Survivor: Caramoan Premiere Recap Part I
She Annoys Me Greatly
By Ben Willoughby
February 15, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Here's a boat with ten Americans, all from different ways of life, all “fans” of Survivor, and there are some brief mentions of first impressions. One guy – Michael – is picked up on by Laura as being very observant. Michael’s observation of Laura is “she looks about 18. What the hell is she doing out here?”
And flying overhead in the more fun helicopters are their competitors – 10 “favorites”. And they each get their own personal introduction from Probst. There’s Malcolm, with footage of his final challenge loss. And Cochran, the “Survivor nerd. He betrayed his tribe and paid the ultimate price. And he took Dawn down with him.” Brenda “used her looks to her advantage, but not everyone on her tribe was charmed.”
Erik was one of the original fans on the first Fans vs Favorites season, and “his inexperience showed.” So of course they play his big moment, which is a bunch of other players saying “Maybe you could convince Erik to give you his idol,” “Who would fall for that?” and Eliza’s eyes popping out when he actually does it.
But Erik wasn’t the only player to give up his idol, as we get footage of Brandon giving up his, accompanied by various WTF looks from the jury. Though to be fair, all my memories of Brandon are people giving him WTF looks. He was willing to “sacrifice immunity to play the honest game his uncle never could.” Andrea “the hard-working farm-girl... flirted her way out of the game” while Corinne was “good at making friends, better at making enemies” and telling Sugar she was an “unemployed, uneducated leech on society.”
And then there’s Phillip and his feather. Everyone thought he was crazy, but he “aligned with Rob and made it to the final three,” like that’s any achievement when it’s obvious you have no chance of winning once you get there. But he still did better than Francesca, who was first voted out in the same season, and on Day 1 summed Phillip up as “crazy.” Phillip also kept calling her Francesqua.
“What will happen when these explosive personalities collide?” Probst is standing on top of a slab of volcanic rock striking a he-man pose. “Thirty-nine days! Twenty people! One survivor!” Cue credits!
After the credits telling us everyone’s names, we get several close-ups on crocodiles that we are supposed to believe are right there when the “fans” arrive. “Welcome to the Caramoan Islands,” greets Probst. “Whooo!” There’s no chit-chat as he announces they will be playing against some of their “favorite” Survivors! Smaller “Whoo!” this time.
The “favorites” land in their helicopters and come out one by one. It turns out that Sherri – the only woman aged over 40 on her tribe - might actually be a fan, because she calls out all their names right after Probst does. “Nerd alert!” some guy calls out before Probst has even said who it is. “Cochran!” Sherri gives him a thumbs up. And now here’s Dawn! “Dawn! Oh my God!” says Sherri.
No one knows Corinne or Andrea, but Erik gets a big “ice cream scooper guy!” from Sherri. She is really into this. Obviously no one knows Malcolm yet, but when Brenda appears there are whispers and murmurings of “so dangerous” from Julia the race-car driver and others.
“Oh my God, that’s Russell’s nephew!” shrieks Sherri. No one points and laughs at Francesca, so everyone’s forgotten her. And Shamar, the big Marine, sighs out an “Oh no” when Phillip appears. I feel you, Shamar. But his overall assessment of the “favorites” is “This lunch meat right there. It’s about to be chow time.”
This season, the “fans” are called the Bikal tribe and will be wearing orange buffs, while the “favorites” are the Gota tribe and will be wearing purple. But I’ll just call them “fans” and “favorites” because that’s what everyone else will be calling them. Not even Probst bothered to tell the castaways their tribe names.
And it’s challenge time already! Before they have even gotten off the beach.
Probst explains the challenge. An area of water has been roped off to make a playing field with two poles – one for each tribe – at the near end , and a ring at the far end. Two people from each tribe will go on to the field, grab the ring and essentially wrestle over it. If you’re holding the ring and touching your tribe’s pole, you win a point for your tribe. First tribe to four points wins reward of flint and beans, and there’ll be lots of opportunities for Probst to say “hand on pole” along the way. Brandon asks if he can tackle someone. He wants to, “really hard.”
The first round has Julia the race-car driver and Shamar the enormous Marine against Dawn and Erik the scrawny ice cream scooper. So no surprises about who will win this. Erik sprints to the ring, followed by Shamar, and then when he gets it he throws it straight to Dawn. Since Shamar is built like a rhino and covered with lots of scary-looking tattoos, that’s what I’d do too. But as Julia and Dawn scramble over the ring, Shamar goes to grab it. Erik makes the most ineffectual tackle ever, which Shamar ignores and the “fans” win the first point.
Next round is Hope aka Miss Missouri USA and Eddie the firefighter against Brandon and Andrea. Since his last season, Brandon has added to his collection of butt-ugly tattoos. Hey, one of them’s a Confederate flag. Not completely unexpected. “Andrea and Hope going at it” is the commentary highlight, but it ends with Brandon seemingly dragging the ring and everyone holding onto it past the orange pole and beyond so that Andrea can get her hand on the purple pole. “Favorites, baby!” Brandon punches his chest.
Round 3 is Phillip, resplendent in his pink Y-fronts, and Brenda against probable face-lift victim Sherri and glasses-wearing Michael. “Sherri and Brenda tied up!” “Break her wrist!” calls out Shamar, and Probst has to break off his commentary to say “What!?” “Like, break her hold,” explains Shamar lamely. It ends with Michael grabbing the ring and Phillip grabbing Michael’s leg and dragging him and everyone else over to the “favorites” pole. Outwitted by Phillip. Michael is not off to a strong start.
Now it’s Cochran and Francesca against inter-changeable blonde #2 Laura and Matt the BMX salesman with the interesting beard. It can’t help Cochran’s ego when he is told by his tribe to take on Laura, but he’s probably relieved as well. “Are you taking me, Cochran? Think you can handle me?” trash talks Laura. “You wouldn’t believe what I can handle,” says Cochran. Of the three inter-changeable blondes, Laura is my favorite so far. Matt is tackled by Francesca and everyone gets in on it. It ends up with everyone having a hand on the ring close to both poles, and the winner will be the one who drags it to their end. The “favorites” are very close... and they actually win their third point! With Cochran!
The fifth and potentially last round is Malcolm the Probst man-crush and Corinne the mean girl against Reynold the salesman and (after reviewing the tape) Allie the bartender. Too many blondes on the “fans” tribe. This is the scrambliest of the lot as Malcolm and Reynold both sprint to the ring in an early competition for Probst’s heart. Reynold gets their first, and tries to throw the ring to Allie, but Malcolm Secret Service-dives to take the ring on the chest and then everyone tussles over it. Reynold is pulling at Malcolm and “Malcolm losing his shorts!” Probst ejaculates. Everyone else is laughing. Way to make a first impression with your tribe, Malcolm.
Anyway, Malcolm – blurred bottom and all – pretty much drags everyone over to the “favorites” pole and after some more tussling, manages to touch it. The “favorites” are all very excited and Malcolm gets hugs from Dawn and then Brandon. I hope he had time to pull up his shorts first. “Favorites” get fire and beans. Nothing for the fans. The boats will take the tribes off to camp for the ritual shelter building and identification of the bossy control-freaks.
After the break and some gratuitous manta ray footage, the fans arrive at their newcamp. Shamar was very disappointed to lose because he “had such confidence in my team” of people he’d never seen before, but it’s a lesson that he “doesn’t have full control over this game.” But Shamar won’t be learning that lesson any time soon, because almost immediately he’s at the center of an argument about whether it’s more important to get fire or shelter.
Shamar, who seems to be taking the heat and dehydration pretty badly, doesn’t want to waste energy building a shelter now, and thinks the tribe priority should be on getting a fire lit so they can get water. Matt interviews that his focus is on building a shelter, and a bunch of them get started on that. In interview, Matt says he wants to do his own thing and see how it plays out. They are both non-self-aware idiots, but Shamar's probably the bigger idiot of the two, as he doesn’t see that ten people can work on more than one thing, and that he's not helping his case when his activity is limited to sitting down, telling the working people that they are achieving nothing by building a shelter and sweating.
Anyway, Shamar and Matt start a discussion that ends with a “Shut up! Stop talking!” from Shamar. Reynold says that “Shamar just went nuts” and talks about the need for camaraderie on his tribe. He has already started to build some by commenting to two of the so-far interchangeable blondes how he’s never seen two prettier sunburns.
The “favorites” arrive at their beach, and Malcolm gets an interview about how good it was to make a positive first impression with the others by winning the game point while mooning everyone. Phillip is next, saying that on his first season he had insecurities along the lines of “Can I survive the heat? Humidity? Starvation?” But now he knows that he can get through all the sufferings of being a Survivor and can focus on playing the game.
The “favorites” get to work building a shelter, with the only thing close to conflict being that Phillip wants to orient it so he wakes up facing the ocean. Brenda mocks him playfully, asking why he can’t just turn his head, but he doesn’t take it seriously. Francesca interviews that she stands by her assessment in the Redemption Island season that Phillip is a crazy person. “Hopefully they won’t be thinking about me,” she says. Then don’t give them a reason to.
In the jungle, Andrea, Dawn and Francesca make an alliance of “us three for sure” and they agree on Cochran for a fourth. Francesca is “traumatized” by going first and now is going to align with everyone. Shots of Francesca talking with everyone. Over-compensation. Francesca even makes overtures to Phillip. “Even though we did not get along so well, I was never gunning for you.” No response from Phillip.
In interview, Phillip says that Francesca is “stuck in a time warp. I just think that… she annoys me greatly.” But back on the beach, he tells Francesca without making eye contact that they are on the same page. In another Francesca interview, she says that she is resigned to playing nice with Phillip and is not gunning for him. Also, if she gets voted out first she “will eat this rock.”
After the commercial break, at the “fans” camp Matt us still hacking at the bamboo and Shamar is still sitting down and sweating. Shamar wanted this to be a miserable experience where everyone suffered, but I don’t think he figured that he would be getting it worse than anyone. Anyway, five people have gotten together to start making fire... though not Shamar, who wanted everyone to focus on fire in the first place.
But it plays out to his advantage, because he watches them fail, thinks through what they are doing wrong and then gets to “be the Marine who came in at the end and just smashed them.” There’s Shamar’s gameplay right there – crash through or crash. (My money is on crash.) Anyway, the fire gets lit, everyone is happy the fire is lit, and Matt claims that things are “smoothed over with Shamar.” Sure.
We are treated to another Phillip interview, where he talks about what a good crowd they are (See? Delusional!) and then leads us through what he learned from Boston Rob. Phillip’s even “created” what he calls the BR Rules. Phillip’s BR rules: 1. Be in an alliance. 2. Be in an alliance within an alliance. 3. Get rid of your alliance before they get rid of you. “And by the way man, you don’t owe anybody anything. It’s all about family.”
Phillip puts the BR rules into practice with Corinne. “Listen, this is important!” “OK, tell me,” says Corinne all wide-eyed, which is exactly the way to play Phillip. Anyway, Phillip and Corinne agree to work together, and they talk about maybe bringing in Malcolm and Andrea. “I’m in, I love it,” says Corinne, who clearly cannot believe her luck. Half the conversation she had her buff at her mouth to stop from grinning too wide. Phillip has already invented names for them all – Corinne is the Dominatrix and Andrea is the Eliminator! Phillip remains the Specialist, staying in the background and giving the directions, unknown to everyone else. But Phillip has plans to expand the alliance, approaching Dawn (maybe she’ll be the Intuitor?), Cochran (the Poindexter?) – and Erik (the Pushover?).
Phillip’s overture to Erik gets off to a bad start, with “You’re the last one” and “I have the numbers without you, but I want you in, as long as you don’t get nervous.” Phillip’s big finish is, “I’m just the messenger, I was sent, I’m an errand boy,” like that’s at all convincing after everything else he has said. Then he goes off to think about what a successful alliance-maker he is.
Erik’s recollection is a little different than Phillip’s. He describes it as “you’re with me or out” and complains that he wasn’t even given a choice. Boston Rob-style power-plays don’t fly with Erik, who thinks that Phillip is a “combative idiot loser who makes everybody crazy.”
BOP agrees with this assessment. Check back tomorrow to read the second part of Ben's hilarious opus on the Survivor premiere.