Episode 1.3

What a strange and unusual season this is thus far. Many people, including Jeff Probst, think that the first season was the best season they ever did. Now I have heard that the postmerge part is the better part, so I might still have to wait and see what is so great. It just seems so strange at the moment and I’m not sure if the ranking will change. But at the end of the season, I will tell you where it stands. I’ve already dreamed about later in the season. The vote out of Gretchen is so confusing, that I dreamed about it. But, I’m hoping that I’ll understand it when I watch it. Otherwise, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, it might be something that happened that I’ll never understand. While these two events are nowhere near the same level of importance, I still think that it makes a good example.

There’s an update that I (don’t really) need to tell you about. One of my TV shows on DVD is no longer on the list of things to roll from. Invader Zim, one of my all time favorite shows ever (occupying my list of top ten TV shows, along with Survivor) has only one episode left for me to watch. This impromptu series finale is a Christmas episode so I think that I’ll wait for Christmas to happen before I watch it. I don’t know if it will reappear on my TV show watching list again or not. Maybe if there’s a shortage of other shows to watch. But, the soonest it can reappear on the list is in 2015, if it reappears at all. But since it is such a great show, I might as well watch through it (yet) again. Since Invader Zim is no longer on the list, I have found a different show to replace it. Futurama moves from one to two. Charmed is now number one on the list. Everything else, including Survivor, is in the same place on the list as it was before.

Now, I’ve had a strange history with the show Charmed. I’ve watched it in a crazy order. I first got into it with its eighth and final season was airing on the WB. For some odd reason, they started showing reruns of the fourth season that same night. I watched a lot of the fourth season reruns and they even started airing the fifth season. It was shortly into the fifth season when it was removed from the schedule. I don’t know why it was removed, but it probably had something to do with the WB merging with UPN and becoming the CW network we know of today. With no more WB, I had to find other ways of watching the rest of the fifth season. So I did something simple: I bought the season on DVD. The fifth season ended on a cliffhanger. Later, I wound up getting the first season. Then, I got the sixth season. I decided that I should finish filling in the gap before getting the last two seasons and inevitably got the second and third season. I found the fourth season very hard to get, but I finally have it now and that is where I’m going to start watching again. I just need to rewatch the third season’s cliffhanger first. A while I have yet to roll that series, on 6-11-2014, I rolled Survivor again and get to watch it with a snack. But enough of my ramblings.

In the recap, Jeff said “tonight one more will go” instead of the more common “who will be voted out tonight?” The Tagi tribe had trouble fishing and Stacey wasn’t getting along with the rest of her tribe mates. The Pagong tribe had fun with stuff near camp. Dirk’s Christian ways annoyed a lot of his tribe mates. The tribes then get ready for their reward challenge which, while not the first one in Survivor history, it was the first one aired. Jeff doesn’t say his usual phrase which would have sounded like “Tagi getting your first look at the new Pagong tribe,” he just points out who was voted out by saying that they were missing a member and who it was. The reward is actually inside the chest that was part of the challenge which is weird. I do believe this will remain the weirdest season that they ever did. Tagi puts their fishing gear reward to good use. Richard uses his good fishing gear to his advantage by telling them that without him, they couldn’t keep eating this well. I don’t know why none of his tribe mates were helping him fish.

Since Tagi was getting all the hunting done, Pagong went with their own style of meal. They decided to eat a lot of rats. This is a test to everyone who wants to a Survivor contestant. If you can eat a rat, then you can probably be on Survivor. Well, there’s a lot of other stuff you’d have to do to, but this is one of what you can probably do beforehand to know that you can accomplish living on Survivor. Greg is a lovable type of strange in this season. I’d list him as one of the possibly autistic contestants. As usual, something related to the challenge is something that doesn’t typically happen anymore. This time, it regards the prep for the challenge. Certain members were already whisked away when doing the challenge. Pagong gets a victory walk which is also something that they don’t do anymore. Tagi closely loses the challenge.

Rudy and Stacey have a rivalry. And it will be Stacey who loses that rivalry tonight. Tagi goes to tribal council and it is between their most annoying member (Stacey) and their oldest member (Rudy). Survivor decides to add more elements from Lord of the Flies, which is partial inspiration for this show. They can only talk with they have the conch shell, which happened in the book. This is the only time you’ll ever see it happen. This only further solidifies my idea that this season is so weird. It also seemed brief, although I’m pretty sure Palau’s tribal council where Ian was voted out was the shortest one ever. I’m not sure if that record could be broken. A terrible rainstorm affects the tribal council area. Kelly and Stacey voted for Rudy. Richard, Rudy, Sue, Dirk, and Sean all voted for Stacey. That means that Stacey is the one voted out. As she gets voted out, she talks about how people switched their vote. I’ll get to that pretty soon. Jeff lets the tribe stay at tribal council until the rain clears. The next episode shows Pagong affected by what is presumably the same rainstorm. There’s also other stuff happening that’s hard to sum up.

Now we get to Stacey. She was the first contestant to be blindsided (I think) and she didn’t really take it that well. She sued the show. She believed that producers convinced certain members of her tribe to vote for her instead of Rudy. To this day, she remains the only contestant to have done that. She’s the only person to have said that the show was fake in some (illegal) way. It’s unknown what became of the lawsuit since whatever issue she had was settled out of court. I just know that Mark Burnett countersued her, although I’m not entirely sure what that means. I’d say that she was probably overreacting to getting voted out and nothing had actually happened besides what normally does when a person is usually voted out. Now this gets to the chances of her coming back to the game. I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again. They wouldn’t want her back. In fact, if there’s a list of Survivor contestants banned from reappearing on the game, then she would have started it. The slim chance I give her of returning to the game is 3%. There’s a chance since she isn’t dead, but a highly unlikely chance.

Total confessional counts: Richard- 14, Gervase- 9, Jenna- 4, Sue- 8, Kelly- 6, Rudy- 10, Greg- 6, Gretchen- 8, Stacey- 9, Dirk- 3, Joel- 4, Sean- 5, Ramona- 8, Colleen- 5.

New confessionals this episode: Colleen- 3, Richard- 5, Gervase- 4, Jenna- 2, Sue- 4, Kelly- 3, Rudy- 2, Greg- 3, Gretchen- 2, Stacey- 6, Dirk- 2, Joel- 2, Sean- 2, Ramona- 0.

Rudy now has ten confessionals and Richard is even higher. Now I don’t think my confessional counts for any season will ever be right exactly, but this should at least be close to what the true number is. This season is very different, even in terms of editing, so that might explain why my numbers are off. Tons of people keep getting confessionals in the game, although it seems to be scattered everywhere instead of certain ones getting a lot. We’ll find out what changes in future episodes. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.