Survivorfest6 - week 1! Game on!!!

Sugar gets dished and we're off and flying on another season of Survivor!

The gang came in on four choppers flying low over the tropical island of Samoa.  Considering the first season looked like it was filmed with two Sony Handycams in a South Florida backyard I'd say Survivor has come a long, long way.

I was pleased to see that Randy hadn't gotten off the chopper and he already looked pissed.  Makes me wonder what a pile of fun he must be at Survivor reunion events.

Cirie related that she was a "gansta" in an Oprah suit.  I wonder where I can get one of those...Halloween is just around the corner, you know.

Five minutes in and Coach is already weird.  I think he's completely embraced the Dragonslayer persona that didn't come out until week 7 of his last go round when he was dehydrated and dreaming of being groped by pygmies in the Amazon.  Real shame this season wasn't set there...I think those little guys would have liked another shot at him.

The villain's chopper arrived to sinister music while the heroes shied away from the sand being kicked up by their chopper rotors.  Nice entrance.  Darth Vader couldn't have done it any better.  Speaking of which, wouldn't HE be a great Survivor contestant?

Okay, right here, right now, which super-evil fictional characters would you like to see duke it out on the next season of Survivor?

My immediate votes go to:

Darth Vader
Damien (the kid from the Omen)
the Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner (Alan Rickman rocks!)
Hannibal Lecter
the Joker (Heath Ledger's) just for the laughs

Wow.  That was a pretty major digression.  That's what happens when you do a stream-of-consciousness blog.

First challenge is for fire.  Teams would dig for a bag in the sand and the first to touch their mat while holding the bag would win a point.

The first team of all women set the pace.  Parvarti and Cirie went at it like a couple of ex-Roller derby gals.  Which, if this were 1972, they both would probably be.

The heroes won that round but not before Stephenie had her shoulder dislocated.  Mad props for toughness by getting it popped back in and shaking it off.  That kind of thing will make a grown man cry like a baby. 

We also got our first blur of the game.  It took several rewinds of the DVR but we caught Parvarti with part of her top pulled off during the melee.  I know, I know.  It's a tough job but I watched it three or four extra times just to be sure.  The things I do for this game.

The heroes won the next match as well with a mixed group of men and women as JT juked his way around a badly over-matched Randy.

The villains took a surprise point when Colby, who had grabbed the bag, was "frog jumped" over to the villain's mat by coach in a gutsy and clever move.  Well done, Dragonslayer!

Tyson shared that Colby was so emasculated by being beaten by Coach, of all people, that he might as well give up and become a woman.  Man, I missed Tyson!

The heroes took the third point in the next all-women match.  It featured the title bout between Courtney and Sugar, which was about as titanic as two stick figures wrestling over a paper wad.  Sugar actually seemed to roll over and give up when the bag sort of popped out her way. 

She picked it up and started to run when Sandra caught her from behind.  She managed to wriggle free while Sandra chose to unhook her (Sugar's) top rather than put her in a chokehold.

Sugar hopped on the mat sans top and gave Sandra the double-bird.  Anyone not familiar with that term?  Okay, she told Sandra that she was number "11".  I have a strong suspicion that a few of the CBS cast parties ended the same way...

The next match paired up James and Rupert and wasn't much of a competition.  Rupert took the brunt of the damage, however, breaking his little toe in a couple of places.  Ouch!

Heroes win reward!

Back at camp, the villains licked their wounds and tried to do anything other than put a camp together.

Russell spent a lot of time trying to work up alliances with anyone and everyone. 

He even started in on the "you need to trust me and we'll go to the final two!" stuff.  Week one and that garbage is growing a bit stale.

Shockingly, they didn't show him looking around for a hidden immunity idol. I wonder if CBS came up with some new unannounced rules on camp behavior.

Courtney, what is with the weird hat, shorts and leg warmers?  You look like a hipster hooker.

Boston Rob came up big with his fire making skills.  Randy told him it was impossible without flint.  That's probably how he knew he could do it.

The best part wasn't that the tribe would now have drinkable water, but Boston Rob now had Coach's undying respect.

Coach and Jerri appeared to be starting up some kind of Survivor romance.  There's gotta be a word for that...ah, yes...Showmance!  We'll see if it lasts through week 6 when Jerri needs to have another wax job and everyone is ready to stone Coach.

Still it should be a fun ride.  We already have two Survivor Hall of Fame quotes out of it:

"The Black Widow and the Dragonslayer" - I wonder if Coach knows what black widows do after they mate...

"You're with the Dragonslayer, man, don't worry about it!" - That may be one of the best pick-up lines I've heard this year.  Granted it's still only February, but I could see him laying that line down in a dance club.

At the heroes camp the strongest players seemed to be lining up alliances.  James and JT and JT and Tom were making nice.  The 90% of us who marked any or all of those guys down as winners breathed a sigh of relief and did a quick bit of back-patting.

I think Colby's hat is big enough for two people.  If he tied it on tight enough a strong wind might lift him to one of the other islands.  Hmmm.  I think that was the plot of a Gilligan's Island rerun I saw the other day.

The heroes were fortunate enough to net four wild chickens at camp.  You know what that means, right?  Eggs for breakfast and at least one gratuitous chicken slaying!  CBS operators are standing by to manage the flood of PETA calls.

I checked.  Here are the options:

Press one to leave a desperate plea to be on a future show
Press two for the location of Jeff Probst's next book signing
Press three if you got confused and thought you were calling the suicide hotline again
Press four if you'd like to complain about something one of our shows did to an innocent animal

Rupert has evidently lost a bit of his mojo and was unable to start a fire even with the aid of flint.  Evidently he didn't attend the Boston Rob camp for Roughing it Up in a Primitive Environment using Rob's Tips.  That was a long way to go to try to make an ironic acronym, don't you think?  See the camp name spells...sigh.  Never mind.

JT came to the rescue and lit up a fire.  For good measure he wrung up a chicken, built the shelter with his bare hands and solved world hunger.  Same old, same old.

Sugar got cold that night and wanted her some warm Colby.  I think there's a sweet cheese joke here somewhere, but it's been a long week already and that RUPERT camp joke really kinda fell flat.

Needless to say, Sugar wasn't making herself welcome.

The Immunity Challenge was to assemble a boat, row it out to light a torch, row it back to disassemble the boat, assemble a puzzle and then use the boat pieces to form a ladder to light a pyre with the torch.

Another rather pointlessly complex Survivor challenge.  Why not have them refine Uranium or something?

The heroes took a quick lead on the challenge by getting the boat together first and making it out to light their torch.  The villains were only halfway out when they returned and started on the puzzle phase.

That's when things took a poor turn for the heroes.  Between Sugar, Rupert and Cirie they completely botched the puzzle challenge.  The villains gained the lead and completed the come-from-behind rout.

A hero would be going home.  Sugar started crying, to no one's surprise.

Back at the heroes camp the immediate impulse was to vote off Sugar.  But that would remove the suspense, wouldn't it?  So the next fifteen minutes of valuable network time was taken up by sequences of everyone over-analyzing who would help the tribe in the short run versus who they might want to take out early.

I don't buy it.  Anyone who knows what they're doing at this game waits a few weeks before starting the blind-sides.  The first vote-off goes to the sucker who either can't help you win any challenges, is completely useless at camp or pisses everyone off.  Unfortunately for Sugar, she fit the bill three different ways.

Tribal council was extra special this season as well.  The contestants had to climb flights of stairs to get the chamber forty feet off the ground.  I suspect Rupert was not too amused with his bum toe.

Council was fairly unremarkable.  Jeff tried to stir things up and poke and prod at strategies.  All these folks had been there and done that and weren't going to be persuaded to tell more than they had to.

The vote went in.  Fittingly, Sugar had a tough time figuring out how to use the pen to write the only name that wasn't spelled S-U-G-A-R on the ballots.

Sugar heads home and the heroes tribe seems none the worse for wear in the early going.  We'll see if they can avoid a repeat visit to tribal council next week on...Survivorfest!