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.