SURVIVOR: BLOOD VS WATER – 9/25/13

Treemail spoils the love fest as we find out we’re all going to Redemption Island ! Yay! We get to see a loved one go home! We march into Redemption Arena and immediately the tears are flowing from a few of the survivors. Evidently, it’s too much for Kat (why?) and some others and you know Jeff’s going to milk that…

The competitors enter.

Rupert. Looking like a roadie for The Garcia Project….

Candice. The warrior princess enters (there’s goes John, crying again…)

Marissa. I can’t decide whether to call her “Gervase’s niece” or just Stink Eye…

Jeff calls her out on the glare she just gave her tribe and Stink Eye explains why she’s pissed. The fact she was voted off because of what someone on the other tribe did is ridiculous. They should have kept their tribe strong, and clearly she’s stronger than Katie, but…you never know what else is going on in the tribe, so maybe she rubbed someone the wrong way. Speaking of rubbing, Stink Eye lets Gervase know the only reason she’s here is because of him:

You essentially “rubbed salt in their open wound,” with your grandstanding, she snaps.

“I’m gonna rub some more, promise you that.”

Once again, just like Brad last week, the advice here is: “don’t say stupid s**t just because you can.” You sound more idiotic doing this than if you just kept quiet and took your revenge later. I’ll give him a pass on it this time, hell, it’s been 13 years since he played, but he needs to start acting like he’s been here before…

So here’s the opportunity to make up for that b.s. he pulled at the Immunity Challenge and swap places with your niece. Gervase, what are you going to do…?

“Handle your biz,” he tells her…

Geez, thanks unc. Thanks for bringing me on this damn show and then abandoning me. Twice! Hope the Peterson family reunion goes well next year…

We’re ready to go, then. The challenge consists of maneuvering little wooden blocks through a maze and then stack them using a long pole… Whoops, maybe Gervase should have done this challenge! (it was an easy joke…). I’ll try to refrain from d**k jokes from now on, but this season is setting up to be one of those seasons. I’ll try to remember: “Bikinis…no weenies.”

Rupert takes the early lead, but his best days of stacking drum kits are behind him and he knocks over his stack. Candice is solid throughout as she does her best to remember all those years of playing Operation and removing the funny bones. I think if she can handle the pressure of being in an operating room, she can handle stacking some wood spools. She kills it and wins. Rupert tries to come back from the “Dead” but Marissa’s too pissed to be beat. She finishes second and sadly, the big bearded one is going home. Can’t say I’m going to miss him, as I said, I’ve never been a fan…

And for winning the challenge, Candice gets to choose who will receive a clue to the Hidden Immunity idol. No brainer here as she picks John.

Later, at Tadhana, the tribe is discussing the biggest twist (in my opinion) of this season. Since loved ones are at RI, the decision of who to send there to face them is paramount. If your tribe goes to Tribal Council, do you send a weak person (like Rachel) so your tribe mate could have a better chance to beat them in a challenge? Or do you not choose someone (Rachel) who has a strong SO (Tyson) who’d be willing to switch places because they’d have a better chance (in theory) of beating Candice. This is the dilemma that John is going through as the men’s alliance is discussing who should go next. Vytas is making perfect sense when he says they should target the other tribe’s strongest player (Tyson) by targeting Rachel in the Tadhana tribe.

This is the point where I think John begins to start making some bad decisions. First, he pretends to not see the logic in Vytas’ plan; which makes total sense. Then, he decides to not include the other guys in his search for the Hidden Immunity Idol.

This is always such a big deal in the course of the game. I’ve always thought that if you find or are given a clue, KEEP THAT S**T SECRET! Go find the idol and keep some power to yourself. But season after season, someone finds the clue, or the idol, and goes and spills and their guts to their closest ally. Seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult to keep it a secret, and then IF your alliance finds out that you had it (at Tribal Council, for example) you just claim that you wanted to keep some control over the game you were playing. It probably wouldn’t play out just like that, but I’m just surprised past players have always found it so hard to keep a secret.

However, in a situation like this, when EVERYONE ON BOTH TRIBES – knows that you were given a clue, I think it’d be better to include your alliance in the search. Simply put, you’ve got no chance of winning if you don’t make the merge, so for heaven’s sake, don’t make any major mistakes! It’s like these people have never seen the show before…

At Galang, the Mutual Admiration Society is comforting Rupert’s wife after his departure. She’s surprisingly okay with it, because A) she doesn’t have to worry about him any more, and B) she doesn’t have a target on her back now. This makes the most sense of anything uttered this episode, because who’s going to worry about the one woman who even Jeff Probst says shouldn’t even be there?

But all this love and affection is once again getting under Colton ’s skin, as he finds this oddly similar to middle-school (?). Now maybe it’s just me, but I think a group of people who show affection and support to someone who’s gone through a difficult event is not exactly like middle-school. I’d say it’s more like…a job. Or a support group. Or any number of other “groups.”

Maybe if the Galang tribe was picking on Laura and teasing her about her clothes and laughing at fart jokes, then I’d say it was like middle-school. But perhaps Colton ’s never had a “real job” so maybe he doesn’t know how normal people behave…? His profile on the CBS site says he’s a student teacher, so maybe that’s at a middle school so THAT’S why he equates everything to it…? I don’t know…

So Colton ’s bitchfangs come out and he starts talking a lot a crap to a few of the others. “This person wants you out…” “That person is targeting you…” “He wants that guy out…” It’s just the same crap we see season after season, but Colton ’s got a plan, so it’s all good for Mr. Cumbie:

“If I can get all this Zin and Zan outta here, I can run this show…” Not sure what he’s trying to say there, but I guess he was talking about these kids…

In an ITM, Kat sees through his b.s. and fears that Colton will turn on her. So that night, while the two of them are discussing one of the lies he told that day, Kat doesn’t give him the answer he wants so he feels backed into a corner. Watch out, here come the bitchfangs! Colton starts a hullaballoo and essentially threatens Kat with going to Redemption Island next time around. Is he in charge of the world? Again with the bullying! I thought they didn’t allow that in middle-school!

Tina laments that this is what the show has become, and probably wishes she were looking at Richard Hatch’s junk than Colton the d**k.

What I find most annoying about Colton is that he’s trying to come off as something he’s not. Namely, that he has intelligence. His misuse of terms and analogies and his misguided references are just the ramblings of an unintelligent person. He simply does not have the life experience to try to tell us why things are the way they are. It’s called, “know your place.” Shut up and listen to what the grown-ups are saying, little boy.

Oh, and don’t be such an a**hole…