Oh Jeff Probst, how I have missed you, you little trickster. When we first see the teams they are randomly divided as they make a quick trek through the jungle (“There’s no fences like at the zoo!” says Jud) to their beach destination. Jeff warmly greets them, with that Emmy-eating grin, asking how they’ve gelled as teammates. Oh yes, yes, they say. This is my team!, they say. Then just like that Jeff shatters their world and reveals that anyone over 40 is on one side and the under 30s on another. Gasps are heard, some of horror, some of relief.
Youngster Jud (dubbed Fabio, and an idiot, by his own tribe) is clearly the Erik from Samoa of this season. Kelly B. revealed she has a false leg (from a childhood birth defect) and almost immediately team confessionals break out the ‘I know how this sounds, but if she makes it to the end…sympathy vote. I want her gone.’ Ouch. Oh, and Super Bowl winning coach Jimmy Johnson is on board, to the chagrin of much of his own tribe, Team AARP. He goes out of his way to emphasize that no jury will award him a million dollars and that he just wants to help his team. That may be true, or it may be a genius ploy (as Jimmy T. points out) that if he plays well enough to get himself into the final, that will be respected enough to win. It’s certainly happened before to many a disliked player.
Can we talk about the MEDALLION OF POWER for a second? Now, it’s important that it’s in all caps like because one has to imagine that it’s being echoed from a lofty mountaintop during an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The MEDALLION OF POWER is a tricky mistress; one that, once used, goes to the other team. It’s basically the drunk girl at the college party in a room full of slobbering frat boys. Team Youngster won the quickie challenge to find the MEDALLION OF POWER and had to decide whether to keep it or give it to the older team in a trade for flint and fishing equipment. They wisely chose the fishing tackle, knowing the importance of food and fire in those first crucial days.
It’s always been a funny thing in the past that CBS goes blur-crazy when it comes to things like butt cracks or a potential pube shot of the survivors, but this season is going really below the belt. Pretty quickly on, the younger tribe guys are all stripped down to their boxer briefs and I guess there was a little too much, ‘guess what religion I am?’ going on downstairs that sent the trigger-happy censor fingers into a tailspin. Every time we saw a young guy we were immediately drawn to his crotch and the giant blur that seemed stuck on him like a barnacle.
The first immunity challenge is yet again a series of fill this bucket, solve this series of puzzle pieces. After 21 seasons and hundreds of challenges I’m sure it gets difficult to think up more diverse or creative challenges but if I never have to see another puzzle on this show it’ll be too soon. That said, it is always interesting when a puzzle challenge is cause for total team disintegration after a commanding lead. That wasn’t the case here, each team was pretty neck and neck for the most part but Team Youngster came out the winner. Team AARP had chosen not to use the MEDALLION OF POWER, which would have given them a big leg up in this challenge and probably secured their win.
In the worst, and fastest, case of foot in mouth disease possible, goat farmer Wendy darling sealed her fate with a bizarre and desperate plea for continuance in the game during tribal council going so far as to interrupt Jeff as he called for the vote to further dig her own grave, all with a chittering, chattering smile that was more than a little scary. Like, hide the machete while you sleep scary. Granted, her fate was sealed much earlier when she said her own husband predicted she’d be the first sent home, although it might have also been the fringe cowgirl shirt. And with that, she was gone, her torch snuffed out and sent into the night, wandering through a Nicaraguan cemetery, probably looking for a little goat friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment