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Hello, good people, and welcome to the first episode of Survivor: Micronesia - Fans vs. Favorites. Considering they put ten huge fans of Survivor in this season, I have to be honest, I'm more than a little surprised to be writing this recap right now. Seems like I should be waiting to see if the jury found me deserving of the million dollars, but I digress.

In an interesting twist, the 16th season of Survivor has picked ten former players and ten big fans of the show to compete as tribes against each other. They call the returning players "Favorites", and I think they use that term loosely. I mean really, was anyone just dying to see Eliza or Parvati again? I'll give you James, Yau Man, Ozzy and Cirie. They were hugely popular in their seasons. In the middle we have Jonathan, Ami and Amanda. I'm excited to see all three of these players because I think they all played a really strong strategic game and Jonathan and Ami come with tons of potential fireworks. With Amanda and James involved, we have the interesting angle of Amanda being the one who dumped James in China, so how well will they get along? Yau Man played the feeble old guy deep into the game and Ozzy relied on dominating challenges. Neither one of these guys is going to surprise ANYone this time around. Will they change up their game a bit or be early boots? There are a ton of interesting scenarios at play this time and I can't wait to see how they play out.

Huh? What? That's only nine favorites? Oh yeah, I totally forgot about the tenth returning player. Filling the role of the quiet reserved under-the-radar player is Pearl Islands Jon Dalton. Y'all may know him by his Reality TV name, Jonny Fairplay. In interviews I've seen with Fairplay and Probst, it has been made pretty clear that he is back for one reason only and that's to stir up trouble. And if everything we're hearing is true, he does not disappoint.

Playing against our returning Survivors are ten people that claim to be huge fans of the show. While I know little about them, what I do know is that we have a couple of guys who want to BE Ozzy. We have a fireman that's every bit as big as James. We have a few hotties, a couple goofballs and a golf course beer lady. Since they are fans, I can't wait to see how long it takes before their adoration of the "favorites" wears off and they start to really not like them.

So far we've been promised some twists, the return of Exile Island (which I hate), a couple show-mances, including one where some crafty camera work was done in order to catch some castaways in an intimate setting, more backstabbing than you can shake a stick at and someone taking away James's title as the person who's made the dumbest move in the history of Survivor.

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