Tandang: the Joy of Secrets

Kalabaw has Jeff hiding his fame, and Matsing has Malcolm hiding his education... but that has nothing on Tandang's tribe of charlatans.  Lisa and Pete have the secret fame and education covered, RC's lying about her career, Abi's fibbing about her age, and I'm pretty sure that Artis is concealing his history of cancer.  Skupin's the only one who is being open about who he is, and he doesn't have any choice in the matter!

Of course, out of all the tribes, Tandang is probably the most eager to play.  Artis has been applying since season one, Lisa and RC have been avid fans since then and Michael's been wanting a second shot since his med-evac.  Abi and Pete are probably newer to the show, but they are no less enthusiastic about kicking their game into high gear.

The latter two and RC set right about the business of playing their social game with each other.  Abi got RC alone and promptly proposed an alliance to her, turning her charm up to eleven.  RC returned fire with a barrage of charisma as she accepted.  There was a lot of bubbly hair-flipping, giggling hysteria and jumpy hand-holding before the pair were satisfied that they could move onto their next targets. 

May the Battle Royale of Flirting commence!

In Abi's case, that was the only guy under fifty, Pete, for the flirting side of her game.  He soon picked up that she was making eyes at him and eagerly seized the opportunity to start his flirting game.  This mutual exploitation is not going to make for a compelling showmance, but I am entertained.

For now, at least, they're all succeeding at their self-portrayals.  I suspect that 24 year old Pete would not be so ready to flirt with a woman eight years older than him.  If nothing else, he must think Abi-Maria is more naïve than she actually is (she's made her accent and cultural differences work for her; respect).  Meanwhile, the two women decided that Pete was dumb, so he's succeeded in passing himself off as nothing more than a model.

As ever, I doubt they can really keep up the deceptions in the long term (except RC's executive assistant lie, which is unlikely to get disproved unless they strike up really in depth conversations about their careers).  However, with a group this gregarious, they might be having so much fun by that point that they won't care.

... And then there's the fourth member of their alliance: Michael.  The most iconic of the returning players, he's the only one thus far whose status has helped him, since superfan RC was delighted to bring him into her alliance.  Out of the quartet, he is the odd one out; not because he has nothing to hide, not because he's so much older, not even because he's a returner.  Michael, alone of his alliance, was not ready for it.

In Australia, Michael hunted and killed a wild pig single-handed, then painted his face with its blood. In Philippines, he faced the full onslaught of RC's charm and looked... not outright afraid, but certainly apprehensive.  It was like introducing an old dog to a hyperactive puppy.  Still, he also literally jumped off a cliff in Australia; he can do a metaphorical leap into the deep end here.

Michael made perhaps the wisest observation of the returning players when he said that you have to go at the game's pace.  This game is moving a lot faster than his previous time--it's not clear if he was ever in a formal alliance in Australia.  He's now answered one of the big questions I had about Michael: he has accepted that the game has changed since he played originally and he's ready to adapt.

RC and Pete finally stopped smiling when
they lost their chance to go to Tribal Council

My new question is if he can handle his eager, young allies.  One of the problems we see in Survivor when aggressive players get together is that they come blazing out of the gate, do too much, too soon and bring each other down in a strategic implosion (see the men of One World and just about everybody on Heroes vs. Villains).  Michael would do well to be a calming influence on them (as hard as it is to watch Australia and think of Michael as a calming influence), but I'm not sure if he's got the confidence to over-rule their proposed strategies.

Right now, it seems that RC is in the driver's seat of the alliance, although most of that is because the editing used her for their narration.  However, it was notable that while Abi-Maria initiated the alliance, RC immediately started enforcing her narrative in-game with the observation that they should bring Pete in because he's brainless muscle and they should be wary of Lisa because she's suspicious.  Neither of those things is exactly accurate, but that doesn't matter.  Survivor is largely defined by perception.

RC also took the initiative before the challenge, in the Tandang Treemail clip on the CBS website.  While Lisa was away from camp, she gathered the others and, with Abi, told them that Lisa would be going home if they lost immunity.  No blindsides, cut and dried.  This smartly forestalled any scrambling after the challenge and gave people like Artis confidence that they were not on the chopping block.

Nobody spoke up to disagree, because obviously nobody wants their name put up instead.  If anybody had any discreet pro-Lisa conversations later, we didn't get to see it, although we do know that Michael wants to keep Lisa around.  He's a fan of hers, just as RC was a fan of his.  However, he's not ready to stick his neck out for her.

It's unlucky for Lisa that she's being targeted so soon, especially since her secret really is irrelevant to the game.  Her celebrity days were more than twenty years ago, she's not using Survivor as a platform for rebooting them, and she no longer has the money she made from The Facts of Life.  As she observed to Michael, nobody's talked about what they did as a child.

Michael thought that she should tell them because it would impress them, but she disagreed.  I'm with Lisa on this one.  If the younger members of the tribe are unfamiliar with her show, revealing that she was an 80s celebrity is more likely to elicit a "So what?" reaction.  Followed by: "Why are you telling us now?"  If it comes up naturally in conversation, that's one thing, but this crew is going to be very suspicious of a big announcement.

One of the things Lisa's mentioned in a few different interviews is that before filming began, when the castaways would see each other around but weren't allowed to talk, she wore a T-shirt she'd purchased off Ebay saying "June Lake 2010 Triathlon."  It was one way to fake them out that she was more physically fit than she actually was.  I wonder if that bit of trickery backfired on her, becoming the basis for RC's suspicions.

Either way, Lisa is on the outs and although Michael is in her corner, he's not actually stepping in to try and protect her.  It's always a dicey prospect, speaking up against your alliance in favour of somebody else, but letting them get voted out isn't good either.  In One World, Jonas regretted letting Bill get voted off, because he had been closer to Bill than anybody else.  In South Pacific, Coach got Mikayla voted off instead of Edna, because Edna was closer to him, while Mikayla was closer to his allies, (and fellow finalists) Albert and Sophie.  In Heroes vs. Villains, Cirie fought to save Candice, got herself voted out for her pains, yet had no regrets.

Michael sticks his neck out for Lisa.
Not quite what I had in mind.

Etc.  I've always been of the opinion that it's better to stick your neck out than to let somebody you trust completely get voted off.  Lisa could be a tremendous ally for Michael, much moreso than the cut-throat younger group.  That's worth fighting for.

The same applies to Artis.  I wonder if any of the older players tried to start up their own alliance.  RC's swift appropriation of Michael probably wrecked any chances of getting one off the ground, but I'd like to think somebody tried.  We don't know what Artis is doing game-wise, but he's not in the alliance and, unlike Lisa, he doesn't even have somebody rooting for him to stay.  If Michael does decide to stick his neck out for Lisa, it will almost certainly be Artis going under the bus.

Kalabaw: Picking a Side

Is this the face of a man who does not
know what he's doing?

Kalabaw had the most skewed edit out of any of the tribes, with the focus being entirely on the returning player, Jonathan, and the celebrity, Jeff, the stage set for a showdown between these two.  Actually, thus far the feud is one-sided, with Jeff gunning for Jonathan and Jonathan not paying the slightest bit of attention to Jeff.  Jonathan is focused on his own game.

Jonathan is also exceedingly helpful, since he outlined his game on Twitter for our benefit: "Knew I had to 1)engender trust 2)WIN challenges 3)seek idol. Did all even if they only showed 2&3!!"  I'll cover all of those in due course, but we'll start with the idol, since that's what was being played up.

I can't really fault Jonathan for being keen to find the idol.  Ever since his first season, the winner of the game usually has the idol or is allied with the idol holder.  Even if, like One World's Kim, you don't use the idol, possessing it means that your voting target doesn't.

On the flipside, looking for it has been increasingly seen as threatening behaviour.  It's a great way to get yourself put on other players' radars.  This very episode, Russell deflected Zane by saying if he thought anybody was looking for the idol, he was going to vote them out.  Jonathan was the only person the episode showed looking for the idol, and while this is unlikely to be the actual case, it does serve to show that the other players' time was spent more effectively when building alliances.

In Jonathan's case, you can at least argue that he was already on everybody's radar.  But, honestly, looking for an idol has never worked out for Jonathan.  In Cook Islands, he mutinied in part because he thought Adam had the idol and wanted to ally with the idol holder--the irony being that his previous ally (and eventual winner), Yul, had the idol all along.  In Micronesia, Yau-Man nominated him to go to Exile Island (thus having a chance to find the idol), and in so doing lost them the majority vote.  Cirie explained in her Reality News Online interview for that season:

I went to Exile Island the first time with Kathy, she and I found all four clues. I saw Yau-Man’s season and I saw how he was with Earl sharing the idol, I saw Earl could trust him. I thought maybe if I could give him the last clue and eliminate the time he spent searching, we could share it.

I went to him with that deal and he agreed. I said the only thing we have to is that you have to be the next one to go. When it came time to send one of us, Yau-Man suggested we send Jonathan. That threw up 10,000 red flags.

The above is corroborated in Jonathan's interview, with the explanation: "He felt he needed to distract the rest of us from suspecting the alliance [with Cirie], which I never suspected."  While Jonathan was a victim of circumstance there, (and rebounded from the setback--until his injury), he seems cursed when it comes to idol-hunting.  This season, looking for it has given Jeff fuel to use against him.

The edit is bound to be misleading when it comes to just how much time he spent looking for the idol.  In episode, we saw him using a rainstorm to search while the rest of his tribe were huddled in a cave (they all knew full well why he was out there).  On the web, we see that he actually found the clue after the immunity challenge.  He suggested that everybody go down to the beach for a celebratory dip, then made an excuse of forgetting something and ran back to camp--taking a tip from Boston Rob's Redemption Island playbook.

On the other hand, he hasn't been entirely secretive.  One of Entertainment Weekly's pre-season teasers described how he'd been giving Katie tips on searching for the idol.  We don't know if that was before or after Katie's in-episode complaint about his idol-hunting, but it's a pretty friendly, ally-courting thing to do.  If nothing else, it's an open admission that everybody is wondering where the idol is to some degree.  He's tried to create a permissive climate for idol-searching, even if he made sure that nobody saw him actually find the clue.

Meanwhile, Jeff's trying to create a climate of ill-feeling towards returning players.  I'm not entirely sure why Jeff was targeting Jonathan straight out of the gate.  Maybe he feels threatened by him as a player, maybe he wants to distract everybody from his knee, maybe they butted heads while building camp (though I'd assume we'd have seen it if so).  My bet would be that he just wants to play the game, and targeted Jonathan as the biggest rival available.

It should be noted that it's not a bad move.  Putting up a name for the first vote is a great way to start taking control of the game.  Nobody's going to disagree, because they don't want to be the replacement.  Players seem to be more worried about "Not me" in the first few days rather than who actually does go, which can be a mistake (see also Tandang where a similar scenario went down).

Dawson knows something
you don't know...

If Jeff's motivations are unknown, his influence is even moreso.  In episode, everybody seemed to be anti-Jonathan, but the only person we saw pro-Jeff was Dana.  We heard so little from Katie and Carter, that we have to leave them as unknown quantities for the moment.

And then there's Dawson, who was the one player to recognise Jeff.  Dawson chose to sit on that little tidbit of information, which is good news for Jeff, since she could have used it to sabotage his game.  On the other hand, she hasn't told him she recognised him either, which does not bode well for our resident baseball MVP.  Over on Tandang, Michael let Lisa know he knew who she was because he was a big fan.  If Dawson hasn't said anything to Jeff, chances are that she is not a big fan.

Obviously, she could have other reasons.  She might be merely non-committal, or she might be afraid that telling Jeff would get him targetting her.  Or maybe she wants to save it up until she's sitting next to Jeff at Final Tribal Council.  But Jeff's been a polarising figure in baseball (so they tell me), and I am leaning towards the interpretation that Dawson doesn't fancy Jeff Kent as an ally.

In that case, how important is this information to Dawson?  Well, this is a pretty definite deception on Jeff's part.  He's earned a fortune through baseball, and he's covering that up.  Moreover, much of his argument against Jonathan "He's had his shot; this is our game!" could also be applied to celebrities: "He's had his moment; this is our turn!"  If Dawson wanted to turn the tribe against Jeff, she probably could do.

She could also use it to take his allies for herself.  We don't know of any definite alliances on Kalabaw, but Dana was eyeing Jeff up for a potential alliance, due to their shared southern bonds.  This is ironic, considering Dana's a lesbian and Jeff Kent's formerly taken a stand against gay marriage.  Even if Dana has already taken into account the possibility that her Southern homeboy has conservative political views, she's taken him to be an honest type, and won't care for the deception.

The fact that Dana was looking to Jeff, a guy twelve years older than her, for an alliance, suggests that she has not formed a connection with the younger people.  Dana's thirty-two, so she's closer in age to the younger group (Katie is the youngest of the tribe at twenty-two), but she feels more comfortable around Jeff.  Losing her image of him could hit her very hard; might she end up on the rebound, ripe for an alliance of Dawson's picking?

Perhaps the real question is how important is Dawson to her tribe?  She's confident and excited to play the game she loves; she's also zany and ready to make friends. (I've a feeling she said she wanted to get to know the girl with the tattoos--i.e. Dana--pre-game, but I can't find it in my notes, so perhaps that was somebody else).  She's almost certainly got a better social game than Jeff or Jonathan, and she's the most dynamic of the younger Kalabaws.

Because of this, I would say that if any player on Kalabaw wanted to get a majority, they should focus on Dawson first.  There's no indication that she's interested in picking a side, but right now the showdown between Jeff and Jonathan hinges on her (admittedly, there have to be a wealth of factors that we didn't see in episode).

I have already inferred that she is not interested in a Jeff alliance.  What about Jonathan?  Dawson's a big fan; she's got an opinion of him.  We just don't know what it is.  That said, even if it was a negative one, Coach has shown us that you can revise preconceptions very quickly.  Dawson was on puzzle duty with Jonathan at the challenge, so she's already had a chance to work with him--and to great success too, since they overtook Tandang's lead for a narrow victory.  That's a bonding experience, right there.

OK, so I have an element of wishful thinking here.  I've been hoping for a Dawson/Penner alliance all along, and I really really want it to happen.  But the possibility is definitely still open.

And this brings us back to Jonathan Penner, and his engendering trust agenda.  Before the game he acknowledged that being a returning player and having his game known could be a blessing or a curse, and he had to make it a blessing by making himself vital to the tribe.  He started early on, when there was one chicken remaining on the marooning boat after the deadline had passed; he grabbed it from the water (source: Dalton Ross's recap).  He helped them build camp, he passed on tips for finding an idol... for all we know, the latter was the beginning of an alliance with Katie.

I'm a little hesitant to trust Jonathan's abilities in reassuring others, considering he has a pretty mixed record with this.  However, he proved his worth in the challenge.

Kalabaw did a sterling job in the challenge.  Yes, Dana and Katie got them off to a bad start, but everybody else was right where they should have been: their strongest players on the boat and the smartest players on the puzzle.  I don't know if it was Jonathan who prepped them for the challenge, but Kalabaw knew their strengths and played to them.

Even if Jonathan had no say on who did what, he proved himself to still be a contender in puzzles.  Jonathan's taken the role of puzzle person on before, in both Cook Islands and Micronesia, and he is good at it.  So often a challenge is won or lost on the puzzle that any tribe should think twice before voting out their 'puzzle person'.

If Dawson doesn't decide the fates of Jeff and Jonathan, that puzzle-ability might.  Even without his knee injury, it's unlikely Jeff brings anything to challenges that Carter (twenty years his junior) doesn't bring more of.  Who's going to replace Jonathan in puzzles?  Dawson might be just as good or better, but he's the one who's proven himself.

Time to break out the puppy dog eyes

I should also take into account the possibility that neither Jeff nor Jonathan will be the first to go from the tribe, since the showdown might be deferred while they get rid of a more obvious weak link.  Was Dawson put on the puzzle solely to avoid having her in a physical leg? (I doubt it; Dawson looked very much involved. Still she admitted she wasn't going to be able to compete on a physical level.)  Was Dana and Katie's effort representative of their overall challenge ability?  I'm not sure that struggling to untie knots can be representative, but I did note that at one point, Katie was just sitting there watching Matsing while Dana was still working on a knot.  We do know that Dana is not confident in her swimming ability, but on the other hand, she wasted no time diving into the ocean during the marooning.

At this point, we can only be sure that Carter's not going anywhere (and this is Survivor, so we shouldn't even be sure of that).  But if I'm correct in thinking that Dana is isolated from the younger group, she could end up being an easy target while said young group procrastinate on picking a side.

Dana can at least take comfort from the knowledge that I am terrible with predictions. Since my Kalabaw speculations can only get more crazy from here, let's move onto Tandang.

Matsing: When Challenge and Strategy Collide

Let's start with Matsing... Let's start with Russell.

Russell digs a hole, possibly for himself.

Russell said he was going to avoid the leadership role, and promptly went straight into dictator mode.  When asked at Tribal Council, he didn't believe he had taken the mantle of leadership until the challenge.  That shows such a lack of self-awareness that I have crossed him off my list of people with any hope of winning.  If you don't know how you're coming across to the tribe, you can't make a jury vote for you.

On the other hand, he would probably have got away with it if it hadn't been for the challenge.  Everybody looks to the returning players for advice, and while his tribe were rolling their eyes behind his back, nobody had any actual complaints from what we've seen about how he got the camp set up.  Actually, the camp looks pretty good.  They had fire without flint, and Zane's secret scene on the CBS site shows them working on the roof of their shelter, using giant banana leaves to make it as rainproof as possible.

Then came the challenge, and this was where Russell threw it all away.  Returning players have had direct experience in Survivor challenges and should know how to tackle them.  In the first episode of South Pacific, Coach was advising his tribe how to get over the wall in the obstacle course for immunity, which helped them to victory.  Russell, on the other hand, would have been hard put to make things worse.

Of the three legs, the running was the probably the least important as in I imagine it took the least time--and most of that was probably on the knots. (Gordon Holmes who ran the challenge on the press tour states in his recap that the distance was only about 150 yards.)  Zane struggled with the run, but Tandang didn't have much of a lead on Matsing at that point.

The paddling and swimming would have been the most gruelling portion (see Dalton Ross's EW recap).  I was surprised when RC nominated two strong men for that leg, when she's possibly the best swimmer out there, but I think she made the right call.  The paddlers had to head out several hundred yards into a strong wind and then push a heavy crate back, which would have required muscle and stamina rather than particular swimming speed or skill.

Finally, there's the puzzle portion, and if there's one thing anybody should have learned from watching Survivor at home, it's that most challenges are won or lost on the puzzles.  You need to know who your puzzle people are going to be.

Russell nominated Roxy and Angie for the puzzle.  Angie explained that she was no good at puzzles and wanted to run, and in Zane's Reality TV World interview, we learn that Roxy said the same thing.  Instead, Russell put himself in running, which was a waste of the muscle he provides to the team.  It would seem far more sensible to put Russell on the boat instead of Denise.  My guess is that Denise and Malcolm are the smartest of the tribe, so Denise might well have made a better job of the puzzle.  Putting Zane on the puzzle too wouldn't have hurt, since he didn't have the stamina for either of the other legs.

Of course, I've no idea how good a swimmer Russell is.  Denise said she volunteered for the swimming portion, so he might have deferred to her there, but if he's a poor swimmer, he might have been deliberately avoiding putting himself in that spot.  If that was the case, Russell put himself in the one leg where he thought he could shine.

The problem is, everybody wants to prove themselves in the first challenge.  Nobody wants to emerge as a weak link before that first Tribal Council.  Roxy said in her pre-game interview that her strength was in short distance running and she was hoping she could be useful to her tribe in that regard.  At Tribal Council, Angie explained that she did track in high school.  Both girls saw their chance to shine in the challenge, but found themselves forced to highlight a weakness instead.  They looked totally demoralised before the challenge even started.  By the time of their inevitable loss, they were outright resentful.

It doesn't help that Angie came into the game looking to prove herself anyway.  Jeff Probst made it pretty clear in his pre-game interviews that he hadn't been in favour of casting her.  I assume he wouldn't have told Angie that directly, but it's possible she picked up on it.  She knows she's the youngest person out there and looks like a Barbie.  And, on the boat, (again according to the Xfinity recap), there was a moment that did not make it onto the show, where Probst asked who wasn't prepared for the game, and Katie replied, "The blonde girl." 

All that and fishing lures for earrings

So Angie's got a chip on her shoulder.  I should admit here that I was equally dismissive of Angie's ability to play the game, so I will give her respect because, so far as I can tell, she's hit the ground running.  I don't think she's playing to any effect, but she's trying.  Witness her attempt to turn the vote against Russell as sweet revenge.  She didn't succeed, which is important to note.  But it's also important that she wasn't endangering herself by nominating him: she had the relationships with her tribemates that she was able to plot against Russell without anybody telling him.

So technically speaking, Angie is doing many of the right things, and it's not impossible that she could develop some influence over the game.  But I doubt it.  Strongly.

As of this episode, she was a pawn in other people's games.  She was the only person who fell for Zane's reverse psychology trick, and I suspect it was Malcolm who talked her into voting Zane out.  In his bid to become the game's puppetmaster, Malcolm has already tied a few strings to Angie by quite literally coming up behind her and whispering in her ear in their first hour on the beach.  Like Katie, Malcolm must have pegged Angie as an easy mark before the game ever started, and he wasted no time in moving in.

Malcolm is another player who I like much better than I expected.  For all his big talk, what was he really going to do that we hadn't seen before?  Start a fire within an hour of hitting the beach, that's what!  (Seriously, isn't this some sort of record?)  And he's been a lot more pragmatic about the game than I anticipated.  If he gloated in confessional about how he had Angie doing his bidding, we didn't see it.  Instead we saw him picking out Denise as somebody he could scheme with.

While I'm happier about watching him on my TV, I'm not necessarily more optimistic about his game chances.  Malcolm came into this game intending to hide his intelligence.  He is lying about which college he went to, and while he considers himself to be good at puzzles, he's hoping to conceal that ability to keep the target off his back.  In that respect, he should perhaps receive his own share of blame for the immunity loss, except I think that his tribe needs his brawn more than his brains.

I appreciate that nobody wants to be seen as a good all-rounder at the game, but I don't think Malcolm will be able to hide his brains for long.  His alliance with Denise is based on mutual respect for each other's intelligence.  His hold over Angie is that she trusts him to know what he's doing.  Even if he never does a puzzle, I predict his tribe will have a decent estimation of his IQ (and game-smarts) long before the merge.  He's going to get that target on his back, whether he likes it or not; what he really needs to do is find a way to keep himself vital to their game.

This is where his alliance with Denise could be a double-edged sword.  It's always good to have somebody smart to scheme with--to tout Survivor as an individual game is to miss the point that it's also a collaborative one.  On your fourth go around, you probably have enough experience to forge your own plans and have an alliance of pawns.  On a first time out, don't get too cocky; have somebody else whose opinion you can trust as a sounding board, for example, JT and Stephen in Tocantins, Sophie and Albert (and Coach) in South Pacific.

On the downside, one of you is going to lose.  In the examples I cited, all of them made it to the finals, but JT was the only person who never plotted to vote his strategy partner off, and he still readily threw Stephen under the bus at final Tribal Council (as did Sophie to Albert and Coach).  At some point, the person you allied with for their brain will use that brain against you.

She also makes him laugh. 
Perhaps best not to ask how.

Still, I love an alliance of intelligence, and this is certainly great news for Denise who is in the always dicey position of being the oldest woman on her tribe.  She's almost certainly in better shape than the other two women, which gives her some insurance, but nothing compares to an alliance for security.  It's not clear how well she bonded with everybody else on the tribe.  Intriguingly, Zane said in his xfinity interview that she was hard to get along with, difficult to read.  In-game, in his secret scene on the CBS site, he described her as "the nicest chick I've ever met."  (I am sure his wife is delighted by that.)

When did Zane change his mind?  During the game or after it?  If it was during his three days on the game, that's not good.  On the other hand, perhaps we should not read too much into Zane's opinions of anybody...

As it was, she seemed to be holding her own in her interactions with everybody.  Zane's secret scene also shows him regaling her with his Frankenstein tattoo story about how he can strangle somebody or give them a flower; she handled it pretty well (i.e. instead of stepping discreetly back from him, she made a joke about needing the machete--which went straight over his head).

Denise hasn't told anybody she's a sex therapist, but more to avoid the explanations and misconceptions about what a sex therapist really is.  She has told them she's a therapist.  This is refreshing in a season where a lot of people are lying about what they do or how educated they are.  Denise said she was going to keep things simple, and it's working out for her so far.  Perhaps people will be wary of taking a therapist to the end, but as with Malcolm, I think the cast would have the measure of Denise as a smart woman who knows how to talk to her fellow players by the merge anyway.

So if Malcolm and Denise are an alliance of two, whose votes are they counting on to make a majority?  Angie has a connection with Malcolm, while Russell is apparently on the outs.  Where does Roxy fall?  She and Angie were conspiring together on the beach, but that might have just been bonding over their shared resentment of Russell.  She's not needed for the voting majority in a tribe of five.

Originally, I thought Roxy's role in the game would be as a friend to Zane, sharing a religious bond with him and tempering his crazy behaviour.  That's no longer an option for our army chaplain.  Although Roxy came into this game with religion in mind, we never saw her mention it in the first episode: instead, it was her military background that got highlighted.

I'm very curious about Roxy's remark at Tribal Council, where she explained she went into soldier mode and followed (Russell's) orders.  She was saying it to fend off the blame for the challenge loss, but she also advertised herself as a loyal ally who will follow orders blindly.  South Pacific's Edna used a Good Soldier strategy, which earned her Coach's protection up until final six.  Roxanne, who actually is a soldier, can certainly do the same thing, although she'll have to avoid the trap Edna fell into which was becoming complacent in her security.

I wonder how disingenuous Roxy was being at Tribal Council.  Is she feeling nervous about her position and trying to get herself invited onto an alliance?  Or is she already in one and emphasising her loyalty?

The only alliances we saw made on Matsing was the brain alliance and Zane's with everybody.  When Zane tipped off Russell and Malcolm that he had also made alliances with the women, Malcolm used that information to pull Denise into an alliance with him.  If he didn't do the same thing with Angie, I'd be amazed, and there's nothing stopping him from pulling something similar with Roxy.  After all, if you're getting somebody to turn against their ally so quickly, then invalidating that alliance is a useful tactic.  Even if he didn't do it, Angie or Denise might have done.

At this point, I would not rule out an alliance of four on Matsing, with Russell on the outs.  I would bet good money that Malcolm has an alliance with both Angie and Denise and that Roxy is more likely to throw her lot in with them than with Russell.  If Matsing go back to Tribal Council, then Russell's in obvious danger.

However, if Matsing go back to Tribal Council, it will be because they've lost another challenge.  And it's going to be really tough for them to vote off one of only two big strong guys.  Russell ended up being a challenge liability this episode, but he's strong and fit, and if they stop letting him do the challenge strategising, he's still an asset overall.  None of the women look like they've got the muscle to take up a 'male' role in a challenge.

If that's the case, the vote will come down to Roxy and Angie.  It's impossible to judge on evidence so far who is weaker physically.  Obviously, Angie has made the better connections (that we've seen), but this is where Denise could potentially cause an upset.  If she's wary of Malcolm getting too close to Angie, having too much power over her vote, she might push for Angie to go home over Roxy.  Malcolm will lose a puppet and be more reliant on Denise; Denise will have lost nothing.

I'm making a big assumption there that Denise is equally close to either of the younger women, and it might be moot if she's not interested in shaking up the game so early--she does want to keep things simple after all.  So as it stands, I think Roxy is in the most trouble, though Angie and Russell need to tread carefully.

The last point to cover for Matsing is the immunity idol.  We haven't actually seen anybody looking for it, although Russell stumbled onto the clue and was spotted reading it by Zane.  Zane thought he might have the actual idol, but Malcolm and Denise only have his word for that.  His potential idol possession could have been the key factor in saving him (though, personally, I'm not counting out Zane's inability to run 150 yards).

Some of the things Malcolm and Denise were saying made me wonder if they were trying to flush the idol out.  Particularly Denise's little speech (and I paraphrase): "I volunteered to swim, so it was my fault for overestimating my ability... but on the other hand, maybe Russell should have told me not to do it."  If so, has Russell's failure to play an idol convinced them he doesn't actually have it?

Of course, he doesn't.  But he's the one with the clue, and this season, you're not going to find the idol without the clue.  The rest of Matsing had best not be hinging their game around finding that idol.

Finding idols bring us to Kalabaw, and their returning player.

Off to a good start!

Well, if they're going to do this in reverse alphabetical order, things are looking very good for Abi-Maria. (Let me guess, I'm the seventeenth person to make that joke?)

Straight out of the gate, I have demonstrated why you should never read this blog for predictions.  In my pre-game assessment, I said of Zane:

Zane needs to go home early.  He won't.

This is one time where I am delighted to be proven wrong.  I was convinced that, like previous wildcards, players would eagerly ally with Zane.  In this respect, I wasn't exactly wrong, but it didn't save him.

The problem with contestants like Zane is that they are unpredictable in their gameplay, because they don't know what they're doing and pride themselves on steering away from convention.

I was dead on there.  Offering yourself up for the vote as a bit of reverse psychology definitely hasn't been done before, and this is why.  It's too easy to backfire on you!

Credit where credit's due, Zane was playing hard out of the gate, and he had Angie right where he wanted her.  He was definitely more of a Russell than a Brandon Hantz, making alliances with everybody and bending events to his own narration (e.g. Malcolm 'begging' him to stay).  Further reason to rejoice that he's gone.  I know Jeff was hoping he'd stay around somehow, but I do not need this season to become the Zane show.

For those of you who listened to the Reality Rant podcasts, Chris had this one nailed.  Damnit, Chris.


Anyway, the Philippines is gorgeous, and it was a thrill to see maroonings and water challenges again.  Was it just me or did anybody else find the returning player introduction a bit of an anticlimax?  I mean, Roxy actually described Russell's med-evac before Jeff brought him aboard, and Jeff didn't so much as use it as a segue.  Wake up, Probst!  Otherwise, the editing seems fairly promising so far, with almost everybody getting a few words in.

Zane wasn't the only player that hasn't worked out as I expected--on the whole, I like the cast more than I thought. My full thoughts on what everybody's doing and how the tribal dynamics stand should be up by Sunday evening.

Almost there!

With the season premiere kicking off tomorrow, there's not much left to do but twiddle our thumbs in anticipation. However, I'll throw out the reminder that I did a series of podcasts with Reality Rant previewing the season. 

Reality Rant is run by former Reality News Online writer, Bill Hammon (the Who Will Go? column) and the equally lovely and certainly more polite, Eric Pierce.  In commemoration of the former RNO roundtable, they got me and fellow RNO alumni Christian Williams (Diplomatic Overview of Survivor) to do our own series of predictions. 

We did four episodes in total: Tandang, Matsing, Kalabaw and a Prediction Special.  Listen, and discover why I'm a writer not a speaker, but the three guys have some great things to say.   I had a blast recording these (first time I'd actually spoken with any of the RNO lot), and Chris and I are already trying to talk them into letting us come back sometime.

Otherwise, nothing to do but wait.  I don't know about you, but I want two things out of tomorrow's premiere: an intro sequence (what else is the extended premiere for?) and for Dawson and Penner to make the most entertaining alliance ever.  I'll be posting on Thursday with an 'obituary' on the first boot, and the main Big Picture article should hopefully go up on Sunday.

Survivor's Women

Jeff Probst recently lit a fire in the internet fandom by giving his theory as to why they don't bring back female returnees. (Video at Entertainment Weekly; transcript and reaction at Reality Blurred.) Speaking as a woman, it is safe to say I am not in full agreement with Jeff.


A Problem of Quantity, not Quality
One of the big problems that Jeff didn't account for is the amount of women who make it to the jury.  Jurors get a boost to their memorability because they will at least be on screen for the entire run of the season.  Generally speaking, if you get booted before the jury, you won't be coming back. (The upcoming Philippines being a notable exception; see also Boston Rob and Bobby Jon.)

In half of the 24 Survivor seasons aired, there have been more men than women left in the game at the time the jury starts.  In eight seasons, the women have had the majority, and four seasons have had the genders equally matched.  Bear in mind that the equally matched seasons have only been possible since Cook Islands, when they started tinkering around with the jury-starts-at-nine-players-left format.  If we look at those twelve most recent seasons, six have had a male majority, two have had a female one--Micronesia and Heroes vs Villains. (All-Stars also had a female majority, which probably says something about how returning players play, but that's another topic.)

In all fairness, the first true example of gender disparity was in Vanuatu where the ratio was 1:2 in favour of women at the time the jury started.  However, since then, we've had three seasons of 2:1 in favour of men: Fiji, Redemption Island and South Pacific.

I'm not sure why this is.  Perhaps starting the jury a few votes early has benefited all those alpha males who were previously on the bubble when they got voted off for being an individual immunity threat.  Perhaps it's just a current trend--after all, there was a four season run starting in All Stars where women had the majority at the jury-stage.  And there are probably a multitude of other factors which would require analysis of the individual season.

Nevertheless, in recent seasons there are more men than women making it to the second half of the game, which brings more possibilities for being remembered.  More screentime, the potential for individual challenge glory, flipping, the last member of an alliance standing, idol-plays, power-struggles...  Perhaps if the Powers That Be are concerned about the lack of memorable women, their first step should be to look at how to get a bigger pool of women to choose from.

Casting
This brings us to casting, which was one of the factors Probst was worried about.   Are they casting women capable of getting to the jury stage, without just being a pawn in other people's games?  What can they do to improve that?

For me, the big thing is to tone down the eye candy.  Take the upcoming season which has not one but two beauty queens.  Or how about South Pacific where their female footballer, Mikayla, was from the lingerie league.  Actually, if you take just about any season, you can expect four or five women in their twenties, all of whom will look like models even if they aren't. I am very tired of that homogenised beauty.

The older women are less likely to be cast for sexiness (though many of them are the more attractive for it), and I don't think it's a coincidence that they tend to be the bigger personalities.  Unfortunately, they're also the ones who are (usually) weaker physically, thus more likely to get voted off early and forgotten.  To be fair to casting, I do think they've done a great job recently in finding athletic older women (Dawn springs to mind, but all of South Pacific's older ladies were strong physically and the same for One World).

My casting suggestion?  Have just one or two Hot Girls (perhaps one per tribe).  Cast the rest of the young girls based on personality.  If you go recruiting, go recruiting from extreme sports or iron man or something, not from the pages of a Victoria Secret catalogue.  Be aware that the Parvati-game has been rumbled, so the outgoing flirt is less likely to get to the end (Brenda from Nicaragua, or more drastically, Elyse from South Pacific).  Go hunting for a different kind of female player to celebrate.

I mean that.  Celebrate her.

Stop Putting Baby in the Corner
One of the most startling things in Jeff's explanation was not directly related to gender.  He talked about casting returning players who could carry the season by themselves.  I think this possibly highlights the biggest problem of all.  Survivor is and always should be an ensemble piece.  On the other hand, Jeff is absolutely right, because recently the editing has steered away from that and put the focus on one leading man, leaving the rest as supporting players.

It's always a leading man, never a leading lady.  Three of the last four seasons with female winners have not been about how she won, but about how a guy lost.  For Natalie and Sandra, it was Russell (yes, back-to-back How Russell Lost; thank-you, editors), and for Sophie (to a lesser extent), it was Coach.  Kim escaped that fate, but then she had an all female final five--and even then, the first half of the game was all about Colton before his merciful med-evac.

I don't think this is intentional sexism on the part of the producers, rather that subjectivity is the defining factor.  I tend to be more interested in the female players because I am female.  They are more interested in the male players, and so, when they come to pick out the storyline for the show, they cast their favourite (invariably male) player in the lead role, limiting the women's screentime and limiting their chances to make an impact.

Case Study, Heroes vs. Villains
One of the big storylines in the first half of this season was the power struggle in the villains tribe between Russell and Rob. Coach was set up as the lynchpin, with Russell trying to woo him away from Rob's alliance. In the end, however, it was Jerri who was flipped and changed the course of the game (Tyson's error aside).

Jerri allied with Rob early on and despised Parvati, but she never trusted Rob (who made the mistake of only giving her cursory attention) and was smart enough to be aware that she was at the bottom of his totem pole. Sandra believed that Jerri trusted her the most and that she would always be able to talk her round, but as it turned out, she wasn't able to stop Jerri investigating other options. Parvati promised her final four, and Russell promised her final three. With that deal, Jerri made her choice, turning on Rob, and because Jerri had Coach's loyalty far more than either of the two R's, she was able to persuade him to flip with her. (He voted for Courtney rather than directly turning on Rob, but the effect was the same.)

I had to glean most of the above from watching the web-clips on the CBS site. What we saw on the show was the battle for Coach's affections with the occasional clip of an unhappy Jerri.  Then suddenly Russell and Parvati asked Jerri to flip, and she agreed.

 I could maybe buy that Coach was edited as a red herring, but why was Jerri relegated to his love interest for the first few episodes? Why did we never see her and Sandra talking? Sandra was a great character, ended up winning the whole danged thing, and got Jerri voted off in the end (equally, Jerri was within a whisker of getting the final immunity, which would probably have put Sandra in the last jury position).

Sandra, Parvati and Jerri were all candid, opinionated women who were playing hard and appeared in every episode of the season. Even if the producers thought Rob, Russell and Coach made for better television, I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have edited a few minutes from their storyline and crafted one for the women instead.

Demographics: the opposite of opposites attract 
When Gillian Larson got voted off second in Gabon, I read an interview with Jeff where he said that wasn't a problem, because Gillian was never going to be a great character anyway. I was baffled at the time, because I loved Gillian. It wasn't that I thought she was going to be a driving force in the game, but she was kooky, constantly over the moon at actually being on Survivor and had wacky insider African survival tactics. (Elephant poop! Come on!)

On the flipside, Jeff lists Amanda in his shortlist of memorable women (alongside Cirie and Parvati), and I have absolutely no idea what makes Amanda memorable. Her appalling tribal council performances? She's pretty and athletic, but that's a dime a dozen when it comes to Survivor contestants. I liked her well enough in China but was surprised that she was cast for Fans vs. Favorites. (If you were going to choose a single female character out of China for memorability, surely it should have been Peih Gee?) By the time she was finished in Heroes vs Villains, I was bored stiff with her.

I always tend to root for the older women though, because that's the demographic I'd be in (just barely, at 34, but on Survivor, that qualifies). I'm married with children and have a good idea of what my career path is from this point... I don't have a lot in common with the twenty-something fashionistas.  I also don't have a penis, so I can't really relate to the testosterone brigade.

Jeff, clearly, is not an older woman, and neither is Mark Burnett.  It's only to be expected that their favourite characters are male (and that most of their favourite women are models).  I know women do work on the show (in casting, even!) but I predict that a lot of the editing decisions are made by men.

Pro-tip: a lot of women watch Survivor, Jeff, and all the ones I know usually have a woman they're rooting for.  Take the gamble, restore Survivor to its ensemble origins and tell the women's story as well, even if you don't find it as exciting.  Get more female opinions on the production side maybe.  I think you'll be surprised at the reception to these 'dull' women.

Made The List?  Check It Twice
Even after everything I've said above, is it really so hard to find memorable women from the ranks of former players?  Let me have a go.

I'm going to restrict myself to the ten most recent seasons (China onwards), because the viewing public has short-term memories, and only women who made the jury or finals and did not quit!  I'll ignore Cirie and Parvati, since Probst already listed them, but whether or not players have (or will have) returned is otherwise not a factor.

I consider all of the below to be women who were compelling to watch and/or had at least one really memorable moment.  This is not necessarily a list of women I want to see back (some of them I don't want on my screen again any more than Russell Hantz), and I have omitted some women who I would love to see back, just because I don't think they fit the definition of 'memorable' that the producers are looking for (then again, they do keep casting Amanda).

China - Peih Gee; Jaime; Courtney
Micronesia - Eliza; Natalie
Gabon - Corrine; Sugar
Tocantins - Taj
Samoa - Laura; Shambo
Heroes vs Villains - Sandra
Nicaragua - Brenda; Jane
Redemption Island - n/a (editing just sucked for everybody but Rob and Phillip)
South Pacific - Dawn 
One World - Alicia; Kat; Kim

That's seventeen players, Probst.  Add in Cirie, Parvati and Amanda, and you've got enough for an entire season (perhaps a return to the Amazon is in order?).  The ball's in your corner.

Cast Assessment and Predictions

This would not be a Survivor blog if I didn't pretend that I could predict how each of the cast will do on their pre-game material alone. Thus, this.

I have gone with a straight alphabetical listing by first name, with the exception of Dawson, since she'll go by her surname on the show.  But for reference, here is a tribal breakdown complete with links to my full thoughts on each player.

Matsing	Tandang	Kalabaw
Angie	Abi-Maria	Carter
Denise	Artis	Dana
Malcolm	Lisa	Dawson
Roxy	Michael	Jeff
Russell	Pete	Jonathan
Zane	RC	Katie

 

Abi-Maria (32)
Abi-Maria is Brazilian by birth, was cut from Tocantins and has now finally made it to the actual game.  Assuming she's been watching the show since her original casting, seven seasons ago, she should at least know the game fairly well, although she seems more focused on using it as a platform rather than winning.  What most struck me about Abi in her CBS video is that she has a very child-like demeanour, despite being thirty-two.  I expect it's a cultural thing, but it makes me wonder how well she'll fit in socially.  Other players might dismiss her as an ally... or they might peg her as somebody who can be manipulated.  I'm thinking the former.


Angie (20)
This season's youngest contestant, the first of our beauty pageant winners and lamb to the slaughter.  Honestly, there is nothing to recommend this girl to the game.  She's probably a perfectly nice person and she certainly looks good for television, but... well, this kind of casting is half the reason why the producers are always saying they don't get memorable female characters (the other half is that the producers' definition of a memorable female character is very different from mine).  Anyway, she might get picked up by an aggressive player seeking a pawn, but it's also entirely possible she'll be dropped early because she doesn't bring anything to her tribe.


Artis (53)
I really like Artis, and as a cancer survivor who's been applying for years, he's automatically somebody to root for.  He seems charming in his video and he also looks in great shape for his age.  On the other hand, he is the oldest guy in the game and that should always set off alarm bells.  I don't think he'll be a physical liability but he might be a social one.  He claims he's able to be laid back and stay calm, but everybody says that before they get hungry and sleep deprived.  If it weren't for the returning players, he might be fine, but Michael will almost certainly be given the leadership role in that tribe and he'll embrace it.

Going back to the physical side of things, old is old, even if he's fit and his tribe has three of the four oldest players in the game.  It's not uncommon for players to decide that the old people must be the weak links (even if this doesn't bear up under examination).  I really hope I'm wrong with this, because I loved Artis' video and his metaphors, but I don't think I'll get to enjoy them for long.


You know, doing this alphabetically has made me seem very pessimistic about everybody's chances so far.  I can promise I have higher hopes for the second half of the alphabet.  Next!


Carter (24)
At least, with Carter, I'm certain he'll make the merge.  As his tribe's only young guy and a track coach, he's going to be vital in challenges.  He's probably the season's most athletic player and he's a laid back surfer dude, so I don't see him going home in the tribal stage.  On the other hand, he'll be a threat as soon as the individual immunities start, and there's nothing about him that screams he's got the strategy to work around that.  He means to play hard, but I think he'll be blindsided before he steps up his game.  He'll be too likeable to allow close to the end.


Dana (32)
I like Dana a lot, but it's tricky to see where she'll fit in, in a tribe that's difficult to determine the hierarchy of in the first place.  I bet she'd be a good player, if she does find her social niche, but I worry she'll be isolated and voted off early.  She admits that she's never swum in the ocean, which could be a significant issue, but on the other hand, she is an outdoors type and looks like she should be able to contribute physically.  I'm hoping she's going to make the jury, but I go back and forth over how long she'll actually last in the game.


Dawson (28)
I can't make my mind up on Dawson who is smart but all over the place.  She's a big fan, comes across as very vibrant in her video, thinks she can play a great game... but talks more about pranking people than her strategy.  What I do think is that Dawson might end up defining the Kalabaw tribe, being one of the Bright, Young Things, but with an intelligence and game knowledge to rival the two older men.  She could decide to lead the younger players in a group, or she might leap at the chance to ally with Jonathan Penner.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but I could be biased, because I love Jonathan.  And since Dawson looks like she could be just as big a character and just as smart, the two should make a vastly satisfying alliance.

What's working against Dawson is her physical ability, since she admits she won't be a huge contender there (it doesn't help that there's no way in hell her swimsuit is lasting 39 days).  If she's a liability, her alliance might end up cutting her loose, however regretfully.  On the other side of things, I wonder how comfortable people will feel aligned with somebody so zany.  Or perhaps she's one of these rare people who can stab somebody in the back, then share a smile with them as their torch is snuffed.  She's a dark horse to win for me.


Denise (41)
Pre-game, Denise is probably my favourite player.  I always root for the older women, but she's definitely a player who ticks all the right boxes: she's a huge fan of the show who practiced making fire before going out, intends to work hard around camp and competes in triathlons. (Cycling probably not so handy, but running and swimming are very good indeed!)  And as a sex therapist, she's used to putting people at their ease and getting them to talk to her.  Cross-skills, ahoy!

Best of all, her game motto is: "Keep it simple, keep it smart!"  Too many players get caught up in making things convoluted and looking to make a Big Move (tm) to seal their name in Survivor history.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It's the little moves that win, not the big ones.

That said, I'm not out and out picking her as a winner, simply because she's an 'older woman' (by Survivor standards) and they always have trouble breaking through.  Players are apt to be suspicious of the older women who play aggressively and frequently older players are perceived as weak, regardless of fact.  I think her swimming ability will keep her around to the merge, but whether or not she's able to get a solid alliance is another question.  If she can, I think she has a very good shot of taking home the win.


Jeff (44)
I'm not a sports fan, certainly not a baseball fan, so I'd never heard of Jeff before the season started.  He seems smart enough and he's got to be athletic, so I would assume he has a decent shot at this, but people more familiar with him than I are predicting that he's going to butt heads with others, most likely Jonathan Penner on the same tribe as him.  From my point of view, he just doesn't seem to have much going for him socially, based on his video.  So I predict Jeff to be isolated early in terms of alliances, he'll probably be aware of this fact and that will only increase his frustration (understandably).  He might make the merge, depending on how his tribe do, or they might cut him sooner if they decide they don't need him.  Either way, I suspect his final words will be how his tribe made a big mistake.


Jonathan (50)
Jonathan is far and away my favourite of the returnees, so I could care less if he's already played the game without being medically evacuated.  This helps make up for his omission from Heroes vs. Villains.  He's always good value for camera-time, and he'll call out Probst when his commentary gets too trite.  He also loves the game and is clearly smart, plus this time, he claims he doesn't care about being a character; he wants to win.

While Jonathan's a savvy player (evidence A: his immediate crosshairs on Parvati in Micronesia), I will always have reservations about him.  He does brilliantly with somebody like Yul who he respected and engaged in academic discussion of the game.  But he struggles on a more intuitive level, gets overbearing, and then frustrated when other players are wary of that--I always remember watching him browbeat Cirie on Micronesia with a sinking heart.  Much as I would have loved her to join forces with him, even I would have opted for Parvati's group in that situation.  Similarly, he failed to grasp that Candice's Cook Islands mutiny was to get away from him as much as anybody else in the tribe.

But he's a popular player, and I'm hopeful that this means other players want to ally with him.  I don't see him as a winner, but I do think he will make jury at least again.


Katie (22)
The second of our beauty pageant winners, and the second youngest player, though she seems less naïve than Angie.  I'm fairly meh on Katie, partly because she keeps listing her beauty as one of her positive attributes.  Please excuse feminism while it scoots back a few years.  Maybe she'll surprise me, but I find myself wondering if Jonathan will peg as her this group's Parvati and get her out immediately... and I don't really mind.  There's nothing obvious that she brings to the table as far as the game is concerned.


Lisa (49)
And our second celebrity contestant... who I have at least heard of!   Or, more accurately, remember the show.  I haven't seen the show since I was eleven and don't remember the particulars from it, but I remember absolutely loving it.  For sentimental reasons, I would like Lisa to do well!  As it is, she doesn't really come across as the z-list celebrity as that other Survivor stalwart, the mother who's now taking the time to do something for her rather than her family.  She seems like a lovely (if conservative) person, but she admits that she won't be able to lie in the game, even though she thinks that's a good strategy.  There's also nothing to suggest she can contribute physically in challenges.  On a different season, she might have been the mother hen; on such a small tribe, I don't think they can afford to keep her around.


Malcolm (25)
There's at least one every season: the young alpha male who assures us that he's smarter than everybody else, that he will be controlling the entire game from day one and that he's going to win because he is determined to do so.  I count seventeen variables in that plan (eighteen, if you include Probst).

Malcolm's biggest problem is that the game is thirty-nine days long, and while he might be a smooth operator, I doubt he's got the skills to con everybody for the entire run.  Like many players before him, by the time of the merge, everybody will have seen right through his social game.  Last season, Jonas talked about how he tried to find common ground with people so his relationship with them came from 'a natural place' and wouldn't feel forced.  I don't think Malcolm's realised this concept.

I'm sure he can get himself to the merge.  I wouldn't put it past him to make the finals.  However, I would predict zero votes for him before I predict him the win.


Michael (50)
"The guy who fell in the fire" is returning after twenty-three seasons or eleven years. That kind of gap makes him ancient history to the recruits... but it happened when Survivor was still new, and it was a landmark moment in landmark TV, meaning he's probably better known than Russell or Jonathan, the other returners.

It's also a long time to be away from the game.  The closest comparison we can make is to his fellow Australia vets, Colby and Jerri, who appeared in Heroes vs. Villains, 18 seasons (nine years) after their original season, although they had been on All Stars in the interim.  Still, Colby struggled with how the game had changed since he originally dominated it.  On the other hand, Jerri appeared a little more laid back than when she had previously played, and thrived (technically, she only finished one position higher than Colby, but she clearly had a more enjoyable experience).

So will Michael be more like Colby or Jerri?  Going back to the original season, he wasn't much like either of them, mostly because he was a little bit crazy.  As far as I could tell, Michael was more interested in survival than Survivor, and although his tribe were set to dominate before his evacuation, it looked like Jeff and Alicia were the ones setting up to run the game.  On the other hand, Michael's evacuation meant a strategic side of his game might have been edited out.  He seemed to have some sort of partnership with the otherwise unseen Nick, and it's entirely possible that they had a gameplan.

Due his infamy, I think Michael will be embraced by his tribe who will be as eager to see his second chance as the rest of us.  He's ten years older, but seems no less enthusiastic and still in pretty good condition, and that should carry him to the merge.  At that point, he becomes the last guy that anybody will want to face in the finals, so I just don't see him getting past the jury.

That said, I'm calling him for Fan Favourite here and now.


Pete (24)
On paper, Pete is cut from the same cloth as Malcolm, and they share a lot of the same sentiments about the game and their chances in it.  However, while Malcolm came across as very pleased with himself in his application video, Pete came across as cool, logical and objective.  I don't for a moment think this means Pete's self-assessment is more accurate than Malcolm's, but it does make a difference in how he's received by the other players.  Pete sounds objective when he talks about the game, and therefore he "de-personalises" his moves.  Think of Yul, particularly when he strategised with Jonathan (I am deeply disappointed that Pete and Jonathan are not on the same tribe), or even Sophie, who was as guilty as fellow finalists Albert and Coach, but whose reserved gameplay earned less resentment.

Pete aims to play like Russell Hantz rather than either of those two, but his engineering background (he has a degree in it, even though he became a model instead) means he should be more methodical than Russell's chaotic and impulsive gameplay.  Judging by the answers he gave in his bio, he's got a goofy side that wasn't obvious in his video, and he does describe himself as a social chameleon.  I'll have to reserve judgment on his social game until we see him in action, but if he can be the guy you have fun with, plus the ally you want to strategise with, he can go an awfully long way in the game.

I expect Pete won't be as good at this game as he thinks he is--for a start he's really too young to have that level of social awareness.  Still there are plenty of other smart people that he can ally with to cover his shortfalls, and his matter-of-fact tone is harder to see through than smooth words.  Add in his athleticism and sense of humour, and this is a player I have to include in my picks to win.


RC (28)
RC looks like a model but is actually a banker who also swims competitively.  She thinks Survivor will be nothing compared to Wall Street.  I suspect that it might be an apples and oranges case, but I do like the fact that she's used to dealing with men in a professional capacity, which gives me hope for another female player who doesn't take the flirting route to the end.  (Honestly, we've been doing quite well with those lately, what with Sophie and Kim's back-to-back wins, but until all the female applicants stop comparing themselves to Parvati, the battle in-my-mind is not won!)

She also said she has swum the Channel (the English one), describing the experience as eleven hours in sixty degree water.  I tried to look up when she did this swim, and can only find reference to her doing it as part of a three-person relay (with her father and sister, changing swimmers every hour; RC went first).  I can't say for certain she hasn't done a solo effort, but it's somewhat less impressive than it originally sounded.

On the other hand, it's still one hell of an achievement--for those of you unaware, there are many requirements for swimming the channel, and one is that you can't do it in a wetsuit (you get vaseline instead).  I once knew a guy who did the swim, and I well remember his cheerful description of how gruelling it was (read his blog here).  Even if RC got to spend two hours huddled in a boat for every hour she was swimming, I can think of few things that would be better training for the deprivations and toll of Survivor.  On a season where they're determined to return to water-based challenges, it's going to serve her really well.

Beyond this, she's a long term fan of the game, and she seems utterly charming in her video.  It's difficult to find something that will work against her in the game, aside from her youth, and winners have been on the young side lately.


Roxy (28)
Roxy is probably the player I'm most interested in actually watching and finding out how she fares, just due to her training as an Army Chaplain, which strikes me as a career that could be particularly relevant to Survivor.   The whole point of army chaplains (as I understand it; I'm very much a layman here) is to provide comfort for soldiers in horrendous conditions.   They don't carry weapons, but they will be in the thick of the action.  They aren't there to promote their faith, but to provide religious support to those who need it.  They are a walking morale boost.

Now, a lot of people are not fond of seeing religion on their reality TV, but I have no objection to it--South Pacific is my favourite season, and that's due to how Upolu bound themselves into a tight unit due to prayer and how the effective exploitation of the devout Brandon cost Coach and Albert any chance of winning the game--there is, apparently, still an ethical line in the sand that players can overstep.  If Roxy follows my interpretation of an army chaplain, she could be a vital element of her tribe, particularly with Zane, who has been cast to be Brandon 2.0.  If that's the case, can she follow through without overstepping the jury's ethics?

She says she thinks she'll win the million because why else would God have brought her all this way.  Aside from the matter of what God has brought everybody else all that way for, I personally feel that God, should he be interested in Survivor at all, is more interested in the experience than the money (although apparently he's OK with revealing immunity idols on request).  Roxy herself seems to be there more for a personal journey than to win, inspired by Redemption Island's Matt rather than South Pacific's Upolu, so I'm not sure she's got the gameplay she'll need, although she is at least a fan.

If nothing else, I really want her to make the loved ones visit so that we get to see one of her parents (I assume).  In her video, she explains that her parents are from the rural Caribbean and have lived in Survivor conditions.  These days, they like to poke fun at the contestants on the show and are apparently looking forward to laughing at their city-dweller daughter's attempts to survive.

Besides all this, she should be fit due to military training and she seemed likeable enough in her video.  On her tribe, I would guess Angie, Russell and Zane would all be open to some religious morale-boosting.  Therefore, even though I think she'll struggle with the individual game, she should be safe to the merge.


Russell (45)
Although Russell has probably the second most famous evacuation scene, he's the least well known of the returners and the 'smallest' character.  In his original season, he made very little strategic impact, since he got totally sidetracked with being the leader of his tribe, a role which he had been forced into.

He claims he doesn't want to be railroaded into leadership this time, but I think he will be, because that's the role returners fulfil: the voice of experience.  If he resists that could spell trouble for both himself and Matsing, but I think being the leader could work out for him this time.  He's got the experience to avoid the pitfalls of his previous season, and everybody else will think of him as a figurehead, not realising that he's more strategically savvy than he appears, kind of like Coach last season.

After seeing his video, I do think Russell's going to catch people off guard by being more savvy about the game than anybody remembers.  I'm not sure if he's really got the instincts to get himself to the end though.  Still, of all the previous players, I think he's got the best shot of winning (even if he won't necessarily finish higher than the other two), because he won't be so high on everybody's radar.


Zane (28)
Zane lists Brandon Hantz as a role model for this game, and has clearly been cast to be a similar character.  He's got nine years on Brandon and does come across as more grounded, but he really shouldn't be on the show.  He wants to be liked by the audience, which is never a good start for a reality show contestant.  He's dismissive of the rest of the cast before he even starts the game.  I hope he warms up to Roxy, because I think he'll be needing religious support very quickly.

The problem with contestants like Zane is that they are unpredictable in their gameplay, because they don't know what they're doing and pride themselves on steering away from convention.  People ally with them, thinking they're going to be easy to manipulate and/or a great person to sit beside at the finals, but nine times out of ten, they open their mouth at the wrong moment or change their mind at the last minute and their allies pay the price.  Also, it's never a guarantee that the crazy person can't win; some South Pacific contestants believed that Brandon would have won had he got to the end, just because he had stayed true to himself.

Zane needs to go home early.  He won't.


After all that, who do I really think will take home the money?  Well, ignoring the vagaries of the game (in the right circumstances, just about anybody could win), I think our players with true winner potential boil down to Denise, Pete and RC--possibly Dawson as well, but she could just as easily be a complete goofball.  Time will tell.

That's my winner shortlist, but in time-honoured internet tradition, I will pick one as my 'official' winner prediction, and that's going to be Pete, on the grounds that I have picked a male winner for the past couple of seasons only for a female to win.  Statistics say that a guy's got to bring home the title sometime, so I'll stick with the less fair gender until one does!

So there we go.  Pete for the win, but I'll assess how far off the mark I was for each contestant as they're eliminated.