April 26, 2007: Idol Hands
OK, I know it's just a TV show - a reality TV show at that - but I'm telling you that by 8:58 pm/ET I was on the edge of my seat and ready for next week's show.
Survivor: Fiji has become pure entertainment and that's mostly because I have no clue who is going to win the million dollars! By now there's usually something to give most viewers an inkling as to who is going to win, but with no clear villain (come on, the Four Horsemen "bad guys" aren't all that bad), I'm not even sure if the Vegas oddsmakers have a clear-cut winner chosen. And that's the beauty of
Fiji. It's anybody's game.
Part of what's keeping
Fiji so interesting are the great challenges, and tonight's were the best mix of athleticism and brainpower that I think I've ever seen on the show. It's a nice twist that, though we're at the individual portion of the game, the castaways are still forced to work in teams as they did for this Hasbro-inspired ball-launch game that I'm almost sure Yau-Man was trying to throw. Yet again, Mookie displayed his take on sportsmanship. Seriously, what is his problem with Yau-Man? But that doesn't even matter given Boo's heroic and disturbing knee injury, complete with sound effect. Can't you still hear his whatever pop back into place? I would almost have preferred a clean ACL tear to that sound. But, hey, Boo's a trooper, and as he writhed in pain in the mud, I realized that I had somehow missed his good looks and fine physique over the course of the first half of the season. Must be those Earl-tinted glasses I've been wearing.
As for the immunity challenge, it's clear someone has been reminiscing about Minesweeper, that computer game that came bundled with some prehistoric version of Windows. It was, perhaps, the most fair immunity challenge ever. Memory, strategy and luck all came into play and made for a tense showdown between Stacy, Yau-Man and Alex. If Stacy hadn't come through last week for The Syndicate, as Earl's alliance has been dubbed, then I would not have been relieved that she won immunity this week. Funny how that works, but it just goes to show how quickly things change.
I've never seen so much true game playing, I'm talking
Survivor-mantra level outwitting and outlasting. Mookie and Alex, reduced to a two-man alliance, cleverly deduced the whereabouts of the other hidden immunity idol and confirmed their suspicions when they rifled through Yau-Man's bag to "find" it. I might have appreciated their plot to blackmail Yau-Man as near-genius had I not been laughing so hard at their being overheard by Cassandra and Stacy. Talk about game-playing! Lest you forget, this unlikely pair was also hiding in the woods plotting their own route to the final two. Boo's turn at Exile Island wasn't random, either. Did you catch how quickly Earl selected Boo to go to EI? That's right, Earl, keep those HII clues in the family. Boo then, very smartly, used his exile clue to try to smoke out the twice-hidden idol without giving up any information as to its location at camp. Even Dreamz showed that he was thinking long-term by trying to get in good with future jury members. I don't know how well Dreamz succeeded given that his explanation for betraying Alex and Mookie made no sense, but at least he tried.
What's best about
Fiji is that it hasn't fallen into the pick 'em off one-by-one pattern of previous seasons. Even though there are strong and clear-cut alliances, everyone has their own contingency plan showing that there are tiny fissures in these rock-solid pacts. If Cassandra's choking Earl didn't make that clear, then Alex voting against Mookie should have. Everyone is playing this game hard, so come final tribal council I don't want to hear any "you don't deserve to be here/coattail-riding" comments. Right now, nobody is coasting.
Even
Jeff is playing hardball. Tribal council ain't what it used to be. No longer is it a place that merely reveals the results of earlier game play. It is truly the third challenge and players need to work for Jeff's favor - or else he'll pull something like he did tonight with the trust question, which was little more than a reprimand for violating Yau-Man's privacy. To be fair, Jeff turned it around with a post-vote comment that rightly planted a seed in Alex's favor. A six-to-one division makes Alex the swing vote and a very powerful player indeed, should any member of The Syndicate decide to break free. All but two, Earl and Yau-Man, have reason to break rank. Will they? Who knows? That's why I can't wait to see what happens next week.
So what do you think, has
Fiji turned out to be the way
Survivor was meant to be played? Is it fair to say that this season has breathed new life into the franchise? And who do you think is going home next week?
