Episode 1.10

You know, I’m thinking of writing recaps of certain players from this season (mostly the people who become returning players) and posting them when needed, such as when they play the game again, even if their second season has already happened by now. I will keep things up with them should any of them ever play the game in future seasons, which you’d think that a lot of them would. I will at least do one of Gervase which I could while I’m doing the affect that B. B. had on this season. I don’t know when I’ll start the regular posting of the Wednesday blog posts, although I know that I will start before the next season starts airing. Maybe when promos for San Juan del Sur start, I’ll post random things on Wednesdays as I have in the past before the next season starts airing. These posts might actually end before the next season starts, although I have no idea at the time. It could either end at the exact right time, sometime earlier, or sometime later. We’ll see what ends up happening. And, now the chances of watching this are only one in three instead of one in six (or five or four, whatever the number of choices there were before I trimmed it down). But enough of my ramblings.

On 7-16-2014, I rolled a six and got to watch another Survivor episode. Or, at least I would be able to if an annoying cat didn’t get on my lap. This will teach me not to avoid putting the DVD in the player before getting ready for both breakfast and writing this blog. I also don’t know if trimming the list was that good an idea since I can now watch the recorded shows on VHS tape again, although I’ll just wait a certain number of days to watch it since I still have the jump aheads where I wait a certain number of days to watch something and automatically see it. But, I will worry about that later. Just like I could always watch this Survivor episode later while I eat breakfast with the Price is Right. I have the feeling that I won’t be able to watch it when I would have wanted to.

Well, it’s now the next day and I think that things might have worked out for the best. I can watch this episode with lunch. People were Hatching a plan to get rid of Richard. I find that funny since Hatch is Richard’s last name. Kelly has broken with the alliance which may have cost her the win, but I’ll get to the real reason why she came in second later. Sue ironically says that Jenna talks too much, not seeming to realize that she does the same thing. The talk is all about an alliance and the fact that it is only eliminating Pagong members. Sean doesn’t seem to realize that there is an alliance, which would help reinforce the beliefs that he’s a dumb player. But if someone makes what should be a dumb move into an effective move, then is the move really dumb? Richard continues to fish to help both himself and other people. Kelly and Sue have a friendship, at the moment. This will famously implode later in the season. As usual, I will get to that later.

The castaways get the first in a small set of unusual treemails. Unusual treemails are so rare, that I can think of only two other examples of it. Gervase got news that a son of his was born, which marks the only time I can think of where contestants got personal news while they were still in the game. I don’t know why this was the only time it happened. The reward challenge started a series of what I like to call tournament style challenges, which you only see after the merge. Gervase easily won the challenge. He won pizza and a chance to call home. Richard is judging someone over their lifestyle choices which seem a bit ironic since he’s gay and probably gets criticized for that. But, there are other people who don’t really like that idea either, although many people are okay with it. CBS showed film of the other side of the phone call. Sue said that she wouldn’t want to be a dad, which I find a bit funny since women can’t do that. She probably meant that she wouldn’t want to be a parent, but misunderstanding it made it funny, even though you are getting it phrase wrong.

Kelly really doesn’t want to be in an alliance since she doesn’t care that much about the game. This gets into her bad game play, blah, blah, blah, it doesn’t matter now, but it will later. (Yes, I’m tired of what I keep saying over and over again and yet I tend to keep saying it over and over again.) The immunity challenge happened next and it was about building a fire. This challenge actually makes use of the torches in the game. I was wondering why a challenge like that didn’t exist, but I guess that I just didn’t know that it was. Richard won the immunity challenge and secured his future in the game. Meanwhile, I have finished eating and want something to drink, but my cat decided to be extra annoying today, so I guess that I’ll have to do that later. Drama happened at camp, usual since it is right before tribal council is about to happen. At tribal council, Sean talked about getting rid of his alphabetical strategy, which just happened to be the best time for that since he would have to target members of Tagi otherwise. Sue says that alliances are actually a good thing in the game. They are bound to happen, leaving a great speech by Sue, but not as memorable as one you’ll see later. We get to the voting. For the only time post merge, the remaining members of Pagong and remaining members of Tagi vote in one block against each other. Gervase and Jenna vote for Sean. Sean, Kelly, Richard, Sue, and Rudy all vote for Gervase. On the next episode, a trip on a yacht is the reward and the alliance continues to crumble, or so we’re lead to believe.

Gervase was a pretty interesting player this season. After what is currently a record amount of time away from the game, he returned in Blood versus Water with a more effective strategy. He started on one tribe and then switched to the other. He then made the merge partnered with his coconut bandit Tyson. Unfortunately for Gervase, Tyson did most of the work in the alliance. Gervase was considered just riding of coattails and got no votes from the jury once he became a finalist. Would Gervase ever play the game again? I think so. I give it a 75% chance that we will see him in a future season.

Total confessional counts: Gervase- 43, Sue- 36, Kelly- 31, Rudy- 28, Sean- 29, Colleen- 31, Richard- 45. New confessionals this episode: Sue- 5, Kelly- 5, Rudy- 3, Sean- 2, Colleen- 4, Richard- 6, Gervase- 7.

Well, Richard still leads the count for the moment and he probably will keep leading it for the rest of the game. It’s likely that in the next episode everyone in the game will have more than thirty confessionals. That is pretty high, considering the number of confessionals I have counted before in previous seasons. But they had to keep this game interesting for the viewers. They did a good job of that too. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.9

You know, there is a little known Survivor first that happened to Greg. Actually, there are two little known firsts that most people probably don’t know about or don’t care about. First, Greg became the first contestant to win immunity in one episode and be voted out at the first tribal council when he no longer had immunity. Second, Greg became the first contestant to win an individual reward challenge and be voted out in that same episode. Most people point out that he’s the first to win both types of individual challenges, which could have easily gone to two different people. But they don’t seem to realize the other part as well. Both things would happen again. First, I’ll start with the contestants who won individual immunity at one point and then got voted out the first time they didn’t have it right after they did. I’ll try to keep this simple with the straightforward contestants. Greg was the first in Borneo. He was also the only one in Borneo. It happened to only Nick in Australia. It happened to no one in Africa. It happened to both Tammy and Robert (this Robert not to be confused with Boston Rob, a different player) in Marquesas and they happened to be eliminated back to back. It happened to Ted in Thailand. Amazon is a bit complicated since Heidi was voted out after she had it, but she didn’t win it since Jenna gave it to her. It happened to both Rupert and Darrah in Pearl Islands. Darrah’s elimination was unfair since the jury had immunity instead of contestants still in the game. In All-Stars, Kathy, Shii-Ann, and Tom all were voted out the tribal council after they had immunity.

Boy, this trivia is becoming long and cumbersome. But, a rambling man’s got to do what he shouldn’t probably be doing. In Vanuatu, Sarge, Ami, and Eliza were all voted out after they had immunity, although we get to a bit of a special note in the list since Ami wasn’t immune once before she won immunity again and got voted out the next time she wasn’t immune. In Palau, Jolanda got voted out after her brief immunity was up, although this shouldn’t really count since this was before the real individual phrase of the game. Jamie and Rafe both suffered this fate in Guatemala, although Rafe was also vulnerable at tribal council before his last immunity win and inevitable vote out right after. This happened to no one in Panama. It also didn’t happen in Cook Islands. It happened to Edgardo, Boo, and Yau-Man in Fiji, although Edgardo shouldn’t really be listed with them since he never wore the necklace and got it as part of a weird twist. It happened to Erik and Peih-Gee in China. The trivia of it in Micronesia is screwy. Erik only got voted out because he dumbly gave up immunity. Yau-Man suffered the same fate that Jolanda did in Palau. And Natalie may have been voted out after being immune, but she never won immunity.

This then leads to Gabon where Marcus had the same sort of immunity that other people have. It happened to Tyson in Tocantins. This happened to Laura and Brett in Samoa. This happened to Rob in Heroes versus Villains where after the one premerge time he could win immunity, he got voted out after the very next tribal council. This happened to Jill and Brenda in Nicaragua. It happened to Ashley in Redemption Island. South Pacific is a little strange since due to Redemption Island, it happened twice to Ozzy. While it happened to Brandon, it isn’t the same since he was voted out right after giving up immunity. Also, in South Pacific, it happened to Jim, which probably happened due to an unaired event that almost happened. It happened to Jay, Troyzan, and Alicia in One World. It happened to Malcolm in Philippines. It happened to Andrea in Caramoan. It happened to Vytas and Ciera in Blood versus Water. At the last season that it could have happened was Cagayan where it happened to every member of the brains tribe that made the merge (Tasha, Spencer, and Kass).

Now we get to the contestants who won or helped a predetermined team win an individual reward challenge and got voted out in the same episode. I will skip the first season as it happened to someone besides Greg and I can mention it then. It happened to Jerri in Australia. It happened to Brandon in Africa. It happened to Sean in Marquesas. It happened to Ted in Thailand. It happened to Dave in Amazon. It happened to Burton in Pearl Islands. All-Stars was the first time that this didn’t happen. It happened to both Chad and Julie in Vanuatu. It happened to Greg in Palau. Some could say that it also happened to Janu, but since she quit and wasn’t voted out, then I don’t actually count that. In Guatemala, it happened to Cindy. That instance is quite famous since she won a car and was given a choice: keep your car and possible curse or give up the reward you won and give every other contestant a car. They put her in a no win situation which is why she was voted out after keeping the car. It happened to Sally, Courtney, and Terry in Panama. It happened to Parvati in Cook Islands. It happened to Stacy in Fiji. It happened to Jean-Robert and Frosti in China. It happened to Ozzy, Alexis, and Erik in Micronesia.

Then we get to Gabon. It didn’t happen to anyone then. It happened to Brendan and Tyson in Tocantins. It happened to Kelly, Laura, and Shambo in Samoa, thus making all individual rewards of that season produce someone getting voted out. It happened to Amanda in Heroes versus Villains, although that was mostly Colby’s fault for not helping her get the hidden immunity idol clue which she could have used well. It happened to Marty in Nicaragua and sort of happened to NaOnka, who quit and wasn’t voted out the episode she won individual reward. Since rewards were basically nonexistent (with few exceptions that I don’t care about) I can’t mention any of this happening in Redemption Island or South Pacific, although I’m pretty sure that there might have been a reward that Brandon won before he gave up immunity and got voted out. It happened to Michael, Jay, and Kat in One World. It happened to Jeff, Pete, and Malcolm in Philippines. It happened to Michael, Phillip, Andrea, and Brenda in Caramoan, although Andrea’s is a bit strange since a reward happened combined with immunity, followed by a tribal council, followed by another tribal council where she was voted out at the second one and this all happened in just one episode. Blood versus Water is strange, so I’ll just ignore that (not that it happened then anyways). It happened to Morgan and Jeremiah in Cagayan. Sorry for boring you with this trivia that you might not have understood anyways. But enough of my ramblings.

So, I finished watching (for the moment, at least) the show NCIS so I now finally trimmed the list of TV shows on DVD to watch to just three choices. Charmed is now numbers one and two. Power Rangers is now numbers three and four. Survivor is now numbers five and six. On 7-15-2014, I rolled a six and got to watch the next episode of Survivor. So let’s start with it. People talked about the previous tribal council and how they had to lie about the alliance in the game. This is when Kelly considers leaving the alliance and begins what would eventually become why she lost the game. (I just lost the game.) Richard correctly thinks that he’s ruling the game, but he should be more aware the people will eventually want him out of the game. There are some problems with the fish in the game. Richard is considered the only one who can fish, although he’s getting on other people’s (or at least Colleen’s) nerves.

Sean gathers the treemail for the reward challenge. Jeff offers words of encouragement which would become a precursor to the challenge commentary he would become infamous for. Colleen closely beat out Kelly to win the challenge and invited Jenna along where they both got a letter from home and a barbeque lunch. This would be the last good thing that happens to her this game. The other people on the tribe just went back to camp and had the regular camp meals that they always get. This is also when the first counter alliance to an existing alliance was made. This is when Richard streaks naked on his birthday or his birthday suit, as it’s sometimes called. It makes everyone feel awkward.

Since people know about Sean’s voting in alphabetical order which is wrongly assumed to be a stupid strategy. You will not see him win a dumb award this season since he doesn’t deserve it. Everyone on the opposing tribe comes alphabetically before his tribe. Because of the alphabetical order, some of the contestants decided that their names now started with z. The immunity challenge happened next. Rudy wins the challenge and becomes the oldest person in Survivor history to win an immunity challenge. I don’t know if that record will ever be broken.

We then get to tribal council. There is another alliance in the game. Also, I never released before how much I liked Rudy due to all the funny things he said. He thinks about lesbians because he thinks that a woman’s alliance might be formed, although I think that it was quite a while before one would happen and much longer before one was successful. At least there have been successful woman’s alliances since I don’t think that a man’s alliance has ever worked in this game. We get to the vote at tribal council. Kelly votes against Sean. Colleen, Gervase, and Jenna all voted against Rich. Sean, Rich, Rudy, and Sue all voted against Jenna and she was voted out of the game. This is why the alphabet strategy is secretly brilliant. People can easily vote with him and that person will wind up going home. Even with this strategy, every vote from this point forward that Sean would cast would be in the majority, until he gets voted out of the game. Not much is revealed in the promo for the next episode, but I’m sure that I’ll find out what happens later.

So, we reach Jenna who is the first I’m keeping track of to return for another season. She played again in Survivor: All-Stars where she started on the Saboga tribe. After surviving the first two tribal councils, she, along with Rupert, spent a record number of days without attending tribal council before she pretty much had to after the merge. She would be a part of every tribe that season, all four of them. She improved on her game a lot, but things didn’t go well for her at the final four. She betrayed her remaining ally in the game to avoid the potential of drawing for rocks. At the final three, she was outnumbered two to one and after failing the final immunity challenge, she became the last person voted out of the game. Many people call her moves towards the end stupid, but I’m not sure that they were because it was probably impossible for her at that point in the game to win anyways. Maybe it was dumb, but other people screwed up more that season, but I can talk about that if I’ll ever blog about the eighth season. Jenna is also known for doing a sex tape that she intentionally released as a publicity stunt. She has not been considered as an alternate for any season since All-Stars, but she could return as a (sort of) second chances player. I give it a 68% chance that we will see her in a future season.

Total confessional counts: Sean- 27, Colleen- 27, Richard- 39, Gervase- 36, Jenna- 33, Sue- 31, Kelly- 26, Rudy- 25. New confessionals this episode: Rudy- 1, Sean- 4, Colleen- 6, Richard- 6, Gervase- 3, Jenna- 3, Sue- 3, Kelly- 3.

So, we are getting to the part where everyone could get higher than thirty confessionals. They love Richard in the edit, which they typically do for the people who wind up winning the game. I can see why people say that he won it best, although I don’t agree with that. But I can’t say that he didn’t deserve to win the game, because he’s paying it harder than anyone else is right now. He invented the great game play that countless other players have done and many winners were able to play similar games. But, I should save my love for Rich until later. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.8

Well, I just posted the fifth episode’s blog post online and I’m starting to write this on. Being ahead on something is terribly unusual for me. I’m typically the biggest procrastinator that I know of. I would mention more about how I’m a procrastinator, but I think that I’ll do that later. And since I’m trimming down the list of TV shows on DVD to watch, I finished watching 8 Simple Rules, although I do plan on watching more of it should they ever release the third and final season of that show. I’m pleasantly surprised to find that someone has been reading the first season blog post of mine. I don’t know who you are (I might, actually, but probably don’t) but thank you for doing that. Getting ahead on this blog is actually quite a good thing to do. It has virtually replaced homework for me since I’m no longer in college. I would still be if I could still afford it, but we’ll see what happens in the future. So one is currently not a choice on the random rolling list and if I get that, I’ll just roll again. Just one more episode of NCIS, and it can be removed from the list as well (I know that there are commentaries from previous episodes that I haven’t listened to yet, but since I can trim the list down to only three choices for a while, I might as well ignore them for the moment). Actually, making NCIS one as well as three might solve my problems for the moment. I’ll probably find some way to burn the choices off so I can get to the more manageable and probably temporary three choices (only three choices, being the temporary part, not the fact that the three choices are temporary, which was already a given). We’ll see. But, enough of my ramblings.

On 7-5-2014, I rolled number five and got to watch Survivor with a snack. The snack was messy so I couldn’t keep track of the notes here at first. But, don’t worry, I can keep up with them now. After Gretchen was voted out, different people not in the Tagi alliance was starting to believe that an alliance of some sort was at play. Some people wanted to wait until another tribal council to know for sure that an alliance was really in play. Gretchen was targeted because she was a threat, the first such move in Survivor history. I have the feeling that Greg might have been voted out in the last episode if he didn’t have immunity.

Richard does the primary fishing and other sort of food providing. Some people don’t want to vote him out because of this, which probably further helped him win the game. He is a bit curious as to who voted for him last tribal council, although he doesn’t seem to care as much. Greg still admires Richard a lot, which for me, further destroys the theory that he would have voted for Kelly at the final tribal council. People are starting to think that Greg is a threat which is probably why he gets voted out later in this episode. Richard even explained in a confessional why he would want to get rid of Greg. Meanwhile, the tribe gets ready for the first ever loved ones challenge of the game which already makes me sad considering how I know that Jenna won’t get a video from her loved one. The challenge actually happened at their beach. I wonder how they decided to order the loved one videos for each of the contestants. In Greg’s video we see his sister who was supposedly offered to play with him in Blood versus Water. Poor Jenna didn’t get a tape back. But she did get to send a tape back to her loved one if she won. But, she didn’t.

Jenna lost after going after Greg who went first and got a target that no one else would beat. In this episode, we are even slightly treated (or punished) with a Jeff Probst commentary on the challenge. But, the first official of that appearance wouldn’t happen until later. Greg would end up watching his tape with the rest of his tribe. Jenna decided not to watch as she was still upset over not getting a tape. The tape and the response to it was weird. I’m wondering if they had to include a response to the tape since Jenna couldn’t win the reward otherwise. Jenna was feeling bummed and some people even thought that she wanted to quit. For some odd reason, the contestants brought their torches to the challenge. You do have to wonder if they’d ever do some type of challenge that would make use of the torches in the game, but I don’t think that they will do it. This challenge might have also been used in Panama, although I should get to that later. For the immunity challenge, Gervase pulled an early lead and kept it until the end.

Before tribal council, Kelly was starting to consider flipping, which would ultimately cost her the game. But, that hasn’t happened yet. Pagong is starting to regret their whole “vote to your conscious” strategy which failed them and explained their scattered votes in the last episode. Jeff explains the change to the game and that a jury would happen to all but the two of them that made it to the end of the game. The talk of alliances came up at tribal council. Finally, after seven previous tribal councils, Jeff is finally asking the hard-hitting questions that make people panic. Sue and Kelly smartly lied about their being an alliance because you don’t want to know that one has been established. The votes in this tribal council were between only two people. Gervase, Greg, and Colleen all voted against Jenna. Richard, Jenna, Sue, Kelly, Sean, and Rudy all voted against Greg. This means that Greg was voted out and he pretended to cry and be upset about it in what would become the first in a loose series of great reactions to getting voted out.

So, Greg, the lovable, popular oddball gets voted out in this episode. And finally, we have a contestant from this season who is rumored to have been asked back for a future season. He posted on his facebook page that he and his sister were both considered for Blood versus Water and they both declined being on that season for reasons unknown. Well, it was probably just him not wanting to do another season, if that source can be believed at all. That is the only known time that he has been considered as an alternate for any of the future seasons that they did. But, if I understand correctly, as much as fans love him, he doesn’t want to play the game again. In fact, he claims to have never seen a season of Survivor besides the first one. He probably liked the game, but doesn’t seem to like it enough to stay into it or be a fan of it. I’m not even sure he wants to be known for his time on Survivor. But, we don’t know the chances of him returning and I’d put it at a 49% chance. For me, Greg was such a wonderful contestant this season, he wins the award for breakout character of the season hands down. No one else seems worthy for me.

Total confessional counts:  Colleen- 21, Richard- 33, Gervase- 33, Jenna- 30, Sue- 28, Kelly- 23, Rudy- 24, Greg- 32, Sean- 23. New confessionals this episode: Richard- 5, Gervase- 5, Jenna- 7, Sue- 6, Kelly- 4, Rudy- 4, Greg- 10, Sean- 4, Colleen- 3.

Well, until Gervase gets voted out, it seems like he’ll be battling Richard for first place. With a lot of airtime this episode, Jenna has joined the two of them with getting more than twenty-nine confessionals. Greg briefly joined them as well due to his ten confessionals in a single episode. Everyone now has more than twenty total, which probably doesn’t happen that much in other seasons. But, I’m starting to see why people love this season so much, even though I have yet to change the ranking of this season compared to the other seasons. I’ll tell you what the ranking of it is when we get to the last blog post of this season. I can’t promise that it will move up to number one, but I’m hoping that it enters the top ten instead of being the bottom of the average seasons where it currently is. Expect more in the future, as always. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.7

I am working ahead on this blog. I just posted the fourth episode’s blog post and now I started working on this one. I might have to post random blog posts with this one since these posts might go on a long while. There is at least one blog post that I’d probably post before the next season starts. There might be others. But, unless another old season has to be watched during the time, you’ll see the double random blog posts during the period between the fall and spring seasons like you did around last year. But I don’t know what will happen yet.

Since this blog is written a while before it is posted, I should warn you that stuff in it could easily be outdated. But you already know that, don’t you? I have an update with the random die roll list. Since the TV shows on DVD are limited to six, I am having a problem when I can’t watch one of the items on the list. That item is the random TV shows on VHS. So it looks like I’ll be ignoring the number six when it is rolled for now. But the more important thing is that I’m done watching Futurama. I am replacing that on the list with 8 Simple Rules. Since Futurama was number two on the list, Charmed will now be number two while 8 Simple Rules is now number one. 8 Simple Rules has bounced on and off of the list due to the rule I have of only watching a holiday related episode on that holiday, should that be the next episode to watch. Don’t expect to see it on the list for that long since there are only three episodes left on the DVD to watch. But there will be other changes to the list pretty soon.

This blog is very outdated when I finally update it thanks to writing posts in advance. I would edit previous posts, but I figure that there’s no real reason to since I’m telling you that some of the stuff is outdated. But there was very sad news in a Survivor community. On 6-24-2014, Caleb Bankston, a contestant from Blood versus Water, died in a train accident. This is very sad news indeed. I don’t know how long it will be until the twenty-seventh season is released on DVD, but I can wait as it aired very recently. Who knows? They could wind up releasing it with Samoa since they can’t pair Samoa with Heroes versus Villains since Heroes versus Villains has already been released to DVD. Besides, my sister would probably want the DVDs since she can’t see this season, even though I recorded the season on VHS for her, I think that she would want the DVDs as well. So, might we both get the same DVD or will I skip getting it since she’ll probably want it? We’ll find out what happens later. But Blood versus Water is a great season of Survivor and it would be a nice one to own. If you want to find out more about Caleb and his time on Blood versus Water, go here https://survivoroz.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/caleb-bankston-interview/ to the Survivor Oz interview with him. I’ll list more facts about him eventually, but for now, there’s not really much that I can say.

Now I believe that I already told you that for me, Blood versus Water ranks as the eighth best season of Survivor at the moment. So, I will tell you that I should tell you other season’s rankings and will tell you over the course of time. For instance, Caramoan, ranks thirteenth out of all the twenty-eight seasons. New seasons will always change the rankings and so could other things. Rewatching a season would probably improve its ranking, although this might not always be the case. The ratings are always subject to change and the newest season is to be added sometime around the finale. Now it would be nice to catch up on other old seasons and I will eventually, I just don’t know when. If you see me posting an old season on Sundays and I would want to start posting another old season in this blog, you would see it on Fridays. Although, when you think about it, no one will really care what day of the week this blog post is posted, especially after it has been there a long time. Besides, I should really have an OCD blog, but I don’t yet. Or maybe I should just keep stating non sequiturs. I like cherry pies. Do you like to use facebook? Movies are fun. I stop rambling now.

The rolling list has changed again. I’m about ready to trim it down to just three choices instead of six. I’ll let you know if that ends up happening. VeggieTales is now off the list and has been replaced with Power Rangers. This means that Power Rangers is now number four on the list and Survivor has moved to number five. On 6-28-2014, I rolled number five and was able to watch Survivor. Or, I would be if a cat didn’t get on my lap and change my plans. Well, we’ll see if I’m able to watch it later in the day. I guess that I will watch something online with breakfast instead. I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch the live feeds of Big Brother, but I should try doing that, if I can watch it for free. I know that it might give me too much information about the show before it airs on television, but I don’t think that it will make the show any less interesting when it airs the first time. I found out that I wouldn’t be able to access it without paying something so I won’t bother with it. But enough of my ramblings.

I wonder if the post merge of this season really is going to be more interesting than previous part of the season has been. I’m just hoping that I can figure out the strange vote in this episode. It just might be the most confusing vote in Survivor history. With little warning, there is a member from one tribe at the other tribe’s beach. Somehow, Jenna either knew or was pretty sure that there was an alliance at the Tagi tribe. Richard was wondering why people thought it was considered unethical to have an alliance. Both Sean and Jenna thought that the merge consideration dinner was supposed to be romantic. They both decided not to obey it being romantic. I don’t think that it was supposed to be that way. The merge deliberation seemed to take longer than people thought it should. Tagi is the location of the merge beach so Pagong had to leave. They had a set time before they had to leave and could only take certain items with them.

So this episode started the farewell to Pagong in more than one way. The tribes then all get to know each other after the merge. Greg feels that Richard is the one on Tagi playing the best game at the moment. This could explain his future jury vote that many incorrectly think was a swing vote. But I’ll get to the real swing vote later. There’s a ton of confessionals in this episode because of the merge. Of the fun merge party that they had at night, they showed very little of it. We then get to the upcoming immunity challenge. We get to the individual part of the game. The immunity necklace was originally called the immunity talisman. The simple challenge has people holding their breath under the water. I know that I would lose a challenge like this. This is one of the quicker challenges in the game. I don’t know how they are holding their breath for so long. Greg narrowly beat Sean in the second phase of the challenge. While he might have faced elimination before, they couldn’t get rid of him since he won immunity. It seems like they went to tribal council right after the challenge, although it’s possible that there was some stuff happening at camp before the tribal council happened. If it was right after the challenge, then it makes sense why the vote would end up being so confusing.

With little advanced warning for anyone, Gretchen would find herself voted out tonight. Let’s get to how the vote actually worked. Greg voted against Jenna, Colleen voted against Richard. Jenna voted for Gervase. Gretchen voted against Rudy. Sean started his alphabetical order voting strategy which is actually brilliant because the opposing tribe all comes alphabetically before his tribe. With this strategy, he voted against Colleen. Gervase voted against Sue. The Tagi alliance of Richard, Rudy, Sue, and Kelly, all voted against Gretchen. The vote still makes no sense. Gretchen would be the one voted out of the game due to the main alliance voting against her. I just wish that there was more in the edit to understand why she was voted out.

The Pagong tribe made a serious and terrible mistake by not voting together. This is the beginning of how they’d go down in infamy as a dumb Survivor tribe. This is the reason that not one of their members would outlast any of the remaining Tagi members. The remaining members of Pagong all win the gold award for dumbest move of the season.

Poor Gretchen is the one voted out of the game. I’m not sure how people even knew how to vote for her. But she is the first contestant voted out after the merge and the first contestant to come one short of making the jury. Many people want her back in the game. She’s actually never been considered to play again, but she might return. I’ll give it a 75% chance that we will see her in a future season.

Total confessional counts: Jenna- 23, Sue- 22, Kelly- 19, Rudy- 20, Greg- 22, Gretchen- 21, Sean- 19, Colleen- 18, Richard- 28, Gervase- 28.

New confessionals this episode: Sue- 4, Kelly- 3, Rudy- 3, Greg- 6, Gretchen- 3, Sean- 4, Colleen- 4, Richard- 5, Gervase- 4, Jenna- 6.

WARNING! RAMBLING PARAGRAPH. Bonus info about future Survivor seasons: last Thursday is when they finished filming Survivor (29): San Juan Del Ser and it will start airing on September 17th. Since the break between filming the fall and spring seasons are typically about two weeks long, that means that on either the 24th or 25th of July, they will start filming Survivor 30. If you know more of the info about Survivor 29 than you'll notice that Survivor 30 might have one of the contestants that was supposed to be on the 29th season, but I will talk more about this in a later, special, random blog post. END WARNING.

I’m almost certain that I messed up the confessional numbers in this episode. I’m not entirely sure that it matters. What I do know is that everyone is in the merge part of the game, every left in the game has a lot of confessionals. We are getting to the over twenty mark. By the next episode, everyone should have over twenty total confessionals in the game. I warn you a lot that the confessional count could be wrong. It doesn’t matter anyways. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.6

I’m wondering if I should stop posting random stuff before the actual important part of the blog post. I have the feeling that I should, but I don’t think that I ever will. I don’t know what people think about it since most people don’t read this blog. It’s a shame, really, but it doesn’t matter that much. I believe it was Queen that once said, in the greatest rock song ever written, “nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters, nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me.” Well, stuff does matter, but this blog is probably unimportant. Or is it? I think that this blog may be important enough that I would want to have a successor to it should anything ever happen to me and I’m unable to continue it. People might notice if my blog just suddenly stopped being updated at all. In fact, this blog post that I’m writing may not end up being posted at all! But the point of the matter is that, if you have a Survivor blog or you know someone with a great Survivor blog, then be sure to post the link to it in the comments for the blog here. It would be nice to know that someone else could continue this blog for me, even though they obviously aren’t the same person that I am.

Well, once again I rolled the right number for the blog and once again I don’t watch the show until later. On 6-20-2014, I rolled the number four again. Well, actually, I rolled the number six, but I can’t use that number at the moment since I have only one tape left and it has something for someone else to watch on it. So I rolled again and got the number one. That number means to watch Charmed, which I had already rolled and watched earlier in the day. Now, with some TV shows, I don’t watch them more than once in a single day unless I exempt them from the rule. Survivor is exempt from the rule I call the same day rule, but I have yet to roll it twice in a single day. As you might have guessed, the next number I rolled was a four which meant that I could watch Survivor. But since I was going to eat a snack with it that would make my hand messy, I decided to save the roll for later and just find something to watch on TV. Of course, I will have to decide which show to watch which will probably lead to me rolling yet another show as I figure it out.

Now, I’m right-handed, but when I eat food that doesn’t involve silverware, I typically use my left hand. This would definitely cause a mess on the keyboard (but only if I’m stupid) because the majority of typing is done with your left hand. I’ve already done this before where I used only one hand to type and ate a snack while watching and blogging about Survivor. I didn’t like it. Now I could wind up doing it again, but I’d rather not have the quality of this blog suffer. (That sentence is probably ironic since it would imply that this blog has quality.) An interesting thing about me is that I can use a fork with my left hand. I’m pretty sure that most left-handed people can use a fork with their right hand. If a food involves the use of both a fork and knife, you typically use your dominate hand for the knife and the cutting while your other hand keeps part of the food still. But if you use silverware, you probably already knew that. I think that most English speaking people use silverware, but if you don’t speak English and somehow have a good way of translating this blog of mine, that’s awesome. Typically, the online translating things that I’ve tried are bad, but I haven’t tried that many anyways. But if you know anyone that uses other languages on www.facebook.com, then you know that their main translating methods suck. Either that or the people who don’t speak English there are bad at speaking their native language, which I don’t think is very likely.

It turns out that I might not have to take a break of this blog for my vacation. Since this blog is written long before it’s posted, then I might have already been on this vacation by the time this is posted. It might not end up effecting Sundays at all. If it does, then I guess you’ll just miss a post randomly. While I am working on blog posts on various Survivor related topics, it might not be until the hiatus between the airing of the twenty-ninth and thirtieth seasons before you see them. They are currently filming the twenty-ninth season and the filming wraps on July 10^th. That means that the thirtieth season probably starts filming around July 25^th since there is typically a two week break between filming the fall and spring seasons. I could be off on that, so I don’t really know. But I do know that I need to work more on my TV blog so I can keep people updated on it. But enough of my ramblings.

Jeff introduces more about the game at the beginning. He is introducing the impending tribe merge. “Will they stick together as a tribe or will it be every man for themselves?” What’s interesting is that one tribe would (mostly) stick together while the other one would be every person for themselves. The confessionals are very different since another contestant can be there while you are giving one. They were so informal. I’m glad they changed that. Jenna talks about (a chicken) pecking the hell out of her which is somewhat ironic when she would later be known for having a sex tape. Speaking of things related to sex, Richard is starting his going around naked phrase since it is part of his game. Rudy joins the now famous Tagi alliance while Richard thinks that he won’t last long anyways. So Rudy, Kelly, Sue, and Richard are all in the alliance that winds up dominating the game. Controversial at the time, it is now a commonplace part of the game. People thought it was cheating, but no one was punished for it so I think that it’s a part of the game allowed to be had. Can you imagine the game without an alliance of any kind?

Gervase said his memorably dumb and sexist comment that girls are the stupidest thing in the world next to cows. The cow comment would become important later in the episode, even though the wrong person was voted out because of it. The tribes then prepared for their reward challenge. They got food before the challenge. The reward is what I believe to be the first challenge held at night. I find the premise to be strange and didn’t really understand the rules. As usual, this is probably not the type of challenge that you’d see anymore. Richard grabbed a duplicate item which gave Pagong the win. After the challenge, Gervase thought that the member of Pagong would be the final six. Actually, only one of them would make the final six. They talk about trying to vote off Tagi one by one, not realizing their own impending fate. The women of Pagong were really annoyed by Joel. This is used to explain why he gets voted out in the episode. He’ll become the first contestant to be voted out right before the merge.

Some army people (which army?) were preparing for the challenge and got the tribes ready for it. This is the first challenge where the tribe that has a numbers disadvantage still had to sit a member out. This is also the last tribal challenge of the season. This seems like the most intense type of challenge at the time they did it. The last part of the challenge reminds me of the plank maze that you can find and try to solve at www.puzzles.com. ([WARNING! GOING OFF ON A TANGENT.] I’m not sure if that link is right or if the information is still there. But, I found another link that definitely has the puzzle that I’m looking for to show you. What’s interesting is how much the previously mentioned puzzle website has changed, if it is even the one that I remember going to in the past. They had lots of great games there that you could do on the computer. I could search for some of them to see if they exist elsewhere. There’s a game there called threesome, [yes, that’s the game’s name and no, it had nothing to do with sex] that I can’t look up online for obvious reasons. But, you should be able to do the plank mazes at the link provided so you can understand what exactly I’m talking about. http://www.clickmazes.com/planks/ixplanks.htm [I hope that the link works for you since it may not work for everyone.]) In the end, it was Tagi that closely won the challenge and wound up sealing their fate as a great tribe in post merge history. Instead of having the idol be transferred at the challenge, it was at an island that Tagi had to retrieve.

So Pagong lost some of their chicken to a wild animal. Ultimately, this doesn’t matter that much in the game. People talk about the vote being between either Jenna or Joel. This tribal council would be the only time Greg would vote with the majority, unless you count his vote as a jury member. Gervase sticks with Joel and they both vote for Jenna. Greg, Jenna, Colleen, and Gretchen are the ones who vote for Joel. Since I’m pretty sure that Greg and Jenna had a rivalry, it is interesting that he doesn’t try to do a tie, but he probably didn’t know that others would be voting with him so he stuck with a majority that he knew would get him success in voting someone out.

On the next Survivor, the two tribes merge into one tribe and people get used to the new way of playing the game. I can’t really tell what Joel was saying that he isn’t, but people think he is. But, I should get to that topic right now. This episode marks the first time that women would vote in a group, although alliances of all women didn’t work for quite a while in this show’s other seasons.

Joel may not have been that stand out of a contestant, but that was probably due to him not lasting that long in the game. I’m not really sure if he’d ever return to the game or not. He might, but I don’t think that he will. So I’ll give him a 31% chance of returning to the game. He probably could return to the game again. Maybe I should give him a higher chance. But, for now, I don’t think that he’ll play again, even though he has better chances than a lot of other people.

Total confessional counts: Joel- 12, Sean- 15, Colleen- 14, Richard- 23, Gervase- 24, Jenna- 17, Sue- 18, Kelly- 16, Rudy- 17, Greg- 16, Gretchen- 19.

New confessionals this episode: Gretchen- 5, Joel- 4, Sean- 1, Colleen- 4, Richard- 3, Gervase- 4, Jenna- 4, Sue- 2, Kelly- 2, Rudy- 2, Greg- 1.

So, by the end of this episode, everyone has more than ten confessionals and Gervase has momentarily surpassed Richard with the most confessionals of the season. We’ll see if that winds up staying or not. It has been a while since every contestant typically got at least one confessional in each episode. Maybe that is more common than I think. Regardless, it would be nice if they kept doing stuff like that nowadays. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.5

So, it looks like this blog of mine might prove to be more interesting. Well, maybe not. I find it interesting that I just posted the third episode’s blog post and I’m starting on this one. But I believe that my posts of this season can only be posted on Sundays. I also believe that I shouldn’t have multiple posts on the same day. Well, I can do that if I’m editing two different blogs on the same day, but I typically don’t do this. So, I have things written in advance for the future and this could wind up happening a lot with this season or any other old season that I’m blogging about. This means that, unless a new season is currently airing on TV, you typically won’t see Wednesday posts unless a Sunday post is missing. Although, there is a vacation I’ll be taking some time during the summer which might reinstate some Wednesday posts. Did you know that you can tell blogger to post a blog post at a future date instead of immediately? I’ve never done that yet, but I might try that out soon. I just need to write some random blog posts in the meantime. (I am aware of Caleb’s death and I will talk more about that in a later blog post.) But enough of my ramblings.

On 6-19-2014, I rolled Survivor again so I get to watch Pulling Your Own Weight. I also get to eat breakfast in the typical confusing way like on Thursdays during Lent. The Pagong tribe was feeling bad as usual. At the Tagi tribe, we see them using the parachute that they got at the last reward challenge that they ended up winning. Even though the parachute wasn’t actually a reward, they could still use it. I’m not sure that the parachute can still be used like that anymore. But that might be why that type of challenge doesn’t appear anymore. Although, you’d think that it might have been changed. Sue is looking for tapioca, although you wouldn’t think that it is important in any way. Jeff talked to Tagi about the challenge. Both tribes prepared for the reward challenge.

They call this challenge the first annual version of this challenge. I’m not sure if that’s exactly what it became, although I’d have to look up more information about the challenge. I think that the point of this is to get your weapons to hit various fruits and you would win the fruit that you can hit. The final round determined the challenge winner and ultimately, it was Pagong that won. The names of the chickens were given by Jenna or Colleen and they were named breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My aunt typically names her cows after the food she plans to turn them into. One time, their names were t-bone, sirloin, and hamburger. Tagi was still happy (for the most part) despite losing the reward challenge. The role of leader is debated at Pagong. Greg is considered the leader, although he doesn’t like the idea of doing that. Greg and Colleen typically are together when they sleep. Many people wonder if they are romantic or not. While they probably aren’t, they sure like to fool people with their behavior.

Richard talks about snakes, which is interesting because Sue would later famously compare him to a snake. Sean gives a bit TMI to the camera that they decided to put in the final edit. Am I glad that he had a bowel movement? I don’t know. I like it when people don’t talk about that sort of thing. People were concerned about health issues that Dirk might have. Richard considers his alliance and this is the first time they would all vote together in this episode. The choice is between Sean and Dirk. Unfortunately for Dirk, they would be voting out him in this episode. Tagi talks about how Gervase can’t swim. It’s widely debated if he can today or not. He seemed to do poorly in the first challenge of Blood versus Water, but he did better at a future water challenge. Greg randomly and meaninglessly burst out into song before the challenge started.

Since everyone knew that Gervase couldn’t swim, he was the one that was decided not to do the swimming part of the challenge. The challenge had a rower going out to rescue various people in the water. So it’s sort of like a water version of a previous challenge from this season. There wasn’t much talk before Tagi went to tribal council, which seems to be a common edit in this season. When we got to the vote, Sean voted for Rudy, Dirk voted for Sue, while Richard, Sue, Rudy, and Kelly all voted for Dirk. They kept the torches of all the eliminated contestants at tribal council, which I’m pretty sure isn’t done anymore. Typically, only certain quitters get their torches left at tribal nowadays. I think that Dirk might qualify as the first ever viewer blindside. This episode marks the first of only three times that Sean would vote with the minority this season. He would cast nine total votes in the game, ten if you count his jury vote, which was in the majority. The next Survivor would cause chaos at Pagong and get the wrong person voted out because of it. But, we’ll get to more of that later.

Dirk is a pretty interesting contestant. I don’t know what the odds of him returning are, but as usual, I will make something up. He was the first contestant to talk about God a lot so you have him to thank (or blame) for any other contestant to do that. He wasn’t really that stand out of a contestant outside of that. But I could see him returning to the game again. I give it a 66% chance that he will play the game again. I hope that he does, actually.

Total confessional counts: Gervase- 20, Jenna- 13, Sue- 16, Kelly- 14, Rudy- 15, Greg- 15, Gretchen- 14, Dirk- 9, Joel- 8, Sean- 14, Colleen- 10, Richard- 20.

New confessionals this episode: Richard- 3, Gervase- 3, Jenna- 4, Sue- 5, Kelly- 7, Rudy- 4, Greg- 3, Gretchen- 3, Dirk- 4, Joel- 2, Sean- 8, Colleen- 2.

It’s interesting how Kelly’s confessionals got doubled in a single episode. Now the only person left in the game without at least ten confessionals is Joel, which seems appropriate since she gets voted out in the next episode. If I’m counting right, Gervase and Richard are currently tied for the highest confessionals at the moment. But I remember that CBS tricked people into thinking that Gervase won so that might explain why they are given him this edit. Well, I’ll get started on writing the next episode’s blog post even though it will be a while before you see it. At least you can enjoy my TV blog in the meantime. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Episode 1.4

I’m already worried that I won’t be able to finish posting this season’s blog posts before the next season starts. I’m even more worried that people aren’t reading this blog. While I’ve always been sure that no one reads this, information on blogger tells me otherwise. When I said that I would be doing a look back, I began with a post that said to ignore this post. But most of what I said there was a joke. Basically, after reading something like that, I’d hope that people knew that they were in for something good. Only a great blog post would begin in such a crazy way. But I don’t think people understood that. Plus, that was only about that particular blog post and not any other ones regarding the first season. I told people that I would post during the summer too! So people should be reading this and maybe they are. This post could be old. But the point is, I hope that people read this or I do this blog for no good reason. Since that’s the point of blogs anyways, maybe I shouldn’t complain about that. I just find it odd that out of all the things that I’m rolling for, I only seem to get Survivor once a week. And I should probably be more surprised that people have read this blog then wondering why people would stop reading it.

My OCD kicks in a lot. The fact that I have a list of shows on DVD that I can only watch when I get a corresponding number on a die is proof of it. But I have to stick to the rolling list. On 6-12-2014, I rolled the number for Survivor. But, this roll was also for something else as well. So I didn’t actually watch the next episode when I rolled for it. But I will watch it, of course. I just don’t know when, yet. If you read my other blog relating to TV in general, you will notice a new blog post there with the corresponding dates mentioned here, provided that day was not a Wednesday or Sunday since that’s normally the time for this blog and yet another OCD rule of mine says I can’t update both blogs on the same day. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first part of the show, Pagong suffered from the storm during the night, but things improved when it became day. People liked Greg on the tribe and considered him the leader, even though Gretchen is like that too. I think that every episode this season has Jeff explaining the challenges for some odd reason. At the reward challenge, Jenna was the representative for Pagong and Dirk was the representative for Tagi. They get an explanation before the Distress Signal challenge. I’m surprised that this challenge isn’t still used in the show anymore, because it is one of the better challenges. Oh, and Sean was annoying some people at Tagi. In this season, it seems like being the leader isn’t a bad thing as it normally is today. This is the episode where Richard starts cheating, I mean, developing alliances in the game. That’s so commonplace in today’s game that you have to wonder why people thought such a thing would be cheating. But we’ll get to more of that later.

It seems like we are seeing very little of the actual challenge that the contestants are doing. In fact, it seems like barely anything important is actually being aired. Jeff, as usual, seems to be doing dangerous things whenever possible. How has he never gotten hurt doing stuff like this? Tagi won the reward challenge. Pagong seems only slightly disappointed that they lost the challenge. Richard’s alliance is already started and he gets a core group of four: himself, Rudy, Sue, and Kelly. Well, at first it didn’t actually have Rudy, but he would join later. Ramona seems to be getting better along with her tribe and she feels healthier, but, as some of her tribe mates put it, it might be too little too late. In fact, the name of this episode (Too Little Too Late?) might have been referring to Ramona since she gets voted out once Pagong loses. A bunch of confessionals all air at once, which is hard for me to keep track of. But, like I’ve stated during every season which I’m kept track of confessionals, I don’t know if they are accurate or not. The immunity challenge is a rally of some sort. I’m not sure if it’s the type of thing that still appears, although it should. Different contestants do different parts of the challenge. Only the contestants are making noise during the challenge which makes you wonder why Jeff feels the need to talk a lot during the challenges of today.

Gervase was probably the reason that Pagong lost the challenge since he failed and the jungle part of the race. I’m not sure that it mattered anyways. Pagong reflected on the loss of the challenge. Not much (if any) strategy was shown among the tribe before they got to tribal council. The tribe seemed to like each other too much at Pagong, although that didn’t prevent them from voting someone off (although they didn’t really have a choice in the matter anyways). Jeff feels that Gervase isn’t doing that well in the challenges. In the end, the votes were scattered. Gervase and Ramona voted for Colleen. Greg voted for Jenna. Colleen, Gretchen, Jenna, and Joel voted for Ramona and that’s how she was voted out of the game. In the end, her overall not coping with the game is what got her voted out. This is the first tribal council where only women got votes against them. I’m not sure how often this has happened again. But it seems sort of sad that this fits into the weakest part of the tribe edit, the whole only women getting votes against them thing.

What happens on the next Survivor? Greg and Colleen start their showmance in ways we don’t typically see. Well, they said that they had sex, but they probably didn’t. And we’ll probably never know since they definitely wouldn’t show us something like that on network TV. Greg will joke about this later in his exit confessional. I don’t think that they did. I’m pretty sure that Colleen was just joking about her and Greg hooking up on the island. But I’m not sure that I care anyways.

So, Ramona was an interesting player in the game. She may not be the only player to not like the conditions in the game, although she was the first to be notably negatively affected by it. I don’t think that she liked the game that much. But I don’t know if she’d ever return to the game. She might since this was a long time ago. She might not since she didn’t like it. I give it about a 40% chance that she will return to the game again. Maybe it should be lower, but I think that I’ll stick with it at the moment. I’m not sure what she’s doing nowadays, because like many other players, she seemed to disappear from the world after she played. She’s still alive, of course, but she isn’t that notable outside of this part of the game.

Total confessional counts: Gretchen- 11, Dirk- 5, Joel- 6, Sean- 6, Ramona- 11, Colleen- 8, Richard- 17, Gervase- 17, Jenna- 9, Sue- 11, Kelly- 7, Rudy- 11, Greg- 12.

New confessionals this episode: Greg- 6, Gretchen- 3, Dirk- 2, Joel- 2, Sean- 1, Ramona- 3, Colleen- 3, Richard- 3, Gervase- 8, Jenna- 5, Sue- 3, Kelly- 1, Rudy- 1.

So, Gervase is catching up in confessionals for the moment, but I don’t think that I counted him right. Ramona got more than ten confessionals throughout the game, but it helped that she was voted out in this episode. I don’t know what prejury boot had more than ten confessionals altogether in an episode that they weren’t voted out in. If it has happened, it hasn’t happened yet. Gretchen is technically prejury, although she does make the merge. I don’t know if Dirk or Joel will make it in the next two episodes, but prejury boots tend to not be shown as much, with some exceptions, of course. Meanwhile, I should stick to calling them premerge boots so autocorrect doesn’t think I’m talking about a crime people commit in court (perjury). But it doesn’t matter anyways, even though there’s a person who typically makes the merge but not the jury in these old seasons. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.