Gervase Peterson Borneo Recap

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.