Survivor: Cook Islands – Episode 2

Survivor: Cook Islands Blog
Episode 2 Elimination: Billy

After watching Episode 2 of Cook Islands, all I can say is “Wow”.  Usually the first few episodes of Survivor after the season premiere are a little dull.  The game doesn’t usually heat up until the merge approaches and most of the dead-weight players have been sent home. That was not the case at all last night, as this was easily the best second episode in Survivor history. Where do I even start?

Seeing as I just completed my psych rotation and have nothing to study, I now have time to ramble a bit this week. So I’m going to go in depth about the whole Ozzy fiasco.  I think the perfect analogy to this situation are the people who consistently bet on Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts during the playoffs.  You see, they look at Peyton’s amazing passing stats, the Colts extremely impressive record, and they think to themselves “Hey, they have to be the best bet to win the Super Bowl, right?”.  Wrong.  Because fancy stats and a nice record mean absolutely nothing in comparison to the fact that when everything is on the line, Peyton Manning is a notorious choker.

As much as I enjoy making fun of those Indy supporters who never seem to learn no matter how often they get burned, I have to say that I’m just as guilty of a similar mistake with Ozzy.  You see, I looked at Ozzy’s monkey-like skills, his initial likeability, and the fact that he didn’t have the outward appearance of a huge threat, and I thought, “Hey, he has to be the best bet to win Survivor, right?” But just like chokers never win the Super Bowl, people who play the game too hard at the beginning and make dumb decisions like throwing early challenges never win the million dollars.  I don’t care if Ozzy had the ability to fly, breath fire, and teleport. I should have never picked him after I saw him talking about throwing a challenge.

So with that in mind, it’s time for a segment called “Who I Wish I’d Picked!”

5. JP – JP was my number two choice last week. I originally stayed away from him because he didn’t have the “under the radar” appeal of Ozzy.  Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, JP wanted to throw the challenge just as much as Ozzy did.”  That’s true, but what really soured me on Ozzy is not that he threw the challenge, but the way he orchestrated the whole thing.  After getting a good glimpse at his psychotic tendencies, getting rid of Billy may have actually been a good move.  But in the process, Ozzy showed how hard he was playing the game, lost the trust of most of his tribe-mates, and acted like an arrogant jerk during the challenge. What I like about JP is that he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about wanting to vote off Billy, until Ozzy brought it up.  He’s also on a team that probably isn’t going to lose a challenge for a while and he’s got some solid alliance potential. Still, you never throw a challenge the second week.  Never.

4. Candice – Candice made the monumental mistake of trying to get with Adam last week. However, after Adam started whining about building a decent shelter, I have a feeling he won’t last very long.  If he gets voted out early on, Candice may be able to redeem herself.  Plus, Parvati is going to start putting the moves on Adam next week, so she may be the one who’s stuck with the “couple” label.

3. Jonathan – Jonathan’s quirky, which is why I didn’t go for him last week.  I think it’s going to hurt his alliance ability down the stretch.  However, the guy seems fairly intelligent, which seems to be a rare commodity these days on the Cook Islands.

2. Yul – I gotta give credit to my girlfriend, Maria.  Perhaps even more impressive than my 4 of 11 in picking the winner, is the fact that the person she picks to win is now 2 for 2 in finding the hidden immunity idol on Exile Island.  First Terry, now Yul.

And now for another tangent… Why on earth do they make the clues for the hidden immunity idol so obvious?  I guess these hints might be challenging if you were missing a chromosome or something, but otherwise it’s basically gift-wrapped for whoever goes to Exile Island.  Last season I knew it was buried by that “Y” shaped tree five minutes into the show when Probst read the first clue.  This season they basically told Yul where to start digging with the painstakingly detailed hint.

If you’re the producers of the show, you want the hidden idol to come into play late into the season.  You want the stakes to be high, and the drama even higher when that sucker rears its ugly head.  So why on earth would you give a super-obvious clue the second week?  Why risk having somebody pull it out in episode six?  It just doesn’t make sense.  CBS, you can consider this my application for the executive producer spot for Season 14.

…And now back to “Who I Wish I’d Picked!”

So you have to like Yul’s chances now that he has the idol.  And I would also like to retract my statement from last week where I said that the guys on Puka Puka break down the stereotype that all Asians are smart, because after more exposure, Yul seems to be a pretty smart guy as well.  That makes him my #2 guy.

1. Becky – Again, I should have known better than to go with Ozzy, but CBS really didn’t give me much to work with.  My gut was telling me that one of the Asian girls would have been the way to go. I just had no way to properly assess them.  Now, I have to say that Becky would be my pick to go all the way. Think about this:
A. She’s on the best team.
B. She’s in an alliance with Yul
C. Yul’s got the hidden idol, which will protect them
D. Yul’s got the huge target on his back, which will keep the heat off her
E. She’s a lawyer, so she’s got to be smart
F. She’s a lawyer, so she knows how to lie
And that, my friends, is why Becky is the complete package. Barring some massive turn of bad luck with them mixing up the teams or something, that girl is going to go far in this game.

Seeing as this entry is almost long enough to qualify as a novel, I think I’ll start to wrap things up…

After the challenge is thrown, Billy tries and fails to turn everyone against Ozzy.  However, before his torch was snuffed, Billy left us with one of the most shocking moments in Survivor history. When questioned about the possibility of leaving, Billy stated that he had already won his million dollars when he fell in love at first site – with Candice!  He then went on to tell everyone that Candice felt the same way because she told him “I love you”. By the way, it was really “We love you”, but when you have psychotic tendencies, pronouns tend to all sound the same.

The highlight of it all was Jeff Probst’s reaction. He masterfully managed to totally make fun of Billy, yet at the same time appear sympathetic so as not to come off as a jerk.  How this man has yet to strike a lucrative deal as a talk-show host or a play-by-play sports announcer is beyond me.  Survivor is an amazing show, and extremely popular.  But you’d have to think that a cushy studio job would be a lot more enticing than spending months at a time exiled in some remote corner of the world.  When he finally does step down, I call first dibs on his job, though.

I know I’m chewing up some serious time with the length of this article, but this episode was so choc-full of controversy between Ozzy, the immunity idol, and Billy’s infatuation, I just had to cover every angle.  And seeing as I’ve really got nothing better to do at the moment, one final rambling…

Heading into the show I was seriously worried that Ozzy was going to get the boot.  I knew he wanted to throw the challenge, and then on the way to school, they ran a promo on the radio with a high-pitched male saying “If they vote me off, they’re going to regret it”.  I was almost positive it was Ozzy’s voice, which it was.  So as I’m watching the show unfold, from Ozzy’s overbearing attitude with the chicken trap, to the way he turned on Billy, to the cocky manner with which he carried himself in the challenge, I’m getting increasingly worried.  None of my picks has ever failed to make the merge, and here’s Ozzy self-destructing his way into going out second.  It was a total nightmare.  Thankfully, Ozzy survived.  Then again, maybe that’s not really a good thing since I haven’t disliked one of my picks this much since Ami and her anti-testosterone brainwashing techniques in Vanuatu.

In the end, I think my merge streak will stay intact.  But I don’t see Ozzy going very far.  He’s playing the game way too hard, and nobody will want him to stick around too long since they can’t trust him.  The only two times someone has so blatantly played the game this hard and come out on top were Richard Hatch (Nobody knew how to play the game back then) and Boston Rob (It got him kicked out in Marquesas, and he only managed to pull it off in All-Stars because he was now good friends with the people he was screwing over).  Otherwise 39 days is way too long to play mind games with people and not have them catch on.

I’ll keep rooting for Ozzy, just because I want my record to remain respectable, and I’d like to see his tribe win.  But I have to say that last night was the first time I was ashamed to be an adopted Latino.

Wow, this was long.  I have serious problems.