Survivor: Nicaragua, week four

I just want this to be perfectly clear: Brenda and Chase are going to blindside Naonka. This won’t be hard to do, since there are at least three other players in line waiting to vote her off, and Naonka is too dim to realize when she’s being lied to. This is going to happen, and Naonka will be too self-absorbed and too confident to play her idol. Then, after she leaves the game, her greatest accomplishment will have been pushing over a one-legged girl.

This probably will not bother her. She seems to really love bragging about it.

I almost like Marty. I like his demeanor, and his attitude. I like that he keeps a cool head around camp, but isn’t afraid to really twist the knife at tribal council. I like that he sees the game as a game. It’s just… he’s not good. I feel like I’m watching a guy who knows how to play chess, and who loves to play chess, and loves to analyze chess… lose a game of chess. I’m sorry, but when you carry yourself in the same manner as Survivor greats as Russel, Yul or Boston Rob, and the pinnacle of your strategy is “this is a game about numbers”, there is a cylinder somewhere that’s not firing.

The preschoolers used their magic necklace… not that they needed it. Their advantage was starting the challenge with two points out of ten, but they went on to win by, like, three or four points. It was a massacre.

Before a challenge, Survivor tradition is for each tribe to receive tree-mail with tantalizing clues about what the challenge is, without outright telling them. Usually these little clues are too vague to be useful, but this week they were given a blindfold. Ah, the tried-and-true bumpin’-into-shit challenge. A personal favorite!

The oldies had the right idea here: they picked the loudest guy to be their caller, and they practiced taking orders on the beach. I really love the simple notation they came up with. If you’re blindfolded, and you hear “Jimmy! Right! Three!” you immediately know you need to take three steps to the right. They seemed like they had a good handle on it, right up until they got into the actual challenge. Then they fell apart.

This was not a challenge the young tribe had an advantage in, aside from their use of the idol. Athleticism doesn’t come into play in a game like this one. All you have to do is follow good instructions, and Tyrone was giving good instructions. None of this stopped Jimmy T. and his partner from wandering in circles for ten minutes while everyone else was scoring points.

After the challenge Jimmy blamed his poor performance on not being able to hear Tyrone. Which, you know, if you couldn’t hear Tyrone out there, something is seriously wrong. He then proceeded to give several speeches about how he wants the opportunity to lead, even though he doesn’t think he could have done better and doesn’t know what he would have done differently. He wants to drive, except he doesn’t know the course. Or where his keys are. Or what a car is.

So the oldies were in a rough spot: they have one guy who can neither lead nor follow, and another who has a bum knee and is afraid of mud. Which person do you want gone: the liability or the liability? In the end they decided to nix the loudmouth. I was pretty tired of hearing Jimmy T. talk about how great a leader Jimmy T. is, so I didn’t watch his closing remarks. No doubt he mentioned that his tribe was in the wrong for not ever giving him a chance, presumably because none of them were Jimmy T. fans.

Who’s gonna win? I still like Brenda and Jill… but I must continue to stress that they’re only out in front because nobody else knows what show they’re on. Peanut says she saw everyone getting new buffs in the preview for the next episode. It’s too early to merge, so I’m guessing it’s a tribal shuffle. Tribal shuffles are the absolute lowest form of game twist, but at this point I’m starving for anything that will mix these stale assholes up a bit.