Stephanie it’s all about her – “I can’t be on another losing team.” This was all evident last season, of course, but the circumstances masked it somewhat. Then she was a clear underdog, and I have a tendancy to root for the underdog. but this season she’s just pissing me off. At this point I would rather see anyone on the island (even Judd, who is a rare idiot himself) win over Whiney Bitch Stephanie.

You whole post says what I think I was trying to say about her just a few minutes ago: She’s a great worker, but she isn’t management material. And that is going to kill her chances, once again, if she survives until the merge. I don’t doubt that she might be the strongest and most athletic female contestant ever to play the game. But as the previews for next week suggest, when it comes to “brain games,” she isn’t exactly on the dean’s list. She’s already shown that she apparently lacks the ability to strategize enough to win the next challenge; I don’t think she has a chance against someone like Brian, who you can tell is already working out a plan for three or four challenges down the road. Her heart is really in it, God bless her, but she just doesn’t have a head for this game. Plus, as Jess pointed out … she is really whiny, with a bit of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.