Survivor One World Recap: “I’m Completely Bum-Puzzled Right Now”

The teaser from CBS for tonight’s episode stated “The battle of the sexes continues, and for the first time, a play will be made that will change the game forever!” Would Colton continue to be the ringleader of the Misfit Alliance? Can Salani continue their winning streak? And why am I writing a recap on my birthday? (Answer: because I love my readers!)

My Random Thoughts:

- Previously on…Survivor: the men dominated the game for the first 5 days, but the women are on a roll after winning the last two challenges. On Salani, Alicia and Christina don’t like each other, and the Misfits booted Matt last week. And don’t forget that Colton called Bill “Ghetto trash.”

- Night Vision recap: Michael thinks “the old guy, the little guy and the gay guy” are stupid for voting out a strong guy. Tarzan Greg is preaching to Troyzan Troy, and says that their alliance of 5 is solid, and despite Mike being “so peripheral he has no clue” (what the hell does that mean??), Bill is next on the chopping block, despite his charm and “beguiling character.” Oh yeah…and Leif sleeps in a box.

- The next day, while the women prepared a morning snack of boiled snails, and talked about how they weren’t struggling for food, the men strolled over and proposed a deal. Jonas asked about their fishing net, and the women said they haven’t had any success. The sushi chef then pointed out that he knows how to use a net properly (because he’s Hawaiian, you see), and suggested that the women let them use the net so that he can catch some fish…and in return, the men would give them half of the fish.

Chelsea wasn’t interested in the least, saying that she “doesn’t want to sound like a cold-hearted bitch,” but it’s a bad idea to feed the enemy. Jonas went on and on proclaiming he was fine with them not agreeing to it, but you could see they didn’t believe him.

Personally, I don’t understand why the women wouldn’t agree to the deal. You do nothing, you get half a catch of fish…and this is the important part…that you wouldn’t otherwise have, because you don’t know how to catch fish with the net. Maybe if the men were starving, I could understand it, but there was nothing to tell us that they were hard up for food to begin with, so I don’t see the point here.

And here’s the interesting part…I’ve been getting the promotional photos from CBS prior to each episode, and in the last two weeks, there have been not one, not two, but THREE photos of Jonas with the fishing equipment, including one of him with the net…and with Matt, who was voted off before that scene! (see one of them below) Either they made the deal and edited to look like it was nixed…or something else is going on. Something smells fishy, and it’s not just that net.

- The Reward challenge gave me goosebumps on the opening overhead shot, because I thought we were going to get to see a combination of two challenge themes from the past two season: coconuts and tiles. But alas, they weren’t tiles, they were planks. I guess Mark Burnett left all of the excess tiles in Nicaragua, but coconuts are always easy to come by.

The challenge was some good old-fashioned coconut-chucking at a giant 5x5 board, and the first team to get a Bingo would win the reward, which was a choice between Comfort (pillows, blankets, and a mattress), Protection (a tarp), and Luxury (coffee and donuts).

Bill sat out, Jay’s jaw dropped at the sight of donuts, Kat trash talked after hitting their first “tile”, Greg kept calling Jonas “Jason”, and the Survivor production team used a nifty graphic and sound effects to show us the progress on the board…because I guess they think we can’t tell from the GIANT HOLES on a wooden wall.

In the end, the women won (their 3rd challenge in a row), and chose the tarp as their reward. Greg was a poor sport both at the challenge and back at camp, branding the Salani win as ‘lucky.’

- While chatting on the beach, Leif let it slip to Bill that he was initially Colton’s target before the plan shifted to Matt before the last Tribal Council. “Bill Posley just got wowed”, he shared with us, as he was visibly shocked.

Upon hearing that Leif spilled the beans, Colton launched into more of his rehearsed faux rants, saying “that little Munchkin is about to get knocked back to Oz”, and “he’s turning into an annoying little Oompa Loompa.” He then called for Leif, as if he was some sort of regal being that requested the presence of one of their loyal subjects. Either that, or the Godfather? Or maybe Rob Mariano.

How arrogant and obnoxious was Colton in this scene? It was almost unbearable to watch as he browbeated Leif about what he said to Bill, over-dramatizing everything for the cameras and telling him that he sealed his fate and picked the wrong side. If you would have told me that I was going to be watching a scene with a small man wearing a panama hat talking to a Tribemate, and one of them was painfully arrogant…I would have bet my house that we would have been talking about Russell Hantz.

- The hint for the Immunity Challenge came in the form of a Tree Mail Puzzle, and the women quickly surmised that they would be working in pairs to solve a puzzle. Kat immediately pointed out that she needed a good partner since she wasn’t good at puzzles (hey, at least she’s a realist!), and when Alicia volunteered, Kat was less than impressed.

Kat said that Alicia wasn’t good at puzzles, so they shouldn’t be partners, and Alicia immediately got all fired up, pointing out that she just “threw that shit together”, talking about the Tree Mail Puzzle. I’d like to point out that the Tree Mail puzzle was only 6 pieces, so it wasn’t really that impressive of a task. When two-thirds of your puzzle are corner pieces, rest assured that a blind monkey could get it done relatively quickly.

I’m not saying that Alicia shouldn’t have been offended. On the contrary, I agree with her. But when the dumbest person on the Tribe is essentially calling you dumb, then it’s a bit of a blow.

- The Immunity Challenge was a 3-armed race, where the pairs (tied together at the wrist) would have to walk across a teeter-totter and then solve a puzzle to get a key. After doing this three times, they would have to use the three keys to unlock three locks and raise their Tribe Flag.

This challenge wasn’t even close, as the men cruised to a victory. We were made to believe that it was due to Alicia and Chelsea struggling at the first puzzle, but I think the men had this one in the bag anyways based on how quickly they did each puzzle.

But the big thing that came out of this was the fact that when the women couldn’t solve their own puzzle, they did exactly what they did last week, and simply tried to copy from the men’s puzzle. I can’t understand how the producers are allowing this to happen. It’s so blatant and brazen, and is an insult to the spirit of the game. Either the puzzles have to be different, or there needs to be a visual barrier between the two Tribes to prevent something like this from happening constantly.

After the men received the Immunity Idol, you would have assumed it was time for the Tribes to head back to camp, as they normally would. Nope…not this week. Not until our favourite Blue-Shirted host decided to dish out a verbal bitch-slapping to Salani, saying that it “barely qualified as a challenge.” He then turned his attention squarely on Alicia, who was nervously laughing at their defeat, and went on to point out that she was hopeless at solving the puzzle even AFTER LOOKING at the completed Manono puzzle.

- Back at the camp, Alicia pitched her case for her and Chelsea to both stay, saying they have been great at the other challenges, but Sabrina says that “Alicia is just dead weight with a mouth” and she wants Alicia gone. Kim says she’s not on board with that plan and still wants to vote out Christina.

- Over on the men’s side of camp, Bill wants to talk to Colton in an attempt to clear the air, so he approaches him and says “I just want to squash some beef between the two of us.” (Now, normally I wouldn’t take such an easy opportunity as this one, but after Colton’s reprehensible behaviour and comments the past two weeks, I feel I can go down this road.) Clearly, this is NOT first time that Colton has been asked to squash some beef between two men.

Instead of talking like two adults, Colton instead had another one of his toddler-like tantrums, saying “I don’t want to talk, I just want to lay here, I don’t want to think about this game.” And as he lounged there like Colton-patra, with his hands over his head in the shade, he showed his immaturity by not listening and just ranting to Bill, “You’re going home next so it really doesn’t matter. Bye!”

He then went to the rest of his Tribe to complain about Bill, and proposed a ridiculous plan: to approach the Salani Tribe and give them Immunity so that Manono would voluntarily go to Tribal Council and vote Bill out.

Um….what?

We’ve seen individuals give up Immunity, and we’ve even seen Tribes throw challenges to be sent to Tribal Council, but never in 24 seasons have we seen (or even heard of) a Tribe giving up Tribal Immunity after they had won it. (By the way, did you notice that Jason…I mean, Jonas…was holding the fishing net in this scene? No deal, my ass.)

I can’t understand why the rest of the Tribe would agree to this ridiculous plan, even though they gave some absurd logic that since Colton was calling the shots, they had to go along with it. Jason/Jonas even asked “What am I going to say? No?” HELL YES YOU SAY ‘NO!”

So the Tribal Pow-Wow was called and Tarzan Greg preached to Leif about what he had done. He told him “You should not have done that. That was bad.” Hey Greg, just because he’s that small doesn’t mean you have to talk to him like a child. Jay summed up what we were all feeling when he said “I’m completely bum-puzzled right now.” (I won’t make a Colton joke on that one.)

- The look on Jeff Probst’s face as the Manono Tribe entered Tribal Council was priceless. After his jaw dropping and head-shaking he pointed out that in 24 seasons and over 400 Tribal Councils, he had never seen a Tribe give up Immunity. Now, I am going to take umbrage with the “400 Tribal Councils” comment, because well over half of those were after the merge, and therefore there was no Tribal Immunity anyways, but the point is still valid, albeit exaggerated for effect.

- Other than a bad act by Leif, and a political rant by Greg, Tribal Council was pretty much just Colton and Bill talking about each other. Colton explained why he didn’t like Bill, saying that it was because he was loud, obnoxious, and a struggling stand-up comic. He channeled his inner Mean Girl when he said “It’s, like, ‘Get a real job’!”

We learned that Bill grew up poor while Colton had the Country Club lifestyle, attending a private all-white school in Alabama. When the topic of race came up, this shockingly ignorant exchange took place:

Colton: “I do have, like, African-American people in my life”
Probst: “Who?”
Colton: (pause) “My housekeeper.”

What made this even more offensive, was the flippant laugh from Colton as he said it, as if he knew how ridiculous his answer made him look, but he didn’t care. He went on about Bill, “I don’t associate with people like that in the real world, and I’m sure as hell not going to associate with people like that out here”

The “Let’s Vote Out Leif” ruse was poorly executed, and it was obvious to me that Bill was going home…and it was unanimous among the other 7 Tribe Members. Why else would Leif agree to the deal to give Immunity away? Even if you know you’re next to go, take your shot with winning Tribal Immunity until the merge, or maybe there is a twist on the horizon. It didn’t make sense.

- I was hoping that the rest of the Tribe would see what a golden opportunity this would have been to get rid of Colton and unite as a Strong Seven. He never would have played the Idol, and it could have been the greatest blindside in Survivor history.

- Please note that next week (March 14) I will be away on vacation, and unable to watch the show. I will get a recap up once I return on March 20th.

Next Week: A Tribal Switch Up?

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