Episode 29.6

Okay, so you may not notice it, I had to work ahead on the confessional count. This episode and the next will have a new order based on the previous episode. I may change the order so that if one of the potential leaders of the confessional count is voted out, then I will put them first in this episode’s confessional count. There are four potential leaders and they are Keith, Julie, Jon, and Reed. I don’t know yet if any of them are in danger of being voted out in this episode. If one of them are, then it might change this week’s list. I might be getting to crazy about reordering stuff in the confessional count. I’m crazy about a lot of things. Speaking of which…

Here’s an update on the movie watching list. Remember that the purpose is to eventually remove Seventeen Again from the Sunday list and replace it with the Survivor: Borneo special, as I call it. Once I watch the special again, I will replace it with Survivor: Borneo episodes to watch on Sunday while the rest of the movie watching list is moved to either the Saturday list or Monday list. The biggest problem with this whole system is that I typically only choose movies to watch by assigning a set of six movies a number in alphabetical order where choice one occurs first alphabetically and choice six occurs last alphabetically with the other four choices somewhere in between. This has prevented me from watching Seventeen Again. Meanwhile, I keep watching other movies and apply other rules to these lists. You see, a replacement is chosen by picking from certain movie choices that can occur alphabetically between the choice both before and after the choice you are taking away. You can roll for this option, or you can choose to replace it with a particular movie if you have either a strong desire to watch this again or you have a dream about this choice.

You see, rolling for a movie choice isn’t the only thing that can make me choose it. There was an extremely complicated thing that I did that allowed me to watch High School Musical 2 on Saturday. It would be hard for me to explain it, just that I probably won’t do it again since it was incredibly annoying to me. So I watched that without having to roll for anything, but I will not be able to do that unless I reinstate what I did the first time. I already stated that I probably won’t do this. I’m not sure that I can even explain what happened. On Sunday I wound up watching Flight of the Phoenix. This was replaced in the choice option list with Enchanted. On Monday, I watched Beauty and the Beast. I still need to get a better sleep schedule to better watch Monday movies. I need enough time to go into work, get enough sleep, and watch a movie, all in one day. That movie was replaced by Bambi.

Mysteries so far this season: Is the potential quitter going to make the merge? Why was Kelley voted out? Does that make any sense? Is Dale’s fake idol the one that’s going to get burned? Is this season going to get any better or will it remain mostly a disappointment to most fans? I think that a lot of seasons are underrated, such as Nicaragua, Redemption Island, and One World, to name a few. While I haven’t heard that many people’s opinion on this season, the overall reception is pretty negative. While it is far from terrible, it isn’t that great either. I guess it is to be expected. This show can’t always be as good as you would want it to be. Meanwhile, I’m still not sure what I want to happen with this game. I do wonder what will happen with Natalie. Did you know that every season that has a Natalie has that contestant make the finale episode of said season? Does that mean good things for Natalie? I still think that the elimination of her twin might have been the best thing for her game. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Dale feels like he’s lowest on the totem pole and uses his fake idol to leverage people. Jeremy doesn’t think that the rice situation is good. Jeff only remembers Australia as when a tribe needed more rice. He must be forgetting that the merged tribe needed rice in Nicaragua. Jeff berates the tribe for their overall dysfunction. I don’t remember ever hating both tribes before. There’s normally one that I root for. Jeff is taking almost everything from the tribe giving them only the stuff that a tribe basically starts with at the very beginning of the game, with the extra bit of rice they need, of course. They had it coming.

In the second segment of the show, we get to the reward challenge. I think that the yellow tribe will win. I wonder how they’ll do the mash-ups. They put up whoever they want to. Reed fights against Baylor for the challenge. The challenge seems neck-in-neck at the beginning. Baylor wasn’t that good at the puzzle, which only seems to increase the similarities between her and Ciera. Baylor goes to Exile Island. While Reed originally wants to send Julie to Exile Island, Natalie decides to volunteer to go. She is not the first contestant to ever do this. But, she is the first from this season. (In case you are wondering, Yau-Man did this in Fiji. If there are any others, then I can’t think of them.)

In the third segment of the show, Jon talks about how Dale has an idol. They were trying to make new plans as to who to vote for. Meanwhile, I forgot who really does have the idol for Coyopa. Jeremy thinks that Reed and Josh are a threat. And he keeps thinking about how dumb his tribe is. If you didn’t notice, they are not giving Jeremy the usual lazy black guy edit that most black guys normally get. I don’t know if Earl got this, considering how Earl is the only black guy to have actually won Survivor. Does this mean that Jeremy wins this season? Possibly. But it could just mean that he has some dramatic impact on this season. Meanwhile, it’s possible that Julie is going to quit. Why is it normally always women who quit? I guess men just stick to other methods of quitting that doesn’t make them official quitters. But that’s arguable at best. The only woman who asked to be voted out, Shawna in Amazon, didn’t have her wish granted, although she was voted out later when she wanted to stay in the game. So, maybe it’s just a bit weird how one counts the whole quitting thing. Meanwhile, I think that almost nothing important happened at Exile Island. In fact, this episode may have less of Exile Island than any other episode of this show. Weird.

In the fourth segment of the show, Julie is still considering quitting due to the rainstorm. We then get to the challenge that’s by the ocean. I have a feeling that we might actually see a quit at this point. The challenge went back and forth and ultimately Hunahpu won. Guess I was wrong about the quit. I wonder if they’ll even really be one in the future.

In the fifth segment of the show, Keith is hoping for the best at tribal council. He is the one with the real idol. Dale is tricking Jon into getting a fake idol if Dale survives today’s tribal council. This could lead to problems if Keith plays his real idol at tribal council. Jon thinks of voting for Missy or they could split the vote against Keith and Dale. This will probably lead to an interesting tribal council, as always. It’s hard to make anything out of tribal council. When asked about idols, nobody plays it. Dale gets voted out, effectively making him and Kelley the lowest ranking pair from this season.

On the next Survivor, oops! I missed what the promo was. Guess that I’ll have to wait until the episode airs. I think that it is probably a merge coming up. That typically happens two tribal councils after a swap. But it’s hard to tell. Meanwhile, a surprise SVU rerun (not a huge surprise since anything new is running against game seven of the World Series) means that I get to watch the 100 live and don’t have to record anything. I should also check out my cast assessment. I want to be doing well, even if they are just predictions. I should also post how well my updates are doing. I was three for five before this episode aired, so maybe I can still do well. I remember placing either Keith or Wes as one of the finalists, but I might have switched them up in my mind and wrote down the wrong prediction. Either way, I don’t think that either one will actually make it to day 39.

The potential quitter might be during the merge part of the game. That would mean that they aren’t put on the jury, since the rules were changed after the twenty-first season. (On a side note, what’s interesting about the two quitters being on the jury in Nicaragua is that they both voted for Fabio to win. Fabio only won by one vote. That means that the season could have been altered if they weren’t on the jury. This fact, while noticed by different fans, has interestingly garnered little to no controversy.) So I don’t know how my predictions will fair during facts like this. They obviously wouldn’t be on the jury, but they wouldn’t be a premerge boot either. This probably means getting that player wrong at any cost. But I don’t think that it will matter. We don’t even know for sure if someone is actually going to quit for real or not. They haven’t touched upon a lot of the things in the super promo at the end of the first episode. That means it could be a while before we see any of it.

Total confessionals: Keith- 11, Wes- 4, Missy- 9, Jaclyn- 5, Dale- 10, Baylor- 12, Natalie- 7, Josh- 17, Alec- 9, Jeremy- 19, Reed- 4, Julie- 8, Jon- 13.

New confessionals this episode: Julie- 2, Jon- 3, Keith- 1, Wes- 0, Missy- 3, Jaclyn- 0, Dale- 2, Baylor- 0, Natalie- 1, Josh- 1, Alec- 1, Jeremy- 3, Reed- 1.

Dale joined the ten or more confessionals club only to get voted out during the same episode. Jon surpassed Baylor as third highest. Josh has second highest while Jeremy has the highest. Meanwhile, Wes and Reed are tied for the lowest at the moment. I might have heard mostly inaccurate spoilers regarding potential premerge boots for this season. But I missed whether or not the merge is actually happening in the next episode. We’ll see what ends up happening. I’ll also figure out when to put both confessional lists in the same paragraph. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.5

Last I checked, people still haven’t read the blog post: Episode 1.7. Does this mean that I’ll stop posting things here until someone reads it? Probably not. But, it could happen. I just want every blog post here to be read. Just one person needs to read it. You don’t even have to read it. Just click on it so the page view count adds a number to it. I also need to update my TV blog and haven’t been doing that as much lately. I think that I could update it every time an unread blog post here comes up. Or whenever. Things don’t always go according to plan. The TV schedule for the fall season is sometimes changed before those shows start. The Big Bang Theory was supposed to air with The Millers. It would have been easy to choose what to watch and what to record. But then they decided to air The Millers on Mondays instead of Thursdays. Meanwhile, The Big Bang Theory is still moving to Thursdays as planned. They will be paired with 2 Broke Girls and Mom, neither of which are any good. It is never that easy to start recording a show at the 30 minute mark especially if there’s nothing to pair with it. But I’ll just figure it out like I always do.

I also wonder what would replace this blog should Survivor ever end. (Trust me, this blog will post about old seasons as often as I’d have to until a hopeful return of this show.) I don’t even know if I would replace this blog, but I have an idea as to what I could do if I needed to. I had a dream that I started a third blog, but I can’t remember what that blog was about. Typically I do things in dreams if they tell me to, although I don’t have to by any means. I probably wouldn’t have if I could remember what the TV show was. It might have been Madam Secretary and I’m not sure that I’d want to do a blog about that. I like the show, but I can’t remember for sure what show the dream had me doing a blog of. Plus, the dream made it seem like the show had some sort of connection to Survivor. That means that it probably wasn’t about Madam Secretary, but the dream could have been saying things that don’t make sense, typical in the dream world. If you think that I SHOULD start a blog about that show, then let me know. It may make me want to start blogs about every CBS Sunday show, although I have no interest in ever doing a blog about 60 Minutes. It’s a good show, but I could never do it justice.

Mysteries so far this season: How will the tribe swap affect this season? What will the new tribes be? Who will gain control because of this? Who will lose control because of this? Will anyone wind up on the same tribe as their loved one? Why was Keith compared to a snake in the last episode by the editors? Does this mean good or bad things to him? Why would both male alliances crumble from both tribes in back-to-back episodes? Will a successful male alliance ever happen in any Survivor season? To my knowledge, none ever have. I hope that one will. It seems weird to have a string of male winners right now and none of them be in a successful male alliance. They have had at least one woman in the alliance and more than just the man they valued most like Gervase or Woo. I do miss having a woman winner. I gladly know no spoilers of this season (with the possible exception of who some of the premerge boots are). I don’t know who the winner is this season. But I feel that the edit is saying that a man will probably win, although whether or not this happens is unknown.

As I’ve said before in this blog, you can learn a lot about this show by watching, listening, or reading things about it. I highly suggest that everyone listen to Shamar’s interview at Survivor Oz so you can learn that the editors hated him. It’s possible that the editors hated Drew. Why do I say that? Well, on Survivor Live, he said that it wasn’t him only who thought of throwing the challenge. Most of his tribe was in on that idea. That’s why some of the strong members were sitting out. The edit made it seem like he was the only one in on it and that got him voted out. Maybe it was the editors way of saying that throwing the challenge would only have a negative effect on him. I can buy that. But the fact that other people besides him helped throw the challenge is something I feel that is worth knowing. I still don’t know what to nominate for dumb moves yet this season. Well, besides John Rocker’s overall bad game play. I also need to think of the most memorable moment and where this season ranks among all of the seasons of Survivor. There’s other stuff to, but I will get to that in the final blog post of this season. I should probably not promise to post stuff here since I don’t know if I’ll ever do it. But, we’ll see what happens as time goes by.

Here is an update on the movie watching that I’m doing. Saturdays might have been improved in some way. Typically I’m stuck watching something not on the list because my mother would get off of work in time for supper and we’d watch something together. Most of my list doesn’t interest her. But, since she needs to stay caught up on different TV shows and doesn’t always have the time to watch them, Saturdays are actually a good time for catching up on them and we can do things separately on Saturdays which works best for both of us. On Saturday I watched Made of Honor. It remains on the list since I want to hear the commentary that goes along with it. On Sunday I watched Juno. While Juno has a commentary, I decided not to listen to it since I have to remove certain items from the list before I won’t be able to watch any of them. This is obviously one of those items. On Monday I watched one of the Stargate movies and still have the two hour pilot, which I’m counting as a movie, to watch sometime. I still don’t know if I’ll ever want the Stargate SG-1 series to watch sometime. But I might end up getting into it in the future.

You know, I’ve been unimpressed by this season so far. It’s far from terrible, but it’s not outstanding either. I haven’t listed where it ranks among the other 28 seasons, but it would probably be with the average seasons. I still haven’t figured out who the breakout star of the season is. I don’t know what the most memorable moment of the season is yet either. A lot of these events have probably not happened yet. But I find it odd that the cast is so strange. Every boot so far has done something dumb that got themselves eliminated. The edit is a bit too obvious with who is going home. It is hard to tell what there is to look forward to in it. I might end up liking it, but I haven’t been into it so far. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, people were surprised as usual about what happened at tribal council. Alec was convinced for some odd reason that Drew would still be there. They were shocked by Drew’s elimination and got a second shock by the tribe swap.

In the second segment of the show, the contestants talked about the upcoming swap. It turns out that there wasn’t a reward challenge in this episode. That’s strange since it looked like a challenge was set up. But, they could have just left the most recent challenge still set up to fool everyone. I don’t know what to think about the relationship between Reed and Josh. I just wonder why we are seeing so much of Josh and none of Reed. Except for the gay part, they seem a lot like some Christian couples in the fact that they don’t have sex before marriage. We get to hear some about Jon worrying about his father. This makes me wonder if he’ll do what Jenna Moresa did in All-Stars. Jaclyn wonders if she and Jon should sleep together. Seasons like this make me wonder if someone would ever get pregnant on the show. Of course, it probably won’t happen. The new Coyopa: Kelley, Dale, Missy, Baylor, Jacyln, Jon, and Keith. The new Hunahpu: Josh, Reed, Wes, Alec, Julie, Natalie, and Jeremy.

In the third segment of the show, Alec is suddenly glad that his brother is gone. Jeremy is worried that Alec will join up with Josh and Reed. Jeremy goes overboard with his surround and drown strategy. Well, talking about it, not actually doing it. Dale and Missy have issues over the rice at camp. I don’t get why this is such a huge problem, but we’ll see what happens next.

In the fourth segment of the show, Hunahpu was feeling weak due to the lack of food. We then get to the immunity challenge. In the challenge, Hunahpu won a quick lead and kept it the entire challenge. They then went into a possibly foolhardy decision about rice. He let them keep immunity. Basically, I don’t know what to think of this or what will happen next.

In the fifth segment of the show, Keith thinks that he might be voted out next. The scrambling begins and it is hard to say what to make of it. I don’t know who the target would be as Hunahpu goes to tribal council. Keith does not play his immunity idol. In the end, Kelley got voted out for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. It’s a viewer blindside, which always seems to show a lack of good editing in my mind. I hope that it makes sense later.

On the next Survivor, Dale’s fake idol will come into play. People realize that other people are supposed to have the fake idol and not the person who created it, right? Hunaphu’s deal could lead to troubles for them, but we don’t know what it might be yet.

Total confessionals: Kelley- 5, Baylor- 12, Natalie- 6, Josh- 16, Alec- 8, Jeremy- 16, Reed- 3, Julie- 6, Jon- 10, Keith- 10, Wes- 4, Missy- 6, Jaclyn- 5, Dale- 8.

New confessionals this episode: Dale- 2, Kelley- 1, Baylor- 2, Natalie- 0, Josh- 3, Alec- 2, Jeremy- 3, Reed- 1, Julie- 1, Jon- 4, Keith- 2, Wes- 1, Missy- 1, Jaclyn- 3.

Keith and Jon now have more than ten confessionals.  Josh and Jeremy tie for the highest. Reed currently has the lowest, although I may have accidentally missed one of his and attributed it to Josh instead. Wes is pretty low too at the moment. In today’s episode, Natalie is the only one who doesn’t get a confessional. Meanwhile, I have to figure out how to rearrange the confessional count for future episode. You may not see it the way that I do. Regardless, I still have to find a way to change the name order, even if that means planning things out in the future. I guess this means that I might have to start writing the blog post for the seventh episode. At least this episode wasn’t as predictable as others have been in the past this season. Hopefully everything will turn out great since I’m not sure what’s going to happen with this season. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.4

I typically start writing a blog post for the next Survivor episode before or immediately after I posted the most recent blog post. You know those random blog posts that I post between seasons? I already have some of them completely written. I keep coming up with new ideas and would probably take suggestions. But, the point of this meaningless filler at the moment is the fact that I haven’t been feeling well due to a cold. I’m hoping that I’m well over it by the time this is actually posted. But there are times when you know something currently happening isn’t good. Like all this crazy stuff with the White House security. Is it a lead-in to something bad? Or, it is just something that will quickly be solved? I don’t care who the president is, they don’t deserve to be assassinated. Four presidents have been assassinated. I’m hoping that there’ll never be a fifth one to die the same way. Of course, I shouldn’t say things like this. I don’t want the NSA to think that I’m crazy. The fact that I AM crazy is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I don’t care if the NSA reads my emails because I have nothing to hide. And if they are reading this blog, then I’ve succeeded in making someone read this blog. Besides, you do realize that assassinating the current president means Joe Biden becomes president, right? Who would want him to be president? I don’t know if he would be good, but I hope that we aren’t put in that situation. Also, if you must kill the president, don’t do it during Survivor. Better yet, don’t do it at all.

Mysteries so far this season: When is Jaclyn going to get some airtime? Does she have the least going for her this season? Does someone else have the least? Who has the most going for them this season? Are they going to win? Are they going to get close to winning? Will they have some other affect on the season? What craziness is Drew getting into in this episode? Will this craziness get him eliminated? When will Hunahpu lose an immunity challenge and go to tribal council? Why do they keep winning? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Are these all the questions that I have?

Okay, against my better judgment, I have added a movie list for Mondays. The list of six movies is Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, dancing videos, the Little Mermaid, Pooh’s Grand Adventure: the Search for Christopher Robin, and Stargate movies. Now, some more explanation: you might be wondering how these six particular movies got on the list. Or you might just be wondering why I ever talk about something other than Survivor in this blog. Bear with me. You see, my sister did a bunch of dancing videos when she was younger that I can still watch. And when I dream about movies, I typically add them to the list and watch them. That is why dreaming about Winnie the Pooh eventually added the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh to the list. Once I was done watching that, I was unable to add its true replacement, so I added this to this list since I was unable to do it to other lists. I’ve had the Little Mermaid VHS for a while, but I haven’t seen it yet and thus, put it on this list. I would do the same with Pocahontas, but that can’t be added at the moment. The Stargate movies is not the end of the series movies that they made. The one was the first movie that inspired the TV show. The other is the pilot of the series that I might want to buy at some point (the episodes of the series). I am interested in Aladdin thanks to a parody I watched of it online. (Team Starchild rocks!) Beauty and the Beast also was parodied in the same play. So were other Disney movies, but I already are added them or I’ve seen them earlier this year. Those are the six that I added and I decided that I wouldn’t watch any of those movies this week. Meanwhile, on Saturday I watched Mr. Bean’s Holiday and replaced it was Made of Honor. On Sunday, I watched the next Celtic Woman concert in the order I was using. That is not replaced at the moment. Sunday was also the anniversary of a death in the family and I normally watch a home video of this person. But, I decided to watch it on Monday instead. I will visit this person’s grave as soon as the weather improves here. Meanwhile, my main problem with adding a Monday movie watching list is having the time to watch the movie. Hopefully, everything will work out okay.

You know, you can learn a lot about Survivor by watching a lot of different things online about it. For instance, the Survivor Live After Show, is pretty informative. Without it, you wouldn’t know a lot of the things about the show. Like the fact that John Rocker wanted to be exiled in the second episode. If he won, he would have chosen himself to be exiled. He wanted exiled to find out information about the hidden immunity idol. It’s a shame that he didn’t use it, but not to the people that don’t like him. I also found out who is competing in the reward challenge. This will probably mean that Jaclyn finally gets some confessionals. So far, Jeremy and Josh have both exceeded nine confessionals and it’s only a matter of time before everyone else either has more than nine confessionals or is eliminated from the game. We’ll see who ends up doing what as time goes by.

I do wonder if one could or would want to send oneself to Exile Island this season. It would insure that they get to spend time with their loved one. So, they might not allow it. In other seasons with Exile Island, people could send themselves there. The only person I know of who did this was Yau-Man. Now, one has to think about how long they plan on doing the reward challenge the way that they are. You see, the tribe division as it stands now ensures that a contestant plays against their loved one. A tribe swap could easily change that. Now remember that they planned on having Redemption Island instead of this possibly nameless twist.

While they could potentially reword a ton of these challenges down the road, they are pretty much stuck with them premerge, I think. This might mean that there is not a tribe swap this season since they have to use the strange exile twist. They have to ensure that each loved one is on the other tribe. While this twist could disappear once every pair has competed in the challenge, I’m not sure there would be time left for a swap. One pair never got the chance to do it, three pairs already have, and one is going to do that tonight. After the four pairs that are left do it, then we are pretty much at the merge part of the game where they probably can’t use the twist anyways. How would it work postmerge? I’m interested in seeing what will happen with all that. Also, do you find it interesting that the contestant who lost the reward challenge is voted out in the next episode? That happened with both Val and John Rocker. This makes me worry about Keith’s chances in the game. (It was Keith who lost the challenge, right?) But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Baylor was glad that John Rocker got voted out. The man’s alliance crumbled and Dale was none the wiser. Natalie found the flint that they lost right at the fire pit. Drew is still upset over the whole lost reward that they choose to give up. I don’t know if it is safe to compare his tribe to Koror since Koror was a lot smarter and knew how to stay coherent as a group. This tribe, however, could fall apart quite easily if they ever lose a challenge.

In the second segment of the show, we get to the reward challenge. The other tribe applauds at the sight of John Rocker voted out. Drew then does his craziness that involves the flint. Jeff continues to be a great host that won’t let the contestants sway his ways. Based on the challenge preview that I saw, this will be a close fight. Jon Misch fights against Jaclyn in the challenge. This makes me hope that Jaclyn will finally manage to get airtime, but she’s only guaranteed that if she actually loses the challenge. As I saw on the after show, the challenge is neck in neck. Jon Misch ends up winning the challenge. Also, I’m going to be calling him just Jon from this point forward since the other John is out of the game. Jon sends Drew to Exile Island with Jaclyn.

In the third segment of the show, Jon is unsure of his choice as to sending Drew with Jaclyn to Exile Island. Julie is upset that her boyfriend is voted out. On Exile Island, we finally get to see Jaclyn get some airtime. Drew then has the crazy idea of throwing the challenge. Is he going to pull a Burton? That mistake got Burton voted out the first time in Pearl Islands and Drew probably isn’t going to get a second chance like Burton did. Meanwhile, Keith was bad at finding an idol and told the whole tribe that Jeremy had it, thus alienating himself from the tribe. He then goes on to find the real idol but “doesn’t want to have a target on his back” by telling people that he has it. He must not realize that a target is already on his back. Could this be the first season since Micronesia where more than one person gets eliminated in possession of the idol? That seems dumb and now I’m really worried that the loser of every reward challenge will get voted out the next episode. Or are they covering up the fact that Drew is a younger and lazier Willard? Willard was from Palau. Meanwhile, I am too busy to eat supper. This is why I normally eat during challenges. That’s the only time when I can’t really say anything in this blog. And it’s the only time when I don’t add too much to it.

In the fourth segment of the show, Alec doesn’t like Baylor while Baylor finds him to be like a brother. At the challenge, Drew thinks that he could possibly get a million dollars by throwing the challenge. I know that Ethan did that, but I’m not sure if anyone else has done that and won. With the blue tribe being shown as winning the challenge, I think that they might lose. Of course, this show loves trick edits. Wouldn’t you know it, Drew did manage to throw the challenge. But will his tribe realize that he did that? The fact that they are showing so much of him makes me think that this will either get him voted out now or voted out soon afterwards. SPOILER! I heard rumors that Drew is a premerge boot. END SPOILER.

In the fifth segment of the show, Drew talks about how it is a good move that he threw the challenge. They are thinking that they need to get rid of players without loved ones. I do wonder if this thrown challenge will affect the tribe negatively like it did with Drake. One can be surprised that the winner was actually from Drake. Of course, that’s a different season than this one. Drew seems to be digging his grave really deep this episode. This makes me wonder why they showed him so much as obviously getting voted out. You shouldn’t do that. That’s bad editing. But, it wouldn’t be the first time that they made the editing too obvious. Jeremy is upset that he can’t vote out Keith yet. We then get to tribal council. The heat was a bit off of Drew while Jeremy and Keith fight a bit. I have no idea what’s about to go down. No idols are played. The votes are all over the place. In the end, Drew gets voted out like whatever the plan might have been. Like Christian from The Quest, the challenge that he threw cost him the game. That’s why you don’t do that.

On the next Survivor, it turns out that a tribe swap will happen right after both tribes attend tribal council. It seems kind of obvious that they do that enough. You see, being a Survivor fan for so long has probably given me too much knowledge on stuff that is in the edits and what isn’t. Guess I was wrong about the possible lack of a tribe swap. It’s a bit too obvious that there would be a swap. Philippines was the last time that they didn’t have one. Meanwhile, Drew was one of my three finalist picks. I’m 2 for 4 with the predictions for this season. I will replace him with Jeremy as a possible finalist.

Total confessionals: Jeremy- 13, Reed- 2, Julie- 5, Jon Misch- 6, Keith- 8, Wes- 3, Missy- 5, Jaclyn- 2, Dale- 6, Kelley- 4, Baylor- 10, Natalie- 6, Josh- 13, Alec- 6, Drew- 9.

New confessionals this episode: Jaclyn- 1, Dale- 1, Kelley- 2, Baylor- 2, Natalie- 1, Josh- 0, Alec- 2, Drew- 6, Jeremy- 3, Reed- 0, Julie- 1, Jon Misch- 2, Keith- 1, Wes- 0, Missy- 0.

Okay, Baylor has now joined Josh and Jeremy with having ten or more confessionals. Reed and Jaclyn are at the bottom. Jon Misch will only be called Jon in the future. Not sure what else to say here. I hope that the switch proves interesting and have a long term affect on the game. That’s not always the case with tribe swaps. Plus, some are more fair than others. They always affect the game. It’s just a question of how much that makes it more worthwhile. I hope that being a super fan doesn’t affect the game too much for me. I also hope that this season picks up as I haven’t been too impressed by it so far. I can keep you updated on how my predictions are doing as time goes by. Guess I hadn’t run out of things to say. Until now at least. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.3

There is something that I should tell you about now before I forget to. I have discovered a great new blog. The person who wrote it sent me a link to it in twitter. I’m not sure entirely who this person is or why he sent me a link to his blog. But I do know that he has a great blog and I hope that he reads this blog as well. We have differing opinions, of course, but I still feel that I should tell you about his blog. His is more of an analysis of players from the season. I do plan on reading his blog on a regular basis. It might even be a new blog, but I don’t know for sure. If it is, I’m a bit jealous of the fact that he has so many comments on just two posts where as I’ve been doing this blog since Survivor: One World and have only gotten one comment throughout these many posts that I’ve done. I have over 100 posts! But, he is a pretty good blogger so I figured that I might as well tell you about him. Truth is, I’ve been looking for a potential replacement for a while. Don’t worry, though, I don’t plan on going anywhere. I plan on blogging until the very last episode of Survivor airs. But, I figure that having a replacement for me would work well in case something happens to me before something happens to him. In case you were wondering, the link to his blog is www.playeranalysis.wordpress.com. The writer of it is a man by the name of Alex Gomory Keisler. We have different views on the players, but that is to be expected as we are different people. For instance, he was a big fan of Val and I thought that she wouldn’t do that well in the game. I thought she was kind of bland.

Mysteries so far this season: Is this John Rocker’s last episode? Is he still the same person that most people don’t like? Why did he flip on Val? How does this define the game? Will this help Jeremy excel at the game? Will John Rocker end up like Brad Culpepper? Will Natalie’s game actually improve now that her twin is gone? Will she, instead, be an easy mark once her tribe loses an immunity challenge? Who is Jaclyn and why is she getting no airtime? What’s up with Baylor? What is her main impact on the season? Has she become the next Ciera? Would that be good or bad? Will there be a tribe swap this season? When will it happen? Do both tribes have to attend tribal council first? Why is this season so similar to the first blood versus water? I want to reach the point where people stop making comparisons to the previous blood versus water season and this becomes its own thing. That’s what you really want from a Survivor season. You want something different. And I hope that difference comes up sooner than later. I still don’t know what to expect from this season.

Well, I was not able to watch a movie on Sunday. I probably could have, but I didn’t. I even rolled the next choice. I would watch another Celtic Woman concert. But, I decided not to as it probably wouldn’t work out this time. At least I had fun bidding farewell to my pastor. I was, however, able to watch a Saturday movie. I watched that last Indiana Jones movie, which is much better than people give it credit for. Indiana Jones was replaced with Mr. Bean’s Holiday. With another Bean movie on the list, it is hard to tell if I should have let it be added to the list. I got the first one thinking it would be as great as the other one. It may have been a mistake to get it. Oh, well. Meanwhile, Celtic Woman has now outlasted every other thing on the list. Every other thing that was originally on one movie watching list has since been replaced with something else. Of course, Celtic Woman is supposed to perpetually be on the list so I always get a chance to watch it. I’m willing to change things. For instance, I’m going to get rid of the snack options that I roll for and just eat whatever I want to. If what you choose to do starts annoying you, then it’s about time to stop doing it. As for Celtic Woman, there’s a deadline that I need to get the watching done by this year, if I’m to reach the special stopping point that I have. Of course, I might just give it up wherever. And I will inform you of when/if I add a Monday movie list as well as why I decided to add these particular movies to it.

I watch too much TV. I really do. Sometimes I have to record two other shows while I’m watching a third. It can be quite bothersome. It was too much of a hassle to record Arrow so I had to give that up. I just hope that no other good shows air at the same time as Survivor as there is no way for me to watch them anymore. I would if I had a second VCR, but that probably won’t happen for a while, if it ever happens again. Meanwhile, I’ve been avoiding twitter so far during Survivor episodes since I don’t want to miss the start of the 100. I know that it doesn’t start until immediately after Survivor, but I watch something at the same time at the 100. That’s why I have to record it. And I will more than likely not be ever get off of twitter fast enough if I were on during Survivor and wanted to record this show. And I won’t know when it starts for a while. So, I figure that I might as well ignore live tweeting for the moment. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Baylor was upset that people voted against her, something that I feel never really matters if they are still in the game. Josh flipped on Val. They are focusing on Drew’s laziness so that is probably bad for Drew. Is this set-up for today’s elimination or a future one? I guess it all depends on who wins the immunity challenge.

In the second segment of the show, Jeremy is mad at the other tribe for voting out his wife. He does seem like the Tyson of the season where this event is what drives him to the end and wins. But, I don’t want to get ahead of myself with potential spoilers. Luckily, I don’t know any spoilers for this season. And I wouldn’t want to spoil the events to these readers of this blog either. Keep in mind that most of the stuff that I talk about here are predictions. If they are not the kind of thing you are interested in, then let me know. You can ignore the confessional count. You might consider them a spoiler. They could be since they are an indicator of how people do in the game. Anyways, Wes wins the challenge for his tribe, giving them their first win. And I can’t stop writing this blog for long enough to eat supper. Just by typing these sentences right now proves it. Why can’t I stop for a moment? Ugh, I just keep doing it. I guess that I should find better time to eat lunch so I’ll be hungrier for supper. Anyways, the winning tribe chose the fishing gear that the other tribe gave up last episode. I wonder if they did that on purpose to either not waste the reward or give moments like this where the other tribe had the reward that they should have had. Meanwhile, I need to learn the names of the tribes. Also, John Rocker tried to explain the situation with Val to Jeremy, but I don’t think that it worked out either way.

In the third segment of the show, Jeremy was upset and chewed out John Rocker to everyone else. Julie doesn’t like her boyfriend being a target. Josh and Keith bond on Exile Island. This messes up my confessional count. Also, I have a terrible cold which is affecting my life. Hopefully I can get over it soon enough. Baylor is using her smarts to possibly get rid of John Rocker. This could be what her edit is going towards this season. She has to be doing something important. But I don’t know if she’ll continue making the majority choices all the time. That’s not always something that you can choose to do. It can be a matter of luck a lot.

In the fourth segment of the show, the dramatic view of the sky with the interesting music means that the immunity challenge is happening next. The challenge seems different than the challenge preview online made it seem like it would be. That always seems to happen so you have to wonder why they ever do the previews. I guess things just change as always. Hunapu wins immunity as always. John Rocker verbally fights with people after the challenge. Actually, they are more arguing with him than he is with them. I don’t recall seeing fighting after challenges, but this has probably happened before. It happened in Panama, although that was the individual phase of the game.

In the fifth segment of the show, Coyopa returns from losing the immunity challenge. If John Rocker feels that he is a target, he will play his hidden immunity idol. I’m not going to question his intelligence because even smart players make mistakes, but he seems like the type of person who would be voted out with an unplayed idol. Unfortunately, splitting votes won’t be able to happen since there’s no supermajority in the game. Baylor wonders if someone might get completely played which is bad if she’s the one saying it. Meanwhile, Jaclyn seems to be in no trouble at the moment since she is still getting no airtime. In fact, she could be getting a quitter’s edit. Of course, I don’t know if someone is going to quit this season or not, but we’ll see what happens. When asked for an idol, John Rocker doesn’t play his. The person voted out was John Rocker. I do wonder why nobody ever gets voted out with an idol and then openly gives their idol to another player. If I did that, I’d give them a fake idol.

On the next Survivor, Drew may be doing something crazy, stupid, entertaining, wonderful, interesting, ballsy, a mix of any of them, or all of them at once. I’m probably missing stuff too. I guess that I’ll have to see the episode to know for sure what it is going on. If this episode gave us what we want that we knew we wanted, then maybe the next episode can do that without us knowing what we want from it.

Total confessionals: Dale- 4.5, Kelley- 1.5, Baylor- 7.5, Natalie- 4.5, Josh- 12.5, Alec- 3.5, Drew- 2.5, Jeremy- 9.5, Reed- 1.5, Julie- 3.5, Jon Misch- 3.5, Keith- 6.5, Wes- 2.5, Missy- 4.5, John Rocker- 5.5, Jaclyn- .5

New confessionals this episode: Kelley- 0, Baylor- 3, Natalie- 2, Josh- 5, Alec- 2, Drew- 1, Jeremy- 3, Reed- 0, Julie- 2, Jon Misch- 0, Keith- 3, Wes- 1, Missy- 1, John Rocker- 3, Jaclyn- 0, Dale- 0

Revised total confessionals: Reed- 2, Julie- 4, Jon Misch- 4, Keith- 7, Wes- 3, Missy- 5, Jaclyn- 1, Dale- 5, Kelley- 2, Baylor- 8, Natalie- 5, Josh- 13, Alec- 4, Drew- 3, Jeremy- 10

Okay, I decided to redo the confessional count now instead of later. Jaclyn is still scrapping the bottom. The three highest are Baylor, Jeremy, and Josh. My picks for the three finalists are currently Wes, Alec, and Drew, something I was pretty much stuck with when I made predictions and will stick with until any of them are eliminated, at which point I’ll think of finding other people to replace them. I may have actually read spoilers regarding certain premerge boots of this season, but we’ll see if that happens. The supposed winners are still Alec, Wes, and Baylor. Sorry if you find this sort of thing a spoiler. But, you can probably stop reading at this point anyways. Of course, most people I know probably don’t read this blog and a blog like this would probably get more people I don’t know reading it, which also doesn’t seem to happen either. Of course, having many different facebook friends who are Survivor contestants is probably helping my chances of getting this blog read. I just wonder if I could update to vlogs so I could interview some of them. For now, that seems unlikely that I could get that technology or would want to use it. I probably don’t have time. Anyways, this is Adam Decker signing off.

Episode 29.2

Well, there are some blog posts I did from the first season that people haven’t read yet. Why write a blog if nobody is going to read it? While the first six episodes all got at least one reader, the seventh one has not. And, there are some other posts from the first season that I added later that haven’t been read by anyone. I might stop posting updates here if the blog post episode 1.7 hasn’t had been read when I post about the sixth episode of this season. I probably wouldn’t stop posting, but I might. I know that I’d continue writing this blog, but I don’t know if I’ll still update it all the time like I do now. I might just wait a while until the old post gets readers before I update this blog again. Or, I might not care since I like updating this blog anyways. Just be warned that I might do something strange, which you should know by now that I do. Also, I’m probably going to add a Monday list pretty soon. As for the half point for confessionals, I should probably add half a point instead of taking it away. But, I’ll work it out somehow. I always figure out a way of rearranging the names, even though they are always in the same order, it just has a different name leading it each post.

Mysteries so far this season: Why did Baylor vote against Nadiya? Why did Josh throw his vote away? Who is the potential quitter? Why do people want to burn an idol? Did someone really do the worst thing in Survivor? What is that bad thing? Which tribe will be a member down and why? Is there a medical evacuation this season? Did Dale find the idol and somehow not know it? Will we learn who the two lost contestants are from this season? Is Josh’s eye injury serious? How will Natalie react to her twin getting voted out? Will John Rocker actually last a long time in the game? (For the record, I don’t recall them ever promoting a contestant a lot in ads and this person was voted out early into the game.) Will the gender imbalance create a gender war this season? Will Natalie be too easy to get rid of if her tribe loses immunity? Can she make a bold move, a Caleb, if you will, that would save her if she needs to? Will the flint be recovered quickly or is it like the missing boat in Thailand? Why are the promos for future episodes always so mysterious? I’ve decided that this might be a good new section for future blog posts. Well, it’s in this blog post at least. I don’t know yet if it will appear in any others. Let me know what you think, if you have any opinions about it at all.

In case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, I wasn’t able to watch a movie on either Saturday or Sunday so the list remains the same. I do have a Saturday choice rolled for the future. I also had a Survivor dream recently where Natalie was the first one voted out of her tribe. I could see that happening, but we’ll see if it does. Just remember that the winners for this season (not a spoiler, just a lame attempt at humor) are Alec, Wes, and Baylor. If I’m not doing well at my serious predictions so far, then I probably won’t do as well with my three finalist predictions. Remember that the joke predictions are solely based on alphabetical order. Since they are in the place where winners end up, then they have to win, right? Also, I will do a revised total confessionals at some point before the finale (I hope, if it all) that will get rid of the .5 that I have listed. I don’t know yet if I will add .5 or take away .5 to all the contestants’ confessionals, but as I said before, I’ll probably add .5. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Josh is telling us how his throwaway vote is supposedly a good move. Now, when you vote against someone, you don’t normally tell them. That normally doesn’t turn out well for you, but it does sometimes. Just remember that telling people that you were going to vote against them to gain their trust almost always causes them to vote you out. They didn’t reference Dale’s sort of idol so this probably means that it isn’t real, like we thought. If it were, production would have probably pulled him aside and told him that it wasn’t just a worthless trinket like he thinks it is. Of course, it could just mean that it isn’t important yet and it could be later. This is also when we learn of the lost flint. The only tribe that I can remember that lost flint was Koror who did it twice (only the first time aired). Things turned out well for Koror in the end, but they were able to recover it.

In the second segment of the show, Natalie gets emotional about her sister getting voted out of the game. They are showing the blue tribe winning the challenge and I’ve noticed that when they do that in the edit (the dream team is always shown in the explanation of the challenge), that means that the tribe they showed will actually lose the challenge. This isn’t always in the case, but more often than not it is. Will John Rocker help his tribe with the challenge again? Will he actually manage to win it this time? Actually, it looks like he has a height disadvantage and will lose. Turns out the blue tribe did win the challenge. But, if you remember my assessment, which google says has been well read, I did say that Julie would do better than her boyfriend. John Rocker gets sent to Exile Island and Julie chooses to send Jeremy with him. The blue tribe tries to barter with Jeff in a probably bad thought out idea, but it actually did work on getting them new flint at the cost of the reward that they just won. Is this a Survivor first? I have the feeling that it might be. I’ve never seen a tribe barter with Jeff first, although there are times he’s bartered with them in previous seasons. He was always the instigator before. It would be ironic if they found the lost flint. Meanwhile, I need to remember what the blue tribe’s name is. Without it, I’m just being too informal.

In the third segment of the show, we get more of Natalie’s reaction to her twin sister getting voted out. This is a bit interesting considering how much they bicker on the Amazing Race. Some twins are more easily separated than others. Look at Cindy, Jamie, and Judd from Survivor: Guatemala. They are all parts of identical twins and only one of them have played Survivor thus far. Not much was revealed in the segment, but I would like to point out something. John Rocker doesn’t like being beaten by a girl. So, while we hope that he is over the whole thinking less of other people things, maybe he’s not completely over it, if he’s over it at all. Besides, he could just be upset about losing.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge. I never know how to react when it happens this soon into the episode. But, typically it means that we are in for a lot of interesting drama at camp before tribal council and tribal council itself. I really hope that this season picks up pretty quickly. At this point, I start having cat problems. My cats are annoying. Sometimes it seems like they are competing in a contest to see which one of them is more annoying. The two never seem to stop wondering who is more annoying. There is a nose injury at the challenge. Baylor and Missy mother both visualize exs. I wonder if they thought about the same guy. Baylor got a bit injured which may have helped her to win the round. I’m starting to think that I don’t like this challenge that much. It seems nice that the challenge seemed to go back and forth and wasn’t a blowout. Today is actually Kelley’s birthday and she helped win the challenge for her tribe.

In the fifth segment of the show, Dale is proud, in a sense, that his daughter won the challenge, even though his tribe lost as a result. John Rocker found a hidden immunity idol based on information that he got on Exile Island. Will he do smart things with it? I doubt it. At this point, I notice a general lack of confessionals in the game and I’m pretty sure that whoever gets voted out will get at least one confessional in the episode they are eliminated in. I could be wrong about that, but I think that it is more often than not. They end up discussing a split vote, which I have always found to be an underrated move in the game. Many people don’t like it, but I still think that it works well. Apparently they chose some of the mash-ups in the immunity challenge which wasn’t really shown in the challenge. That wouldn’t be the first or last time that they edited out something important in a season. Val and Baylor have a bit of a fight in the game. The girls’ alliance was even shorter lived than I realized. With the voting happening this soon, I’m very confused about why things are happening this soon. I guess they just want a lot of commercials after the elimination or something. The vote is a tie, which I figured would probably end up happening. Now I wonder if we might end up drawing rocks this soon in the game. Probably not. John Rocker flipped, thus making an important move that will either help or harm him. Val is the one voted out of the game.

On the next Survivor, John Rocker is pretty much the focus of everything. His move doesn’t look like it will turn out well for him. Will his arrogance catch up with him and give him the elimination that so many of us want him to get? We’ll see.

Total confessionals: Jon Misch- 3.5, Keith- 3.5, Wes- 1.5, Missy- 3.5, John Rocker- 2.5, Jaclyn- .5, Dale- 4.5, Kelley- 1.5, Baylor- 4.5, Natalie- 2.5, Josh- 7.5, Alec- 1.5, Drew- 1.5, Jeremy- 6.5, Val- 5.5, Reed- 1.5, Julie- 1.5.

New confessionals this episode: Keith- 0, Wes- 0, Missy- 1, John Rocker- 1, Jaclyn- 0, Dale- 1, Kelley- 1, Baylor- 1, Natalie- 1, Josh- 3, Alec- 0, Drew- 0, Jeremy- 2, Val- 3, Reed- 0, Julie- 0, Jon Misch- 2.

Wow. A whole seven people didn’t get any confessionals. Jaclyn is still scrapping the bottom of the barrel while Josh seems to be doing the best. But, I also question who is doing the best early into the game since many did well this soon and were eliminated early. This may seem like Jeremy’s game. He seems the most likely winner this early on. The elimination of Val could mean to him what Rachel’s elimination did to Tyson, the winner of the last blood versus water season. John Rocker may have signed his own death warrant this episode. At least he didn’t have to draw for rocks. The general lack of confessionals seems pretty bad for this episode, but I’m guessing that it will pick up later. I hope for better episodes in the future, although this one was kind of interesting in a way. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.