SURVIVOR: FANS VS FAVORITES – 3/27/13

This past week has been a bit of a whirlwind for me. As many of you who follow me on Facebook know, March Madness is an obsession of mine. It’s slightly better than Christmas, minus the part where I get presents from people. However, life got the way of many of my laid-out plans. A member of my wife’s family passed away. She was her Godmother. She died much too young, leaving behind a husband and three young children. I never like starting my blogs off this way, and contemplated not writing anything, but someone that close to my wife deserves a moment of acknowledgment, even if it’s in the beginning of some silly blog her Goddaughter’s husband writes. To Nadine, I give you these laughs I try to provide in the following paragraphs. You meant so much to my wife growing up. It’s the least I could do.

(pause)

We open on a dim lit stage, sand bits piled one on top of the other until a beach is formed, trees casting heavy shadows in the background as Julia, the frumpy, soft spoken mistress of the game talks about pissing herself at the broken, humbled team’s last spent minutes at Tribal council. Ok, enough of that. I was going to attempt to dramatize my entire blog, as if this were old English literature, but you can’t shine sh*t and make it look like steak, right? Julia was, basically, frightened at Tribal, almost to the point where she nearly wet herself for the first time in her life. I believe she’s race car driver in “real” life, and from everything I hear about race car driving, you often have to wet yourself during those long races, so somehow I’m going to call bullswippy on her lies and assume she’s peed her pants in the past few years.

While Julia discusses her urinary tract, Michael is off making the best of the situation, knowing he can’t mope around after losing his buddy. He immediately gets in Corinne’s crotch, even though Corinne already stuffed his gay head right up there for the duration of her stay in this game. It is while she is speaking to the camera where I realize that Michael is going to be the death of her game. She’s letting her love of the gays (again, her term, not mine) cloud her vision, leading her to go against her very own alliance – most notably Phillip. As much as she doesn’t want to believe Phillip holds the key to her having the opportunity to win this game, she needs to just suck it up and go along with his reign of terror until the merge comes and someone bigger, and more worthy takes down the Special Agent. She’s not equipped with the band of dummies she’s been given to take down Phillip. Cochran and Dawn aren’t exactly figures of prominence, so I’d stick with them until the merge and then try and reattach yourself to Malcolm, and just hope that he’s done the smart thing by linking himself to the right people on his given tribe so that they can take down Phillip and then allow themselves to take each other out, as she stands on her own until the tribe is down to five, or even four, before they’ve even given the thought to voting her out again. Will she be able to hold off and stay behind Phillip until then? Or, will she let her love of the homosex take her down?

Phillip, smartly, wants Corinne gone. He knows that she’s going to stick with Michael, and that she definitely loves Michael more than she does him, so it’s about time for her to go. But, Cochran, even more smartly, lays it to him straight that now is not the time for that to happen. She may be up to something, yes, but they have the numbers in the game, and you don’t want to relinquish numbers by voting out your own just because you’re holding a little grudge. Although, at the same time, they do have enough numbers to go ahead and dump one member of the clan – mostly because they all know she’ll jump ship at the first sign of younger, fitter land ahead. To bide time with his plot to rid the game of Corinne, Phillip decides to show young Harvard his fetish for arm wrestling. And just how skillful he is at it. And, yes Phillip, beating the gangly redhead from Harvard definitely proves your worth in the arena of arm wrestling. The rest of the world shivered after seeing your pure domination of Cochran. Did Cochran’s arm even touch the sand? Good Lord, that man is clearly delusional. And, here I am saying that he deserves to win the million dollars?!? Maybe I’m going to need help after watching this season. I should probably retire from this blog, because my brain is definitely lacking oxygen and dying more and more each episode. What has it been, four seasons now? Oy vey.

Jeff calls upon the two tribes to come forth and take battle in a Reward challenge that was completely unfair from the get. Phillip may have become too tired way too early, but did it really matter? Sure his tribe may have been mad at him for talking himself up so much and then completely failing them in the challenge, but no matter what strategy they drummed up, they weren’t going to win that challenge. We could walk into the brainiest classroom at MIT and ask them to devise a plan for Bikal to have won that challenge, and I guarantee those kids would have died in that classroom trying to figure out some formula before realizing they never had a chance of creating one. That challenge was designed for the Gota tribe. All they needed to do was show up, walk at a brisk pace for a few minutes, and they would be off to enjoy espresso shots, brownies, and croissants with each other. I know it’s been two weeks without food, and I’m guessing I would be excited about brownies and cookies, too (even though I’m not a sweets kind of guy), but we all know there was some disappointment running through their heads when they heard Jeff rattle off all the “goodies” that would be there. Just like Dawn said, that stuff probably ran right through their systems. Especially with the coffee and espresso. Anyone ever had a shot of espresso by itself? If you’ve ever experienced the coffee enima, you’re in for a whole new treat with the esprenima treatment! You should just drink it on the toilet. With your pants down already. I erased what I just wrote. You’ve heard me say some sick things over the past few seasons, but even what I just wrote was TOO sick for me to even allow myself to write. See what I mean – I need some help.

“You tubby lunchbox, I’ve yet to see an ab on you.” It’s much funnier writing these things down and replaying them in my head, with my own voice, but even so, Corinne spitting out that gem was HILARIOUS!! Just the terms “tubby” and “lunchbox” together makes Corinne my lifelong friend. It goes without saying that after you say something like that about a person, chances are you don’t want them still in the game. She’s still on that kick about getting Phillip out. Soon enough it’s going to be put-up-or-shut-up time for her – she either needs to make it happen or settle for fifth place this season. If I’m Phillip, I get her out, pronto. If I’m Corinne, I back off Michael a bit, ease tension with Phillip, coddle him a little more, and wait for the merge to make my move. Neither scenario I just typed out for each of them will happen. Tension will build, and one of the two is going to garner enough votes to take the other out at the first tribal council after the merge (barring one of them wins immunity).