If you were ever interested in
knowing everything about a contestant that became a returning player, than I’m
the blogger for you. This blog post of mine will give a recap of Gervase’s time
on Survivor: Borneo in case you were wondering about his first game when you
watch him on Blood versus Water. This blog post will recap his time in the game
from the beginning to the end. I plan on doing this with other contestants,
provided that I have that season on DVD. I’m not sure when all these potential
posts might happen (they might not), but I’m giving you this one for now. At
the time I started this blog post, the people who we could vote for from season
31 had not yet been revealed. I know that doing a recap of Kelly Wiglesworth
would have made more sense then, but I feel that before she was revealed to be
in that cast, that Gervase would have been the best pick of all the players who
had played the first season and then returned to play again. Hopefully, you’ll
see a Kelly Wiglesworth recap some time soon.
First, we start with what the
greatest and most outrageous moments reveals about him. Everyone gets an equal
amount of airtime in the special so we don’t see much of him in it. Gervase is
shown not liking B. B. He also can’t eat the grub at an immunity challenge.
Only his very first vote this season was in the majority. We don’t see much of
him until we get to his part of the special. He was eliminated, it seems,
because of all the competition in the game. He wanted it out and that’s why he
was voted out. But a better recap will soon follow. Let’s start with the first
Survivor episode.
The Marooning- Here we get
introduced to Gervase for the first time along with every other contestant this
season. Before Survivor, he did stuff for the YMCA. Gervase celebrates when his
tribe makes it to the beach after three hours of rowing.
I will report his confessional
count again and hopefully it matches up with the confessional count I told you
last time. He isn’t seen much in this episode and doesn’t get a single
confessional. Once his tribe wins immunity, then we pretty much don’t see him
until the next episode. He celebrates winning the challenge in his now famous
way.
The Generation Gap- I’m pretty
sure that Gervase gets his first confessional in this episode when he complains
about B. B. He gets another confessional with Ramona and a third about B. B. He
talks more about B. B. in another confessional of his. That’s four so far. His
tribe won the reward challenge, but that wasn’t seen on screen.
Gervase is very squeamish at the
challenge and doesn’t want to eat the grub that he has to. He is chosen for the
tie-breaker round and causes his tribe to lose the challenge. He is not
considered in danger at the vote and receives no votes at the tribal council. I
don’t know if he was even considered to be voted out. He casts his vote for B.
B. in this episode. This marks the only time this season that he votes in the
majority. Another confessional before the end gives him five confessionals in
this episode. He currently has five confessionals total.
Quest for Food- His failure to
win the immunity challenge isn’t mentioned that much during the previously on
Survivor segment. He has fun at his camp with the rest of his tribe visiting a
mud volcano that is near their camp. He gets a quick confessional about it. He
gets another confessional before the challenge reappears. His tribe randomly
does a conga line on the way to the reward challenge. They ended up losing the
challenge. Gervase gets a third confessional mentioning the fishing that Tagi
is doing. How are they getting information about the other tribe? That doesn’t
seem right. Anyways, he gets a fourth confessional about food in general.
He eats rats with the rest of
his tribe. I know that a lot of animal rights people were mad about the rat
eating. But I’m willing to bet that if anyone were in a survival situation,
you’d eat animals too. Gervase gets a
fifth confessional about it. He isn’t seen much as his tribe prepares for the
immunity challenge that his tribe ends up winning. They get a strange victory
walk out of it. We don’t see him again until the next episode. So that’s five
confessionals in this episode for a total of ten confessionals so far.
Too Little Too Late?- Gervase
starts out this episode with a confessional. The contestants on his tribe
complain about the elements. He complains about Ramona’s lack of work ethic in
another confessional. It’s interesting that the previous time they went to tribal
council, Pagong voted out the person who wanted to work the most while this
episode, the person who has worked the least around camp is the person that
gets voted out. Also, both times, they don’t consider the possibility of voting
out Gervase who helped contribute to the tribe’s loss in both immunity
challenges. His tribe loses the reward challenge, but he does get a third
confessional this episode about it.
Ramona is brought up by the
tribe, including Gervase, in a different confessional. Gervase thinks that she
has improved her work. In his fifth confessional of the episode, he thinks for
sure that his tribe will win the challenge. Another confessional of his says
the same thing. The challenge is a bit confusing. Gervase did bad at it, but it
seemed like his tribe might not have known that at the time. His tribe lost the
challenge and I just lost the game. He gets two confessionals about the
upcoming tribal council. That’s eight confessionals total this episode. At
tribal council, he first admits to thinking that he’s not vulnerable, but then
says that he is after that last question. He gets a voting confessional when he
casts his vote unsuccessfully against Colleen. He has eighteen total
confessionals this season so far.
Pulling Your Own Weight- Gervase
isn’t seen much in this episode. He doesn’t participate in the reward challenge
that his tribe wins. He names the chickens won on the reward: breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. Well, either him or Jenna named the chickens, I think. He gets his
first confessional in the episode talking about the chickens and how they are
glad that his tribe won them. He gets a second confessional taking about Greg
and Colleen’s showmance.
Before the immunity challenge,
people on both tribes talk about how Gervase can’t swim. He even gets a
confessional about it. This has him as a rower for the challenge. He uses this
power to bring his tribe victory. He will be important in the next episode
according to promos. Moo. So he has three confessionals this episode leading to
a total of twenty-one confessionals during this season.
Udder Revenge- Gervase is
first seen in this episode getting a confessional after his tribe decided to
eat some of their chickens. They are doing this so that Tagi members don’t get
them. We then get to Gervase’s comment about women and cows. Once again,
something negative he does doesn’t seem to have any negative effect on his
game. He seems to avoid that a lot, something I didn’t notice the first time.
He gets around three confessionals about it. People think that he is lazy.
Jenna mistakenly thinks that he voted against her at some point, which he
hasn’t. He gets about two more confessionals about stuff like that in general.
His tribe wins the reward challenge due to Richard messing up. Gervase talks
about picking the other tribe off one by one in a confessional. It is ironic
that Pagong tribe comes up with this potential strategy for reasons you
probably know already and if you don’t, well, you’ll figure it out as the
season progresses.
Gervase gets another
confessional right before the immunity challenge. He sits out of the challenge
along with another member for some odd reason. I guess they only wanted four
members in the challenge. Also, I may have just found the first case of production
interference. Gervase has eight confessionals thus far. His tribe narrowly
loses the immunity challenge. I don’t think that he has any confessionals
leading up to the tribal council. He blames the cow comment on Joel. Since Joel
is generally sexist, the women (and Greg) decide to vote him out. Gervase casts
a minority vote for Jenna and gets a voting confessional when he does so. He
doesn’t have a good reason for voting against her, it seems. This leads him to
a total of twenty-nine confessionals so far this season.
The Merger- Gervase gets a
confessional when Sean visits his tribe before preparing for the upcoming
merge. The merge was handled much simpler then. He gets a second confessional
regarding missing Jenna, the tribe mate they sent to be an ambassador for their
tribe. When he learns that Pagong will be moving to the Tagi beach, he gets a
third confessional about it. After he becomes a member of Rattana, he gets a
confessional when talking about the new tribe dynamics. Richard thinks that Gervase
is a better player than he lets on. Gervase stays underwater the longest in the
first part of the immunity challenge. At the second part, Greg wins the
challenge while Gervase doesn’t do that well. If there was talk about who to
vote off after the challenge and before tribal council, we the audience don’t
see it. Gervase has four confessionals this episode. He casts a minority vote
against Susan in this episode while he receives a minority vote against him
from Jenna. We do not see a voting confessional from Gervase this time. He
actually wanted to vote against Greg, but he switched to Sue for reasons
unknown. He now has thirty-three confessionals total.
Thy Name is Duplicity- At the
beginning of the episode, Gervase gets two confessionals about the voting
alliance in the game. He says that he would have to wait for other tribal
councils to see for sure if there is one or not. That sounds like a risky move
to me. It won’t pay him off in the long run. He gets another confessional about
the food situation after the merge. He gets a fourth and brief confessional
about things that Richard is talking about. When videos from loved ones are
shown, his girlfriend and daughter are the ones in the video.
Gervase gets three more
confessionals about his general standings in the game. It appears he brought a
deck of cards as a personal item. The unusual immunity challenge is won by him.
I wonder if he’ll accidently vote for himself? There seems to be talk about getting
rid of Jenna since she is sad after the reward challenge. That is probably why
he votes against Jenna at the tribal council. He talks about Pagong making
mistakes in the game and this time, nobody votes against a Tagi member, which
seems like a bigger mistake since they could at least try to get rid of
members. It’s hard to make sense of most of this. He gets a voting
confessional. He has seven regular confessionals in this episode leading to a
grand game total of forty confessionals.
Old and New Bonds- The recap
further explains why Gervase voted against Jenna in the previous episode. Why
doesn’t he vote for her in this episode? That, I’m not too sure about. I might
have missed a confessional of his at the beginning of the episode. But, I
already know that these confessionals will not line up with what I reported
when I blogged about the first season. He loses the reward challenge and isn’t
brought along for the reward. He finally gets a confessional before the
immunity challenge happens. He gets another confessional about Sean’s
alphabetical strategy. He has a great quote about it from his grandfather, “If
you want to be seen, stand up, if you want to be heard, speak up, and if you want
to be appreciated, shut up.”
Gervase is wearing the
immunity necklace at the immunity challenge. He loses immunity to Rudy. Gervase
gets a third confessional when he talks about joining Colleen and Jenna in the
Barbeque alliance (the first ever counter alliance). Those people are the last
remaining Pagong members. He gets another confessional about how his alliance
is voting against Richard today. That’s the vote that he ultimately casts. He
gets a voting confessional about it. So he has four confessionals this episode
leading to a grand total of forty-four confessionals.
Crack in the Alliance- Gervase
gets a confessional about how the Pagong members were getting voted out yet he
remains standing. He gets two more confessionals talking about how he doesn’t
like Richard that much. Gervase gets treemail about his son being born. It’s
the only time I know of in which a contestant still in the game got news about
something outside of it. This leads to another confessional about it. Other
contestants share their thoughts about it as well. He wins what could be the
shortest challenge in Survivor history by a close margin to Richard. It seemed
a bit unfair for Richard at the end. Anyways, Gervase wins a reward of a pizza
slice that he shares with other contestants. A single pizza slice? It makes me
glad that there are better rewards nowadays. According to a commentary, Gervase
originally wanted to call the actress Selma Hayek after winning the reward. But
he ended up calling the mother of his newborn baby. We get footage of her end
of the phone call. We get a fifth confessional from Gervase about this. The talk
of alliances leads to a quick confessional by Gervase.
After the immunity challenge,
Gervase talks about Richard some more in a confessional. He gets another
confessional about trying to turn on the Tagi alliance. This leads him to
having eight confessionals going into the tribal council. He ends up voting in
the minority against Sean. Why did he turn on the person he was trying to get
help from? I’m not sure if that’s explained well or at all. There’s just too
much lack of common sense on the Pagong tribe, even though Gervase is claiming
that Sean lacked common sense when Gervase votes against Sean. Gervase gets
votes against him from the entire Tagi tribe of Sean, Richard, Susan, Kelly,
and Rudy. This gets him voted out of the game. Interestingly, Jeff calls the
torch a staff when he snuffs Gervase’s torch. Gervase had fifty-two
confessionals in the game. His last words state that he holds no grudges
against anyone.
Future Episodes- Now that
Gervase is voted out of the game, the rest of this post, until the finale, will
just cover random things in Survivor: Borneo that hopefully related to him in
some way. In the eleventh episode of the season, Gervase’s elimination is
covered in the recap. I probably won’t have much, if anything, to say about him
until his jury question happens. The twelfth episode of the season doesn’t have
him except for when he witnesses the tribal council where Sean is voted out.
The Final Four- Gervase is
mentioned at the final four immunity challenge fallen comrades. Almost everyone
from this season is. We see him at the rites of passage as well. He gets a
special confessional regarding Kelly as all of the jury members get a special
confessional in this episode. He gets the first jury questions among the jurors
and asks both of the finalists if there is anything that they would have
changed on the island. He votes for Kelly to win the game giving what just
might be the longest voting confessional, as a jury member or otherwise, in quite
possibly the whole show’s history. As usual, his vote is in the minority as
Richard would win.
The Reunion Show- Joel gets
upset at the whole cow comments and Gervase points out that while he (Gervase)
said it, it was he (Joel) that lived and breathed it. Later, Gervase talks
about the grubs that he failed to eat at the challenge. There’s various talking
that he does at the reunion show, but most of it is hard to summarize and not
worth mentioning. He isn’t seen much on the reunion show at all.
There’s a special feature with
Gervase that I will talk about in this blog. He does a lot of other special
features, but this one is the one that I will mention. On some episode of the
Late Show with David Letterman, the cast of Survivor: Borneo appeared and did a
top ten. Here is Gervase’s entry, which is number three on the list: “If you
prepare rat meat by carefully cleaning, seasoning and cooking it, it’s pretty
bad.”
I hope that you enjoyed this
recap. I will be back in the future with other recaps. The next one will be
about Stephenie LaGrossa from Survivor: Palau. I’ll probably do Kelly
Wiglesworth in the first of future rewatches of Survivor: Borneo. I’ll only do
a recap of someone if they have both become a returning player and I have their
original season (or one of their seasons if they’ve made an appearance since)
on DVD. I know that I will get more DVDs in the future, so hopefully, I won’t
run out of recaps. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.