After Week Eight’s GREATEST EPISODE EVER in the “Survivor” enterprise, this week’s episode was CBS’s way to do the yearly Thanksgiving catch-up. This is the time for all families who have been belching up their turkey meals on a Thursday night to snooze in front of their fireplaces and remind themselves what a blast Survivor Gabon has been this season. And, there is ample opportunity to hop in and join all the shenanigans. Because this week, CBS managed to actually show not just some nicely edited recaps from the first several weeks, but it also unveiled some of the contestants’ application videos. Some were quite revealing because it helped explain some of the treacherous and evil behavior of some of the castaways up to now. Read the rest of this entry »

27 days in captivity with the contestants and this is what we have learned about the Survivor: Gabon this season thus far:

•    This has been a season of blindsides. And not just this, but, in true safari style, some of the victims have been big lions. Ace the mastermind, the sometime British-accented guru: gone. Marcus, the ringmaster doctor who felt he could sway anyone with a wave of a hand: gone. And last week, it was Charlie, the lawyer from New York, who was also as self confident as Marcus, and was possibly in a bro-mance with him, and was trying to call the shots on Fang with evil Corinne: gone. Not that the remaining players are all weaklings, because they’re not. But there is some kind of triumphalism in that comparative weaklings like Susie and Ken, and especially Crystal are moving past the established players. Read the rest of this entry »

How the mighty have fallen! Wow! Score one for the underdogs! After last week’s searing blindside of Ace from Fang, at the hands of his supposed kewpie doll/sorta love interest, Sugar, this week’s ouster was just as stunning. Marcus, the mighty doctor, leader, motivator, who liked to hear his own voice, was knocked to his knees at exactly the moment when he thought he was controlling his entire tribe. Uh uh. Here on “Survivor”, people’s fates can change in an instant and this was a classic, if not entirely unsurprising, moment. Here’s how this all went down: Read the rest of this entry »

Time to get caught up with the goings-on in Gabon. Week Five did not generate much drama, actually. As we know, Sugar has the hidden immunity idol, which she found weeks ago on Exile Island. Everyone on Fang knows this, including the Mephistophelian Ace with the maybe-phony British accent who seems to have taken a liking to the former pin-up model. In fact, on last week’s episode he told her that it seems that everyone knows she has the idol. To which she smiled gamely and said it didn’t matter much to her.

Also, Ace managed to pad his alliance with Sugar a little more with Matty, who seemed to be the most physically imposing of any of the other players. Matty gladly agreed, since no one else seemed to approach him about anything. Matty is a strong player, and he really stepped it up on a competitive level last week when lesser players like Kelly and Crystal could not. In fact, Crystal, Kelly and Ken attempted to sway Matty away from the clutches of Ace, i.e., how to tell him that Ace is a menace to everyone and that he is some kind of evil guru. Well, Matty for one isn’t seeing it. And given the fact that this lot is meager, starving and quite lacking in performing in any of the challenges, the choice for Matty was fairly clear. Read the rest of this entry »

So there was this elephant on last week’s episode of “Survivor”. The Fang tribe discovered it. It was a pretty angry pachyderm, and it was busy tearing down large branches and their camp. The team sat there in bemusement, and even Ace and Matty took the kayak to get a closer look for absolutely no good reason. Sugar seemed afraid for Ace; GC was saying “leave the elephant alone”. And yet, this opening sequence was a metaphor of sorts. The “elephant in the room” for Fang is that they are rudderless and full of disarray. They are unable to deal with personality and management issues in their own tribe because they won’t face them. And this is to their own detriment, and once again, they were faced with doom: Tribal Council. Read the rest of this entry »

With Paloma gone last week, Kota seemed to be ridding itself of someone weak and nattering. Yes, she complained a lot, and so did Kelly, who was a bit of a confidante or partner in crime in hating on Ace. Kelly the sales rep had a target on her, and Ace was apparently determined to go after her. She was not the cute sidekick to him that Sugar was. Hell, without the Idol that Sugar found, what use was Kelly anyways?

Over at Fang, fresh from two victories last week, you’d think they would settle their petty differences about, well, eating rice. They’re getting emaciated out there and someone at least (Randy) thinks they are going their food supply too fast. Except that a mini group of Ken, GC and Crystal –the non-white members, natch—don’t think so. They seemed to be pitted against evil-minded Randy (again), Matty the personal trainer, Dan the attorney-who-needs-to-find-himself and Susie, who brings up the rear because she doesn’t want her housewife-ness to get ousted. These cleavages within Fang are familiar. Read the rest of this entry »

We are still in the getting-to-know-you phase of Survivor. Jeff Probst is firmly at the helm of the reality show juggernaut, commenting at every turn about how both Fang and Kota tribes are settling in at their camps, winning or losing challenges, having some skirmishes between purported “:leaders” or followers. Each tribe is trying valiantly to win both reward and immunity challenges because they need the momentum and moral boost to carry them through these initial weeks.

In last week’s double episodes, Kota burst out of the starting gate with relative ease. People found their roles to play in setting up a shelter, finding water, digging latrines, and the stronger personalities prevailed over the lesser ones because of basic survival instincts. You need water and you want to complain that Ace, the worldly and slightly stuck-up photographer, is bossy? No. Let’s get this all done first. And let’s win all the challenges –and then figure out whether Ace or anyone else manages to rise to the cream of the proverbial crop. Read the rest of this entry »

Survivor Gabon Week 1

In terms of production value and sometimes suspense, “Survivor” is in a class all its own for reality shows. Many have tried to emulate its format, but no one has learned how to capture what it means to haul 18 complete strangers to some exotic locale, force them to create a “society”, perform difficult physical or mental challenges, and, as its fabled slogan says, “outwit, outsmart, outlast” the elements and the other contestants for 39 days. Since its start in 2001, there have been cult favorites like the first winner, the ornery Richard Hatch (now serving time in prison, incidentally, for evading Uncle Sam with his prize money), professional soccer player Ethan Zohn, who won the otherwise uninteresting season three, Survivor: Africa. That was even the season that introduced Elizabeth Hasselbeck to the world, and now we can take in her Republican cheerleading on the “View”. The locales for the show was visually stunning, and the show is paced in such a way to guarantee that there will be some level of intrigue in every episode, and as the season goes on and there are fewer survivors, things get pretty intense. Of course, this is the show that brought the term “tribal council” to American cultural lexicon, and it’s the centerpiece of each episode. Survivors arrive here ready to vote out someone with lit torches. The erstwhile (and recently Emmy-winning) host Jeff Probst reads out the votes, and when your name is called, your torch is symbolically snuffed out. The prize at the end of 39 grueling days? A cool million bucks. Read the rest of this entry »