Episode 29.10

My sister has been in Africa for the past two years and soon she will be coming back home. I’ve recorded this Survivor season and the past two on VHS for her. (I would have recorded Caramoan as well, but I didn’t think about doing that in time.) I hope that she likes these seasons. I know that of the four that she missed, this season would probably rank the lowest of the four. But I will post the ranking of this season among all twenty-nine seasons in the final post for this season. Like I said before, it wouldn’t be high by any means. But it wouldn’t be the worst either. It might even be average. I do wonder when she’ll want to see this season. I have to stay on my toes.

Soon I’ll be posting the last of my movie updates for a while. I don’t know yet if I will be able to watch any movies on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, which is the beginning of Advent, is when I’ll start watching various Christmas movies and specials. I may have to finish watching any of these specials when the next year starts. But I hope to finish any and all Christmas movies in December so that in January, I can start watching my regular movies again. January 1^st next year is a Thursday so Saturday the third is when I’ll start the regular movie watching list again. I’ll post my last movie watching list of the year in my next blog post. After that, you’ll see a long update in the first post of the 30^th season.

All I have to do is roll the right number on a Sunday so that I can replace it with a different choice so I can roll that choice to watch the Survivor Borneo special again (something that I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to do again this year anyways). Once I do that, I will slowly phase out the Sunday list by moving choices to other lists until there is no Sunday list. Then, I’ll rewatch Survivor: Borneo on Sundays while playing a drinking game and writing notes about B. B. Andersen (and maybe a special recap of Gervase since there isn’t enough of just B. B.). I’ll post just one (or two) posts in the future that focus on this player’s time in the game. I know that this whole process is long and confusing. It can be quite tedious. And, the choice has to be on the Sunday list, although that could be voided should I have to watch another old season in the near future.

So here’s the movie update. I watched Made of Honor with commentary on Saturday. I’m replacing that with Monster’s Inc. On Sunday, I watched Enchanted. That got replaced with Finding Nemo. The Monday choice was one of those dancing videos. There are five of these videos total, even though there were more performances over the course of their existence. Likewise, I’ll have to watch the other four some other time. This means that three of the original Monday choices remain on the list. Guess this means that I can allow only three Christmas movies at the absolute maximum to not be watched during December of this year. Only three or less can be the overrun. And that’s only if there’s no problem with the same letter repeating. I’ll post the rolling list for next year in the next blog post of mine. I might be able to watch one last Saturday movie this year since this Sunday is when Advent starts and I can start watching whatever Christmas movies that I want to watch.

Mysteries so far this season: Is a floater going to win this season? Who is best described as a floater? Would it be bad if a floater won? Would it be what we expect to happen? Will a woman win or a man? Will there be only one good player left at the end? Will there be any at all? Will more of the great players keep getting voted out? Is Jon the frontrunner? Will he become a finalist? Will Jaclyn become one as well? Will he know when to use his idol? Will Keith’s idol become important? Are there any other idols in play? I learned on Survivor Live that John Rocker’s idol was rehidden so if it will become important again is a matter of time. Weren’t they advertising that an idol could be burned? Might it be a fake? I’d love to see a fake idol again. They are about as underrated as splitting the votes. Would someone really throw a real hidden immunity idol into a fire and destroy it? You wouldn’t think so, but if an entire group of contestants once threw an idol into the sea, then we shouldn’t have to wonder what could end up happening. Plus, these aren’t the smartest contestants this season anyways.

I said before that I would list more facts from the Borneo finale in future blog posts. Well, I might have run out of facts to say about it. I did my two main two facts and I don’t know what else to say on the subject at hand. I still don’t know why no one has read some of the blog posts I wrote on the Borneo season. But, at least it gives me incentive to write posts for my other blog. I just have to wait until another past season of Survivor can work in my schedule or until I can rewatch Survivor: Borneo. Every Sunday (or even Friday if that winds up happening) that I’m able to watch a Borneo episode would be when I post a new TV blog post of mine. Meanwhile, I just have to figure out other random times to update that blog in the meantime. I could have a lot of updates ready with no idea as to when I can post them. Not that it matters, of course. I could post it a lot more often than I do. But the blog has had so few readers lately. A vast majority of some of the blog posts have absolutely no readers whatsoever. While updating that blog less could be counterintuitive, I still think that stopping doing something that nobody is interested in is a far better idea than keep wasting my time posting updates. Ironically, I’ll probably post updates anyways. Just not as much as it once was or could have been. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Jeff points out in the recap that this might be the longest we have gone in the game without an idol being played. I hadn’t thought of that before, but it makes sense as not enough interesting things have been happening this season and idols typically bring interesting things. Jon might have made a move similar to how Yul made a move in Cook Islands. Jon tells more people about his idol. Natalie looks for the idol at camp and we do have to wonder who might have it. Before we get any further, I’d like to point out that I was able to live watch the episode and evident by the date this is posted. But, don’t be surprised if I schedule posts for next month. You might never know if I do this or not. I also ate supper before the show started for a change, although I might have to finish more of it later.

In the second segment of the show, we get to the reward challenge. There are two teams, which seems unusual since there are nine players and no reason to leave someone out. The reward is one of many where the people in the game help the people at the location where they are at. As usual, it is hard to summarize the challenge and what is happening in it. The yellow team wins the reward. Jon, Jaclyn, Reed, and Alec won the reward. Reed gives up his reward for Missy. They send Wes to Exile Island. Also, while I’m glad that the real Christmas season is starting soon, I still find it annoying that over 600 Christmas commercials have aired so far this year. Ugh. At least Survivor fans have two new seasons of Survivor (Samoa and Nicaragua) that they can get on DVD for Christmas.

In the third segment of the show, the people on the reward get to a baseball field where a bunch of Nicaraguans are at. Jon laments that he and Jaclyn can’t have kids. I heard that he might be considering using winnings from this show to adopt a kid. But if you don’t hear about it now, that doesn’t mean that he won’t win. It just means that he doesn’t have any winnings yet, which is customary for every season of Survivor. So don’t get suspicious of what they might be doing and if it’s an indication of what happens in the future. We could always hear something at the reunion show. Meanwhile, Keith and Reed hatch a scheme to get rid of Jon. Will it work? We’ll see. But no scheme is foolproof. There are a lot of fools on Survivor. Baylor and Natalie find the idol. But who gets to keep it between the two of them? It looks like Natalie is the one with it. You know, with all this emphasis on Natalie, you do have to wonder if Nadiya will ever become a returning player. You can’t say that they’ve never done a first boot before. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if either season 31 or 32 becomes the first ever second chances season. It may be a bold prediction, but I think that Nadiya will play the game a second time.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge. For some reason, Wes’s time on Exile Island is completely ignored. That doesn’t normally happen, does it? Can anyone think of a time where something on Exile Island wasn’t shown for any reason? (What’s a donut burger?) There are food temptations in this challenge and for the first time, I think, Jeff eats the food when it looked like nobody would eat (what could have been another first) until Jon decides that he wants it. Missy falls out of the challenge. Baylor and Jaclyn take advantage of Wes’s big mouth for milk and cookies. Wes falls out at the next opportunity. Plus, are they done with the hero duels? I thought that we could see them post merge, but apparently not. Does that mean that these challenges are reused in other parts of the game? Even though I like Redemption Island, I’m glad that it didn’t appear this season as it might not have worked the way they wanted it to. Keith steps down due to pain. Since there is so much of an edit as to who doesn’t have immunity in the promos for this episode, I haven’t figured out yet who would. In the end, it is Reed that wins the challenge. Natalie decides to lose it for food since she can’t handle any more pain.

In the fifth segment of the show, Reed thinks that now is the best time to get rid of Jon. Since he does not have enough numbers to split the votes, whatever plan he thinks of is going to fail. That is, of course, if Jon senses the danger and plays his idol. Jon thinks that he’s not calling the shots but he also doesn’t want to play his idol. The talk at tribal is all about the idols. I don’t think that there have ever been three idols all at once during the merge part of the game. Well, actually, there were in Philippines, but one of them was played right at the merge. Heck, we still might see a null vote in the future, where everyone who had votes against them had their votes cancelled by idols. That could happen and I’d love to see it so I’d know what they’d do about it (even though, they might have revealed already what could happen). Natalie tells Jon to play his idol while Jeff gets the votes. Jon plays his idol. Keith considers giving his idol to Wes, but ultimately plays it on himself. Jon is glad that he played his idol which makes me glad that he played it. Wes is the one voted out which disproves my theory that everyone gets a confessional in the episode that they get voted out. I forget if Wes was one of my finalist picks or not. I guess that Reed now joins Alec and Baylor as the supposed winners.

On the next Survivor, we get two freaking hours in what I’m guessing is in the normal time slot. I think that this season was supposed to start a week sooner so there has to be a catch up at some point. Not only does Advent start next week, meaning that I’ll have to record it to watch later, but now I have twice as much to record. Apparently there is a fight of some sort that changes the game. Just avoid an expulsion of a player and we should remain good. Now I really want to know what will happen in the future. And we seem to have the days that needed to happen in the future. When’s the finale? I would like to know which Sunday in the future that will be.

Total confessionals: Alec- 11, Reed- 14, Jon- 27, Keith- 22, Wes- 8, Missy- 15, Jaclyn- 11, Baylor- 18, Natalie- 12. New confessionals this episode: Reed- 5, Jon- 2, Keith- 2, Wes- 0, Missy- 1, Jaclyn- 1, Baylor- 1, Natalie- 3, Alec- 1.

With Natalie and Reed above ten confessionals now and Wes eliminated, we have no one remaining in the single digits. Jaclyn and Alec tie for the lowest. The three highest are Keith, Jon, and Baylor. Keith’s game is probably going to pick up now that his son is eliminated from the game. He might even feel guilty about not giving his idol to his son, even though that would mean that he would have been voted out instead. There is some untold story regarding Keith’s game and it is probably going to be told real soon. Jon looks like the biggest threat to win and could become my favorite to win since Jeremy is out of the game. But you still don’t know if Keith is pulling out a surprise of some sort. Reed’s game could still pick up and there are any number of players that could win. But who will? I don’t know yet. But I’m eager to find out. Remember that my future blog posts about this season will be delayed. I'll be posting them on Thursdays until the finale. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.9

For a while now, I’ve been contemplating whether or not to start a blog about the show Madam Secretary. This idea for that blog all started with a dream. There are a lot of times when I’ve done something because I dreamt about it. I’m not even sure the dream had a Madam Secretary blog in it. It might have been a different show and I’m remembering the dream wrong. But, I seriously might start a blog about it. This may only be revenge for the lack of readers on this other blog of mine. And I’m serious enough about it to have a poll about it on my fan fiction account. There are many good things about having another blog. And there are many bad things as well. So I might as well weigh in my OCD about it and mention it on this blog because maybe one of my readers here will comment as to whether or not a blog about that show is a good idea. The dream had some supposed link between it and Survivor. That obviously hasn’t happened, but I might still start a blog about it regardless.

If I do start a blog about Madam Secretary, this might make me end up doing other blogs as well. I might end up doing one about The Good Wife. And I’ll probably wind up doing one about CSI as well. And if I do one about CSI, that might mean that I wind up doing one about CSI: Cyber, Without a Trace, CSI: New York, and CSI: Miami. It would also unsure that I have to get all these shows on DVD as time goes by. Typically, I only get shows when they are no longer in production. At least CSI: Miami, Without a Trace, and CSI: New York are all on my wish list. (Hint, hint, readers of this blog who ever buy me presents for Christmas, birthdays, or any other occasion.) Plus, I’d have to keep track of the creators of all these shows and all the actors of all these shows even when the show ends. This could lead to more blogs about their new shows if I like these shows as well. Geez, it could become an endless cycle of some sort. And I’m pretty sure that I will start this blog regardless of the fact that I’m not sure that it is such a good idea. When my OCD takes over, it can get really complicated.

You know, just because it happens in a dream, that doesn’t mean that I have to do it. And yet, that’s my main problem with a lot of things sometimes. Sometimes I ignore various dreams of mine. For instance, I have a facebook group called Firefly: Where are they now? It keeps track of the careers of the former actors and creator of Firefly. I had a dream that I did that with the show That 70’s Show as well. I will probably not create that facebook group as there is not enough interest for me to do it. There are tons are dreams that I ignore. Most of them, however, I wind up doing again. There’s a list of different Playstation 2 games that I want to play again because I dreamt about them. And, watching different movies comes from dreams as well. But you see, I will probably start this blog on Madam Secretary. I don’t think that the dream has anything to do with it. My TV blog has a lack of readers and I plan to create a new blog and start to ignore the TV blog. Of course, I’d be updating my TV blog if I ever figured out a good schedule to update it on. Since I have yet to rewatch any of Survivor: Borneo yet, it could be a long while before I have the schedule again. Plus, I don’t want to get another Survivor season on DVD because that would mean that either the twenty-seventh season is on DVD or that someone from the first twenty-one seasons died. But, whenever the bottom of the post list is zero readers, then we have a problem. And that’s when I’ll do the next blog.

When it comes to this Survivor blog, it can be a bit easy to watch it and know when to update it. If I can’t watch it live, then I record it to watch it later (and soon) after it airs. I’ve had to stop watching a lot of good shows that air at the same time (Revolution, The Middle, The Goldbergs, Arrow), but I think that the benefit is pretty good. I would live tweet more, but since there are now more than one show that I stay into right afterwards, I am almost never on twitter anymore. I could not live tweet Madam Secretary. And I could also not give up the other shows that I watch on Sunday. I typically record the episodes of Madam Secretary on my laptop since I live watch Once Upon a Time and record The Simpsons and Brooklyn Nine-Nine on VHS. All those shows are on at the same time. Of course, since CBS Sundays are known for shows being on tape delay due to sports like football. In those events, I might wind up recording the CBS shows on VHS as a way to punish them. Of course, me punishing them will probably have little to no affect on the viewership of the show. If you are not a Nielson family, then any viewership you give a show doesn’t actually matter. I couldn’t tell you if I was a Neilson family, which I’m not. I don’t know if I could do any TV related blog if I was with them. Maybe I could, but I don’t know any of the rules. Maybe I should ask someone I know who used to be in a Nielson family. They can tell you that they were with them after they are done.

If you think about it, a lot of this blog is just random meaninglessness. But, when you think about it, aren’t all blogs? I should really stop the rambling that I do before the actual point of the blog that people read. But I haven’t done that yet. I’m not sure that I ever will. I’m not sure if I want to. If I ever try, I could wind up failing miserably. Sometimes I just need meaningless filler. Speaking of which, I should give you an update on the movie watching that I’m doing. I could not watch a movie on Saturday so that list remains unchanged. On Sunday I watched One Night with the King which was replaced by Pocahotas, which should have been on Monday list when it was created but I had to wait to add it since there was a different p movie to add: Pooh’s Grand Adventure, the Search for Christopher Robin. Guess what I rolled to watch on Mondays? That’s right! It was Pooh’s Grand Adventure and I got to watch it. That got replaced by the DVD of Power Rangers: the Ultimate Rangers which has various noteworthy episodes that can be watched all at once by clicking play all. That way, you see a good portion of good Power Rangers episodes. I know that I’ll have to get more episodes on DVD. I still have unused jump aheads for Power Rangers that I couldn’t use before since I ran out of episodes to watch. But we’ll see how potential Christmas gifts changes my list of things to watch.

Mysteries so far this season: In Jeremy in control? Was he only in control for a moment? Will his game come crashing down? Or is he still the biggest contender to win? Will Reed take control of the game? Is he going to accomplish something important? Is he still mostly irrelevant? What will happen regarding Keith’s idol? Is Keith a villain? Is he going to accomplish things in the game? Who is getting blindsided tonight? Will someone from the majority alliance be voted out? What is the majority alliance? Does this mean that Jeremy’s time in the game is about to run out? Who is the frontrunner? Why do I even have this section of the blog? I might have to get rid of this. Maybe I should replace it with a better section like “trivia of the week.” In a section like that, I can mention a trivia question relating to Survivor and I’ll post the answer the next week. I don’t know if I should keep changing this blog or not. I like things that are consistent. It might be my OCD or Lutheranism. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Jon questions his decision at tribal council. Keith wonders how he could eliminate someone with his idol. He doesn’t have the worst idea to get people to vote against him so he can play his idol. But how one goes about doing that is what makes the idea worthwhile.

In the second segment of the show, we get to the reward challenge of the episode. The contestants seem to be having a lot of fun during the challenge. I take this opportunity to eat supper. The yellow team wins the close reward challenge. Jeremy and Natalie, who were on the winning team, switch places with Jon and Jaclyn, who were on the losing team. This could be their form of good payback and further helping them stay in their alliance. Risky move. Not a choice that has never happened before. Yau-Man also gave up a reward and then sent himself to Exile Island. That was quite an interesting moment in Fiji. Anyways, Jeremy is now being sent to Exile Island. Baylor, Alec, and Reed keep their rewards and go on it with Jon and Jaclyn.

In the third segment of the show, the losers and Natalie got back to camp after the reward challenge. Keith thinks that opening saying that he doesn’t want blindsided is a subtle way of telling people what he wants. Openly talking about things like that isn’t even close to subtle. We seem very little of the reward, meaning that it has no impact on the game. Reed is cynical about what happened regarding Jon and Jaclyn. Clearly, it is them (Jeremy and Natalie) who want to use the swing votes to their advantage. And Jon and Jaclyn might fall for it too.

In the fourth segment of the show, Jeremy doesn’t like Exile Island and he thinks that Jon has the hidden immunity idol. Jon realizes this and talks to Jaclyn about it. Jon thinks that he’s in trouble, even though Jeremy probably wouldn’t talk about it with that many people. Would he? We’ll see what ends up happening. We get to the immunity challenge next. The challenge can only be done with their feet. I don’t know how this would be enforced, but there might be some exceptions or ways around it. The strange challenge was won by Baylor. There are casting calls for future Survivor seasons. Since they already have the 30^th season filmed (please no quitters!), it would be the 31^st and 32^nd seasons that they are preparing for. Here’s hoping that the casting call means a future for Survivor. They were casting a second season of Pirate Master, so don’t get your hopes to high. But, you can get them high enough since this show is still a huge success.

In the fifth segment of the show, Reed and the rest of the team gets back to camp after the immunity challenge and we finally get to see the Reed drama that was promoted. Keith learns of what’s going on with his idol. All this idol drama might be very good for tribal council. Jeremy knows that Jon has the idol and Jon knows that Jeremy knows, you know? Jon tells Missy about this for some odd reason. Meanwhile, all I can think of for now is #blindsided. Who will be voted out next? I haven’t got a clue as to what might happen. They get to tribal council next. I can’t make out all the drama of what’s happening there. I don’t think that I know anything. I just think that Jaclyn and Alec are safe for the moment. I’m reminded of McLaughlin Group because of the humorous talking over each other. Of course, I haven’t watched McLaughlin Group since I realized their bias. Meanwhile, there’s far too much drama at tribal council to realize what will happen next. Nobody played an idol after the votes were cast. Since they said someone would get blindsided, I don’t know what to think. In the end Jeremy gets voted out, thus leaving the game up for grabs for any of the remaining players. How did this happen? Geez, this season gets interesting and they get rid of all the great players.

On the next Survivor, Natalie takes control of the game, Alec finally does something, and people look like they will once again take out the strongest player: Jon. Please stop getting rid of all the people who could win! There could be no deserving potential winners at the end if you keep going like that.

Total confessionals: Keith- 20, Wes- 8, Missy- 14, Jaclyn- 10, Baylor- 17, Natalie- 9, Alec- 10, Jeremy- 31, Reed- 9, Jon- 25. New confessionals this episode: Wes- 1, Missy- 1, Jaclyn- 0, Baylor- 1, Natalie- 1, Alec- 0, Jeremy- 4, Reed- 3, Jon- 4, Keith- 3.

Wes is currently scrapping the bottom of the confessional count. Jeremy was the highest and his elimination returns Baylor to the top three highest confessional count. She’s there with Keith and Jon. Nothing else to note here. To post an update about this blog in general, since the next episode airs the day before Thanksgiving, I don’t know when I’ll update this blog. If all goes well enough, it will be updated on the day the episode airs, but I can’t promise that. With Advent coming up soon, keep in mind that I will move posts to Thursdays during that time since I probably wouldn’t be able to live post on Wednesdays shortly after the episode airs because I’ll be at church and have to record the episode to watch later. I probably couldn’t go that long without watching it as I can’t risk learning any spoilers. Plus, I think that the next episode won’t be a recap of any sort since they still have a lot of game to play. The Sunday finale should be posted here as usual on Sunday at which point I will start posting here on both Sundays and Wednesdays about random Survivor stuff. Hopefully, I can keep both posts going well at the same time. You’ll be hearing my last movie update for a while. Christmas movies will replace the other movie watching that I do for December and possibly longer. And to all my facebook friends who get links to this blog on my page, keep in mind that I probably will continue posting this blog, even though I probably won’t post the link there on facebook. So keep coming back here for updates, even if they are a bit irregular. And let me know if I should or shouldn’t start a blog on Madam Secretary. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.8

I don’t know how often I can do these reliable updates. I already know that I probably can’t do them as regularly as I would want. For instance, I don’t know when I’ll be able to post about the episode of this season that will air the day right before Thanksgiving. It could be soon, but it might not be. I hope that it is not a while before I’m able to update this blog. In fact, I might be able to watch an episode live then anyways. But if not, then it could be a while before the next post. I would just hope that I can update this blog within a week of the episode’s airing. I don’t know why I’m worried about this. But we’ll see what ends up happening. I just hope that I can stay updated here as usual. I’m already worried about the Christmas stuff that I typically watch every year. There are different specials and movies that I always want to watch every year. I’m even willing to watch them late, meaning the next year, just so I can see them. There are also certain Christmas episodes of various TV shows on DVD that I want to watch while I have the chance, and a New Year’s Eve episode as well. I will stop watching the normal movie lists during the month of December, so I’ll post my last updates about it then (just last for the year). I will tell you of some of the missions that I want to do relating to Christmas.

The main problem I have is when the NCIS series. If I have to wait until next Christmas to watch the next episode in line, that would be a problem. I was able to watch the Halloween episode and even switched it with a different choice so that I would be able to watch the next three regular episodes followed by a Thanksgiving episode. I have the entire month of November to do this, in theory. But I’m not sure if it will actually happen. I’ll let you know if I do manage to get to the point that I want. If not, I’ll have to either wait a year to watch that Christmas episode, hope that there are five other shows besides this so I can roll to unlock one (hoping that I will roll this particular choice), or wait until I’m reading an old Christmas Reader’s Digest magazine and am in a magical world where I can do any Christmas choices regardless of the time of year. Boy I’m confusing and need to get a hold of this OCD of mine. Meanwhile there is both an NCIS: Los Angeles Christmas episode to watch as well as Invader Zim. The thing with Invader Zim, though, is that there aren’t any episodes after the Christmas one to watch. I’d have to start again from the beginning of the series as any other episodes of the show were never finished being made. Of course, I don’t know yet if I’ll do this, but I will if there’s ever a gap in the future rolling list. But I hopefully don’t have to worry about that for quite a while. There’s a Big Bang Theory New Year’s Eve episode which I’d want to watch sometime between December 26^th and the last day of the year. I just don’t want to miss my chance of watching it again. If I am able to watch both NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, then I’ll constantly be switching them on the list until I reach another stopping point with one of them.

This leads to all the Christmas specials and movies that I typically watch once a year. I decided that I can add any of these choices to regular rolling lists should I not be able to finish watching them in December. I can watch any specials regularly after Christmas ends. Last year I went on vacation outside of the country, as evident by the lack of blog posts towards the end of the year. That’s when I decided that I could catch up with Christmas stuff later that year, but only if I can get caught up before the first Christmas commercial of the year airs sometime in September (although it could air at a different time). With the TV show list, different things, provided that they are not Christmas episodes of TV shows (although they very well could be if I want them to) would replace various shows once they are taken off of the list. With the movie list, a single Christmas movie would be on all the movie lists with it being removed from all once it is watched. Meanwhile, the recently added regular movies would be ignored for the moment until they either gain more seniority or more Christmas stuff is watched. This could reorder the list in some way. Meanwhile, all the Christmas stuff that I watch are Celtic Woman: A Christmas Celebration, Celtic Woman: Home for Christmas, a Charlie Brown Christmas, Elf, Frosty the Snowman, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (movie version), It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, the Muppet Christmas Carol, the Polar Express, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Smurfs Christmas specials, the Tangerine Bear, and a VHS tape containing Yogi’s First Christmas, Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too, Earnest Saves Christmas, and the Wish that Changed Christmas. This is in addition to this year’s Christmas related episodes that I don’t always watch every year (although my family loves the Invader Zim Christmas episode that we typically always watch on Christmas Eve). If you think that is a bad tradition, then at least be glad that we don’t listen to Weird Al’s the Night that Santa went Crazy anymore.

Now that I’m done talking about Christmas too early, I might as well mention more problems with not just this blog of mine, but my other blog. You see, nobody reads my TV blog. Plus, I don’t know when to update it. It used to have an update schedule based on this blog, but that has not worked recently. I decided that I could update that blog after whenever there’s an episode update in this season that relates to first season episode blogs that nobody has read yet. There are three episodes from the first season that I wrote about that nobody has read. Those blog posts are Episode 1.7, Episode 1.8, and Episode 1.10. Why would no one read about these episodes? At least they give me a reason to update my other blog every once in a while.

Mysteries so far this season: Why did Julie quit? Would there be more answers on Survivor Live? Was the jury supposed to start with her and now it will have one less member? Would we ever know the answer to questions like these? Who is in power? Is Jeremy in power? Does he need to make a big move to get in power? Is Josh in power? Does he just think he’s in power? Is Jon in power? Is his only power that of the swing vote? Will he be discarded when he isn’t needed anymore? What happens between him and Jaclyn? Is it serious? Is it a trick edit? All I can tell is that for the first time this season, I am probably very interested in what’s going to happen. That’s because, for the first time this season, it looks like something interesting is finally going to happen. I do wonder if the winner of the Jon versus Jeremy versus Josh fight winds up winning the game. I have a feeling that a floater is probably going to win. I find the floater game to be highly underrated. But, we’ll see what ends up happening.

Movie update: Okay, so here’s what’s happening with the movies. On Saturday, I wound up watching the last movie in the High School Musical series and I ended up replacing it with the movie Heidi. The Sunday thing that I watched was the next Celtic Woman concert. This leads me to wonder when I’m going to get on twitter again. Maybe even this coming episode. Maybe some other time. It annoys me going without twitter for such a long time, but I chose not to get on since Big Brother was airing. I just need to get back on to satisfy my need for twitter for a while. I’m also wondering if I’ll be able to finish watching all the Celtic Woman specials. Well, technically I would have to get to a certain stopping point that I’m not even sure that I would want to reach. I don’t know what I want. Meanwhile, on Mondays, I watched The Little Mermaid. Now the replacement ended up being a movie and its sequel. That movie is The Omega Code.

You know, I typically like Christmas. But, I typically only like it when it starts in December. If you read my other blog, which nobody does, then you’ll see yearly posts about the number of Christmas commercials that air in a year. But, the early Christmas craze has probably gotten to me since I have already bought some Christmas presents for this year. The fact that I allow such a long time after December ends to finish watching Christmas things is probably bad. It was sometime in March when I watched my last Christmas thing earlier this year. Maybe the craze is getting to me. But that doesn’t make it any less crazy. Still having just 24 days of commercials would be better for each year.

Let me go back to stating Survivor facts. In the first season of Survivor, Kelly became the first contestant to win five individual challenges in a row. Her record has never been broken, but it has been tied by two different men. Ozzy did this in Cook Islands, provided that you count his reward win with a team of himself that also had Parvati and Yul in it. I have not checked Redemption Island duels for this record. Although, when you think about it, since there are two different challenges in seasons with Redemption Island and people on Redemption Island can’t compete in the other challenges, then it would technically be impossible for any contestant in either of those seasons to work. Bob did this in Gabon, making him the only winner to hold this distinction (the other two came in second place). He was also the only one who didn’t win the last five challenges to claim this record. Also, Kelly and Ozzy won four immunities and one reward where as Bob won three immunities and two reward challenges.

The mostly recent to air episode had no tribal council, the first episode since all the way back in Tocantins to not have one. (In case you are wondering, only Australia, All-Stars, and Panama have also had this distinction.) Due to the tendency now to still have tribal council after medical evacuations and quits, having something like this happen without any sort of tribal council afterwards is pretty strange. I could list the episodes, but I probably won’t. Well, maybe I will, I just don’t know when. Meanwhile, I have been away from twitter for far too long and decided that I will get on today. I am ignoring the SVU episode because it is part of a crossover with other shows that I don’t watch. This may mean that this blog suffers as a result and I try to tweet, blog, and eat supper, all at the same time. Well, I might eat supper early. I should get started on that now. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Missy was upset at Julie quitting, as I’m sure many people are. Not really sure what all to say here as not much is happening. The blue Keith, Reed, Natalie, Jeremy, and Wes, win the reward challenge. Missy couldn’t win it and I never like it when people have to sit out of reward challenges. At the reward, many people talked about different things. Wes goes overboard at the reward challenge, as is usual at different challenges. Josh is mad at Baylor for her indecision. Geez, could Baylor be any more like Ciera? Jon gets a clue to what might be a special hidden immunity idol. It’s probably different as it is hidden at Exile Island. He winds up finding it, as to be expected by the edit. He thinks that he has all the power now, seeming to forget that there are other idols in the game.

In the next segment of the show, Jeremy feels like he is at the bottom. Well, mostly he feels like everyone else is being in ass. They probably are. Everyone in this season is being pretty unbearable at times. Every contestant in this episode gets a confessional. Good for them. I guess that all the real game play is about to happen after the flashback immunity challenge. Jeremy wins the challenge after it came down to him and his rival Josh. Poor Josh. But I’m team Jeremy, so this should even itself out. The commercial aired something for casting, so this means potential good news for the future of the show. After a boring season like this, we could use something new. Just no more quitters, please?

In the next segment of the show, Jeremy is glad that he won immunity. Jon told Jaclyn that he had the idol. They are setting up for a Josh fall, but I don’t know yet if that will happen. They are thinking of voting off Baylor. Baylor learns of the plan to vote her out. Jon and Jaclyn don’t know who to vote for. But they might be voting against Josh. In the end, following votes that I’m not sure of yet and probably won’t care about that much, Josh was the one voted out over Baylor. Does this give Jeremy a clear sprint towards the end? Not by any means. It makes it a lot easier for him, but he still has a lot of challenges to face if he is the one who wins. Or, this is just a temporary victory for a player that doesn’t end up winning. We’ll see.

On the next Survivor, Reed creates drama, possibly becoming the next Caleb Bankston. And everyone finds out about Keith’s idol. But, is Jon’s idol still a secret? Probably. I don’t know what will happen, but I’m glad that things are finally somewhat interesting. If they aren’t painting Jeremy, who isn’t getting the lazy edit that his people typically get, to be the winner, then I don’t know who the frontrunner might be. I don’t know what to think. I just hope for a good surprise at the end (even if that surprise is Jeremy winning). It’s about time that I find a good player this season, even if I might be influenced by that blog that I mentioned earlier.

Total confessionals: Jeremy- 27, Reed- 6, Jon- 21, Keith- 17, Wes- 7, Missy- 13, Jaclyn- 10, Baylor- 16, Natalie- 8, Josh- 26, Alec- 10. New confessionals this episode: Alec- 1, Jeremy- 3, Reed- 1, Jon- 4, Keith- 1, Wes- 1, Missy- 1, Jaclyn- 3, Baylor- 3, Natalie- 1, Josh- 2.

Looks like Alec and Jaclyn are now above ten confessionals. With Josh, who was in the top three, now out of the game, it looks like Jeremy, Jon, and Keith are the top three highest. Josh’s exit reminds me of how Sarah was voted out last season. The bottom of the confessional count is currently Reed, but I expect that to change next episode when he possible gains a lot of control on the game. Or, maybe none at all. He could be causing chaos, but that has yet to be seen. Meanwhile, paired with Jon, Jaclyn is doing much better in the confessional count. Remember when she had no confessionals when everyone else had one? Their bond with each other could be their undoing. Or, they could make it to the end together. We have yet to see what will happen. I just hope that interesting things wind up happening and this season ends on a high note. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 29.7

You know, when I did my blog posts of the first season, I talked about facts from the finale that I would talk about later. Now, it’s about time that I actually mention those facts. I’ll start with Sue Hawk who once cast a vote against Richard Hatch and later cast a vote for him to win. She’s not the only person to have done this throughout the various seasons of the show. She was the only person to do this in the first season. Nick and Rodger did this with Colby in the second season. Nobody did this in the third season. Kathy did this with Neleh in the fourth season. Robert and Tammy did this with Vecepia in the same season. Nobody did this in the fifth season. Christy did this with Jenna in the sixth season. Tijuana did this with Lillian in the seventh season. What makes that occurrence interesting is that when Tijuana voted against Lillian, she actually was successful in eliminating her from the game. Only Lillian came back into the game and made it all the way to the finals.

This leads us to All-Stars. Rupert did that with Boston Rob in the eighth season. Shii Ann and Lex did this with Amber in the same season. If you recall, Shii Ann voted against Amber as a warning to the other players. She knew that Amber stood the best chance at winning the game, and she was right. It was Lex, however, who was the real swing vote that season. Nobody did this in the ninth season. Nobody did it in the tenth season either. Lydia did this with Danni in the eleventh season. Shane did this with Danielle in the twelfth season. Meanwhile, in the same season, Terry, Courtney, Sally, and Austin all voted against Aras at least once and they all voted for him to win the game. That does make it interesting. Adam and Candice did this with Yul in the thirteenth season. Nobody did this in the fourteenth season as Rita’s throwaway vote for Earl was the only vote against him and she didn’t make the jury. In fact, if you listen to David and Jeff’s Survivor podcast, it is clear that she was voted out because of this. I could go off into a tangent about not being a guest on that podcast, but I won’t. They know that I want to be on it and if they want to ignore me to have the same old guests they always do, that’s their problem. If they don’t want me to be a guest, I wouldn’t be insulted if they just told me. Telling me that I can be a guest and then never even attempting to schedule me for a show is dejecting. Oops. Guess I did go off on a tangent. Hope that I don’t regret this.

This leads us to China. Peih-Gee did that with Todd in the fifteenth season. Erik did that with Amanda in the sixteenth season. Although, it should be noted that his only vote against Amanda didn’t count since she played a hidden immunity idol. Ken did this with Susie in the seventeenth season. Nobody did this in the eighteenth season, as evident by JT’s perfect game. Both John and Shambo did this with Russell Hantz in the nineteenth season. Their votes against him didn’t count since he played an idol. Laura, Dave, Monica, and Brett all did this with Natalie in the same season. That’s pretty interesting. It can also be a testament to the type of season the Samoa was anyways. Jerri did this with Parvati in the twentieth season. The first vote against Parvati was cancelled by an idol, but the second one was not. Colby and Rupert did this with Sandra in the same season. Sandra’s idol negated their votes the first time when Rupert was eliminated, but Colby’s second vote against Sandra counted against her. Both Dan and Benry did this with Fabio in the twenty-first season.

This leads us to Redemption Island. Ralph did this with Phillip in the twenty-second season. David, Julie, Steve, and Andrea did this with Rob in the same season. Andrea’s vote against Rob did not count, though. If people ever say how they think Rob should have played a perfect game that season by getting Ralph’s jury vote, remind them that one has to have no votes against them when they win unanimously or it’s not really a perfect game. Rob had a lot of votes against him that season. But I digress. Brandon and Ozzy did that with Sophie in the twenty-third season. Nobody did that in the twenty-fourth season. Malcolm, Abi-Maria, and Jonathan did this with Denise in the twenty-fifth season. Nobody did this in the twenty-sixth season, as evident by John’s perfect game. Tina did this with Tyson in the twenty-seventh season. Tasha did this with Woo in the twenty-eighth season. Spencer, Jeremiah, and Morgan all did this with Tony in the same season. Of course, it is currently unknown if anybody does this in this currently airing season.

Movie update: Okay, so on Saturday I watched Bean: the Movie. This makes me wonder if I should rewatch Mr. Bean’s Holiday. As I said before, the movies aren’t similar, although they have the same, strange main character. I’ve already watched Mr. Bean’s Holiday earlier this year. I typically have a rule against watching the same movie twice in a single year. But, I do make exceptions to that rule. I have some movies lined up to watch as soon as next year starts. This makes me worried that I will have to add a fourth movie list (or third if I can finally get rid of Sunday’s list) when the next year starts, but we’ll see what ends up happening with that. I replaced that movie on the list with Copacabana. I should clarify something first, this isn’t the terribly shitty movie version of Copacabana. This is a recording of the far better stage version of it. It’s a recording of a version that I was in back from high school. On Sunday, I watched The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey. That will obviously be replaced by the next Hobbit movie. This leads to the Monday movie. I watched Bambi. This leads me to have to explain something. You see, I have two grandparents who are giving away a lot of their stuff. I don’t think that either of them are close to dying or anything. They seem pretty healthy. Anyways, I got a bunch of videos from them. Some of the sets are short enough length that I will add them to the TV watching list. There are three of them that I am assigning different letter to. There are three movie length videos that all relate to the bible. They are best described as documentaries. I will call them the bible video series. So that’s three videos, all with one letter choice, and it happens to replace the outgoing letter. The only problem this creates is that I’ll have to roll this choice three times before I can replace it.

Mysteries so far this season: Is Julie going to quit? Is someone else going to quit? Is anyone going to quit? When will the jury start? What tribe dynamics will happen after the merge? How much of the super promo from the premiere is going to happen? Will a floater win this season? Would that be a bad thing? Does the edit seem to favor men more than women this season? Does that mean that a man will win? Will Baylor regain her previous lead in the confessionals? Has she suddenly become irrelevant to the season? What’s in the mystery bag? Is it a hidden immunity idol? Is it some other type of secret? Who has it? Are my confessional counts even accurate? I’ve wondered that for quite some time. I don’t even know where I can find an accurate place for each episode each season. Do you? I’m not sure that I care enough of that this blog gets enough readers in the first place. Remember that there are still at least three posts that have no readers at all.

I had a dream that a Survivor contestant got pregnant and didn’t know what to do. Maybe they had to quit the show. I’m not sure. Meanwhile, this mystery bag seems interesting, but I don’t know if it’s actually that important or not. The later promos make it seem like that. Meanwhile, I’m just concerned about how the merge will affect the game and what tribe/contestants this could mean trouble for. That, and what to do for supper. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Missy blabs about the split vote against Keith to Keith. Sound smart? I didn’t think so. Josh talked about how they should have gotten rid of Jeremy while they had the chance. But them not throwing a challenge seems like a pretty smart move. Will Jeremy wind up winning? Possibly, as he’s getting a much better edit than most black people typically get. Meanwhile, with supper not as important a priority for me as it should be, I don’t care that a cat is on my lap.

In the second segment of the show, Jaclyn is glad that she made the merge with Jon. Survivor most definitely didn’t hurt their relationship in any way as they were dating when the show was filmed and they are engaged now. Julie is upset that her boyfriend didn’t make it this far. There are a ton of loved ones on the merged tribe together. Jeremy is working out the tribe member to assess the current situation. He might be teaming up with Jon. Jeremy thinks he has the numbers, but it’s unknown at this point if he actually does. TANGENT. While I’m glad that the political commercials are over, I do not like the constant Christmas commercials. But I’d take Christmas commercials in May than political ads any day. END TANGENT. Anyways, despite objections by at least one cast member, they created a hashtag for the name of the merged tribe. They simply combined the names of the two main tribes to do that. They haven’t done that in a while. Huyopa. But, at least it beats Nobag.

In the third segment of the show, Wes’s birthday happens. We see so little of Wes that it’s hard to think that he’ll amount to anything in this game. Keith doesn’t seem to be doing well either. I predicted one of them to be a finalist. I might have switched them around while I was doing the predictions and assigned the wrong one the finalist prediction. Likewise, I don’t think that either of them will win. Before this episode started, I was four for six with my predictions. The scrambling that typically happens at the merge ends up happening as usual. Josh wonders if he’s still in control and he wants to keep the couples together to take out the singles and presumably Jeremy. But I still don’t know which of the two they are setting up to fall, if either one of them do. It’s hard to tell who the swing vote is. The last season proved that the wrong person can be thought of as the swing vote. Jaclyn says that “one wrong vote can be a million dollar decision.” This might be setting up her and Jon to be the swing vote. It might also imply that they don’t make the right choice. Plus, when you think about it, swing votes are typically only needed until they have no further use and are discarded at the next available opportunity. A good example of this is John in South Pacific. But, that’s not always the case, as evident by Kass last season who made it to third place.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the mystery bag segment. Julie took some trail mix. That’s the mystery. Is that really going to be an important part of this episode? When they show the survival aspect of the show, it is typically a bad sign for the quality of the season. The best known example of this is Thailand. When they focused so much on the lost boat, they didn’t have any good thing to actually show us. Julie thinks that she’s in trouble because of the trail mix. Josh thinks that he’s in trouble because of the merge. They might be setting up Josh’s fall. The immunity challenge is one of many that involves balls. Jeff annoys everyone with his commentary. Meanwhile, he isn’t making any ball jokes like he normally does. I can probably come up with stuff like that, but I probably won’t. In the end, Keith won the immunity challenge.

In the fifth segment of the show, Jeremy was upset at being the first person out of the challenge. He feels that he has the numbers. But does he? Neither Josh nor Jeremy is immune and it looks like this is one of those times when the winner of the immunity challenge is irrelevant to the tribal council that will happen. Julie is upset over everything in this game. Missy is also afraid of things getting messed up. Jeremy thinks that now is the best time to get rid of Josh. Jeremy feels that way because he thinks that Josh’s alliance would fall apart without him. It looks like Jon and presumably Jaclyn are the swing votes and might actually be in control of the game. Will there be a tie? It’s hard to tell yet. It’s hard to tell how whatever happens to Julie will affect the game. She winds up talking with Jeff. It’s hard to summarize what her conversation with Jeff was, but the main point is that she ends up quitting the game. This makes me think that there won’t be a tribal council. Jeff talks to the rest of the tribe about it. There is no tribal council in this episode. This makes this season the second one to have an immunity challenge and no tribal council, following Tocantins where, also right after the merge, a medical evacuation prevented a tribal council from being needed. This makes Keith the third person to win what turned out to be a useless immunity challenge, following Tom from Palau and Tyson from Tocantins.

On the next Survivor, a battle of the sexes suddenly happens and might break up Jon and Jaclyn. Julie winds up getting an exit confessional. I think that Jeremy is in danger of getting voted out, but since the next episode makes it seem like something different will suddenly happen, then, as usual, I’m not sure what to believe. Just now that Jon and Jaclyn’s relationship will last past the filming of this season. But I’m wondering what could have happened between them before day 39. They probably both make it there, we just don’t know if they’ll be jury members, finalists, or one of each. I’m guessing that the jury starts in the next episode.

Total confessionals: Jon- 17, Keith- 16, Wes- 6, Missy- 12, Jaclyn- 7, Baylor- 13, Natalie- 7, Josh- 24, Alec- 9, Jeremy- 24, Reed- 5, Julie- 13.

New confessionals this episode: Reed- 1, Julie- 5, Jon- 4, Keith- 5, Wes- 2, Missy- 3, Jaclyn- 2, Baylor- 1, Natalie- 0, Josh- 7, Alec- 0, Jeremy- 5.

Julie and Missy are now beyond ten confessionals. Of course, Julie is now eliminated from the game. Jeremy, Jon, and Josh are still the three highest. Reed is the lowest. I will probably just make one confessional paragraph for the future. At least the split this time affecting the reordering of the list will work perfectly with the order for the next episode so, if all remains lucky, I won’t have to work ahead on many future blog posts for a while. I have some prepared for the hiatus between this and the 30^th season. It looks like they are casting for future seasons, so number 30 might not be the end. No idea what will happen that season. Sometimes I like the hiatus between the fall and spring seasons of Survivor. It gives me a chance to keep up with shows I probably wouldn’t be able to watch. Modern Family and The Middle just started reruns of their most recent seasons ready for syndication. This may ruin some of my plans for watching things, but we’ll see if that happens or not. Meanwhile, I need to work on more of these random posts for the future. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.