Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the Sixth: The Rest of Australia

It saddens me that for the second time in a row I have to begin a post this way. I would like to send my condolences to Tina Wesson, Katie Collins and their family. Their son and brother passes away in a fatal car accident recently. I am very sorry for your loss.

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

Its amazing how often it seems people don’t start acting intelligently when it counts, only after the point it would matter do they start actually using their brain. Only on day 22, after the point where Jeff was out and Club Kucha had for all intents a purposes lost the game did Elisabeth realize ‘Okagor hates Jerri, lets vote for her’. Don’t get me wrong, feisty, desperate Elisabeth played hard, and that’s what I like to see. That said, it’s a little upsetting that she only started playing his hard after it was too late. Her attempts weren’t successful for the time being, and Alicia eventually bit the dust.  Before that however, Jerri won a reward and did the dumbest possible thing and took Amber (she voiced her reason well though; claiming to be choosing the runner up, which is always the best policy when choosing who to take on a reward.) This gave Colby Keith and Tina a taste of camp life without them, and (not so shockingly) they enjoyed it. Not enough to be stupid and vote Jerri out when doing so would cost them the numbers, but enough to make them at least consider getting rid of Jerri before Elisabeth and Rodger at the very least.

See this was when Survivor Australia became boring. Who was going to win? One of Colby Keith and Tina. We knew this, there was no way any other outcome was possible given what would occur. Alicia getting voted out was obvious, she was seen as a huge threat and there was no way CKT was about to throw away their numbers edge. Elisabeth’s pushing to have Jerri eliminated did work however, and the biggest female heel in Survivor history was gone.

And truth be told, I missed her. She was awesome TV. Everyone starving and trading the tarps for rice? BORRRRRINNGGGGGG. See at that point the game had stopped and everyone was running on fumes. Everyone did what was simplest and strategy was lost. No one had the energy to plot. If this game had taken place in the Cook Islands, Keith or Tina would have been voted out at 7. Had Rupert been feeding them, Elisabeth and Rodger, 2 unassuming yet conniving players would have smacked some life into nick and tried to pull Amber in. But as it stood, they were hungry and had no energy to do so. As a result when F7 vote came around, they vote for Amber, thinking CKT would be with them again. They were not, seeing as how they went back to what worked without much effort, Pagonging Kucha. Nick was the least liked and therefore voted out.

Then the flood. Great TV, but boring Survivor gameplay. Notice the distinction. See, this was compelling to watch. The first time. Every other time? It’s like watching The Perfect Storm. You know what happens and therefore it is no longer interesting.  (also I think I just said Keith Faime was like Mark Whalberg… Let that sink in.) The other notable detail of this episode? Colby goes on a reward. He keeps his head in game mode. And he also eats a lot of food (in a rather comedic manner I might add). After a boring as shit immunity challenge (I HATE the you have 3 plates, break other peoples plates challenge. It sucks) we have a rather interesting vote. See when the flood hit, everyone needed to come together. It wasn't an individual game anymore. The 5 who didn't go on the reward needed to sleep in a cuddle puddle in order to even attempt warmth. That shit, while boring as fuck to watch on tv, lead to some interesting logic. Keith and Tina found themselves wanting to be with Rodger and Elisabeth more then they wanted to be with Amber. Amber did what she had been lead to believe to be the case, and voted Rodger, as did Colby who was still operating in the realms of intelligent Survivor game-play. Why would he vote out the goat and keep the threat?

Next episode was also boring. The only real interesting thing of note is that this was the Survivor debut of Tina’s daughter Katie, who would compete on season 27 (and go on to become one of the biggest non-factor contestants in the history of contests ). Elisabeth and Rodger should have tried to convince Keith to come with them, but in all seriousness this would never work. Keith was 3^rd no matter which way he went, and if he went with Kucha he was only fucking himself out of potential jury votes.

The rest of the season is actually really boring up until final 3 tribal. Elisabeth gets voted off, Colby’s mom watches him shower, they eat peanut butter. WHO THE HELLS CARES???? I seem to be running into this problem where the last 2 or 3 episodes of each season are just dreadfully painful to sit through. The last few episodes of Australia (and even more so in Africa) are BORING.

Should Colby have taken Keith? Yes. Did he make a mistake taking Tina? No. Would Colby have been remembered the way he is had he taken Keith? I think not. Colby is a Survivor legend, more so than Tina I think. She won the battle, but I think he won the war. Afterall, Colby played 3 times first, has a better average placement, isn’t a first boot, AND got his dick grabbed by another Survivor legend. What more could a guy ask for? Okay yes, a Survivor win, but there’s more to Survivor than winning, after all, some of the biggest and most memorable players never won (see: ‘Fishbach, Stephan’ ’Wade, Coach’ ‘Hantz, Russell’ ‘Orlins, Eliza’ ‘Fredberg, Malcolm’ ‘Cesternino, Rob’ ‘Fairplay, Johnny’) and some winners are never talked about again (See: ‘White, Natalie’ ‘Towery, Vecepia’ ‘Crowley, Bob’) .  

The Australia reunion was… Better than the Borneo one. I've come to the conclusion that I just don’t really like the Reunion shows. They never really do it for me.

At the end of every season I will give the following awards
Best Player of the Season: Colby
Best Jury Member Question/Speech: No one really stood out.
Best Episode: 6
Worst Episode: 10-13 take your fucking pick
Best Challenge: Episode 6 Reward Challenge
If I were on the Jury, who would I have voted for (based solely on their final tribal performance): Colby
Person I most grew a new appreciation for: Elisabeth

(ps notice how Alicia and Amber were left pretty much unmentioned? THESE WERE ALL STARS PEOPLE)

Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the Fifth: Australian Outback Episodes 6-7

I'd like to start this post by sending my condolences to the family of BB Andersen who recently passed away. I am very sorry for your loss.

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

Episode 6 of Survivor: The Australian Outback is a phenomenally memorable episode of Survivor for TWO much much different reasons. Obviously Mike Skupin fell in a fire and had to be airlifted out of the game. That's the big one, the thing everyone talked about. It was very unfortunate for multiple reasons. It screwed every other member of Kucha out of a chance at winning, it paved the way for the tragically early ouster of Jeff Varner and it made people forget entirely that the greatest challenge in the history of Survivor had taken place 15 minutes beforehand. Yeah, I said it, the BEST challenge in Survivor - in terms of being good television - was the reward challenge in this episode. its not the best challenge in terms of that the challenge is or the way it is designed (for me that's probably the vertical maze from Vanuatu or the block stacking imuunity challenge that Foa Foa won in Samoa) No no, this was the best challenge in terms of the way it played out on the screen. A lot of challenges have the potential to be great, and often times blindfolds are involved as they were here. Blindfolded challenges always provide the potential for a nice balance of drama and comedy. All that being said, some challenges that seemed great on paper just didn't end up being as epic as they could have been. This one took a simple concept and ended up being the best challenge to watch ever on Survivor.  Why? Go watch it. Okagor has the challenge won, despite the fact that half the tribe are literally wandering into the void the entire time, but Kucha pulls out the win at quite literally the very last possible moment. Keith and Amber end up spending most of this challenge walking into a log. I don't know how they did this. We see a lot of times in these challenges where someone goes too far in the wrong direction and they can sense they are out of the way they should be going (the one in Vanuatu had this a lot, Lopevi did this challenge probably the best of any tribe ever, which is actually kind of funny if you think about it.). Keith and Amber saw the course, they knew what they generally should be doing. Walking into a giant log? Not on the to do list. So yeah, Colby and Tina (so Colby) end up doing all the work, and all Amber has to do is put the picnic basket on the table. She has the basket in her hands, the table is literally within arms reach of her and she freezes. Now, Jerri's incohernet screaming probably didn't help her at all, and it lead the way for Nick to lead Kucha to come comeback win. Jeff and Alicia were smart enough to know that they needed to move their asses, and Nick was a great caller in that he was able to stay calm and give clear directions. A great job all around by Mr. Brown. So Kucha wins a challnge that Okagor had no business losing. Everyone cackles and laughs. Colby dumps water on Jerri out of frustration and we have ourselves one of this writers top 10 favourite Survivor challenge moments of all time (that list will come after the entire retrospect, so yeah, look forward to that)

Also worth mentioning in this episode is the classic scene in which Jerri and Amber are losing their minds due to being horny and hungry (horngry if you will) and Colby is losing his mind because he is sick of Jerri and Amber. Much comedy. I kind of felt bad for the guy. Here he is on a tribe with a woman he is slowly growing to despise and her little sidekick in the era of Survivor where no one ever went against their tribe. This would become more apparent in the next season, but tribal lines ran deep back then, and no one ever really went against that. EXCEPT to vote out Jerri. She was that annoying to her tribe. That's a topic for next time though, we're still in episode 6.

GUY FALLS IN FIRE. You know, looking back on Mike Skupins Survivor career, the guy sucked. People love to do some serious retconing of Skupin's run in this season and its ridiculous. To say this guy would have made any significant impact is a joke. First of all, the only thing the lack of him had any impact on was the numbers. He was just another Kucha.  Had Kucha won the 6th immunity challenge, which by all accounts they most likely would have due to the fact they had access to much more food AND a caffeinated beverage to boost their awareness, the final 6 people in this season would have been the 6 members of Kucha. Mike was probably the biggest outsider of this group. And if Kucha had lost the 6th immunity challenge? the smart move would have been to vote out Jeff, since Okagor only knew Jeff had 1 vote and no more Jeff means Okagor doesn't have a target (although I doubt they would have thought of this) But most likely they would HAVE VOTED MIKE OFF. He was seriously on peoples' nerves. Varner was gunning for him to be voted out.  So don't be all 'oh Mike Skupin was robbed of a Survivor win when he got hurt' Mike Skupin was robbed of at best 6th, a seat on the jury and we were all robbed of not having to deal with the guy ever again.

That said, I feel bad for anyone who is forced to leave Survivor for medical reasons, its always unfortunate. The scenes that followed the accident are odd. The mood was very very somber. Everyone on Kucha vowed to stick together and go to the end together.

Unfortunately they got fucked by production and had no shot. Like I said, Okagor knew, thanks to Kimmi, that Jeff had a vote. When did they find this out? On the walk to the cliff jumping challenge. I have always hated this. Its so unfair that they were even given the opportunity to find this out. Kimmi fucked up this whole season by opening her big mouth. It should be a rule that at no point should the tribes vocally interact unless a challenge, tribal council or twist in the game specifically calls for it. Also, Jeff shouldn't have EVER stepped off that pillar. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

MERGE EPISODE YAY!!!!! I guess. Early merge episodes suck. The whole send ambassadors thing is really uninteresting. Although this one had potential for a cool twist. When they separated the men and women, they could have had them come together for a challenge and have it revealed that these were new tribes. How awesome of a swerve would that have been? Alas, this was season 2, back when they were outright told that they were merging at ten. That also kind of bugs me, but I digress.

Standing on the pole is always a good challenge. Although why Varner stepped off for peanut butter, I will never understand. Oh well, such is life.

Tribal council this episode has an interesting tidbit to it. Jeff only knew about 1 vote against him. See, back then, Probst didn't always reveal votes in the way he does now. I don't know the best way to explain it, so I'll just give an example. If he shows 2 votes for Christopher, and 4 votes for Francois, and there are 7 votes, the last vote is for Francois. Back then votes were left unrevealed a lot, one of which was Kimmi's vote for Jeff. So Jeff had 2 votes but didn't know it. Jerri had 2 votes and knew of both. If Kucha had voted for Jerri... Would she have been eliminated? Would Probst say 'Jeff actually has 2 votes'? Neither of these solutions seems fair. But they voted for Colby... for some reason. I don't know why they thought this was a good idea. Picking your target  Tribe vs Tribe votes at the first merge tribal have had 2 schools of thought in the 2 separate eras of Survivor. In the old days you wanted to find the person who either a) you thought had the most votes against them or b) you could get someone to turn on. Nowadays its the person who least likely will have or be given a hidden immunity idol. Colby was a strong physical asset (which in this era meant he wasn't going to be targeted) and well liked by his tribe. Why did they think he had votes?

Some horrible gameplay by club Kucha. But that's okay, because now Elisabeth is in a corner, and that means Elisabeth is suddenly going to start playing really hard. But that's for next time.

Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the Fourth: Australian Outback Episodes 1-5

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

And we are back with what is remember as the height of Survivor in terms of pop culture relevance and popularity. This was the big one. I wasn't watching at the time, I was 8, in the third grade and didn't really have an interest in shows like Survivor. I was still just a kid, watching Digimon and Power Rangers. That said though, I heard all kinds of things about this show. I knew the names Colby, Kieth and Tina without ever havign watched a single second of the show. The day after Tina won there was an article in my local news paper about it. Not kidding. Survivor was everywhere.

Looking back with 2013 eyes though, this season kind of sucks. Yeah, I said it. Survivor: The Australian Outback is a crappy season in terms of Survivor game-play. There is a reason for this, and that reason is caused by one of the better parts of the show. This season more than any other had things happen that made the title 'Survivor' actually relevant. The flood the forest fire, the running out of food, the accident, all of these made the experience a true survival test, but it also made everyone fold like a cheap lawn chair when it came to the strategy. I'll explain more once the merge passes, because there's a lot of pre merge stuff to talk about.

The show starts on a plane, people are heaving, Probst is being Probsts and our castaway are dumped and left to hike to camp. This is one thing we hardly see anymore on Survivor, an situation that immediately puts people at odds over something so simple. Right off the bat, Debb has issues with Kimmi, Nick gets Kucha lost, Kieth ditches his tribe ect. We instantly have drama. Nowadays the producers are like 'heres your camp! the idol is under that tree. BRB GOTTA GO SET UP REDEMPTION ISLAND!!!' The hike to camp is something that needs to come back.

Ogakor instantly has shelter because Colby pulled a fast one with his luxury item.  He listed it as a Texas flag. he wasn't lying, he just didn't mention that it was 8x12 and had metal grommets in it. Well played, but kind of cheating. Although this was back in the days where the contestants were given a shit load of supplies, so the flag, while giving an extra bit of shelter, did out ogakor was at 12 while kucha was at maybe a 10. If the survivors weren't given so many supplies, the flag might have been a bigger deal, but in the end it didn't matter. Second best luxury item ever. (The first was in Heroes vs Villains and it was James' unused hidden immunity idol from Survivor China)

Neither tribe gets fire, Ogakor wins immunity and matches, Debb gets voted out. (Not saying anything else about Debb)

The next morning in episode 2 we see the first example of something that wasn't clear to me until i rewatched this after seeing him again on Survivor Philippines and that is that Michael Skupin is AWFUL at the social aspects of Survivor. He has absolutely zero sense of self awareness, he always thinks he is in the best possible spot, and that the people who disagree with him are wrong.  Why this guy was so talked about in terms of returning players is beyond me. He sucked. If he had never fallen in the fire he would have been completely forgotten. If they had never done Survivor: Injured Old Guys, I doubt he would have ever come back. The first of three returning players from this season that just make me shake my head.

The other 2? Alicia and Amber. I'll get into both more as time goes on, but in the first 5 episodes, neither does anything to warrant a second shot. Amber just says "Oh my gooooooood, its sooooooooo gooooood" like 40 million times and Alicia does her whole head bob-finger wave thing at Kimmi. Two of the '18 best Survivors' on the first 7 seasons people.

Beef Jerky. Yeah, I'm going to talk about this. There's two things worth mentioning. 1. I doubt he actually had beef jerky. 2. Kel handled that whole thing in the absolute worst way possible. That situation was so easily solvable. there's a bunch of different things the guy could have done to explain whatever it was he was doing. Grab a stick, put it in your mouth, walk back to camp, calmly and casually mention how you miss your smokes. Do not mention that you overheard the beef jerky talk, play it cool. I get that the dude was pissed about being accused of something, but he handle it  wrong, and I think it caused him to become more of a loner and get himself voted out. That said, even if that situation hadn't occurred, he was a sitting duck since he was so anti social, but this did lead the way for Jerri to become the villain she became.

Maralyn, while entertaining and fun, fell victim to the classic older person weak in challenges curse. Oh well. The only good that came from her boot episode was Jerri alienating Tina and Kieth. The start of the next episode is awesome. Kieth and Tina go fishing and come up with a plan to try and fight back. They need Colby on there side. Jerri had the hots for Colby. Whether Colby had to hots for her, that's a little harder to determine. But through Tina and Kieth's constant talking ill of her, and Jerri stratigizing to the point of annoying him, Colby did end up flipping and voting for Mitchell because he was so weak.

Episode 5 is memorable in my mind because of the unfair immunity challenge, Kucha was forced to have all 7 members in the maze, this made it harder for there to move as a group. Whether or not this made a difference I'm not sure, since Roger and Kimmi sat out the reward they were in regardless and they seemed to be weaker challenge competitors. Either way, that challenge was unfair in that regard. But Colby's pre challenge speech lead to a victory for the dwindling green tribe, and Kimmi was voted out. Her vote for Jeff was not read, and this will be discussed next time.

The season up until this point was very fun and light hearted. Kucha was winning a majority of the challenges, and were largely the happy go lucky baby faces. Jeff was doing a little bit of scheming on the side with Alicia, and we can only wonder how it would have played out if the events of the next episode had not occurred. But we'll talk about that next time.

Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the Third: Borneo Episodes 12-13

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

Ahh episode 12, the least talked about error in Survivor history. If Richard Hatch had lost this game this would have been his fatal mistake. its clear they wanted Kelly to go, but she again won immunity. So its between Sue and Sean. And they vote out Sean. That's the mistake. If they had voted off Sue, the final 4 vote would have never been a tie. Kelly would either lose immunity and get voted out or win immunity and vote for Sean. Because Sean was vote out here, Richard was almost eliminated. Assuming the past votes tiebreaker was in effect at this point, if Kelly had voted for Hatch in the revote, he would have been eliminated. He had 4 previous votes to Sue's 3. Now I know it doesn't matter, he won regardless, but the point still stands, he made a blunder.

The finale is boring. Fallen Comrades is a boring challenge, as its hands on the idol.  Plus the whole ceramony/rite of passage thing was lame. It only works when the finalists make comments, not when they just walk past the torches to cheesy music with clips edited over the cheesy music. They aren't dead, they got voted out of Survivor. Hatch made the brilliant move of dropping out, but it was almost ruined by Probst talking. Probst was so unprofessional back then, he talked way too much and it boarded on interfering with the game. Again, it didn't end up mattering, but it could have.

Final tribal was pretty good. The thing that is most memorable was the fact the jury seemed to respect Hatch's gameplay more than Kelly's. Kelly tried to distance herself from the rest of the alliance and that's what cost her. She was more deceitful trying to seperate herself whereas Hatch was never dishonest about his intentions, he was there to win. Sue's speech is famous blah blah blah. By this point I was sick of the season. Hatch won, pick a number. You know this. This is about my opinions, which I will give:

At the end of every season I will give the following awards
Best Player of the Season: Hatch
Best Jury Member Question/Speech: Sue
Best Episode: 9
Worst Episode: 11
Best Challenge: Episode 6 Immunity Challenge
If I were on the Jury, who would I have voted for (based solely on their final tribal performance): Hatch
Person I most grew a new appreciation for: Joel

The reunion of this season was a waste of time. Bryant Gumble hosting these things was a huge mistake. Not worth commenting on beyond that.

That's all for Borneo. See you for the Outback

Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the Second: Borneo Episodes 5-11

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

Disc 2 was AWESOME. Compared to disc one its like night and day. People are actually sort of playing Survivor. I say sort of because we are still given little to no motivation as to why many of the people vote the way they do. This is especially true in the ludicrous 4-1-1-1-1-1-1 vote at the merge. Why does Gervase vote for Sue? Did literally no one from Pagong actually talk to each other about who they were going to vote for? That was one gigantic clusterfuck, and while it was entertaining, it also shows how poor the strategy was back then.

Richard was the only one with any sort of a plan. This is made clear when the Tagi tribe sends Sean to be the ambassador. They don't run the risk of any information being leaked to Pagong because Sean didn't know anything. Meanwhile Pagong sent Jenna who, from what I've heard, spilled the beans on everything.

Now i'm getting ahead of myself, I'm talking about the merge before I even discuss episodes 5 and 6. These are two awesome episodes. Episode 5 is awesome because it is the first example of finding myself happy a particular tribe lost immunity because I wanted to see the go to tribal council. This happens a lot, I'll find myself really hoping a particular tribe ends up going to tribal because I feel it would be more interesting (the most recent example, at the time of writing this is the the most recent episode of Survivor. I really wanted Galang to win immunity because I wanted to see Tadhana go to tribal council. Whats better, Laura Boneham doing something dumb and getting voted out of Tyson blindsiding Aras?). Tagi losing lead the way to a great tribal, where the alliance claimed its first victim. They made the right choice in keeping Sean over Dirk because Dirk was clearly the weaker of the two, and they needed to win the next immunity challenge to b safe at the merge.

Episode 6 features and epic immunity challenge, and my single least favourite tribal council of the season. I hate the fact Joel was voted off. The women (and Gerg) voted Joel off because Gervase made a sexist comment. Reread that. Read it again. What the hell? This is the big oment where Pagong set themselves up to get rolled by Hatch and co. at the merge. Joel wanted to keep the team together. Joel could have been the hero who stood up to the villain (Hatch) and eventually win one for the good guys. Keep in mind, back in 2000 Tagi were the heels and Pagong were the baby faces. Joel could have been The Guy. He could have been Colby before Colby was even cast. But nope. Oh well. Seeing the look of disappointment on that mans face as Probst snuffed his torch says it all.  Joel will always be the hero that never was.

Episode 7 is the merge. And its kind of boring all things considered. They devote so much time to the ambassador thing and the tribes coming together that by the time the challenge ends we are at tribal. Some of the best stuff to happen on Survivor is the post tribal scrambling, especially when the intended target won immunity, which he did in this case. Sure it was an easy choice who the next target should be, but still, some foreshadowing would be nice. From what I've read, the production team was crushed when Gretchen was eliminated. This was the first truly cutthroat vote off in the show. Tagi went right for the jugular and everyone was shocked.

I hate episode 8. I'm not a fan of the loved ones challenge, and I know that makes me sound like a dick, but its just my opinion. I was glad to see Greg get voted off. I was really getting sick of him.

Moving onto disc 3, because well I feel like it. We start off with the best episode of the season. Th episode where Colleen and Jenna pull their heads out of their asses and try to fight back. They get Gervase and they talk Kelly into not voting with the alliance. The first time I saw this I thought we were going to have a 4-4 tie. Sean's alphabet voting strategy was esentially making him a 5th, unknowing member of the Tagi alliance, since his vote was more or less public knowledge, the other Tagi members would vote with him, and thus prevent and sort of counter alliance. Sounds good. So when Jenna's name rolled around, thats who Hatch, Rudy and Sue voted for, along with Sean. The remaining Pagong members voted for Hatch. Kelly voted for Sean. 4-3-1, bye bye Jenna, see you in All-Stars. As big of a fan of Hatch as I am, I kind of wish Kelly had voted for him, causing a tie, and potentially his elimination. There's much more drama there, and I like drama. This is the closest Hatch came to being eliminated (final 4 notwithstanding).

Episode 10 is a hot-cold episode for me. It truly highlights the major flaw in early seasons. About half the episode is devoted to the fact Gervase's son was born, and a shit load of conversations about children out of wedlock and things that have no place in Survivor. Its all irrelevant and a lot of the episode is devoted to it. That said, its in this episode that we learn that Sue and Kelly intend to turn on Hatch. Excellent, drama. Going into the immunity challenge, breaking it down based on numbers, if Hatch makes it through the next tribal, he essentially wins the game. Since Sean was now officially on his side  (as explained in Mark Burnett's book), and Rudy always was, once we past final seven, there's no way to get the numbers to guarantee a move on Hatch. he wins immunity, does his little dance, and has for all intents and purposes won a million dollars. Oh that dance. I makes me smile everytime. It's the gayest thing Richard does in his 56 total days on 2 seasons of Survivor, and its flat out hilarious. Gervase gets voted out 5-2. There was talks of a Gervase, Colleen, Sean, Kelly alliance, but Gervase and Colleen vote for Sean so... Yeah can't explain that one.

Episode 11 has more loved ones bullshit that I do not care about. Kelly and Sue get into a fight, and that leads Sue to rejoining Hatch and Rudy. Kelly is the target, but she wins immunity. So it's between Colleen and Sean. Hatch wisely keeps Sean. Sean won't vote for Hatch, but Colleen has twice. Keeping her runs the risk of a 3-2 vote against him at final 5. This episode is kind of blah. I hated Colleen, and was glad to see her go.

That's all for now.  Hopefully I can find time in the near future to write some more. I've actually watched almost all of Australia. So I'm behind on the writing side of this thing and need to catch up.

Survivor All Season Retrospective Part the First: Intro and Borneo Episodes 1-4

(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)

I haven't written on the blog in almost a year, which is rather sad. My apologies for the literally 2 of you who read this.

Its no secret to those who know me that I don't have much of a life. If I'm not at work i'm either hanging out with a the same group of friends (you know who you are), at a Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament with the same group or I'm at home bored out of my mind watching something I've already watched. After getting sick of watching Prison Break and Flashpoint over and over again I decided to watch Survivor. All of it. From the beginning. From Borneo to now. Now I love Survivor, but some of it i have never gone back to rewatch. Some of it I have little interest in rewatching, but I will not be biased here. I'm going to watch it all, no matter how much I like or dislike those involved or what is happening. I think it will be interesting to see it all from the beginning, especially when it comes to those who play on multiple occasions, seeing how they grow and progress as players and characters. I will document my thoughts on this here blog.

Bornero. Where it all began. I did not watch this season when it first aired. I was 8. I was completely ignorant to pop culture. I did not see this season until it was released on DVD in 2004. I watched it with my mom. Watching Survivor with my mom is one of the few things she and I do together. its always fun. Although I find it rather whacky that after 10 years of watching Survivor she still cannot name everyone who is left on the current season at any point in time. Also, she's a huge mark  (wrestling term for a fan someone who always has the reaction the producers tell them to have).

Anyways, back to Borneo. For this season I will post thoughts after every 4 episodes until the finale because that's how many episodes are on each disc.  Disc one is awful. This is very boring Survivor. Its more like a documentary about people living on an island in the South China Sea who just happen to occasionally participate in challenges and vote people off.

Richard Hatch claimed to be the winner in his FIRST confessional. Epic. Simply epic. I love this man.

Other people I like thus far: ... I kind of like Joel. Sean is funny in a 'look at how stupid this book smart guy is' kind of way and that's about it. Colleen is really on my nerves. This dimwitted moron who is neither charming nor humorous at any point in the first four episodes became 'America's Sweetheart'? Also, Greg has yet to wow me. People say he's awesome, but so far the only moderately entertaining thing he did was break out into a musical number.

The lack of challenge commentary is... different. Its hard to decide which is better. I think it depends on the challenge, when its a race, the commentary can add drama. When a challenge is more concentration based, the commentary is often stupid an annoying. So far the challenges have been a nice mix.

One thing I've noticed is the terrible editing. Often times we get a clearly dubbed in voice over by Probst. its very jarring and poorly done. In addition, we hardly ever get context as to why a certain purpose is voted out. Why did Ramona get voted off? The established Jenna as her friend and then she votes for her. Why did Stacey? I know, they fudge the Stacey vote and told Dirk and Sean to, but I mean in the context of the story they are telling through the editing we are given no reason for either of those boots.

That's all for now. Yes the seeds of the alliance were planted in episode 4, but that's better saved for next time when they actually go to tribal council.

Power Rangers Mega Force: Things Are Looking Grim

 The following opinions are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else (although they should be and probably are)

I have seen 3 preview clips, which amount to a total of around 2 minutes of footage of Power Rangers Mega Force, and so far, as the title of this post would suggest, things are looking grim.

The first clip showed the Red Ranger, Troy, on a bus having a dream. In said dream was The Great Legend War, or whatever they will call it here. It looked like it was the same as the Sentai version, couldn't really tell (irrelevant point anyways). After the bus driver yells at him to wake up and get off the bus I got my first glimps as to why this could be a rough season. The guy says 2 words "weird dream" and already I can't stand the guy. The delivery was so dead pan. It was like he was reading the words weird and dream for the first time.

The second clip lead to reasons 2 and 3 I'm worried. It showed Rangers Red, Blue, Black and... one of the girls, couldn't tell which one falling out of a portal and encountering a horrible looking CGI Robot (reason 2) and some horrible line delivery from our new Blue Ranger, Noah (insert Ark joke here) (reason 3). I'll start with the CGI robot. It just looks bad. Its 2013. We had a convinging looking robot on this show 20 years ago. This is just lazy. Make a costume. Its more artisitc. As for Blue Ranger? He's a third string clone of dear old Billy. Glasses, technobable, dressing like Billy did, the whole nine yards. Piss off with that shit. That's an insult to the legacy of one of the best characters this, or any other kids show for that matter has ever had. Trying to recreate Billy is pointless, stupid and does more harm than good.

The third clip showed the morphing call. Which is the classic "Its Morphing Time", at which point they put there little cards in the morpher and then "Go Go Mega Force". They also had Troy parrot a line from MMPR about how "(insert name of mentor) said morphers would give us power, so let's do it" The problem here? Troy isn't Jason. No one could ever be Jason. The way Jason used to yell "Its Morphing Time" was awesome, and no one but him could ever make that line more bad ass. The task with Power Rangers is that these actors have the near impossible task of making cheesy lines like "Its Morphing Time" or "RPM Get in Gear" sound awesome. Some can, some can't. These guys can't. Also, "Go Go Mega Force"? Phoned in much? "Go Go Samurai" wasn't great last season,  but it was better than the alternative "Rangers Together Samurai Forever". Why even have 2 calls? I think "Its Morphing Time"would have sufficed on its own.

The nostalgia in this season so far seems for like fanwakery than anything. If you want to please this fan, stop trying to recapture the MMPR magic, and give us some friggin RPM follow up.