Survivor: Guatemala--Episode 1

I’m very confused as to why Gary is so worried someone will recognize him.

He played in the 70s.
Football players wear helmets that cover their whole face.
If your name’s not Bradshaw or OJ, we’ve never seen you without your helmet.
He was a middle of the road player.

That to me equals anonymous.

I mean, you could go back 15 years and look to a pretty popular player from my team (the Giants), Pepper Johnson. He was pretty well liked for 2-3 seasons. Can anyone pick Pepper Johnson out of a lineup today?

Hell. I’d say more people would recognize the backup Giants QB Jessie Palmer who just went on the Bachelor than would the #1 pick who is currently their starter, Eli Manning.

Unless they associated him with his more famous brother…

Well, there is that one girl wearing a “FOOTBALL CHICK” t-shirt…

Go Bobby Jon! He’s closing in on Stephanie’s record as being the losingest loser in loser Survivor history!

Who probably was in diapers when Hogeboom was warming the bench.

Aaaah, the infamous Hot Vomit Soup episode. Not quite as good as the infamous Broken Ox episode, but a good one nonetheless. Well, not so much actively “good” as “memorable,” anyway.

Oh, and Draelin? I shan’t be reading She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s comments, thankyouverymuch. No hate, I’ll just be ignoring her. There will plenty to hate on the current season soon enough, I’m sure.

So who do you think will be the villian of this season?

It tends to be a woman for some reason (there are exceptions to this of course).

Minor nitpick: He played from 1980 to 1989. Here are his career statistics, courtesy of profootballreference.com

Gary Hogeboom

I would be majorly pissed if I were in his tribe. I think he said it was his strategy to let Gary take charge, then fuck up and get voted off. WG might as well have a big sign that says “NOT A TEAM PLAYER” hanging around his neck.

But in Survivor lingo, a Fishmonger is really a manager at a fish company.

So a Wilderness Guide may just work at Disney’s Wilderness World…

I don’t think anyone would recognize the face, but the name certainly jumped out at me as soon as I heard it, and I’m a pretty casual follower of pro football. Hogeboom is just a name that sticks with you.

That’s actually worked for a lot of people (Hatch, Vecepia, Brian, Chris). You can’t really say that any of those guys did much to help anyone out except themselves. Since the beginning, but I think most especially since Rob C. in the Amazon, “students of the game” who start their endgame on Day One tend to make it pretty far. It’s not pretty, and sometimes it’s not fun, but unfortunately that’s the way the game works. Hopefully this season will turn out to be more like Palau and less like Vanuatu.

Help me out here, I’ve only watched the first two seasons and everything since All-Stars, and even those seasons are all blurs. All the "a"s and "u"s in Palau and Vanuatu are confusing my football-addled brain. Which seasons were those? Tom the fireman was on which? And was the other one the All-Stars?

Okay…Queen Bee Ami was on Vanuatu. Tom the Fireman and Ian the Dolphin-Boy were on Palau. All-Stars was in Panama (Pearl Islands, after the actual Pearl Islands season).

To add to what jayjay already said, and to clarify my earlier comment, which was written under the influence of both football AND the Emmys: I didn’t much care for the Vanuatu season, because nobody seemed to have any fun. A bunch of the castaways started playing an individual game from the second they got there, and the young, strong, and interesting got voted off early. These people (most notably Chris, Sarge, and Scout) were “students of the game” with a fairly clear strategy in place to get them as close to the end as they good (in some cases, all the way to the Final Four, without ever once really finishing an immunity challenge). They were miserable and no fun and boring and jerkish. Especially Ami.

And then, right after that, when I was about to give up, there came Palau. My opinion of that season is favorably biased because of Ian, I admit, but pretty much the entire Koror tribe (except for maybe Janu and Karen) seemed to have a hell of a lot of fun while they were out there (except for when Katie went psycho on Ian, but we’re trying to leave those unfortunate memories in the past). I wouldn’t say that no one in Palau had a strategy - see the awesomeness that was the episode with Gregg’s ouster - but it sure did look like enjoying the experience as much as possible was a big part of that strategy. That made watching much more pleasant (or at least much less uncomfortable).

So, I am hoping that (once the mass emesis has subsided) Guatemala will include some amount of fun. I’m all about keeping personalities around. Entertain me, dammit!

OK, I forget - who was the nurse? Tina?

My favorite Probstism was saying “you have a couple of tools to help you” and introduced Bobbi Jon and Steph as said “tools”.

My DVR kicked out early, too - anybody have a summary of Jim’s final words?

I don’t think they showed them but they’re available on the CBS website. Overall he was pretty gracious. He wasn’t surprised by the vote and didn’t blame his team for voting the way they did. He mentioned several times that the challenges were much tougher than he expected.

I got his final words on my broadcast.

He was fairly gracious.

Aww, Ian has offered his car to the first person to kill a croc with a machete. I love that man. :slight_smile:

What surprises me most about this season is that they’re doing two things that Jeff Probst has come out publicly and said he hated; one was the “inland” location of Survivor: Africa, and the other was the “Outkasts.” As much as I like Stephenie, I think bringing her and Bobby Jon back is no different from that stupid Outkast twist. Actually, yes it is – it’s worse, because in this case, the new people in this season have to put up with returning players who were voted out not by them, but by completely different players. Not to mention the fact that their presence depleted the available spots for new people to have an opportunity at the million bucks. I really, really hate this twist and I hope Bobby Jon and Stephenie get voted out as soon as possible. We’ve seen them play, they’ve had their chance and failed. Get them off my screen.

Point of order: Bobby Jon didn’t get voted off. He just plain lost.