After a lengthy absence, Jeff is back with a brand new cast of schemers, meatheads, sociopaths, ditzes, bipolar suffers, blithering idiots and famewhores! The good news is that the cast is once again back to 16.
Yay, I don’t need an Excel spreadsheet just to remember everyone’s names! Plus there’s less chance of half the cast being edited down to two seconds of airtime each episode. Remember Becky? Cassandra? Liliana? Rita? Janice? Mimi? Of course you don’t because they barely appeared on this show! Also, I may have made some of them up.
I have a feeling that this season is going to have even more Personalities than usual. Just in the first few minutes, we were introduced to a number of interesting people: Peih-Gee, the sad little matchstick girl; Leslie, God’s chosen warrior; Chicken, indecipherable Appalachian; and Courtney, Gollum-esque bitch.
In Buddha we trust
Jeff had them all perform a ceremony of some such or other to make it seem as if the show was deeper and more profound than the trashy reality show we all know it is. Peih-Gee (pronounced Pee-jee as in PG Autoglass or PG-13 movies) cried. Get used to little matchstick girl’s sad face by the way. I don’t think a smile has passed those lips since 1987.
Courtney treated the ceremony with about as much respect as you’d treat washing powder ads. She rolled her eyes a lot and made a lot of funny faces. In other words, she acted exactly like I do during any one Survivor episode. I like her!
Holy Roller Leslie was uncomfortable because there were scary statues all over the place. Casting her eyes to the sky, she silently called upon her Lord to rescue her from this torment. Finally, she made herself leave the ceremony because of the evil, evil Buddha figures staring at her. I see she’s one of those fun Christians. She told Jeff she left because she considered the ceremony “idol worship” and was convinced she had done the right thing and made God happy. I’m sure God’s counting up one the $1 million for your loyalty right now, Mary Magdalene.
Jeff announced that the Chinese government had confiscated their luggage and given it to Communist Party loyalists and thus they would be competing in the clothes they were currently wearing. Blonde Wisp of Forgettableness Jaime remarked that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Jeff remarked that it would make her either a liability or really popular. With Wrestler Ashley around, I don’t anyone’s going to notice Jaime’s boobs at all any time soon.
Tigers and dragons and chickens, oh my
The teams this time around are named after the Chinese words for ‘tiger’ and ‘dragon’ because Mark Burnett got a little too enamored of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He also made sure each team got a copy of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’, which I suspect is an abridged version written in treemail rhyme:
To win a war you need to fight
So get your buff and get your sword
Prepare to face your foe tonight
And you could win a nice reward
Crouching Fighting Tiger (aka John Woo) consists of:
PG Autoglass
WWF diva Ashley
Erik, the curly-haired guy who won Survivor Africa
Frosti the snowman
Chicken Boo
Sherea, who hates the outdoors and thinks everything should be paved with cement
Generically good-looking white boy leader Dave
Bra-less Jaime
Hidden Flying Dragon (aka Failing) consists of:
Denise
Denise’s mullet
Gay Mormon Todd
Jesus’ favourite angel, Leslie
Gravedigger James
Jean-Robert, the poker player
Beauty queen Amanda
Generically good-looking white boy leader Aaron
Courtney, who thinks they’re all dumbasses
The Lazies
John Woo proved to be full of lazy asses who joke and laugh and do buggerall. Except for PG, all quivering-chinned and quailing-lipped, who thinks work is the only way to stave off both her depression and Tribal Council. She thinks that if they do not work, they will all die. Lucky there’s a gravedigger this season then.
Sherea announced she was not outdoorsy with the same tone of voice one might announce “I am not a hooker” or “I am not a pedo”. Outdoors are not a happy place in her world. She is, I believe, a sad attempt to recreate the magic of the amazing couch potato goddess Cirie and her fear of leaves. It’s not working.
Ashley wanted to impress her many WWE fans (all two of them) but got off to a bad start by falling sick on the first day. Maybe it’s dehydration? I can’t imagine how much liquid she needs to keep the giant water balloons on her chest hydrated. Sortakindanotreally leader Dave was nice enough to comfort her: “I don’t want you to think you’re on the block just because you’re sick. Even though you totally are. I just don’t want you to think that.”
Chicken was one of the few (well, one of the one) who got stuff done, but nevertheless found himself the odd man out in his team. It is hard to bond with someone when you need a Hillbilly-English dictionary to communicate. He did not approve of Ashley’s lollygagging.
The Crazies
Failing proved to be full of hard workers who get along and generally get stuff done. Oh yeah, and Courtney. She hates their sunshiny goodness because she’s a misanthropic gnome from New York. She likes to make fun of things instead. I feel a strange affinity with her. Is that wrong?
The happy sunshiny goodness appears to be just a front for some. Jean-Robert claimed he could read people and immediately pegged Todd as one to watch. “Are you really a flight attendant?” he asked Todd. Who else would he be, a semi-famous retired football player? Thinking about it, it is suspicious Todd is claiming to be a flight attendant. Aren’t their height restrictions? Little Todd looks like you could just plop him in your carry-on bag, especially when standing next to big, bearish Jean-Robert.
Jean-Robert thought Todd came across as an intelligent type, a secret Todd begged him not to spread around. Just in case we hadn’t gotten it yet that Todd iz smrt, there were a few confessionals of him basically proclaiming how genius he was. We’ll see about that, Spice World.
Another unlikely pairing was Leslie and James. Leslie thought log-carrying James looked like Jesus Superman. She was slightly perturbed when she found out James was a gravedigger. Hey, someone’s got to bury them, lady, their bodies don’t magically ascend to heaven the same time their souls do.
James was worried about sticking around because he isn’t exactly the most sociable person around. Dead people don’t exactly make good company, after all, although they do probably make better company than Leslie.
Chicken noodles
Because of their location, the producers have access to all the made-in-China cheapo figurines they can get. Therefore, this season’s Immunity Idol is a statue of a Terracotta warrior, straight out of the Mingg Dynasty (Mingg is to Ming what Polex is to Rolex). Oh dear, Leslie will have to perform an exorcism every time her team wins it.
Failing was the first recipient of this mass-produced piece of history, leaving John Woo to go to Tribal Council. PG, who’s suffering the effects of Prozac withdrawal by now, wept. She then showed there was another side to her personality by bossing her team around. PG is where fun goes to die.
She, as well as Ashley and Chicken, were in the hotseat to be voted off. Chicken made it clear (as clear as a mush-mouth like him possibly could) that he was voting off the person who had done the least work – Ashley. No-one else did however and Chicken himself had his neck wrung. Chicken let out a startled caw when Jeff read out his name. In his final words he said…uh…er…well I’m sure he was sad about the whole thing.
To end, an excerpt from The Art of War: Survivor Abridged Version
Chicken Boo
What’s the matter with you
You don’t act like the other chickens do
No-one understands
What you’re saying, man
So we’ll vote you out
You’re a Chicken Boo