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Mike's Survivor Review
SURVIVOR: Heroes Vs Villains
Episode 4: The Heroes keep sucking
We open at Hero camp, where Colby, who had spent
the past forever telling Tom that he was mentally
checked out and pretty much done with Survivor
basking in the glory of JT’s siding with him and Tom to
get Cirie out and save them. “JT is a hero” he
declares, because Colby’s a sucker for such statements.
Rupert on the other hand, is outraged. He’s not
so much on the “JT is a hero” bandwagon as the “JT is
a backstabbing traitor” bandwagon. JT babbles
incoherently to the tribe that what he did was in their
best interests, not his, blah blah blah.
Its morning and JT spends his morning lying his
ass off to Amanda about the fact that he’s totally solid
with her still, in spite of his betraying her
the night before. Amanda’s all “He lied to me, it’s game on now!”
in a promo, as if the game hadn’t been on from
the moment they got on the island. Amanda is on the whole,
pretty much devoid of game, so her threats are
meaningless.
Credits take us to Villain Camp where Coach is
doing Coach-Fu with the Villains, Sandra and Courtney
share ‘what a joke this guy is’ glances, as they
humor him by doing his rituals. Russell, who couldn’t care less
about even making the attempt at being socially
graceful, returns to his dirt pile where he’s been digging for the
Hidden Immunity Idol. He finds it and now celebrates
the fact that he’s a complete social outcast in his tribe,
but hey, he’s got an idol.
Reward challenge time, and it’s for chocolate…Which
when you’ve been on a diet of crap for two weeks,
is sure to make your stomach just about explode
in agony. The Heroes weirdly refuse their small amounts of
‘whet your appetite’ chocolate, which leads to
a rather testy exchange between Colby and Probst, and then
Rupert talks about how refusing the chocolate
will show the Villains that the Heroes MEAN BUSINESS and
are focused! Russell smacks Rupert down by declaring
the Villains clearly are the more focused team, since
they win everything, Russell may be loathsome,
but he’s right here.
The challenge is part rugby scrum, part basketball,
as half you tribe fights for balls in a mosh pit to then hand to the other
half of your team to shoot them into hoops. First
team to score ‘two’ (Note: Again Jeff is not on camera saying this) wins.
The opening fight for the balls has James blow
his knee out. The Heroes are not allowed to sub Colby in for some reason,
but they go on to score the first point of the
challenge anyhow, with Amanda scoring the point.
Round 2 has Tyson scoring for the Villains, the
main action here is Rupert was wrestling with Jerri and ended up smashing
her face first into a support pillar. Boston
Rob goes after him and Probst has to get everyone to settle down. Rupert
says
“I did not mean to do that!” as Jerri gets up
and blows him off. To hell with Dirty, Woman Beating Rupert. (Note: I honestly
don’t think he knew the wall was there when he
turned his body with her, but I hate him, and like a Republican, I’ll use
any
excuse to attack Rupert.)
ha ha
Round 3, Jerri, fresh from being mugged by Rupert,
scores the game winner for the Villains, take that Heroes, and awful Rupert!
Defeated yet again! The Villains head off to
magical chocolate land, while the Heroes are once again banished back to
their camp
with only failure, and without James, who could
be sent home with his blown out knee.
We’re back and now the medical staff look all
concerned and serious about James knee, they say they have no idea what
kind
of damage he’s done to it, and so they’ll give
him a splint and see if he can walk, if yes, he stays, if no, he leaves.
Said dramatic
walking attempt will not be shown to us.
We’re now at Villain chocolate party, Russell
celebrates the crippling of James and the eating of chocolate. Jerri says
she’s going
to be sick from pigging out on chocolate. The
Villains get a side reward of this awesome pool in the middle of nowhere
where they
have a swim and bask in the glory of always winning
everything. Boston Rob brings up the fact that Russell has the hidden idol,
and
then interviews that he’s never played with one
in the game before. The producers seem to love constantly airing promos
of Boston Rob
being just totally baffled by the nature of the
Hidden Immunity Idol. This seems like some ham-handed attempt to build
drama or
foreshadowing for Rob’s defeat at the hands of
the Hidden Idol.
Pavarti and Russell talk about the Idol that Russell
has. He tells Pavarti she’ll be riding his coat-tails, not knowing Nat
did that last year
for a million dollars. Russell wants to blindside
Boston Rob (Which gets a totally edited out of context “Yay!” out of Pavarti.
Honestly,
she wasn’t even looking Russell’s way and it
made no sense for her to say that, die lying producers, die.) and he needs
another ally.
Pavarti says Coach should be his target, declaring
him a ‘scared puppy’.
Russell, who’s TOTALLY CONTROLLING THIS GAME and
is KING RUSSELL…Quickly follows Pavarti’s orders and runs
over to Coach. Coach, who’s always
at the ready to get over-dramatic and sappy, is just blown away by how
awesome Russell is
with his pledge of giving Coach the Hidden Idol
if it ever came to that. He goes so far as to kneel before Russell in fealty.
Coach in a
promo declares that he’s now loyal to the bitter
end with Russell, because Russell said that maybe, sorta, kinda somehow,
if it really
needed to happen, Russell would debate handing
him the idol.
It was funny that coach declared "I'm a very loyal person" mere seconds after throwing his mentor, Boston Rob, under the bus.
Back at Hero camp, people debate James, Dead or
Alive, and the answer is…ALIVE! James returns and everyone’s happy,
except Tom, it seems. James is gimpy on one leg
as he shambles back to camp just in time for. Immunity Challenge!
Three groups of 2 people are blindfolded, while
1 person directs them around a course to find 10 tetris style puzzle pieces,
and then use those pieces to build a cube with
a logo on them (for the Heroes, a sun and palm trees, for the Villains,
a skull with crossed torches.)
Doesn't it seem like the challenges are DESIGNED
to injure people?
They blindfold these people and have them locate large, heavy objects to
carry over a field while blind.
This, after making the girls play rugby with
the boys.
The Villains have Jerri be their eyes, and James,
due to being a cripple, is the eyes for the Heroes.
This starts off with the Villains getting a lead
in the early gathering, but they end up falling one piece behind
by the end of gathering and the Heroes begin
frantically working on building their puzzle.
The Villains get back their final piece and instantly
fly into Villains Crush Puzzles mode. I know everyone gives Boston Rob
a ton
of credit, myself included, but Russell takes
off his blindfold and he instantly grabs a base piece and puts it in place.
Sandra was right
about a corner piece, and yells when everyone
else finally figures out she was right, Danielle (sitting out due to the
Villains numbers advantage)
says “Work as a team!” and Sandra says “They
told me no!” which should have been the title of this episode the way she
says it. The Villains
as a team just seem to work better together than
the Heroes. I mean in the challenge where it was ‘one person runs everything’
it appeared to
be a very close race between Tom and Rob at the
end, and Rob only won it because the Villains had the lead in the physical
part of that challenge,
so I have to guess that the Heroes just can’t
work together and the Villains can.
The Villains crush the puzzle and win again, because
that’s what Villains do, they win. Learn a lesson, kids of America, those
who are edited
to look like jerks on reality shows are smarter
than those who are edited to look good on them (this applies triple to
Rupert).
James declares Tom to be the problem and vows
to destroy him. James is hilarious because he spent all episode on the
Steph boot screaming
and yelling that she was a cancer because her
tribe lost every challenge, now he wants to vote out Tom, the guy who led
the tribe that won
every challenge. James is Republican-like in
his shifting reasons for doing anything.
Back at Heroes camp we get to watch everyone play
Survivor very poorly. Candice and Rupert begin things by having an epic
battle of stupid.
This battle begins by Rupert telling Candice
he wants Tom gone and Candice wondering why James should stay in the game
on one leg.
To make this even dumber, they have this conversation
in front of JT, who’s clearly playing everyone for fools.
Candice is an outsider to both major alliances
(Rupert/Amanda/James Vs Tom/Colby) who only gets Tom and Colby to a 4-3
loss if JT
doesn’t go with her, but with her vote, Rupert/Amanda/James
have majority and have control. She should be thrilled that anyone but
her is
going home and just say ‘yes, your plan is the
right one’. She should never offer up a plan of her own, since Rupert is
in an alliance and if
she draws Rupert’s ire, he might well vote her
out.
Rupert by the same token, needs to see that JT
is a snake oil peddler and Candice is a doomed outsider who would kill
to be a part of a
solid alliance, of course this will never happen,
because Rupert’s an idiot, Amanda’s a follower, and James doesn’t even
try to play the
social game, he mostly just gives orders and
hopes they are obeyed come voting time, none of the three of them see that
just pulling in
Candice cuts off the need to trust JT, who’s
already betrayed them before.
In a moment of clarity, Rupert declares that if
an injury should get you voted off, he should have been voted off ages
ago. Thanks for
finally admitting that you big idiot! Let’s get
Sugar back on the island STAT. She’s no more annoying than you are and
she’s far easier on the eyes.
Candice’s stupidity is quickly shown as such as
Rupert now lobbies for her to go home with Amanda they then recalibrate
their
boot order to 1. Tom 2. Candice.
See Candice, this is what you get for telling an alliance member “I’m not
so sure about your plan,
perhaps you should vote out an alliance mate.”
Meanwhile Rupert and Amanda get to worrying about
JT, because again, being MENSA members they can’t grasp the fact that their
three person alliance isn’t strong enough to
control the vote without JT. And they clearly have no earthly idea how,
in a tribe with 7 people,
two of which they are allied against (Tom/Colby)
one of whom they can’t trust at all (JT) and one who’s just twisting in
the wind (Candice)
where they could ever, in a million years, come
up with the forth vote they need to boot Tom. The Heroes are like Democrats
trying to
cobble together votes for a bill.
Now both the Tom/Colby alliance and the Amanda/James/Rupert
alliance lie around and whine about how JT’s working both sides,
and talk about hoping he’ll go with their side.
Of course they could hold their fate in JT’s hands, or they could all just
decide that he’s
playing them, and he’s clearly got the most game
out of anyone in the Heroes tribe, and boot him out to rid themselves of
his endless
plotting and scheming, but because they are all
idiots, they just allow JT to decide who stays and who goes.
Tribal, or as it’s known “Where the Heroes end
up at the end of every show” happens.
Words are spoken, lies told, and we get to the
votes.
Its 5-2 Tom is sent home, only he and Colby voted out James. Tom is sent packing, and the Heroes continue their death spiral into ruin.
THOUGHTS
JT’s just insane, if his end game after last week
was to vote out Tom this week, then why the betrayal last week? He’s low
man on
the totem pole for the Rupert/Amanda/James alliance.
The next vote will clearly be Candice or Colby, but the real question is,
once
that’s done, does the Alliance keep JT around?
Will his ties to Coach and Tyson worry them over keeping Colby, who’s useless,
or Candice, who may betray them, but has no real
pull with the Villains, is this any better than it would have been if he’s
just stuck with Cirie?
I don’t know, but the fact is, he’s clearly made
himself look a lot less trust worthy.
As for the Russell/Boston Rob throw down, it seems
like a really weird series of events here, if Russell honestly flips Coach,
then that
could flip Tyson and Jerri and give Russell the
majority to boot Boston Rob, but the thing is, are Tyson and Jerri going
to be cool with
throwing out Rob, over say, Courtney, or Danielle?
I mean you’re asking to toss out somebody who the tribe sees as a huge
advantage
in challenges, and for what? To make Russell
feel good about himself? That doesn’t seem like a good reason. And
if Coach doesn’t flip
Jerri or Tyson, than you only have a 3 person
bloc voting against a split voting alliance of 6, all you can do is force
a tie and a re-vote
which will get Pavarti booted and then Russell
follows right after.
The only way this works out for Russell is if
his scheming with the idol gives him a majority that allows him to win
a vote over Boston Rob
without the idol. It’s more the threat of the
power than the power itself that is his major advantage. If he needs to
use the idol at this Tribal,
than he’s done in two votes, I not, he’s pulled
off his coup and has the majority with the Villains.
Of course all of this is moot if the Heroes don’t
ever win another immunity challenge,
and winning those is something they seem completely
incapable of.
mikethedealer@hotmail.com
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