And we’re off with yet another season of Survivor and it was a doozy of a first episode (2 hours long!). If I was to tell you that someone would destroy their tribe’s entire food supply, immediately before tribal council … and not get voted out, would you believe me? And how bad a player do you have to be that you get voted out over the anarchist psycho? (It turns out, pretty bad indeed.)
But let’s rewind back to the beginning. The conceit is Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty. No returning players, and no Redemption Island (yay!). We get the intro of the players with heavy editing so that they are talking about the trait that’s landed them on their particular tribe. Blah, blah, whatever. Jeff tells the players of the tribe split and then immediately makes them choose a leader. It’s LJ for Beauty, Sarah for Brawn and David for Brains. Then, the “leaders” are immediately told to pick the weakest member of their tribe. LJ picks Morgan the cheerleader (because she’s too hot), Sarah picks Trish (because she’s older and looks to be the weakest), and David picks Garrett the poker player (because he looks to be the strongest). LJ and Sarah are at least apologetic, but David is quick and brutal. He says his choice was for further ahead in the game. Which is remarkably stupid on the first day. It’s also remarkably stupid because there’s no way we’re losing three people right off the bat, so David’s made himself an instant enemy.
Jeff then interviews the three about how it sucks to be “voted off” this early. Um, this was not a vote, except in the literal interpretation of ‘one man, one vote’. Anyway, they’re obviously not out. Instead they’re sent to their camps early by helicopter and given a choice to help themselves or help the tribe. Garrett easily chooses to help himself and gets an obvious clue to the hidden immunity idol. It’s underwater but he finds it pretty easily. Trish decides to help the tribe and they get a second bag of rice. Morgan chooses to help herself … but can’t find the idol. While she’s looking, her tribe arrives but she dupes them into thinking she chose the tribe saying that the stuff they were given was because of her. Clever.
Then, we get the Beauty tribe making fire without flint. Also clever. Less clever is Tony (who is a cop) lying to Sarah (who is also a cop) about being a cop. He says he’s in construction but has like fifty friends who are cops. Huh, ok. All this does is make Sarah not trust Tony. Over at the Brains camp, we have J’Tia who is a nuclear engineer, deciding this makes her qualified to design a shelter. Not help construct it, mind you. Just bark orders at people about how to build it. This causes everybody to dislike the bossy person, go figure. Oh, and the idea doesn’t work, either.
On to the first immunity challenge which involves moving a cart through an obstacle course, picking up chests along the way, then disassembling the cart and moving everything through a wall, then reassembling the cart, through another obstacle, then solving a puzzle. Beauty and Brawn are good, Brains are terrible. They’re completely disorganized, suck at disassembling and getting through the wall. They drop their chests numerous times which then break open. It’s a fiasco. Beauty wins, Brawn are second and Brains are dead last. They’re going to tribal.
Back at camp, J’Tia is the obvious first choice because she’s rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Kass is direct and tells J’Tia she’s in trouble. Kass is right, but why tell her? However, Garrett is angling to oust David because of the earlier move by David (see? That’s why it was a bad choice). Garrett lines up J’Tia and Tasha, with Kass as the maybe. It doesn’t look good for David. Spencer (who seems like he’s actually good at this game) is worried about David having the idol, but Garrett doesn’t come clean.
On to tribal, where there’s a lot of blather and David is ousted, much to his surprise.
On to the second hour where we get more from the Brawn and Beauty tribe. At Brawn, Cliff and Woo are bonding over a failed fishing expedition and an impromptu swim after their boat tips over. Trish and Lindsey aren’t bonding over Trish wanting Lindsey to contribute and Lindsey mocking Trish’s overbite. Trish commiserates with Tony, who is also hard at work on setting up a ‘spy shack,’ which seems to entirely consist of him crouching behind the shelter. It’s not exactly him being a super spy. At Beauty, Morgan, Brice and Jeremiah are showing the beginnings of an alliance.
At the next immunity challenge, the tribes swim out to a wooden cage, climb in, then untie fishing traps and drag them to the beach. Finally there’s another puzzle for one person to solve. Being a lone puzzle solver puts a lot of pressure on your shoulders, hint hint. Brains are very good at the first part of the challenge, even with J’Tia being a terrible swimmer. They are way out in front when it’s puzzle time and J’Tia is the solver. Uh-oh. First Brawn catches and passes them with Sarah winning it for Brawn. Then Beauty does the same for second place. J’Tia completely fell apart in the puzzle, and it’s a pretty epic failure, with Jeff rubbing it in the entire time. Brains is going back to tribal and the target is now super obvious.
Back at Brawn, Tony figures there should be a clue in their fishing reward challenge, and there is. And he successfully finds their idol. He’s the (self-titled) king of the jungle.
At Brains, we get one crazy, crazy turn of events. It begins with Garrett insisting that they have an open group discussion where he puts Kass on the spot. She’s uncomfortable but says J’Tia is who she’d be voting for. Garrett then puts Spencer on the spot who doesn’t like the open discussion but agrees with the J’Tia pick. Tasha asks to speak to Garrett and Spencer alone. Garrett refuses, saying there’s no need. He wants everybody to sit together until Tribal, and this is utterly ridiculous. Tasha snaps at him out of frustration and walks away. Kass joins her and they get a moment to themselves and hatch a plan to turn things on Garrett. Garrett and Spencer join them in the water, and Kass worries about leaving J’Tia alone. Garrett doesn’t care, what could she do on her own? Well, quite a bit, as it turns out. She dumps all of the rice right into the fire. That’s their entire food supply. J’Tia plays dumb when they return, but it’s very very obvious what has happened. Kass is furious and their plan to oust Garrett would seem to be dead in the water. As they will be too once they starve to death.
Finally, we’re at the last tribal where Jeff is stunned by all the goings on (especially from the Brains tribe). J’Tia calls it ‘not her finest moment.’ Jeff asks why they would tell J’Tia she was going home, and Garrett completely self-destructs when he’s confronted with his stupidly trying to keep everyone from talking. He slips and talks about an alliance then clumsily corrects it to ‘tribe’. Then, he says the alliance was Kass’ idea. Kass calls this a lie (which it is). And it’s a stupid lie. Who is Garrett trying to convince? He doesn’t care about Tasha and J’Tia. And he’s just annoying Kass (and Spencer). It’s an awful performance. We vote, and Kass has flipped her vote and Garrett is out. Amazingly, Garrett hadn’t even brought his idol to the tribal, let alone playing it. For that alone, he deserves his fate. Whew that was a long recap. Stay tuned for next week when Tony continues to be an idiot.
