Hey, I’m back. It’s been a hot minute. Is anyone reading
this? Probably not, but I’m gonna talk anyways. I’ve been thinking, and yeah, I
think it’s time I got this blog back into the swing of things. Some stuff’s
gonna be different, but some old things are coming back too. So, how about we
get started with a good old fashioned Survivor
article?
It’s that time of year again, where 20 people follow Jeff
Probst out into the wilderness to starve and strain their bodies for 39 days in
hopes of walking home with a bit of cash. It’s no secret that I love everything
about this show, and hey, now that Canadians are eligible to participate, maybe
someday I’ll get to test my skills.
But we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about
Survivor: David vs Goliath, dang it!
I’m not a huge fan of “vs” themed seasons, unless the theme
really works. I really enjoyed Millennials
vs. Gen X because of how well the age theme worked in the interactions
between the members of the two tribes, giving us great moments like Bret coming
out as gay to Zeke. On the other hand, it’s hard not to agree that Heroes v. Healers v. Hustlers was a
mess, with an extremely flimsy theme that was thrown away like mouldy toast the
second the merge hit.
The idea of David vs.
Goliath is a much easier to grasp concept than the confusing HvHvH (remind me how Joe the probation
officer wound up in the Healer tribe?), but there’s definitely the concern that
the ultra-powerful Goliath tribe will dominate the Davids in the early game. I
mean, look at them! They’ve got the Mayor of Slamtown on their side! How can
they possibly lose?
That question was answered in the first challenge of the
season. After the Goliath tribe chose their two strongest members and who they
thought the two weakest David members were, the Davids were allowed to choose
between different obstacles to make courses for both themselves and the
Goliaths. Of course the Davids built themselves the easiest course possible,
made even easier by Christian’s apparent mastery of slide puzzles, giving them
an early win.
One thing interesting about this premiere is that, thanks to
the extra half hour of runtime, everyone got at least one confessional and a
quick moment in the sun. While screentime still wasn’t doled out equally (since
he broke his NDA, Alec is our purple contestant of the season, mark my words), it
was still nice to get introduced to pretty much everybody on our first day.
Over on the David tribe, Pat quickly put his skills as a maintenance
manager to the test as he put himself in charge of building the shelter. He
definitely made the mistake of rubbing the tribe the wrong way with some
borderline offensive comments and excessive yelling, but it was hard to deny
that some of the stuff the guy was doing was really impressive. Seriously, him
going up that tree just to take down a branch? Awesome.
Meanwhile, chaos engulfed the Goliath tribe, as the reverse
happened while they were building their shelter. Their oldest player, Natalie,
felt that the best decision for her game was to stand back, watch, and complain
while the rest of the tribe built the shelter for her. I’ve said many times
before about many subjects that nothing is more important than a first impression,
and the same is true for your Survivor game.
Once you get off that boat, you immediately have to start working on getting
people to like you. If people don’t like you, you might as well not even bother
unpacking your bag. Judging by next week’s preview, it looks to me like poor
Natalie isn’t making the merge.
Also on the Goliath tribe is former Amazing Race contestant and writer of The Emoji Movie (that is not a joke, look it up) Mike White. Mike
decided that the best use of his time was to run off into the jungle in search
of a hidden immunity idol on Day 1, yet another rookie mistake that we’ve seen
time and time again. At this, everyone promptly decided that if Mike was
looking for the idol, they should do the same, and that led to a montage of
everyone checking under every nook and cranny in the camp. Angelina and Alison
teamed up, hoping to break the trend of HIIs being mostly found by men, Mike
realized he was committed to trying to find it at this point and kept going,
and even Natalie got off her high horse for a second to join the hunt. In the
end the idol was found by police officer Dan in a surprising edit that told us
he had it before it showed us.
After a brutal challenge taking place in the middle of a
typhoon resulting in a win for the Goliaths, the Davids prepared to go to
Tribal…or at least, that was the plan. A rocky boat ride home proved to be too
much for Pat, smashing up his back bad enough to take him out of the game.
While medevacs are an unfortunate reality of Survivor, it’s always a real shame when one happens, because losing
a potential vote-off because somebody couldn’t keep going is no fun for anyone.
This one was especially hard to watch as Pat begged and pleaded to be kept in
the game, but the damage was done. The good news is that Pat left enough of an
impact on his first appearance to justify maybe seeing him again at some point
in the future, but as it is right now it was a real downer ending to a pretty
strong season premiere.
Okay, now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Who’s
gonna win? Well, first thing’s first. It ain’t Alec. He hasn’t even been
invited to the reunion because he broke the NDA.
It’s always hard to tell on the first episode because a lot
of the time the editors tend to focus hard on big personalities that don’t
stick around very long in the pre-merge. Case in point, both Pat and last
season’s Jacob didn’t make it out of Episode 1, yet were both given a lot of
screentime because the editors knew we weren’t going to see them again.
My pre-merge pick to win it all was Alison, but she didn’t
have a lot of screentime today, instead working as a partner to the much more prominent
Angelina. I can also see the Mayor of Slamtown going decently far, at least to
the merge. He seems likable enough and it’s always good to have a strong
challenge beast on your tribe. As for Mike, he has the advantage of being a
sort of David on the Goliath tribe, meaning that so long as he doesn’t drag
them down he could fly under the radar for the time being. Last but not least,
I don’t think Dan’s going too far. The fact that he’s already trying to build a
showmance and align himself with all the pretty girls on his tribe means that
he’s an easy target for a blindside, even with a HII.
Meanwhile on the David tribe, we have a lot of strong alignments.
The nerd team-up of Christian and Gabby looks like a lot of fun, and Christian
already proved himself to be exceptionally good at puzzles, the most crucial part
of Survivor challenges. I’m also
really interested in Lyrsa, who seems like she’s already putting the work in to
make strong alliances. Unfortunately, judging by the Next Week promo it looks
like she’s already in danger, which is never a good sign. I also really enjoyed
Davie the David, who’s octopus-catching adventures were a lot of fun. I’ll need
to see his strategic side before I can commit to him, but I’d like to
see more.
So I think, for now at least, I’ll be sticking with Alison.
While we didn’t see much of her just yet, the fact that she was singled out in
the opening is a good sign, and a close alignment with one of the more
prominent players on her tribe is always nice.
I’ll probably be doing more of these than my usual three, so
keep checking back for more!
