Let’s get physical!
Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains Blog: Episode 1
1st Elimination: Sugar
I hung up my keyboard and retired from Survivor blogging after I got married and started my residency. Breaking down the latest episodes week after week was a passion of mine, but one that took up waaaaaaay too much of my time. I knew that I just wouldn’t be able to do the blog justice with all the new changes in my life. Then, this December, Jeff Probst announced that Season 20 would be called Heroes vs. Villains and I immediately knew I would be back, no matter how full my schedule may be. Seeing as I’m typing this a solid nine days after the season premiere, it’s safe to say that we’re off to a great start with the Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains blog. Every rational bone in my body is telling me that there’s absolutely no way that I have enough time to do this blog. Then again, Survivor is a show that manages to spit in the face of rationality perhaps more than any other I know. So it’s only fitting that I throw caution into the wind, just like Sugar with her bra during the first reward challenge,and blog this incredible season for all it’s worth.
Since we’re already so far after the fact, I’ll skip a major re-hash of the first episode and stick to some of the more salient points. The bottom line is that for the first time ever, a crew of 20 Survivor veterans are facing off against each other. Things are guaranteed to be a whole lot different than the Morons vs. Favorites season, and I’m guessing we’ll see a whole lot more strategy involved than the All-Stars season where Boston Rob basically ran circles around everyone. With few exceptions, we’re seeing some of the cream of the Survivor crop in terms of over-all game play. They may not represent the absolute 20-best players of all time, but at least half of them belong in that hallowed group. Needless to say, I’m a little more than pumped to see how Survivor’s version of the Royal Rumble plays out this spring.
Some Questionable Additions:
Like I alluded to earlier, not every player in this game would’ve gotten my vote to participate in this hallmark season. The three in particular that I have issue with are…
Sugar – Does riding coat tails and having daddy-issues qualify you for “hero” status?
Candice – She was utterly forgettable on the Cook Islands. I’m also wondering how being part of the neo-Nazi caucasian alliance in direct competition with favorites Ozzy and Yul qualifies her as a hero.
Danielle – Dumb as a box of rocks, and not overly evil. She may have made it to the final in Exile Island (thanks to a questionable immunity challenge), but I fail to see how you can argue her into the Top 50 of all time.
Never in a million years would I have selected those three above. Some of the other picks I don’t particularly like are…
Randy – Yeah, he had a horrible attitude, but he also played a pretty horrible game in Gabon
Courtney – Again, bad attitude, but she basically rode Amanda and Todd’s coat tails in China
Tyson – He’s good for a chuckle every now and then with his mocking commentary, but wasn’t overly memorable in Tocantins.
My Pick:
For those of you who don’t know, every season I try and pick the eventual winner after the first episode of each season. Early on, when the smart people weren’t quite as strategic and the dumb people weren’t quite as insane, I was actually pretty good at picking the people would would go far. Through the first 15 seasons, every one of my picks had made the merge and over half my picks made it to the Final Tribal council. Since then, things have been a veritable disaster. Mikey B totally stunk it up in Fans vs. Favorites, and my subsequent picks have all been early merge fodder. Here’s my stats through 19 seasons:
My Picks:
Borneo: Didn’t watch
Australia: Elisabeth – Final Four
Africa: Ethan – Winner
Marquesas: Boston Rob – Merge/No jury
Thailand: Brian – Winner
Amazon: Dave – Merge/Jury
Pearl Islands: Sandra – Winner
All-Stars: Boston Rob – Final Two
Vanuatu: Ami – Merge/Jury
Palau: Tom – Winner
Guatemala: Stephenie – Final Two
Exile Island: Sally – Merge/Jury
Cook Islands: Ozzy – Second Place in a Final Three
Fiji: Edgardo – Merge/Jury
China: Todd – Winner
Micronesia: Mikey B – Fourth out
Gabon: Marcus – Jury/No Merge
Tocantins: Brendan – Merge/Jury
Samoa: Eric – Merge/Jury
My picks who have…
Made the Merge: 16/18 – 89%
Made the Jury: 16/18 – 89%
Made the Final Four: 9/18 – 50%
Made the Final Tribal Council: 8/18 – 44%
Won the Game: 5/18 – 28%
Those stats are good, but as you can see, they’re padded by a fantastic first half of the decade and a very disappointing second half. Ironically, my Survivor picks in the 00’s coincide nearly perfectly with the rises and falls of the New England Patriots. It seems that the better I do, the better the Pats do. So Season 20 is about much more than padding my stats and redeeming myself. It’s about bringing the Lombardi back to Foxboro!
With that in mind, here are the people I considered making my pick for the season, before I reveal the true selection:
Danielle – She defintely has the whole “under the radar” thing going and could surprise a lot of people if she makes the right alliances. I found myself seriously considering this option before I remembered exactly how stupid she was. Not only was she a major player in the alliance I titled “The Axis of Idiots”, but upon review of my Exile Island blogging, one cast member described her as “completely useless and unable to complete coherent sentences”. Yeah, I think I’m gonna pass…
Cirie – Always, always a threat. Unfortunately, everyone has caught onto this, making her a huge target. Even if she can spin her web, her chances of winning a final immunity challenge are about 2% and not even Danielle is stupid enough to take her to the final.
Russell – Best. Player. Ever. It’s a crime he didn’t win in Samoa. Personally, I chalk up his loss to his fellow players being too stupid to actually appreciate how badly he outsmarted them. However, Russell has the type of game that will overwhelm a normal group of castaways, and I doubt it will translate well when he’s dealing with a group of veterans.
JT – You can tell he’s come to play. Still, I just can’t imagine a scenario where all these sneaky people don’t knock him out. Unlike Russell, JT has got the amazing ability to lie to you and have you still like him, which is about as dangerous of an asset as you can have in this game. This was a tough one to pass up.
Boston Rob – He’s the only player that I’ve picked twice. Going for a third time was tempting, but I have a feeling that there could be a power struggle between him and Russell. There’s no telling how that would turn out. Plus, the previews for Episode 2 show him lying unconscious in the jungle. Never a good sign.
Tom – He was a powerhouse in Palau and clearly has his thinking cap on this season. Still, his victory came during a season in which his tribe won EVERY immunity challenge. As a result, his win in Palau wasn’t the most strategically-dominating performance in Survivor history, to say the least.
Stephenie – I’ve labeled her as the KG of Survivor. The girl is all heart. How many women on this show would’ve dislocated their shoulder like that and kept competing? However, this season is full of catty females, and it’s looking more and more like she could be on the outs.
Sandra – She’s another great under the radar pick, which is suprising since she’s won in the past. Make no mistake, she will sniff out a good alliance and ride it as far as she can. I don’t have much of a negative for her other than the fact that she’s a past winner. However, this time around, I don’t think that past victories will matter quite as much as they did in All-Stars as nearly everyone has made it very far.
Jeri – Since everyone pretty much dismisses her as being “over-the-top” evil, she’s not considered as big of a threat as she should. She’s definitely a darkhorse candidate. However, she did break the first rule of the (yes, it’s back!) Survivor Manifesto…
Rule #1: Under no circumstances are you to engage in overt flirting or public displays of affection.
And with Coach of all people! Sorry, I just can’t endorse that.
And now for my pick: Amanda
For the past three seasons, I feel that I’ve fallen into the trap of picking the “obvious” person with Marcus, Brendan, and Eric. I feel that I may be doing the same with Amanda. She played the best game in China. She played the best game in Micronesia. She is the only player in Survivor history to make it to the Final Tribal Council twice. I don’t care about James’ muscles, or Russel’s sneakiness, or Cirie’s social skills. When it comes to Survivor, Amanda is the total package. Well, until you get to the last Tribal Council, that is.
Both times she had the million dollars in the bag and then completely fell apart in front of the jury. We’re talking about absolute train wreck performances. However, as she mentioned in this episode’s tribal council, she’s fully aware of how awful she was. For me, that was what sold me on Amanda. She’s got tons of social connections, having played with 5 other contestants in the past. She’s a beast in late season challenges. She’s as good of a strategist as the game has ever seen. And now, if she can harness those assets and make it all the way to the end for a third time, I think she knows what it will take to punch home a victory.
So yes, this is the “obvious” pick, but it’s a pick I know that I can trust. There’s absolutely no way to tell what will happen this season. There’s just too many good players. But I highly doubt that Amanda will let me down.
That’s it for Episode 1. I wrote far too much, but then again, I’ve been itching to get back to Survivor blogging for a long time!
