New season tonight. 400th episode and as Jeff pointed out, they have also had about 400 folks play the game.
8:00 Eastern on CBS in the USA. 
It’s on!
Voting someone out right away? What crap.
I hate when this show does that.
Gervais acted like he won the challenge, when he was the one who nearly blew it. What an idiot.
Gervase probably just put on the worst performance by a loved one in Survivor history–definitely up there with Sean Hantz and Brian Heidik’s wife.
Wasn’t Gervase the one who basically originated the meme that black guys on Survivor can’t swim 13 years ago? And he STILL, with 13 years to rectify that, hasn’t learned to swim.
It looked like Gervaise was going to drown, Aras saved him. He basically could have set out the challenge by having two of the women do the puzzle and one of them run the water leg.
Of the Blood Bonds, it looked like Gervaise/Niece and Aras/brother were the “loosest” bonds.
I was really paying too much attention to the intros. I thought Probst said Aras’s brother name was FETUS. I looked later and it was Vytas.
I have seen all the seasons of Survivor, but I have no recollection of Aras’s season.
I believe he won the first Exile Island season. The one with the old Asian guy who got medivacced for constipation and the crazy executive who made a Blackberry out of a slab of bark.
I remember Shane and the Blackberry. and I remember Shane Dropping Trou in front of Nurse Cirie because he was galded.
But I do not remember Aras.
My memory of the first Survivor is a bit hazy, but wasn’t Gervaise made out to be some kind of athlete in his first season, but in all his challenges, was always quickly out of breath, had no stamina, and laid around “conserving” his energy all day?
Shocker, the football guy’s a douche. “We have five guys here- well four guys and a gay guy.”
Well, I actually liked this episode. It was easier to keep track of the contestants because of the relationships, unlike a “pure” Survivor where you have no idea of who anyone is. It also proved that the concept might work, when the first bootee was sent off due not to her own performance, but because of her loved ones. I can’t wait to see the reaction at the next challenge.
Rupert will be the first one off the show, as it should be.
g
ETA: Yeah, Culpepper is committing pretty much every error one can make in the early game of Survivor.
Those 3 veteran puzzle ladies did it so fast, I bet they would’ve beaten the puzzle design team.
Colton proves that not all “victims” are sweet innocents. Witness Colton yelling at Kat to paddle harder when all that would accomplish is turning the boat even more backward. I wonder if his perception of Southern people as homophobic isn’t just regular people reacting to his assholery. I’m sure in his mind, he instantly re-casts himself as the victim in every situation.
It was a smart move at tribal council. When Galang see who was voted out, it might throw them off on the next challenge. Like if people are more self-conscious about their reactions and potentially getting their loved one booted, they might not as focused on the challenge itself.
Jeez—Bruce isn’t that old. Late fifties, I think. Old by Survivor standards, I guess.
This was the best first episode in a long time. Some really interesting new dynamics, and it seems like Redemption Island might actually work this time? Too early to say for sure of course, but this season seems promising
Sorry to interrupt - I haven’t seen an episode of Survivor in about a decade, and normally skip right past the threads. However, for some reason, this caught my eye on mouseover.
Given that, for the most part, the show removes one contestant per episode, then simply by sheer mathematical reasoning, you would always expect that the total number of players is roughly equal to the total number of episodes. This is like pointing out the coincidence that the number of takeoffs a pilot has had is exactly equal to the number of landings.
Sorry. Carry on.
I think with repeat contestants, he just thought it was neat to point out. Jeff Probst tweeted it.
I wish they’d spend a few seconds explaining how the whole “You can’t share the money with another player” rule works here. There’s three married couples, one engaged couple, and two mother/daughter couples. How do you enforce that? “Oh, we see you’ve built a new home with your winnings. Sorry, but your spouse can’t live there, or you have to give the money back.”
It was the season with Terry, the former Navy fighter pilot who everyone hated, but won all the Individual Immunity challenges except the last one so he didn’t get voted out until the end.
And there was a Doper named Lockseer who was friends with Aras, and even showed up on screen for two seconds at the reunion episode. Final thread here.
I thought it was a good first episode, too, though I feel bad for the bootee getting it for her uncle’s sins. 
On the plus side, it’s likely Rupert will go soon AND the other returnees have Colton’s number. The fact that his team is down one guy might save him for a while, but he’s not exactly a challenge monster, is he?