"Survivor"
Posted April 6th, 2006 by RD Heldenfels
I've figured that some of you reading this blog are out west, and maybe even taking a peek here at night to see how shows turn out before you watch them. But I heard from one reader — the comment is with the "Amazing Race" post below — who did not like me giving away the results on that show in the headline, where it was impossible to avoid.
That was a bit of a surprise, since I had been giving away info about other reality competitions in headlines for some time, without complaints coming in. So I'm curious if that matters to the rest of you. Feel free to post a comment with this post.
Anyway, for the sake of this "Survivor," I'm dropping the result down here in the text. The latest victim is Austin, and his ouster is revealing a fatal flaw in Terry's strategy.
Terry is proving really lousy at building alliances. The members of his old tribe are being picked off while apparently leaving him no protection if and when he has given up the immunity idol and lost regular immunity. (He won regular immunity again tonight.) I say "apparently" because we never know what's being left out in the editing — a secret alliance between Terry and some of his supposed rivals, say? But based on what we're seeing, he keeps trying to flip people who don't flip.
In tonight's show he tried to take advantage of his extra immunity, offering it to Danielle as an inducement to get her and Bruce to join his shrinking alliance. There was also a hint that Danielle, Ciri and Courtney were considering breaking off from their alliance, because they wanted to get rid of Austin while Aras had other ideas.
After much maneuvering, the end result was that no one flipped, with the Gang Of Six forming a solid bloc for Austin's removal — and the Three Amigos (Terry, Austin, Sally) are now Two Bad. I wrote last week that Terry could have made several different strategic moves that would have worked better than what he did, and he had one of those opportunities again this week — lose immunity at the end of the challenge to draw the Six into the trap of trying to vote him off. But, again, he didn't try it. As I said, he's proving a lousy tactician.
Speaking of lousy, tonight had one of the lamest rewards ever: breakfast in bed, only the bed was soaking wet from sitting out during a rainstorm. On the other hand, we got another example of the show's perversely adolescent sense of humor in the reward challenge. Let me put it this way: It involves coconuts. And underdressed women carrying coconuts. Many giggles should ensue.
