Survivorfest 3 - week 1

And they're off! The show, that is.


Michelle is voted off first, quickly followed by Gillian. No one had Michelle as a "Loveable Loser" but plenty of us had Gillian pegged for an early exit. So close, so close.


I've updated the main Survivorfest3 page with the current scores for each Survivor (I'll tidy up the page later): http://www.woltermanns.com/Survivorfest/Survivorfest3.htm


My thoughts on week 1 of...Survivorfest3!


GC related that, as a young man, he'd "done some things" he's not proud of. I like the sound of that. With any luck he'll end up having to do a few more before the show is over.


Randy shared "I'm against marriage. I'll never get married...I'm almost sure of it." After reading your bio, I think we can all be pretty sure of that, Randy.


Corinne let's us know that "I'm going to be a bitch...and I'm going to hurt someone and when someone cries, I'll laugh." Ooooooh, I like her. I wish she was my pharmaceutical sales representative.


Gillian and Bob, being the oldest of our Survivors, are selected to choose tribes in a schoolyard pick. Frankly, I think Gillian is old enough to get to choose the first pick for both sides.


To see who goes first, Bob and Gillian play "rock paper scissors". Bob, the physics teacher, wins this challenge and chooses first. He probably had an entire semester of college on winning at that game.


The last person chosen is Michelle. I guess everyone knows trash when they smell it.


The first challenge is a race. The first two tribe members to reach the top win individual immunity. The first tribe to have all members reach the top first receives food reward.

You know it's got to be hot there. Just standing around Probst had a nice set of pit stains going.

You'd think Crystal, as an OLYMPIC SPRINTER, might have done well on this challenge. Alas, she ran out of gas halfway up the hill and had to have her sorry ass dragged the rest of the way, long after the other tribe had reached the top.

Her excuse? "I was wearing a dress and my shoes weigh about ten pounds!" I may not know Olympics, but I know when someone is out of shape. And why in the world to women still wear dresses to their first day of Survivor? Hasn't any of these people seen the show?

G.C. and Marcus rush ahead and win the respective immunity idols and 2 points each for anyone who has them on their game sheet.

Gillian also struggled mightily making it to the top, marking her as an almost certain liability in any physical challenges.

As Matty so adroitly put it "Gillian will be a huge, huge, huge load to carry."

The two new tribes headed back to their respective camps to find abandoned, damaged shelters in place. Bob quickly took the lead in getting the roofs repaired.

"Well, I'm from Maine and that's what we do in Maine." You build huts?

Seems like Bob might be this season's answer to Yau-Man.

Back at camp Fang (pronounced "fong") Gillian tries to rah rah the troops to almost immediate scorn. When Probst tells you that you got smoked in a challenge, you'd better believe it.

Already I think the Fang tribe is screwed.

First blur displayed was to cover Randy's foul mouth, but it doesn't count toward the game. Nice to see that Randy is only in Gabon for a day and he's already dropping F-bombs.

Gillian takes some time to educate her tribe on the topic of elephant dung, also to immediate scorn. Man, this is a tough crowd. I can't recall who it was, but one of the guys said "you wanna see my dung? It's interesting too!"

Ken started hanging out with Michelle and was eventually able to get her to eat a termite.

We have our first nudity-related blur! Anyone who "X"ed Michelle gets 5 points.

Ken, the poor schmoe, is obviously smitten with Michelle. This can't work out well for him.

Ace takes a moment to tell us that he is "the full package". He's brilliant, scheming and an incredible athlete. It'll be curious to see what he looks like in a few weeks when his hair starts growing out.

Charlie, the gay lawyer, is already smitten with Marcus. "He picked me! With those deep, blue, beautiful eyes!" Somehow I don't think this is going to work out for Charlie, either.

Marcus, clearly not very comfortable: "I'm not into Charlie...This may be the Garden of Eden, but there's no two Adams here".

That night at camp, Randy manages to crack his noggin on a branch. With blood gushing, he asks Nurse Gillian for help. To this she replies "I can't see a thing". She then offers us her best advice that you'd be best served to be careful and don't let yourself get hurt. I think that's the old equivalent of the Marxx brother's routine: "Doctor, doctor it hurts when I do this!" "Well, then stop doing that!"

Randy gets real medical help from the Survivor medics and runs the first risk of a life-threatening infection. Plus he got a really cool head bandage to wear.

The next morning Michelle seems to have had enough. She's cold ("why is Africa cold?") and irritable and everyone else in her tribe is stupid. Good start to day two, Michelle.

Ace leads a combined meditation routine for his tribe leading to the first challenge, to only partial scorn and ridicule.

Any idea what Sugar was wearing over her outfit? It looked like a maze-patterned potato sack.

First challenge tied 6 people together and sent them through an obstacle course. They find puzzle pieces that the remaining three have to solve.

The first leg of the course is a jaunt through a leech-infested swamp. Yes! Leeches!

The Coda tribe leapt out to a quick lead. After a few moments of digging for the puzzle peice bag, G.C. quit to take a nice break and watch the other tribe finish well ahead of them. Probst took a moment to chew them out for lack of effort and being, in general, quite pitiful.

Randy on Gillian: "nothing against 60 year old women...just don't come to my camp!" Umm...sounds like you have something against them, Randy.

Back at camp, Ken relates to Michelle that she's "on the outs". As I would have expected, this takes Michelle completely by surprise. Imagine that no one finds an irritable, complaining loner endearing.

"Really!?! These are the dumbest people....they're, like, retarded!"

At tribal council, Probst twisted the knife a little. "Not did you get destroyed in the challenge, but you're in denial about it!"

I love the fact that Dan, the lawyer, wore a tie to tribal council. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts. I'm thinking by week 6 we'll be lucky if he's still wearing pants.

Probst told them that they lack leadership and tried to get someone to step up. G.C. said "I think it would be a good idea to have someone to look up to...and to vote out in three weeks." Okay, I made that last part up. But you know he was thinking it.

The rest of the tribe sensed blood and "elected" G.C. as tribe leader. G.C. was actually fighting back tears at that point. They weren't tears of joy, either.

The votes go in and, judging by Ken's expression....yes! Michelle is voted out! Poor Ken will never have a pretend girlfriend at this rate!

After council, Probst gave them fire and sent them back. Kinda made the other tribe winning fire as part of the challenge a bit less meaningful. I guess they must think these guys are real losers.

Back at the other camp Marcus and Charlie start working up an alliance. Marcus confides that it's like layers of an onion. And he wants more layers. I think what he was saying is that he wants more layers between him and Charlie. He made sure to bring in the two hot chicks.

Back at camp Fang, things keep getting better! G.C. spent one day as leader then resigned.

Randy begins operation "let other people crash and burn". This dude comes as advertised!

In preparing for the next challenge, Dan talked his tribe into using war paint. Dan is a face-painter...who knew?

Unfortunately they did nothing to shore up their general pitifulness, so now they will lose and look extra silly afterward.

Anyone else think that Randy, in his war paint, looked like Batman?

The next challenge was to push a large, fake boulder through gates, picking up keys. The keys would unlock a final gate where the tribe would roll the boulder into a cradle to complete the challenge.

Paloma sat this one out to keep the teams even. Notice that she's not getting any camera time?

Almost immediately into the challenge G.C. tells Gillian to get out of the way so someone can push. This still doesn't help and Coda moved on to another victory.

Coda selected Dan to go to Exile Island, giving him first shot at finding hidden immunity.

Coda received fishing supplies and quickly began bringing in protein. I'm impressed to note that Sugar is willing and able to scale and de-bone fish. Might be more to her than I thought, although I'm not sure that's difficult.

On Exile, Dan is given the choice of comfort and food or the opportunity to look for the idol. He chooses idol and began a fruitless (literally) search for it.

Back at Fang, the tribe showed some signs of life by making fishing gear out of glasses, shoe laces and other material. I always wondered why tribes didn't try that. Nice to see some life in them.

Dan returns for tribal council. Everyone immediately assumes he has the idol. He turned over his bag and exclaimed "I don't lie!". Umm. Aren't you a lawyer, Dan? Hmm. We'll see how well the no lying thing works for him later on.

At council Dan's got his tie on again.

I think Matty looks like "Heat Miser" from that claymation Christmas special. I'll have to find a good picture and add him to my Celebrity Look-A-Like page: http://www.woltermanns.com/Survivorfest/Survivor_celebrity.htm

Gillian is voted out, to no one's surprise. I wonder if she could have argued that she should have stayed on a technicality since almost nobody spelled her name correctly. I'm 90 percent sure that G.C. misspelled Michelle earlier (Mishell).

It's a wild first week of Survivorfest! Feel free to post any comments you have to this blog.

See you next week on....Survivorfest!