Survivor San Juan Del Sur Recap
Episode 1, Part 1

By Kim Hollis and David Mumpower

September 24, 2014

Here are the people who will be ruining your Wednesday nights this year.

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So it’s come to this. Survivor returns and the once and future recappers return as well. Jim Van Nest’s busy parenting schedule precludes his participation this season, so we return to the scene of the crime once more.

Let’s get some housekeeping out of the way before we begin. If you are new to BOP, hi! We first recapped the series in 2003, and we have handled over half the seasons overall. BOP has been recapping Survivor since season two, which makes us one of the oldest television recapping sites on the net. Alas, we have a reputation for being brutally honest with our feelings toward the show. To wit, we were so discouraged by a couple of previous seasons that we lost our enthusiasm for handling recaps.

Survivor has gone wrong in a key regard. Once they stumbled upon the inflammatory Russell Hantz, who we call Evil Loser Russell (ELR for short), they grew obsessed with the idea of casting trolls. It’s how we wound up with a racist, Colton, and a sociopath in desperate need of help in Brandon Hantz, Russell’s nephew. These are two people who need extended help via therapy who were cast simply to be controversial. Their presence ruined the show for us.

There was also the entirety of last season, which featured a dirty cop lying to everyone about everything. He was one of the worst winners in the history of the show, right at the bottom with Vecepia and Heidik. And the worst part was the inevitability of his victory. That guy whose name we don’t remember and we cannot be bothered to google was the living embodiment of the idea that it’s better to be lucky than good.




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Dirty Cop (we always thought of him as Michael Chiklis from The Shield, only without the charisma) repeatedly did the wrong thing, yet he was consistently rewarded. It was an odd type of anti-karma that floated him to an undeserving victory. We were so disgusted by the entire affair that we never even watched the finale. In our defense, we were at Disney World at the time and we knew the result by the time we returned home the following week. We simply deleted the episode and gave no further thought to the season. It was that forgettable.

This leads us directly to our feeling regarding the season that begins tonight. We had not planned to watch it. This would have been the first time since the show’s inception that we willingly avoided Survivor yet there was no hesitation on our part once casting was announced. As those of you who read BOP’s recaps of The Amazing Race realize, we are not fans of Natalie and Nadiya Anderson, the twins who suck the air out of any room they enter. Their presence alone would have made us question the upside of watching this season.

The elephant in the living room is someone else, though. John Rocker is a big honkin’ doofus. Sports Night said it in 1999 and nothing has changed in the interim. Rocker was an elite closer for several seasons for the Atlanta Braves. He also became notorious for some ill-considered comments involving public transportation in New York City. There was… more to it. Suffice to say that if you are not a white southern male, Rocker said something that directly or indirectly insulted you.


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