Survivorfest week 4!

Mikey B gets sacked!


Wow, the sixteenth season of Survivor continues to provide loads of surprises! The main page will be updated shortly with the latest information.


My thoughts on week 4:


Cirie couldn't wait to get back to camp so she could ream Ami for writing her name down. She didn't even have to ask, she knew who did it. Ami backpedaled faster than a stuttering politician. The only thing that saved her was that Penner still can't keep his mouth shut about the broken alliance.


Eliza was ill. James felt her forehead and admitted that she felt "a little warm". Well, it is a tropical island...and she has been in contact with Parvarti...

James began to come to the realization that voting off Yau-Man might not have been the most strategic move: "Man, we were stupid last night!" It's probably not the first or last time he'll say that on the island.


They openly discussed that they should have voted off a sick Eliza rather than Yau...with Eliza sitting with them. Predictably she got a little pissy about that. "I'm gonna do better than Yau-Man would have in the challenge tomorrow!"

She also scolded her tribemates by telling them that she'd perform better if they were nicer to her. They didn't think much of that plan. Eliza attempted to put a voodoo curse on the lot of them so that they would catch whatever she had.

The Fan tribe went wild when Jason and Erik tracked down and beheaded a hapless eel on the shore near camp. Aliza chimes in with "Got an eel? Yeah, ya did!" The Internet dimmed out briefly while 85,000 PETA members dashed off a emails to CBS.


The reward challenge was a swimming event with a (gasp) puzzle at the end. The reward was a coop full of chickens. Jeff was handed a note from one of the NBC guys off camera and hastily added that the chickens are for "laying eggs". Another PETA-induced Internet brown out avoided.


The Fans had an extra person, and to no one's surprise, they sat Chet. I think he's still trying to finish the last rewards challenge that involved swimming.

Ozzy started off for the Faves with Jason swimming for the Fans. No contest. I seriously think that Ozzy doesn't need to breathe. The Favorites strategy of having Ozzy stay under water for eight solid minutes, moving their coconuts to the edge of the underwater cage paid off almost immediately. They took a quick lead and never looked back.

I was amused to see Jason, on a subsequent dive, make a half-hearted attempt to toss Penner's coconut away from him. Time to put on your big boy pants, Jason. Either do it or don't.

Natalie wins a special mention for the dreaded double-blur! The players must go to a special tailor that makes sure that we have at least half a dozen wardrobe malfunctions a season. The grand prize still goes to Amanda's swimsuit bottoms from last season. They had a multi-week blur going that may never be topped.

The puzzle at the end is solved by unscrambling the coconuts with letters painted on them to form a word. James sees it first: "Is 'triumphant' a word?" I think he thought it was one of the honey-stealing monsters from Winnie the Pooh.

The Faves win the chickens and select (gasp) Kathleen to head to Exile Island. This time it's Ozzy's turn to go with her. At this point I predicted to my wife that Ozzy would find the hidden immunity idol. He's reaching the point of being unstoppable. Might as well add an immunity idol to the mix.

Back at the Fan camp, the defeated tribe raves about Ozzy's challenge performance. Erik looks none-too-pleased. As I recall from one of the early shows, he thinks he can hang with Ozzy in some of these challenges. At this point, Ozzy is making him look like...well, an ice cream scooper.

On Exile Island Ozzy sports his hat with a buff wrapped around the top. It makes him look like Minnie Pearl.

As predicted, Ozzy quickly dashes through all the clues and finds the hidden immunity idol. Kathleen spends the afternoon relaxing and letting the campfire burn out. What a moron.

Ozzy took a page out of Yau-Man's book: he hid the idol in his sack and replaced it with one of his own making. Even after getting voted out, the Yau keeps on making an impact!

Unfortunately Ozzy's rendition of the idol is pitiful to behold. It looks like something between a primitive adult sex toy and a tuber. He could at least have added some fluff or bird feathers to it. Still, it's probably realistic enough to fool half the people this season.

The immunity challenge was a large-scale puzzle challenge. The tribes had to strap long poles to their bodies using harnesses, unlock their poles from a tether, figure out how to maneuver through obstacles to pick up pieces of a puzzle and solve the scrambled word at the end.

It struck me that when Parvarti strapped on the harness it was probably the most clothes she'd worn all season. Is it my imagination or is her bikini actually shrinking?

The Favorites jumped out to a huge lead. The Fans were pretty much doomed when Erik was unable to open his lock after several attempts. Have I mentioned that he's got my vote for "the idiot" this season? I thought so.

The Favorites completely obliterated the Fans in this challenge.

Back at camp, Mikey confides that he wants to keep Joel around until the last minute and then "take care of him". Has he even watched this show before? That almost never works.

Chet, who at this point might actually be dead, was wearing a buff on his head like Aunt Jemima. Or a dead, shriveled, Aunt Jemima.

Tracy found out that the corpse formerly known as Chet is on the chopping block for tribal council that night. She began to try to stir some life into her two "older" pals (Kathleen and Chet) and then began working on Joel to vote Mikey off instead. Personally I didn't think she had a chance until she began questioning Joel's manhood, hinting that Mikey was going to double cross him right away and stopping just short of admitting that she was psychic.

She earned a spot on the Survivor quote Hall of Fame with "I know stuff...I was just born with it."

At this point Joel had smoke coming out of his ears and was hoping that a good "Raaaugh!" would make the pain in his head go away.

Quick prediction on Joel. I think he's three weeks away from looking like Rupert Boneham.

At tribal we're treated to a rare event. Usually Jeff has to poke and prod people to speak up. This night no less than three people wanted to filibuster. When Jeff tried to get them to vote, Jason actually stopped him and proceeded to lecture everyone to vote for the strength of the tribe.

Erik joins the Survivor Hall of Fame quote board with "You can run into a wall a hundred times but that's not the best way to get rid of a wall." I did mention my vote for him...? Yep.

As the Fans make their way over to vote, the camera pans over a despondent Chet. I finally realized who he reminds me of. I'll add it to the Survivor Celebrity look-a-like page. http://www.woltermanns.com/Survivorfest/survivor_celebrity.htm

The votes are tallied and the first two are for Chet. Uh-oh. I know at least one vote was for Mikey because they showed it. They always make the vote as dramatic as possible by re-ordering the tallies.

Sure enough, Mikey B is blind-sided. I can't tell who was more upset, Mikey or Chet. You could almost hear Chet thinking to himself "my God, why are you people doing this to me!?!"

Even Jeff appeared to question the strategy: "Mikey, your stupid tribe has spoken." Okay, I made that up, but he was thinking it.

I'm interested to see if Joel echoes James and admits that they were "stupid last night." I rather think he'll talk himself into thinking that voting Mikey off was really his idea and it was the best strategy they could have planned.

Next week it appears the tribes will merge. If so, that should lead us to our first individual immunity winner and another money payout.

See you next week on....Survivorfest!