Survivor: Vanuatu
Most episodes of Survivor show us three days of life on the island. This one only shows us one, but it's a pretty pivotal day on the island. Both teams have to go to tribal council and vote out a member of the tribe. The twist--and it's a complex one--is that one team wins reward and then one person on that team gets individual immunity by winning another challenge. Said person then goes with the other tribe and can give individual immunity to anyone he or she wants. Confused yet?
So, the men win the reward challenge of fishing gear and then John K wins the immunity challenge. He then gets to spend a couple of hours with the women, observing them as they bicker and argue about losing Dolly the night before. There's tension in the tribes this season and voting people out seems to fall strictly along age lines. I scratch my head and wonder about the strategy employed by the men is to vote out the strongest guys early so they won't be a threat later in the game. Which I guess makes sense, but you're assuming a lot...you're assuming you're going to win a lot of the immunity challenges leading up to the merge and if there's anything we've come to know over the past few seasons, it's never assume. As for the women, it's always interesting to watch them go to tribal council since you have no idea who is going home until the votes are finally read by Jeff.
I can see this going one of two ways--either it's gonna make the final few episodes really interesting, or it will be like Survivor: Africa where all the interesting personalities were voted out early and the last few episodes were unusually unmemorable.
Lost: Pilot (Part 2)
Before I get started on talking about this week's episode, if you've not seen it and want to catch-up, it's airing tonight on ABC for two-hours starting at 8 p.m EST. Trust me--it's more fun to go in not knowing what will happen.
Seeing the complete pilot for
Lost, I wish ABC had shown it as one two-hour episode instead of broken up in chunks like this. But, hey, what are you going to do, right? The second half of the pilot only gets better as we slowly begin to learn more about the people on the island. I love how J.J. Abrams, like the genius that is Joss Whedon, puts characters and situations out there, allowing us to make assumptions and then pulling the rug out. Kate was the prisoner in custody with the U.S. marshall?!? Never saw that one coming. I figured the transceiver wouldn't work as they'd hoped, but that was about all that was truely "expected" in this hour. This felt a lot like a Stephen King story--a group of "ordinary" people are stuck together in an increasingly bizarre circumstance and now we'll see if or how they band together to survive. And the whole polar bear on the island twist--that was one of those great twists that makes me glad I stay away from SPOILERS. Just like the early seasons of Alias, J.J. Abrahms have me hooked and he ended this one on a cliffhanger. Can't wait for more of this one.
And let me add this--
Kate out in the surf in her bra and panties....the hormonally imbalanced, red-blooded male in me really, really appreciated that scene.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 10/02/2004 10:42:00 AM |
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