It's
been a while since I posted something. I think it's because: (a) I
though the last few episodes have been below average, and (b) I don't
have too much to say about them.
Brandon
is a deeply disturbed person, but his histrionics seemed a tad staged
to me. I'm not saying he isn't a tortured individual. I'm not saying
he doesn't lack self-control. But, the whole thing seemed a little
forced. Brandon didn't lose control. Brandon decided to act like he
had lost control.
Brandon's
first time on Survivor was a mess. He played a very confused game.
Was he playing to win? For honor? For Jesus? Or, as Coach's pawn? It
was hard to tell. When he got back home, he was criticized from all
angles for blowing it. When he came out the second time, I don't think
he knew what he wanted to do. He didn't have a game plan or
father-figure to lean on. He was outside the main alliance. He felt
vulnerable. He crumbled. He went looking for a reason to be the center
of attention for an episode and get the heck out. Frankly, it's a
pathetic way to quit. Brandon might be the author of his own fate but
only a lunatic would write such a script.
After
the Brandon meltdown, Corinne made a crucial observation. She realized
that no one defended or comforted her or Phillip after they had
borne the brunt of Brandon's diatribes. I'm not saying the tribe
defended Brandon, I'm just saying Corinne and Phillip didn't get much
personal sympathy and that should be a major red flag that they are not
particularly liked. We'll see if Corinne will use this realization to
her advantage and sniff out a blind-side in the nick of time. My hunch
is she won't and will have a meltdown. For those looking to eliminate
Corinne, my advice is to do it before she gets on the jury.
I
have a gripe with how they reshuffled the tribes. I had no problem
with making sure both tribes were going to be 4-3 majority-Favorites. I
think it would be unfair to shuffle and have some Favorites in a
minority. The Favorites had rightly earned to be in a dominant
position. My problem, though, was that the rest of the allocation was
random and the next challenge was incredibly physical. Whenever you
have a random allocation, you risk creating significantly mismatched
tribes (which happened here). I think it's fairer to have a more
strategic or knowledge-based challenge. Instead, they ran one of the
most physical challenges in the show's history, and next week's
challenge looks just as tough. I have no idea why they are doing it
like this, but I don't like it. I want competitive challenges
not blowouts.
Next
week's preview showed Malcolm possibly aligning with Reynold.
Alliances like that make sense early on (strong men do better when
aligned to strong men), but I think it's too late for that now. How
does Malcolm expect to win a jury vote if he betrays the Favorites? Has
he been keeping track? The whole jury is going to be made up of
Favorites - they already outnumber the Fans 8-5! Hopefully, the preview
was misleading.
One
last point - since I criticized the producers I should say they were
right to give both tribes a bag of rice after Brandon dumped his. Rule
#1 of Survivor is that you can't hit another contestant, so how exactly
are you supposed to restrain someone from dumping your food supply?
Giving both tribes a bag seemed like a fair solution.
Here's
to tomorrow's episode being more fun than the last two! (Then again,
even a bad episode of Survivor is still better than almost anything else
on TV!)
Later.
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