It’s a whole new game when the tribes merge.
Survivor: China Blog
7th Elimination: Jaime
Once again, Survivor: China has come through with another amazing episode! The show has been on an absolute tear the past three weeks with tons of surprises and double-crosses. What started off as one of the most boring seasons has been completely revitalized! If you can’t tell already, I’m very pumped up about this show! A lot went down this episode, so I’m abandoning the usual “Three Observations” for multiple “quick hits”. Onto the blog…
1. Peih-Gee is delusional. It cracked me up when PeihGee was getting interviewed and she started talking about how her game was completely dependent on getting Frosti and James to go with her, Jaime, and Erik. She then went on to add that she felt very confident that James would stay on her side.
The reason this cracked me up was that right before her speech, we were shown numerous clips of Peih-Gee talking to James about how the tribe needs to stick together, and how much she likes him, and how good their chances will be at the merge, and how she’s depending on James to stay true to the team, yada, yada… And the entire time James is half-ignoring her and patronizing her with “yup’s” and “uh-huh’s” that couldn’t have been less enthusiastic. You could probably be blind and deaf and still have been able to read that James had zero intention of sticking with Peih-Gee after the merge. But somehow, she just didn’t get it. Maybe she was just in denial, but you’d have to be pretty naive to think that James would ever consider sticking with that tribe after that tank-job they pulled two episodes ago.
2. Who let the female dogs out? Meanwhile, back at the other camp, Courtney once again graced us with her glowing personality. She started flipping out on Todd and Amanda for not throwing away the game by voting off Jean-Robert last episode. I guess when you’re a lock to be dragged along to the final tribal council, you don’t really care about who has the numbers, but Courtney clearly has no concept of how this game is played. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Courtney has never watched a single episode of Survivor. She probably overheard someone talking about the show and figured it would be a good opportunity to starve herself and lose another 15 lbs.
3. The non-immunity idol. You just can’t make stuff like this up! When James got back to his camp, he waited for the right moment to retrieve the immunity idol from the top of the gateway. However, he intially took the emblem off the wrong side, which yielded a piece of wood without the “you have found the immunity idol” inscription. He then took the correct emblem off the other side, but had to leave the other non-immunity emblem lying on the ground because the others were approaching. Wouldn’t you know, Jaime happens to notice that the emblems were missing from the gateway and proceeds to check it out. She finds the non-immunity emblem and wrongfully believes that she’s found an immunity idol. This my friends, is the set-up for some high comedy.
I’ve always been disappointed that nobody found Yao Man’s fake immunity idol last season. I always thought if someone had found that and tried to use the fake idol, it would have been the greatest moment in Survivor history. The fact that Jaime may have given us a second chance to see that happen, left me extremely giddy.
4. Some stats that only I care about. Here’s where I would normally say to skip ahead to the next section if you’re not interested, but I don’t want to this time. The way I see it, I give you a quality Survivor recap every week, and it’s the least you can do to hear me ramble on about my Survivor pick statistics. So with Todd now making both the merge and the jury, here’s how my Survivor records stand:
My early picks to win who have…
Made the Merge: 14/14
Made the Jury: 13/14
Made the Final Four: 8/13
Made the Final Two: 7/13 (Ozzy got 3 votes and Becky got 0 votes in Cook Islands, so I’m counting him as finishing second)
Won the Game: 4/13
Just to clarify, the numbers are out of fourteen because I didn’t watch Season 1 until it aired as repeats on the Outdoor Life Network. So I obviously couldn’t make any picks, already knowing the outcome. The way the game is going, I really believe it will come down to Todd or Amanda. That’s a good thing for me, because after picking the winner in four of my first nine seasons, I’ve been completely shut-out the past four times. Then again, history doesn’t bode well for me as the fiance”s pick has outlasted mine all thee times she’s made one. Considering the fact that her choice for this season just happens to be the most physically dominating player and has not one, but two hidden immunity idols down his pants (literally), I may be in for yet another big disappointment. This brings me to my next point…
5. Somebody needs to teach James to share. Before I continue, I do need to point out that the fiance”s pick is now an astounding 4/4 in getting the hidden immunity idol. Terry, Yul, Alex, and now James have all managed to get their hands on the little guy. What even more incredible is that she’s technically 5/4 as James is currently in possession of both of this game’s idols. This, of course, raises the question of why Todd hasn’t approached James to get his idol back. After all, he was the person who found the first idol, and gave it to James to use in the event he went to tribal council. Since James didn’t end up going to tribal council, you would think that fairness would dictate him handing the thing back to Todd. Then again, Survivor is a game where fairness gets thrown out the window, so I don’t blame James for holding onto the idol until Todd actually asked to get it back. But why hasn’t Todd approached him?
Todd clearly is the smartest player this season, and probably one of the smartest players ever. However, he has shown some surprising lapses in logic, like when he wanted to vote out Jean-Robert last week. The fact that he hasn’t tried to get the idol back from James is just dumb. That idol could very well be worth a million dollars! Not only does it have the power to keep him alive in this game, taking it back from James also prevents the big guy from completely running the table. The way things stand, there’s only going to be six more immunity challenges. Do you really want to give a powerhouse like James two free passes and only make him have to win four challenges to get to the final? It just makes no sense!
6. Get your heads in the game! After the merge, Jeff Probst announced that they were going to be treated to a feast and a Chinese cultural show. He also made the cryptic statement “Remember, the game never stops”. This may as well have been translated as, “Attention idiots: There is an extremely high chance that the immunity challenge will be based around the events of the feast. If you have half a brain, you will pay attention to what goes on and not get completely plastered with booze.” Of course not a single one of the Survivors caught on and were all shocked when Probst showed up and began quizzing them on the details of the feast as an immunity challenge. Keep in mind that these were not hard questions and anyone who was paying an ounce of attention would have gotten them. Seriously, there have been times this season where the level of play from the castaways has been just atrocious.
7. So I double-crossed an axe-murderer. Just a quick one here. Did anyone else find it amusing when Jean-Robert began threatening Todd that he would hold him personally responsible for any backstabbing that went down? I mean, he was acting all happy and then suddenly got deadly intense and started gesturing at Todd with his machete. Kind of scary…
8. Are you sure you’re “playing”? As tribal council approached, Jaime began talking about her non-immunity idol and her plan to overthrow the game. While doing so, she left us with this gem: “”I’ve come to realize that I am very good at playing stupid and it works to my advantage.” Again, you can’t make this stuff up!
However, even though eliminating Jaime should have been a slam-dunk for the former Red Tribe, things weren’t exactly falling perfectly into place. Jean-Robert was advocating to eliminate Peih-Gee since she was far more likely to convince people to flop than Jaime. In actuality, Jean-Robert was dead-on. Everyone knew not to trust Jaime, while Peih-Gee may be able to weasle her way into an alliance. Also, the fact that Jaime would be operating under the false pretense of having a hidden idol would make almost any scheme she came up with ineffective. The rest of the alliance didn’t see it that way, but there was the off chance that Jean-Robert would vote his own way and potentially throw off the numbers to eliminate Jaime. And of course, there was always the distinct possibility of Courtney voting for Jean-Robert because she’s a vindictive… you know.
In the end, we were all treated to Jaime stopping Jeff before the votes were read to bring up her non-immunity idol. While it was still pretty funny, it was not the payoff I had hoped for. Maybe somebody handing over Yao Man’s pathetic ball with “I. I.” painted on it would have resulted in a humiliating verbal bashing from Jeff Probst, but I think the fact that her non-immunity idol looked so close to the actual thing made him lay off. In the end, Jaime ended up becoming the first member of the jury. While good for my rooting interests, it did disappoint me as that means we’re due for yet another three person final tribal council.
Survivor Power Poll:
| Ranking | Player | Comments | Last Week |
| 16 | Chicken | Eliminated. | 16 |
| 15 | Ashley | Eliminated. | 15 |
| 14 | Leslie | Eliminated. | 14 |
| 13 |
Dave |
Eliminated | 13 |
| 12 |
Aaron |
Eliminated | 12 |
| 11 | Sherea | Eliminated | 11 |
| 10 | Jaime | Eliminated | 10 |
| 9 | Peih-Gee | Jean-Robert is dead-on that she’s should be the next person that his alliance pick’s off. | 7 |
| 8 | Erik | Jaime’s gone and he’s got no numbers. | 8 |
| 7 | Jean-Robert | My guess is that his alliance will stab him in the back before all the old Yellow Tribe has been dismissed. | 9 |
| 6 | Frosti | He’s still viewed as an outsider. | 5 |
| 5 | Courtney | She’s looking more unstable every day. You wonder how long she can keep this up before Todd and Amanda turn on her because they can’t trust her any more. | 4 |
| 4 | Denise | Flying waaaay below the radar right now. | 3 |
| 3 | James | Todd is wisely trying to oust him before he expects it. As a result, he could be the next to go. Still, that potential blindside is only enough to knock him down to the three spot, because with two idols and his strength, he should be the favorite. | 6 |
| 2 | Todd | He’s going to be the one who will start taking heat for the decisions. He also second-guesses himself a lot and ends up changing his plans. | 2 |
| 1 | Amanda | Take notes. This is how you play the game, folks. | 1 |
