Flop of an anniversary...

Hey folks time for another Heather Writing essay thing.  Now for a rant that I've had... for a long time.

Why Heroes Vs Villain’s isn’t an amazing season

(A.K.A Heather’s HvV rant)

For two years straight in the Survivor Oz poll of “Greatest Season” Heroes Vs Villains has walked away with the award.  This gets me confused.  I have always wondered what is the aspect of HvV that appeals to a lot of fans.  It’s not the case of the returning player aspect (reminding that my favorite season is Guatemala, a season which features returning players) but rather what happened and the edit of the season in general.  I’ve had a long standing HvV rant that I would happily speak had anyone asked, although this is the first time I’ll post it in its entirety, rather than speak it.

The first part of what is wrong with Heroes Vs Villains started before the season even aired.  The season meant to represent that tenth anniversary of the long standing series only used players that were seen in thirteen seasons.  This is without considering that no original players from Guatemala nor Micronesia was present and completely disregarding the full returning player cast of All Stars this is only ten seasons out of eighteen.  If I convert this into percentage only 55% of the seasons of Survivor were represented by an original castaway from their season.  Among these seasons with no representatives include the very first season of Borneo.  Heroes Vs Villains was set up as the big season celebrating “every” year it’s been on the air, unfortunately HvV failed what it was set out to do before it even aired. 

The second part is the castaways themselves.  Nine of the twenty players had already received their second chance on another season.  While many a people complained about the inclusion of Danielle (runner up of Panama) and Candice (best known for being the first contestant to willing switch tribes) I was complaining about seeing Parvati, James, Amanda, Rob, Rupert, Stephenie, and Cirie again.  I usually give a free pass to Colby and Jerri because of the format and they are the original Hero and Villain respectively of Survivor, however that is still seven people who I believe had no business being there and whose spots could have easily have been filled by players that we have yet seen again, perhaps from seasons that weren’t even invited to the tenth anniversary season of Survivor.  So far, this is two points of facts against the season in the casting alone and we are just getting started.

Heroes Vs Villains failed in being a tenth anniversary season before it even aired.  However it could be a great season even without that fact looming over it right?  Wrong.  I have the confessional count of HvV and it isn’t good. (Special thanks to my friend SleepTight from SurvivorSucks for Confessional data.)

Confessional counts are handy in getting a rough idea on the edit each player got for that episode.  Let me point out some surprising facts on the confessional data of this season.  Let’s start with Sandra and the fact that she spent six episodes in a row without a single confessional, or how about the fact that Courtney’s confessionals per episode average is .44 which is because she only had four confessionals despite on being the second jury member.  How about Russell getting 68 confessionals for the total of all of the season, with the second highest being Rupert’s 38?  How can this be a true All Star season when we see someone get a single digit confessional despite making the merge?  You get a sense of a balanced edited season if the confessional per episodes are around the same number, but Heroes Vs Villains was anything but a well edited season.

Now let’s get a look at each contestant who participated in this season.  For one, the “epic” characters in this season can be counted on one hand.  The Heroes tribe overall had the personality of a wet piece of cardboard and the Villains tribe had a few good characters, but are also overshadowed by wet pieces of cardboard.  I’d like to believe that casting was a huge factor in this, but the edit sure didn’t help with this either.  Also I’d like to point out that nearly every player had their reputation take a giant nose dive, this is completely ignoring the fact that no one but Jerri even improved on a past finish this season, discounting Candice and Sandra who finished in the same placing.  Let’s go through them all shall we?

Sugar- The “robbed” fan favorite from Gabon finally seen as annoying and grating and booted first

Stephenie- The underdog of Palau and played a strong game in Guatemala showed her self-centered Guatemala self and was second voted out.

Randy- Strong challenge performer in Gabon who was voted out third for being a challenge liability.

Cirie- Seen as a robbed mastermind from Micro and Panama but was idol’d out by Tom for being a threat.

Tom- The beloved winner and leader of the unstoppable Koror in Palau to the person on the outs and was voted out

Tyson- a lovable goofball in Tocantins who “voted himself out” by swapping his vote from Russell to Parvati (which by the way that choice had nothing to do with Russell.  From an interview (here) he pretty much had said that he wanted Parvati gone over Russell and switched his vote based on his own choice.  It was only edited the way it was to trick people into thinking that Russell influenced anyone out there.)

James- Does this need explaining? Okay, the fan favorite from two different seasons becomes a giant bully and gets voted out because of an injury in the only season were he didn’t make the merge.

Rob- Even though he did grow from his ASS expectance and became a father since then, he was voted out by the people he thought he could trust the most just before the jury.

Coach- While he was still the same old goofy Coach from Tocantins, he was thrown under the bus for screwing with the villains order of how they sit people out and had he was voted out in the same spot Tocantins he wouldn’t have made the jury.

Courtney- The main comic relief from China who was almost completely ignored and had a grand total of 4 confessionals

JT- The lovable fan favorite and winner from Tocantins to Dumbest Survivor ever.  Does this need explaining?

Amanda- While I’m not sure if Amanda had much of a legacy or exactly why she’s a hero, but this is the first season she gets voted out in.  Amanda is pretty unimportant in the long run. :/  

Candice- While people wonder why she is included, she was a record breaker in her original season for multiple reasons, but in HvV she pretty much did the same thing with flipping and didn’t improve in standing.

Danielle- Panama’s runner up that backstabbed Terry who got into an alliance out of desperation with Russell, left in tears because of Russell deciding to vote her out.  Also got a whopping eight confessionals despite being a huge part of the reason why Russell lost again.

Rupert- Not as big nor epic as he was in past seasons.

Colby- Probably took the biggest hit out of everyone in this season, the challenge dominator of the second season to “superman in a fatsuit”.

Jerri- Okay, Jerri is the biggest expectation to this list as she was widely loathed by everyone but really came together as someone who we can root for and love.   

Russell- Lost the exact same way as he did in Samoa.  See Russell is probably the polar opposite of a great player.  All he did in both of his seasons was flash around idols like crazy and that never impresses me because any idiot can play an idol to get out someone like Tyson or Kelly.  He didn’t know how to play Survivor as he voted out his own allies (Daneille) and made fake promises to those that weren’t his allies (Colby, Rupert) just to add the sting to it all.  How anyone can say that he was robbed is beyond me, except for the fact that HvV was just Samoa part two.

Parvati- I think this was the best showing of Parvati, who had a personality aside from one dimensional flirt.  However like Russell I have to point out that her double idol play was really overrated and could have played by any idiot who realized that their friends were in trouble.  Also just like Russell she wasn’t robbed.

Sandra- I hate that it was only her second win that won her the respect that she deserved in Pearl Islands.  She won using the exact same strategy in Pearl Island and Sandra finally getting the respect that she deserves is easily the best thing about this trash season.

Tl:dr this season was full off underwhelming characters completely ran on Idol Shenanigans.  If someone wants to point out a reason why this season is better than the 17 other seasons that I placed above it in my personal season rankings go right ahead and E-mail me. (HeatherNS17@ymail.com)  However a lot of seasons are better than the Russell show 2.0 and the season of character suicides.  Not to mention that Heroes Vs Villains was a flop of an anniversary season that only included reps from 55% of Survivor Seasons. 

  

Thank you for your attention.  Hope you enjoyed the truth tea. :)

Heather

Turning older

It was my birthday yesterday on the seventh.  I had a ton of fun and the fun still is coming.

I'm sorry for dropping out of this, I've been extremely busy with school and various things I had to get done, oh and Computer failure.  I've been also working on a few projects and stuff so yeah there is that.  However I shall keep it going throughout the month. :)

Has everyone voted in the Ozcars?  Well if you didn't then it's too late but tune in tomorrow for the announcements on who won.  I am so rooting for Brian for best pre-merge!

I recently finished my Cook Island rewatch, and I hated it. :)  I love Cristina though.  I love her now.  Also the amazing theme of the explorers theme with the Hidden Immunity Idol being a compass and the voting urn being a messenger bag. 

With the result of Caramoan, I just don't like the season for various reasons.  Mostly because it sucked.  Phillip was horrible, the reaction from it all was horrible.  It can be truly called "Half-ASS" because it is literally All Stars with the bitterness with just half the cast!  Congrats Probst.  You got what you wanted.  A season with horrible characters with most of the camera time, interesting players shafted by the edit, and a winner that you would gladly have sex with.  I hope you are proud of you "creation" because it's pissing me off.  Enough of this returning player nonsense.  Clearly Probst no longer cares about the quality of the show anymore.  It's just tiring.  I'm hoping for the best with Blood Vs Water but I have the lowest expectations with it.


So thanks for listening to my Summer rant!  I'll post more in the future btw. ;)

Dead Week... Again

Things I'd said I do- Tocantins rewatch (not up), Caramoan recaps (missed last weeks), long huge essay (one part is up).  I'm sucking at this aren't I? ;_;

Well I was sick last week.  I lost weight in fact I was so bad off.  So sorry for that hole.  Oh, and I'm no longer posting my recaps here.  They shall be on the S-Oz website unless I miss an update.  I think it's rather redundant to post it twice.  So, it'll either be here or there, and if it's there then it shall be linked. :)

Oh and my personal life updates because you want to know them:  My first year of college has less than a week left.  This Monday I'm moving back home to the Tulsa/Skiatook area.  I've done great!  And I'm coming back next year!  Oh and this summer I shall be rewatching a lot of Survivor seasons to review my list.  I'll be rewatching all 26 (yes including Caramoan) seasons in a random order. :D (god help me if RI or ASS is first...) then I'll write a little something, something about them.  So, I'm suspending my Tocantins updates after my fourth one (I have half of it done).

OH YEAH I'M ALMOST DONE WITH SCHOOL FOR THE SUMMER!!!

So yeah, I've been really busy.  Sorry I'll fix it.

Love yah always-

~Heather~

404 your Tribal Council is missing.

Sorry this was late.  I was busy most of the week with school and such.  I'm almost done with the year so I'm trying to set up for next year, as well as some other things.  So yeah. 

I'm also been working on the next Tocantins update.  I'm not leaving you guys out in the cold!

THE BLURB

First off, I didn't watch this live.  It was storming so hard we were under a tornado watch, so I just saw it on CBS later that night.

First off, Phillip left.  This episode is as good as gold to me for that. :D

As soon as they get back for the last Tribal Council, both groups go off and regroup to figure out how to move on from there.  In the SRU group, Andrea seems to be taking charge of those discussions; they decided that Renyold(s) is next.  Over at the three amigos, they decided to figure out where the next idol is.  By the way, why must they insist on planting those things?  I’m already tired of the Hidden Immunity Idol.  I say play it once and done.  Really good Survivor players shouldn’t need to relay on idols.  However, that’s enough on that tangent for the moment.

Remember that one preview that hyped up a Dawn meltdown, one that would drive her to quit?  It turns out that she has a retainer and in fell into the water and she can’t get.  She goes and calls for Brenda while having a breakdown moment.  I wanted to give her a hug.  Brenda finds it for her, and Dawn loves her for it. It’s such a cute moment, and Brenda finally gets a confessional.  I’d love to hear more from her speaking of.  Let’s say I got tired of Cochran and Phillip getting every single confession ever.  Although I didn’t like the Dawn bashing.  Not a fan.  However a great night’s sleep is what Dawn needed, and she was better in the morning.  However she looked ready to take out Andrea of all people.

So we get to the reward challenge, and it’s one from the last season of the Philippines.  Malcolm, who has won this challenge before, used Penner’s strategy of finding all the bags for everyone before moving on, however Reynold picked up on that and found his team’s bags a lot quicker.  Add in the fact that Sherri took forever on the Orange team, thus making this a victory for the purple team of Cochran, Phillip, Erik, Reynold, and Dawn.  Even though everyone seems to enjoy the reward of a swimming pool and food, Erik is annoyed by Phillip not using the shower and instead dirtying up the pool with the mud/rice combo from the challenge.  I would be too.  Phillip doesn’t really mesh well with the group now does he?

The immunity challenge is one of my favorite challenges from a past season.  Pearl Island’s merge Immunity challenge has come back.  Phillip decides to not participate in this challenge because of an incident that he had with water.  I call some shenanigans on that because he participated in the last immunity challenge, which had him submerged in water as well.  Oh well, Reynold wins anyways forcing Phillip and his not so stealthy Stealth R Us to change their target to Malcolm… except that he finds the rehidden Hidden Immunity Idol right in front of them.  They still are planning to split the vote between him and Eddie however just in case.

However, at tribal council, Malcolm pulled a fast one.  

He gave his other idol to Eddie so that the both of them could be safe at Tribal Council, as well as vote out Phillip.  He announces the plan, but Phillip tells everyone to stick to their guns, although both Brenda and Dawn want to take the chance to vote out Andrea.  However that was not meant to happen because of the seating arrangements, and the idols get played with Erik also voting for Phillip (or rather “Fillup”) and for the first time Phillip gets voted out of Survivor.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think this was the best move for Malcolm.  His best bet was to sell out Eddie.  Rarely does a minority alliance all make it to the end, the only examples I can think of is the Aitu tribe in Cook Islands and the Jalapao Tribe in Tocantins.  It’s much more common to see the less threaten person of that alliance to make it far and win, like Chris and Danni.  Also if Eddie and Reynold are on the jury, and Malcolm is up in the final three, they will be guaranteed jury votes for him unless Malcolm really screws up with that somehow.  Even then, I don’t think that he should have said that they were going to vote out Phillip.  Spring up a surprise or something.  I’m not a huge fan of this move and it will be another overrated idol based move to match Parvati’s double play six seasons ago.  There have been bigger and better moves in Tribal pulled without an idol play.  Leann, Brendan, Tyson in Tocantins, and Jamie are all vote outs that I would regard better than this one.  I really hope that they won’t rehide the idols, simply because there is no need to keep on dragging them around and using them to substitute social game play in a minority situation.  However we shall find that out next time won’t we?  

I didn't see the preview, but I'm wondering who shall be next.

Oh, and I need to us this Malcolm Tweet as the Tweet of the Week. "If anyone needs me, I'll be wearing nothing but war-paint dancing on top of a burning cop car leading a chorus of God Bless America"

God bless.

UPDATES

I'll be working on the second chapter this week, and the Tocantins update will be ready soon.  Not much else to say except for just hold on!  

Love

~Heather~

Sherri goes Sarah Palin

I lied.  Oops.  Tocantins recap will be up by Saturday hopefully.  You can blame the idiots in PoS for making me reply to sarcastic, witty remarks until it's not funny anymore.  F up guys.

Jk, I love you people.  Now to the recap. :D

THE BLURB

You’d think that after Corinne got blindsided, that Malcolm and friends would be worried about the game a bit more.  However they try to get back into the game not worrying about the sinking ship that they are on.  I loved the fact that CBS hyped up an alliance that was going to eat each other the first vote off of the merge.  Super-Alliance, sure let’s just call it that.  Malcolm wants to try to flip Dawn (who he believes is on the bottom of Stealth R Us) and try and get Sherri on his side.  

About Sherri, she’s now on team favorites.  Philip even gives her a nickname.  Sherri seems to have this weird, roller coaster of an adventure.  She was in power on Gota, then no more, and then gets separated from her main alliance on a swap, and finally she gets targeted at the last vote.  She’s now turned her back to the remaining fans.  It’s fueled by revenge, but it’s something that makes sense.  Because of this, she won’t go with the other fans because they sold her down the river the last vote off.  Malcolm going to Dawn about this is also a bad, bad idea.  Just ask Julia and Corinne, two people that were both voted out because of them telling Dawn something like this.  She must be such a lovable person that people are literally lining up just to tell her their secrets.  It’s a rather smart strategy, and it’s keeping her off the chopping block but putting other on, without even alerting people to what she’s doing.  She clearly knows what’s up.

The reward challenge is from a challenge in Nicaragua, the one where Fabio peed in the pool.  The reward is a classic beautiful waterfall with food.  After a few, nail biting rounds, it was the all male purple team of Eddie, Reynold, Michael, Erik, and Cochran that won it.  The guys try and get Cochran into the all male alliance, saying that they could fight against the female’s flirting, because you know that Dawn and Sherri have been playing that card all season long.  However Cochran isn’t into the guy thing and would rather be on twitter and hang out with the gals and Phillip.  By the way, Erik is still in this alliance?  After he voted out Corinne?  This season doesn’t make much sense.

The talks about strategy on each side brought up a lot of names.  On team Favorites Plus Sherri it seems that Malcolm would get voted out, while on team Mostly Manly Men, Andrea was identified as the leader of Stealth R Us, which makes sense because it’s not Phillip whom I think is nothing more than a mascot when it comes to that alliance.  Also Eddie and Andrea seem to have an adorable bond, though I think Andrea is just playing it up on the show to get more info.  Good on her.

Now we get to the immunity challenge and they are reusing another Palau challenge.  I’m not a huge fan of Palau, but Palau had a lot of water challenges so the more the better I guess.  The winner is the lovely Brenda.  Which, btw why has she gotten so little airtime in this season?  I hate the stupid jokes about “Who?” and “Wait, there is a *insert underedited player here* in this season?” because is too old and too beaten to the ground, but she is pretty much no even there.  It’s really odd that even winning immunity didn’t give her a confession, which I believe may be a record?

Now comes the pre-Tribal scramble, so the Fans and company want to target Andrea because they all know that Phillip is a huge joke.  However Eddie tells Andrea this in one of the oddest conversations I have ever seen, who goes to her alliance who decide to change the vote from Malcolm to Michael, as Michael would be the least likely to play an idol.

However, when we finally get to Tribal Council, it is by far an interesting night.  First of all, Phillip was on season 22 named Redemption Island.  Did you know that?  Second of all, Andrea had a bug in her hair.  Don't worry, Erik saved her from it.  Third of all, Reynold tries to play his idol, but Malcolm tells him that they voted for him and to give him the idol so that presumably Andrea goes home.  However it was revealed that Malcolm voted for Reynold for some reason.  At first I thought it was a failed attempt to get out Reynold to try and prove his loyalty to the other favorites, except that they all voted for the safe vote, Michael, instead.  However I'm not exactly sure.

However, Michael is made the first jury member of the season instead.  I wonder if this is going to be an eight person jury final three then.  I think I said this before, but nine jury members are way too much for a two person finalist, and I’m like in the 3% of Survivor fans that don't really care about how many finalists there are.  It would be refreshing to see a final two but I really only pay attention to the jury myself.

Well, that’s really all I have on this episode.  Next time it looks like something is up with Dawn.  She just needs a hug and to send off some more bread.

Today's tweet of the week comes from Malcolm! 

My most impressive Survivor feat to-date was convincing Eddie to actually vote against a hot girl. I think I broke his brain.

UPDATES

Did you love my first chapter on the big essay that I'm doing?  Yes?  Yes?!  Awesome.  Part Two I shall get up next week.  I'm not sure how many chapters there will be, but it will cover most, if not all, of the underdog winners, no matter the edit.  Like I said, next chapter I'm planning on taking on two of the biggest come from behind winners in Chris and Danni.  

Oh yeah.  I also found this cool website.  You can pretty much just ask me questions on there.  I'll answer anything.  Here's the link.   Get asking.

That's all for now!  See you next time. :D

~Heather~

Winning Without Numbers- The Rise of the Underdogs

          One of the biggest unwritten rules of Survivor is to have the numbers in an alliance, if a player is on the wrong side of numbers, they are usually on the outside of the tribe, and picked off without remorse or regret.  Usually, winners of the season were a part of the bigger alliance.  They had the numbers that got them the win.  All they had to do was micromanage their alliance in order to be seen as the leader, in order to take credit for their alliance’s success and gain jury votes from the departed outsiders or other members that had to go due to liability issues.  It’s an all too common strategy seen but what most viewers don't realize is that usually there is other people outside of the main alliance.  Maybe it was an immunity win, or a social move, or both, but suddenly that person is a huge threat to win it all.  Suddenly, an a contestant with no real alliance left is in the finals and the jury looks to them more favorably because that was their old alliance that was picked off, all on the jury.  People generality praise the gameplay of the dominant leaders of the alliance that ruled the game, winners like Richard, Brian, Tom, Parvati, and Kim, and not look at the winners that spent a long time on the bottom rung, like Vecepia, Sandra, Danni, Fabio, Denise, and Natalie plus a few others. 

          The first winner that won while entering a merge down in numbers is Vecepia who won the fourth season Survivor: Marquesas.  While she was on the Rotu tribe which had the numbers, she was on that tribe as a result of a tribe swap, and the only people that was on the old Maraamu tribe with her were known trouble makers Rob and Sean, two people that would get voted out before her in almost every situation.  At the merge, the old Rotu tribe had seven people still in the game out of the eight people originally on the tribe, Gabe being the only one not to make the merge.  However, infighting with Kathy and the Rotu four caused a major power shift and John, the leader of said alliance was out the door as soon as they managed to pick off Rob.  With only Sean and a good bond with Kathy, Neleh, and Paschal, the shattered remains of the Rotu Four left right with John.  Vecepia then wins Immunity at the final four right before Kathy stuck with the old Rotu lines and helping to vote off Sean, and the tiebreaker sent Paschal home.  Vecepia then ensured her place in the finals by getting Neleh to make a deal with her that ended up backstabbing her original ally Kathy, and winning the game due to Neleh’s horrid jury performance.  Even though she came from a tribe that only won one Immunity challenge, she has yet to really get the respect that she deserves.

 

Why doesn't she get the respect?  A lot of people today call her an “invisible” winner, even though she wasn’t that invisible at all, especially in comparison to later seasons, and later winners.  I have a theory that they editors just didn't know what to do with her.  They made her a character, but not to the extent of Kathy or Sean, or even Neleh and John.  She was someone that faded to the background, but I've noticed over all of the seasons for the most part, the winners do have a period of hiding.  It’s a myth that every winner is up and front every episode.  Now we do have the exceptions, Boston Rob is the best example, but take Brian Heidik for example, he wasn't big in the beginning of the season.  Vecepia was there, dropping the all important “winner’s quotes” that people like me look for on rewatches.  It would be that quote that should get used whenever people talk about that winner.  It puts them in a relatable light.  Vecepia gets the backlash that she did even though if you look at the numbers, she should have been voted out 7^th or 8^th.  Back then, the basic rules of Survivor is to "Pagong", to pick off.  Yet she defied the law, opening the door for another possibility.

Another winner three seasons later took up that strategy that Vecepia had.  Vecepia started the “anyone but me” outlook to Survivor, yet this winner is the most associated with that term.  It’s Sandra.  Many people call her the queen of Survivor, as she is the shows first and only two-time winner.  She competed on both the seventh season of Pearl Islands and the twentieth season of Heroes Vs Villains and has won both seasons.  However before she became known as the queen of Survivor, a lot of viewers, including Jeff Probst himself, didn't really give her the praise that she probably deserved back then even though she did come out alive as the only person not to get voted out from her season and the fact that she never even received a vote against her in Pearl Islands.  After Rupert’s blindside she had to stay on her toes and watch her back as the one of the biggest villains in Survivor history, Jonny Fairplay, was looming over her.  She became this free vote and pretty much sunk Fairplay’s game by getting Darrah and Lill to vote for Burton.  While Survivor tends to celebrate the challenge dominators, Sandra has never won a single individual challenge.  Statistically the greatest Survivor player ever and she has a track record of zero individual challenge wins.  However, Sandra laid low on both seasons.  She took Vecepia's game, stirring up drama and making moves that benefited her and her only, and made it her own.  She was louder that Vecepia but the frameworks of their wins are the same.

Even though Sandra got the respect now, she still has those people that call the luck card.  They discredit her win due to the luck she had with pre-merge challenge wins, alliance infighting, and other people winning challenges that took her to the end, however Survivor is mostly luck.  The game of Survivor is never truly in ones hands the entire time.  Silas in Africa thought he had it, and then the first tribe swap happened.  All it takes is a twist, a challenge loss or win, a medical evacuation, anything that happens in the game can either help or hinder anyone.  Every winner was lucky.  They had the right tribe dynamics, the right twists that helped them out, anything that happens in the game can change it.  Sandra is lucky to win twice.  However she managed to make her own luck when blindsiding Burton and putting herself in that position that Lill took her over Fairplay.  She made the moves, it’s not all luck. 

To wrap up this part, I want to remind people reading this that this is not an “under the radar” game play essay, this is a down in numbers game play essay, meaning that I'm not going to cover the lower visibility winners unless they had a huge disadvantage at the merge.  The next part I'm going to cover two winners that had very similar situations, but are both edited differently and took different paths to the million dollars.  They both cracked alliances that let them walk into FTC and win it all. 

Yes.  The Next Chapter is about Chris and Danni.

Punching the throat of Mass Chaos.

Just want to give everyone a quick update, I've been traveling this past week.  I will try more or less to get back into my usual schedule of updates.  Sorry guys, to make up for it I'm writing a examination of the vast underrated winner strategy of Surviving Survivor without the numbers.  This will cover winners with some of the worst luck, and why they shouldn't be tossed aside.  All of that plus the rest of my Tocantins rewatch in the next few weeks.

So- without delay...

THE BLURB

(Yes I'm still using it without Julia.  Suck it)

So, we get Bikal back from Tribal Council, and I can say that poor Micheal and he must hate it.  So far, he has been to all but the first one, and is the last fan standing on Bikal.  They are hoping for a merge, but for the rest of the night they have to deal with Phillip still trying to convince them that he threw the challenge.  Ugh, yeah.  Sure.  And I live in Alaska.  It annoys Corinne a lot.  I do not blame her.

However a merge is what they shall get, as a boat comes to get Gota to pick them up and take them to the Bikal camp.  There they unlock a chest containing food and bright GREEN buffs, which is such an adorable call back to Micronesia.  They decided to name the tribe Enil Edam which is Malcolm's mom spelled backwards.  I don't really care where it came from, but I love saying that name and it will be mine by the end of this month.  Mark my words.  Also Green is such a cool color.  

Right away Malcolm gets back with his BFF Corinne as they talk strategy.  They compare numbers, with Malcolm saying he had Reynold, Eddie, and Erik and Corinne has Michael.  Right there they have half of the tribe, with six.  Phillip wants to split the vote in case ofthe idol.  RIGHT THERE, Corinne should have agreed with that plan.  With that six, they could swoop in and blindside whomever they want including Phillip himself.  However Corinne points out that no one likes Sherri at the moment.  Without her original alliance of Julia, Matt, and Laura, and Michael doing whatever he can to stay afloat, she'd be the safest vote off.  Let's see where that takes us...

Oh, Gross food challenge.  You can't go wrong with Balut.  I mean, you got China Denise yelling at one, Bobby Jon shoving them in his mouth as fast as he could, Balut is the gold standard of Survivor gross food challenges.  Also we get two minutes of Dawn being awkward.  But in the end, it was the Dark Horse Cochran that won the first Individual Immunity challenge.  He has won more Individual Immunity Challenges than James Clement in all three seasons that he has been in.  Good job to him.  I thought I'd never seen the day.

Right before everything, Corinne is still not sure about the numbers.  She goes to Dawn and tells her plan to her about voting off Sherri, then going after Phillip.  Dawn, worried about the fate of their alliance, goes to Phillip and tells him the plan.  Sounds like something she did to a certain race car diver and Ice cream flavor the last episode huh?  Dawn is trying to play carefully, but telling Phillip she has thrown someone into the cross-hairs that could have safe otherwise.  Even though her name has yet to come up, Dawn seems to just be binding her time to make her own moves.  She says that she's learned from her past mistake, not telling Savaii that Cochran would flip on them, and she must be have flashbacks.  Poor dear.  And now, Phillip is going to everyone, telling them one name to write down. "Corinne".  Even Erik goes with the plan, and everyone heads to the first Tribal Council for the merged tribe.

It seems like the tribe is very fractured   The only thing I'd like to point out is Sherri saying that the Fan's are pretty much screwed.  That aspect of the Fans Vs Favorites is really the only reason I'm not too crazy with Micronesia, is the fact that the Fans will have a hard time winning with a full tribe of favorites.  It's a known fact that these returning players have a huge advantage, this isn't two or three, this is a full tribe of ten.  However, there is something that when Sherri says it she's trying to lure the Favorites in a false sense of security.  Out of the remaining Fans, I can see her or Michael getting farther.

Also, we get a huge blindside with Corinne shockingly getting seven votes, when her name wasn't even on the table a few days ago.  Also, for some reason she didn't start the jury?  How odd.  The last time this happened was in Tocantins, when Joe was Medivaced, but when it comes to vote outs, it was the very memorable Nick from Exile Island that made the merge but not the jury.  I wonder when the jury will start back up?  We shall seen next episode when it looks like something's going down with Andrea and Eddie... 

But of course, my favorite part- the Tweet of the week.  From Malcolm this time 'round-  Cochran swallows better than me.

~WEEKLY NOTES~

~ Corinne's two merged tribes have a fun thing in common.  They are both backwards names.

~ Stephen compared Dawn's game to his own on Twitter.  You know, the guy who got no votes at the end of Tocantins.

~ I am so wondering what the configuration of the jury is this year.  Will it be like last season?  What shall it be?

~ Speaking of the jury- not having Corinne on the jury is a crime in itself.  She would have been a fun bitter person.  The most memorable kind.

~ People are going to give poor Dawn heck about it, but she probably did do the right thing for her.

~ One last praise for the Erik flag btw.

~ The food eating challenge was fun.  From Andrea's shipworm mustache, to Dawn being awkward with the food, and Malcolm scolding Jeff for calling the bugs "food".  

~ Loved the mention of Survivor history with Jeff in that challenge too.

TODAY'S WRAP UP- UPDATES

I have a few more things to tell people, sorry that this was a day late (again) but I really wanted to catch the Brian Corridan S-Oz recap.  He didn't change my opinions on anything here though, I just wanted to compare notes. (Plus, I get the recap done, I use a watered down version for the one I submit to S-Oz) Plus I love Brian.  Guatemala <3

Anyways, I became the topic of conversation for a minute and a half-ish.  Ben brought up with my question to Brian that I a huge Guatemala/Brian fan.  Turns out that Brian still lurks in Survivor Sucks and noticed that I was a huge fan and fighter for the Guatemala Season, and he thanked me for that in the best shout out ever.  Thanks a bunch Brian!

And yes, expect me marching on with the Tocantins recap.  :)

Love Yah!
~Heather~