Survivor: Redemption Island (episode six)

Survivor: Redemption Island

First off, I should apologize. I usually take notes during the episode so I remember what to cover in these write-ups. I didn’t do that this time, but the episode on the whole wasn’t super-exciting so maybe it won’t matter very much.

I suppose I should also apologize for being two weeks behind. My bad. But certainly you weren’t expecting more from me!

At Redemption Island, it is revealed that Krista is every bit the God Warrior Matt is, and they two of them have a big ol’ Jesus orgy right there on the beach. Both of them sincerely feel they are there because of God’s will, and ask Him to help them advance in the game, because everyone knows God is concerned about white privileged Americans on a glorified month-long vacation in a world where there are cancer patients and earthquake victims.

That’s not what I want to talk about though. Krista, then. A Jesus freak? I bet that took a lot of people by surprise, considering she is one of “Russell’s girls”. After all, why would a good, moral, Christian girl side with the vile, evil, Satanic king of lies? Well, because she understands what so few Survivor players do: Survivor is not real life. You can be one person in the game, and one person out of it. You can live a virtuous, charitable life back home and still go into Survivor cutting throats and stabbing backs.

I mean, it didn’t help her get anywhere in the game. Krista still got voted out, and still got smoked by Matt at the redemption duel. But I do like to see players who can separate strategy and emotion.

You know who can’t do that? Steve. Zapatera is melting down, and he doesn’t even care. He is so focused on who he can trust that he’s not focusing on playing the game. Dave told him at one point, “Right now we need to win. Trust comes later. It doesn’t matter if we can trust each other if we don’t have the numbers.”

I’ll spoil the ending now: nobody listened to Dave. The choice was to vote for strength in challenges or to vote for trust, and Zapatera voted for trust. So the fiesty Stephanie (Russell’s other girl) went home, while the weak and useless Sarita stayed in the game. If Zapatera loses their next immunity challenge, it’s not going to matter how much they trust Sarita, because they’ll be forced to vote her out anyway.

Or maybe not. You know who sucks goat ass at challenges? Ralph. I mean, are you watching this guy? The challenge was: one person (Stephanie) used a giant slingshot to lob balls into the playfield, where competitors from both tribes were paired off to catch them. Catch a ball, win a point. Ometepe won this challenge in a complete blowout; Grant and Rob caught every single ball. At tribal council, when Jeff asked about it, Ralph had the audacity to say “We would have done better if I’d been shooting.”

Ralph is an idiot. A blind idiot. Stephanie’s throws were perfect. Every ball she launched went directly to Ralph. The issue was, Boston Rob was right there nabbing them out from in front of his fat, stupid redneck face. What was Stephanie supposed to do? Aim directly at Rob and hope to knock him unconscious? Telepathically communicate with Ralph and then launch in some pre-determined direction Rob could not have known about? He sucked ass at the previous challenge too, where Stephanie was trying to call out to her blind tribemates, and was drowned out by his constant yelling.

In his fervor to eliminate Stephanie from the game, Ralph has been inadvertently sabotaging his own challenges.

So Steve is stupid, and Ralph is stupid, and Sarita is useless. Zapatera knows there’s another tribe in this game, right? The orange tribe? The one with Rob on it? Do they have even the beginnings of a plan with how to deal with that tribe in a post-merge game?

Not a lot happened over on Ometepe. Rob put the lid back on a Phillip blow-up. The girls manicured each other and had headaches. There was a little dance over the immunity clue. And, of course, they whipped ass in the challenge. What else can I say? At least a few of these people are here to play.

Who’s gonna win? Boston Rob. Or, if not, certainly one of his tribemates. Zapatera is done.

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