Survivor: David versus Goliath Premiere

You know what this season wants me to do? I want to read more of the bible. I was going to start doing that when the show Of Kings and Prophets premiered as it was about 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel. The show didn’t last long, but I still want to read the bible every Tuesday, which is when the show was on. Only I don’t. Maybe I don’t have time or make the time or wind up busy with other things. But I should use this season as a basis to read more of the bible until I’m finally done with it.

I forget if I told you before, but I am planning on doing a recap of Sue Hawk from Survivor: Borneo. I then had to wait until it was on the list before I could do the recap. Well, I added it to the list of things that I watch back in February which you might know if you read my Madam Secretary blog. I will watch it whenever it works out and another blog or blogs will be updated on days I do watch it. It might even affect when this blog is updated should I have a past season of the show on DVD to watch.

Speaking of past seasons to watch, it turns out that I got myself Survivor: Gabon on DVD for sometime in the future. I will finish watching Survivor: Borneo before I start watching Gabon again. Look out for some updates of this blog on Sundays to see if I am watching it or not. Of course, I could be watching it for long before the updates are on Sundays.

SPOILER. Apparently, there is a twist regarding the 38^th season of the show (the one after this one) that people don’t like. I don’t yet know what it is and plan to wait to find out until later. If anyone is reading this and want me to do the research, let me know. Otherwise, I try to stay as spoiler free as possible in this blog and in real life. END SPOILER.

Something that I thought that I could do regarding this season is coming up with biblical themes with it. I don’t think that I’ll do it every episode. But I will make a special post about it after this season is over in the post after the season finale (unless I’m posting an old season by that time). This makes me wonder what pastors would do things like this. Dwaine of Survivor Talk with D and D is a worship pastor of sorts. Maybe he could do something with it, but maybe not since he isn’t podcasting anymore. I know that my pastor who’s an uncle is a fan of Survivor. But since he is currently a missionary in Ghana, then he won’t be able to see it. I’ll have to check to see if any of my former pastors or vicars are fans of the show. An old vicar mentioned it in his sermon once. I’ll see what I can think of. Aren’t some old Survivor players pastors? I know that Sunday from a few seasons ago was.

While I have the past season of Survivor: Gabon on DVD now, know that even if I do start watching it, I might have to put off doing the blog posts for it until after I have no other blog posted on Sundays. At the moment, my TV blog is posted on Sundays. It should end in the future, these Sunday posts. But I do know that if any blog winds up there, I’ll have to wait until it is open before I can put it there. Of course, I’m going to also have to wait until I’m done watching Survivor: Borneo first.

Something that I thought that I could do for this season’s post would be saying a prayer for a contestant from Survivor. I’ll only do one contestant per post and I won’t be so asinine to think that I could pray the gay out of someone. I would pray for someone’s poor life choices, but I wouldn’t pray (publically in this blog, at least) for those who aren’t Christian. The point of this is that Gretchen Cordy from Borneo needs some prayers due to health problems that she has.

Sundays are now open again for posts for this blog potentially. We’ll see when they happen. The TV blog posts ended then when Mondays started being an option only it wound up alternating Mondays with that and my Madam Secretary blog. It might be phased out entirely of regular updates and would then go back to random monthly updates.

I’ve noticed that the names of the tribe for this season will be David and Goliath. This will make this the first season since Heroes versus Villains where the names of the tribes will be based on the theme of the season itself. This makes me hopeful that there won’t be a tribe swap this season, for the first time since either South Pacific or Philippines, regarding if you count the Matsing dissolve. We’ll see what ends up happening this season. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, we get to the introduction of some of the contestants. Christian and Elizabeth are introduced on the David tribe. Natalie and Angela are introduced on the Goliath tribe. We then get to the tribes meeting. Some woman talks in the introduction, but they didn’t say who. Jeff does his usual Jeffness by telling them things that are meant to sound awesome and often do, but not as much worth recapping. Nick seems like a JT junior, which is interesting since I think JT is a junior already. John doesn’t know who he is going into this season.

Jeff wants to make sure that people know the difference between the two tribes. The Goliath tribe gets to pick the weakest members of the David tribe. Lyrsa and Christian get picked. The Goliath tribe then picks the strongest man and woman from their own tribe, them choosing Alison and John. The David tribe then gets to pick a challenge here at the boat. Everybody look at the mother****ing boat!

They then get to the reward challenge where the David tribe picked who got to do what route. The David pair gets across the first stage first. Things are pretty much even after the second stage. The David tribe is able to win easily. Nice twist challenge. I don’t think that it was a blow out as it was the last stage when the people had won. Christian gives a long confessional about it. I’d like to see the uncut version of that. Did they just forget to do a commercial break here?

Mike talks about how he was on the Amazing Race. Which tribe is he on? Someone talks about how he was fat and is a police officer. This is Dan who is talking. Dan finds a woman named Kara that he thinks can be his Supergirl to his Superman. Um, you know those two are cousins to each other, right? I’m glad that a showmance seems to be happening as I have a video to share that could relate to it. This was the Goliath tribe, which is the purple one. We then see the David tribe. Pat takes the leadership role, which is a bad role on Survivor. I know that David becomes a leader, but he did do bad things. Christian thinks that Pat is only not in danger as his tactics get the shelter built.

In the second segment of the show, there are some issues with people at the Goliath tribe. Natalie seems to be part of the usual generation gap that we often seen. She can’t handle kids these days and they don’t like her methods. Meanwhile, things seem to be going much better on the David tribe. It seems that Jessica is unsure how she will fare in this game due to her being so young.

Some man gets a confessional, but I miss who it is. Lyrsa thinks that she has a friend, but I miss who this friend is. Gabby seems to be doing well with Christian. John is into wrestling and does that for a living. I wonder if he’ll stand a chance, considering how wrestling is normally fake. Natalie freaks some people out and Mike wonders off looking for an idol. He thinks that people don’t know he is looking for one, but they all notice that he is gone. What Amazing Race season was Mike on? If you are looking for an idol, you have to know that you are taking a risk like Teddy Roosevelt did when he gave an hour long speech right after he was shot. He does realize it was a mistake.

In the third segment of the show, there is a rain storm and the David tribe is already struggling. But an idol that Elizabeth has is that their tribe cares more about each other. Nick wants to avoid work when he can avoid it. He is looking for a flock of sheep. He thinks that he can gain people’s trust easily. Angelina thinks that women haven’t found as many idols as men. I might need to check that number

 Mike is then out looking for an idol and everyone else is looking for one as well on the Goliath tribe. Dan found it. I do now know, until they explain it. There are people who know about it. An octopus is found on the David tribe by Davie. Now he needs to tell his dog friend about it and learn a life lesson. Blerd is a word about a nerd who is black.

Jessica gets emotional about her mother in a story that I hope is honest. I wish that I didn’t have to doubt stories like that. Other people like Bi talk about their struggles. Nick then talks about a traumatic event that he has experienced. His mother died due to drug problems. It seems appropriate that there have been a lot of struggles to overcome with the people on this tribe. The storm brought people on this tribe closer together. You know that I have a song about that. Actually, I have multiple songs.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge that starts in the pouring rain. Has this ever happened before? I know that challenges in the rain have. I just don’t know if that’s how they started. It seems to be over or could be that way once the challenge is actually happening. Goliath is the first tribe to make it to the ladders, but fall behind at the puzzle. I don’t quite understand how one can do this puzzle exactly. Hey, at least everyone is doing the puzzle at the end. Goliath wins the challenge sending David to tribal council. Lyrsa wants Pat to be voted out, I think.

In the fifth segment of the show, the storm rages on and a boat is on the water for some odd reason. There is a medical situation going on? Pat is having some sort of problem. This is weird. What happened and where did this come from? There seems to be a crack that happened on the transport boat and Pat was injured. This could make the first injury during transport that happened. Could they not wait until the weather calmed down to take them back to camp? Pat doesn’t want to leave.

In the sixth segment of the show, it is clear now that Pat is being pulled from the game. The rest of the tribe looks on as this happened. Jeff still tries to offer words of encouragement about what is going on under this situation. People get emotional over the sudden exit. Gabby thinks that she had misjudged him and what had happened. Jeff talks about what had just happened. Jeff cancels the tribal council that they could have gone to otherwise. Where are they taken to if it isn’t camp? How far away is it? This is the weirdest season premiere since either One World or Millennials versus Gen X.

On the next Survivor, there’s a new war, a new target, and new man in charge. Natalie will be the face of the war, Lyrsa appears to be the new target, and Christian will be in charge. That’s how all of this seems to be taking place or maybe isn’t because things can be misleading often on this show.

Total confessional count: Natalia- 1, Carl- 1, Natalie- 2, Jeremy- 1, Pat- 2, John- 3, Christian- 4, Kara- 1, Angela- 2, Alec- 1, Bi- 1, Elizabeth- 3, Gabby- 4, Jessica- 2, Alison- 1, Dan- 2, Davie- 1, Lyrsa- 2, Mike- 3, Nick- 2.

Pat had only two confessionals this episode. That’s the same number that Nike, Angela, Natalie, Jessica, Dan, and Lyrsa had. The people that have more are Elizabeth, Gabby, John, Christian, and Mike. The two who are the highest are Christian and Gabby with four a piece. The lowest with one a piece are Alec, Bi, Natalia, Carl, Jeremy, Alison, Davie, and Kara. I know that I missed a man and woman in this episode. I cannot catch everyone. I don’t know what else to say that I wouldn’t want to put in other posts. I guess we will see how this season winds up going. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Redemption Island (the twist) Analysis

With there being three major island twists thus far, I thought that I would go back to one of them and do a look at to what all worked and didn’t work about it. Many people have rightful reason to hate this type of twist that changes the game. Did any of it work? I guess we’ll see.

If there was any good in a twist that changed the game the huge way it does, it would be that it can give people a second chance that they wouldn’t otherwise get. In the premerge part of the game, you could win your way through the game while being on a tribe that sucked. You could be a threat and still get to keep winning even if you were voted out after losing once.

Sadly, there’s too much bad in the twist as even the pros can seem like cons. In all cases where the twist had appeared, the people who won their way back into the game got voted out of it again at some point in time. Some lasted longer than others. It only really worked well in Blood versus Water and even then, its success is debatable at best. Often, it seemed like we were wasting airtime showing contestants who had no chance at winning by virtue of being there.

The biggest problem that I saw with it was that not all of the challenges worked or seemed fair in some way. Some only worked well if they were just between two players, which they weren’t all the time. Others were untested challenges and seemed horrible in execution. This is the biggest problem in my mind in terms of whether or not it would work.

I think that’s about it for this blog post. Sorry that it wasn’t longer in any way. I don’t always have the time to write what I want to and should, although I should be glad that I have the time at all for this and all the other blogs that I write about. It’s hard to believe that after all this time, the show is finally back with new episodes starting next week. I will see you then with the start of the next season’s episodes. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Four Finalists on Day 39: Should it Happen?

I had thought of this idea a while ago, but didn’t know if I would be writing a post about it right away. But I took it off of the back burner and thought that I would post my thoughts on it due to various ways that they have changed the game in the past. I thought going into Cambodia that it was possible that there could be a final four for the first time.

For the first twelve seasons of the show, the format was very simple: two finalists would face off against a jury of seven. Then, they changed the format. One might wonder why they made it three finalists and kept with that format for all but three seasons from the thirteenth onward. But would they ever go to more than three finalists?

There probably isn’t much of a case for why they should be doing this. One might see it as people not being voted out fourth when they are otherwise the best player of the game. Of course, this is why they had started doing three finalists in the first place and some have always and will always criticize the new format will thinking that it’s somehow easy to bring two goats to the end.

Another reason that I can think of why they should do it is that it would get rid of the stupid new format of forced fire making tie-breakers. But is one bad format a good reason to get rid of a different one? I think that four finalists at the end would be a terrible idea. Why am I suggesting it? Well, it was just me thinking of what else could change the game in some way. I would have thought that they would do it since six people were starting at a finale instead of the usual five.

With far too much changing about the game and not changing back, I don’t think that they should just keep expanding the number of people at day 39. It is bad enough that there could be ties with more than two finalists. Four is just too many people at the end and it shouldn’t be done.

I think that’s all I can think of for this post. I hope that I can think of something for the next post of this blog next week. After that, I’m back to blogging about the new season of the show as usual. We will see what all could happen with this blog in the future and hopefully I can write it as quick as possible. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

What’s with all the Strange new Twists?

I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. Survivor seems to be about one strange twist after another nowadays. It didn’t used to be this way, right? Surely Survivor wasn’t just about one new twist after another in the past. This makes me wonder why it is so terrible with twists in the present.

Some may wonder if this show would have lasted without twists. It wasn’t that long into the series when they introduced twists. It was the third season when they introduced tribe swaps. It wasn’t that much longer when they did other twists as well. They did the fake merge, outcasts, returning players, lot of different things and kept going at it with new twists. But there were things that made the twists very different in the future.

First, it was the hidden immunity idol. Before this, the vote was always simple and straightforward. If you won immunity, you were safe and couldn’t be voted out. Everyone else was vulnerable and could be voted out as a result. The idol changed it where people could be the target and play the idol in order to change the vote effectively. This changed the game forever and made otherwise clear vote outs even more complicated. I don’t know if this is where twists went wrong as not much of the game was that different in the future. But it made things different and while it helped make some tribal council more interesting than they could otherwise, it might have tainted the game in some ways.

Where I think twists went wrong was when they started doing all these advantages. It seems like more of a recent thing in my mind. When were they introduced? I forget exactly when, but I think that it was in the more recently airing seasons. This seemed to expand on the already questionable idea of hidden immunity idols by making one person getting a secret advantage that often doesn’t stay that way. But they seem to be a way to just try to make the game more interesting with them forgetting that the game is already interesting and what they are doing is instead making long time fans question whether or not the game is getting out of control with its twists.

It may seem like a more recent thing, the overuse of twists, but I felt that it was first seen badly in the eighth season, Survivor: All-Stars. They wanted to keep these returning players on their toes so they put in an overload of twists and I don’t think that most of them played out well.

Of course, what might be the problem with some of the cases isn’t that the twists show up once, but that they become what the game is always now about. The voting out a jury member was horrendous and never should have happened. But it only happened once. As for the twist where there is a more open forum for the jury at the final tribal council, that wasn’t such a bad idea as it seems to have fixed the problems of landslide wins or, at least, made them less likely to win as easily as they have in the past seasons. Still, it is kind of annoying that something that worked for 33 seasons is suddenly gone. What is even more horrendous is the new final four twist which messes with the format far too much.

This could just be me not like the Ghost Island twist which I really hope is never used again. I’m not even sure what they thought would work about it. But they had all of these advantages used again and they mostly just failed again over and over again. It wasn’t so much that they were trying to fix what was broken and that they were using what was broken again and hoped that it would get fixed.

It is hard to tell if getting rid of these twists or twists in general would work at all. What I do know is that a back to the basis twist might be something that they want to try if they don’t want to lose the fans of this show. They might not be able to get rid of the hidden immunity idol, but that arguably isn’t an issue the way others of these are. Maybe either stop doing so many twists or advantages or just do the more simple ones that you have in the past. I still like the tribe swap if it isn’t used too much and other, new twists might work. They just have to be careful with what could happen.

Well, I think that’s about it for this post as I don’t know what else I could add outside of this closing. I do hope that they can stop doing all of these strange, new twists and get to do something more basic and simple. It might be better for them not to have as many twists since a lot of people like the show better before they were introduced. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.