My Exercise In Futility

With this season’s edition of Survivor focusing on Heroes and Villains, I realized how many seasons of Survivor I have missed for one reason or another. I can remember watching most of the first season of Survivor. Richard Hatch made great TV. I then remember watching the premiere of Season 2 of Survivor after the Superbowl. I was instantly enamored with Colby. He was physically attractive and seemed quite friendly in that first episode, the only episode I ever watched of Season 2. After that, Survivor fell of my TV map for many years; the next season I remember had Sugar on it or when JT won, or are those the same season – I don’t remember.

Curious to learn more about this season’s players and with an abundance of television time available to me, I thought it might be fun to revisit previous seasons of survivor. To date, you can purchase previous versions of Survivor from iTunes for as little as $8.99. They have seasons dating all the way back to Season 9 – Vanuatu. For me, that was as good a place as any to start.

While I won’t bore you with a play by play of each season, but I’m sure my I’ll have some entries over the next couple of weeks about the different strategies or specific things I liked or disliked about these older versions of Survivor. I’ve made it through Season 9 – Vanuatul; Season 10 – Palau; Season 11 – Guatemala; and I’m currently on episode 3 of Season 12 – Panama. I’ll get back to Season 12 – Panama in a moment. Let me just make a few comments about seasons 9 – 11, even if they are 4 or 5 years too late.

Season 9 – Vanuatul had great challenges. This was a fun season to watch.

Season 10 – Palau had some interesting characters on it. I fell in love with Stephanie. I thought she was a hard worker, a competitive person, and she should have gone much further than she did. I can see why she was, at the time, one of the most popular players of the game. I was very disappointed that Tom won the million dollar prize in this season.

Season 11 – I can’t tell you how excited I was to see Stephanie return to this season. I was very happy she made it to the final two. This season played out quite well. I do think that Cindy should have given up her 1 car so the other 4 could have had cars. I don’t know that this would have escalated her to the final two, but I think it would have been a smart move and good for life long karma. I also wish I would have seen this season as it aired - Cindy was from Naples, FL where I grew up. I found this out only yesterday. It just would have been nice to route for somebody from your own hometown.

Now, the main catalyst for this entry has been some of the changes to the game made in Season 12 – Panama. I like how the season started off separated into four tribes – older men; older women; young men; young women. I also like the concept of Exile Island and a hidden immunity idol, a feature I definitely remember in seasons to come.

My all-time favorite change to the game so far is that in this season of Survivor, the hidden immunity idol can be used AFTER the votes have been read. This is definitely a mind blowing change to the game. Personally, ever since I’ve known of hidden immunity idols in the future seasons, I always thought that this is how immunity idols SHOULD be played. Let the players cast their votes and then play any idols! The next highest voted person is then eliminated. I love this concept. I am only on episode 3 of season 12, so will see how it actually plays out.

One other thing that has impressed me about season 12 so far one of the four person alliances that has formed during episode 2. Of the Casaya tribe, Shane, Courtney, Daniel and Aras formed an alliance of four. Aras made the alliance very public and started informing the other players about the alliance and of the supposed order in which the others would be forced to leave. I personally think this is a pretty good strategy – provided everyone is on board with the alliance being public. The mistake that Aras made was that he blabbed his mouth without first telling anyone he was doing so. It made a lot of other people uncomfortable, and I feel that alone with be the demise of this alliance.  We’ll have to wait and see.

What I hate about the the entry I just wrote is that I was trying to provide hyperlinks to some of the players from season 12 and I’ve stumbled on a spoiler indicating who won already. It sucks, because I didn’t know who won this season until now – but it will still be fun to see how it plays out. I suppose for my future Survivor – Seasons Past entries, I’ll have to take good viewing notes and make hyperlinks later.

*WARNING – the last paragraph states who was eliminated from the race. If you do not want to know, don’t read the last paragraph.

After watching episode 3 of The Amazing Race today, I am cheering for cowboy brothers Jet and Cord (hereby dubbed Team Cowboy) to win the race. Hopefully I’m not jinxing them publicly stating my support. Aside from their obvious likability factor, I think they are able to read people pretty well – I believe their disdain for Team Lesbian, Carol and Brandy, is shared by many of the viewers as well.

Episode 3 was pretty tame in comparison to the previous week. Nobody was kicked in the head by a farm animal. The challenges didn’t even involve any interaction with animals this week. I wonder if this was what was originally planned or more of a ‘lessons learned’ afterthought. I’m sure the producers and their insurance carrier must have been pretty concerned about the number of animal related injuries from last week.

But this week’s episode was not without health related drama. Team Model, Brent and Caite, began the show with a trip to the ER from what was supposedly dehydration or food poisoning, it was never clearly stated. I think the ER doctors should have checked their knuckles for bruising, as their fatigue may have been more ‘forced vomiting’ induced than dehydration. We all know how the models keep the weight off, right? (I’m just sayin’!)

Despite their constant calls to Jesus, I was sad to see Team Mommy, Monique and Shawn, eliminated from the race. They seemed like a good team that was communicating and encouraging each other well. I thought they would have made it further than episode 3.

Rather than focus on the negatives, I’ve tried to create a video blog entry about the positives. Winter Party is only 5 days away, I’ll be home (for good) soon, and I’ve caught up on my reality TV.