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another great episode, complete with yet another Brandon derailing.
Edna’s ‘almost twice’ Mikayla’s age? She doesn’t look it!
I was hoping Mikayla would win The Great Shuffleboard Challenge. Then the tribe could have voted Ozzy off. Then he would have to kick her off, or she him. (Not that I dislike either of them. I just thing it would e been interesting to watch.)
Mikayla wasn’t in that challenge. Don’t you mean Elyse?
It was Elyse that lost the RI Shuffleboard Challenge. Mikayla was voted out last night and (presumably) will play Christine next week in another (lame-ass?) R.I. Challenge.
:smack: Not enough coffee yet.
So there’s still hope.
Anyone else undewhelmed by this season? I like nutjobs on survivor, but I like them to be a little more cunning than our current batch. Also, I’m sick of the returning survivor all stars, I want a bunch of people kind of figuring out the game as they go along.
I’ve been a bit underwhelmed in recent seasons. I liked it better when there were actual ‘survival’ elements in it – such as rationing a small food supply, having to make fire, and functioning on very reduced calories. Some people say starving contestants are boring. I found that starving contestants are more on edge, and there’s more drama. (Also offers of naked breasts in exchange for chocolate.)
‘Star’ players? Some of them are OK, and others aren’t. It seems that returning players have become the norm, rather than the exception. I’d prefer to see fewer returning players.
Roomie, who is not a Survivor fan, likes Redemption Island. I think it’s lame, even though there is the potential of bringing an interesting person back into the game. I’d like to see (at least once) a game where ousted players are secretly put into a new tribe that comes back later. They did something like that once, but it wasn’t secret.
Yeah, but I don’t judge a season until I see who is in the merge and who is on the jury.
I think they are learning how to play the game, just now with returning players (though I’d be fine with them giving up on that experiment.) You saw it last week with the new players keeping Ozzy around for his helpful attributes, but making sure he wasn’t in control of the alliance. In this weeks mirror image show, they also figured out the right way to play, but the mustache blew it and Brandon is too crazy to go through with logic. Not that I see any special skills that Coach brings to the table.
One thing they haven’t figured out is how Redemption Island plays in. Right now, Coach has a divided tribe, and two players on RI that absolutely hate his guts. Next week Edna is going to find out that she never was a part of the alliance, she’s only in the game to be Coaches purse-dog. In other words, Coach is an idiot, which we all already knew. His “loyalty” oaths are just a cover for his misogyny towards any woman who shows on ounce of strength or original thought.
Kudos to whoever designed the immunity challenge. That was an awesomely designed challenge.
Probst tweeted that he was really impressed with the design of that one. It was really neat.
That was a fun – and different – challenge, and a nice follow-up to last week’s pig spit-off, which may have disgusted many people here but I thought it was a hoot. Maybe the producers themselves are getting tired of the “race to gather puzzle pieces, then assemble the puzzle” formula. Now if only they can step up the RI duels, which have totally sucked so far this season.
Maybe Rick blew it, maybe not; we don’t know how this will play out yet. But it did make for a dramatic vote – I can’t remember the last time I had no idea who was going until the final vote was revealed.
Christine and Mikayla face off in a brutal game of… checkers!
I was rather hoping he’d vote for someone unexpected (like Coach or Brandon) so as to force a tie.
They did exactly this on season 7, Pearl Islands–it had a huge impact in that game and the two returnees got to 5th and 2nd, respectively. Opinions may vary (Probst has said many times that it was poorly thought out), but I think it’s worse than Redemption Island is right now.
A part of last season’s lameness of Redemption Island was the huge difference between how terrible Matt was at Survivor and how good he was at duels. Redemption Island will work best for strategically strong players who happened to be on the losing side of an alliance–the most recent examples, Brenda or Marty, would have been really interesting, I think. If Christine gets back in, I expect some fireworks.
Last episode was a snooooooozzzze fest. The only thing that happened (beside the cool Immunity challege) was Ozzie stupid .“I have the idol” WTF???
I was thinking that too, but of course he would have had to pick a side anyway for the re-vote, so he may have considered this and soon realized there was no point.
Fireworks in the sense that she’ll be a horrible shrew, and constantly yell and bitch at people? Yeah, probably. Fireworks that will actually affect the game? Less likely.
If there happen to be two alliances with equal numbers fighting for control when the RI player returns, then he or she can make an immediate impact in the game. Virtually any other scenario makes that player completely irrelevant, as happened twice last season.
No Elyse=no me watching.
I am not a hard core fan of the show, so this may be a stupid question, but is it ever a good idea to announce that you have an idol? Has there ever been a time when that helped a contestant?
Other players knowing you have the idol can buy you some time…but normally it causes the rest of the team to take action to force it’s use. Thus delaying you being voted out by one week. If they want it forced out, they let you know that you are being voted out, they split the vote 4/3 or someother ratio that works, you play the idol and the other person voted against goes home. Now you know longer have the idol and are vulnerable.
In this case it does not appear that the Ozzie was being targeted to voted out as he presumed, but just that they didn’t like hime cozying up with Elyse, thus making him even stronger.
I don’t quite agree with this–had Matt or anyone on the minority alliance had half a brain last season, things would have turned out differently. When Matt returned at the merge, there were 6 from his old tribe and 5 from the other tribe. The obvious play was to join the other side and try to pick up the bottom person (Andrea) from his old tribe–Andrea even brought this plan to Matt and dropped it at his feet. Somehow he managed to screw this up and then confessed to Rob about it. The minority tribe also managed not to promise/use the idol on the guy whose vote they needed most.
Even if the merge happens at 7/4, the returning player has a chance to be a part of a minority alliance big enough that, if it uses its idol right, can overcome vote splitting. Fortunately, this season it looks like there will be someone on the minority alliance at the merge (Albert/Sophie, or Jim/Cochran/Keith) who knows how to use the Redemption Island returnee properly.
The second Redemption Island return was problematic because the obvious target to flip on (Rob) happened to still have the immunity idol. It would be certainly more interesting if this return happened after the last tribal the hidden immunity could be played.