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Wacky Wanda's Episode 11 Review!
« on: May 2nd, 2006, 10:01am » |
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Here's what Wanda sent us this week...
The Fight for F-2!
Cirie, Danielle, Courtney: Who would get the coveted F-2 spot? While Terry, Shane, and Aras (who has been dogged, plucky, and determined in spite of Terry's overpowering him physically and Shane's overpowering him as the tribal hypnotist) have clearly had their sights on the top spot, the women seem to have conceded that a man will win the final challenge, so their challenge is to survive to the final three and then be selected by the endurance challenge winner to go to the F-2 chair.
From there, all that stands between you and a million dollars is good persuasive speaking! If Terry is F-1, the F-2 woman appeals to the loyalty of her Casaya tribemates and hopes that jealousy will keep the jurors from awarding Terry the big prize. If Shane would win the final immunity challenge, his insanity, controlling behaviors, moodiness, and sheer ugliness should separate him from the million bucks! Aras making the final three would be a long shot, but if Aras would win the final challenge, a woman in the F-2 spot could hope that her warmth and friendliness could charm a jury with four males (Austin, Bruce, Terry, Shane) to award her the grand prize rather than award it to a rival buck, and that her girlfriends would give her support as well.
Gotta hand it to Cirie! In my post last week, I outlined the predictable finish for the final six and hoped that someone would change up the game. If my prediction had been right, it would have been another "ho-hum" show with Aras taken out, but a change in the forecast would mean something great happened. Kudos to Cirie -- SHE DID IT! This was the best play since Rob C's game in the Amazon, and arguably the best Survivor play ever! LOVED IT! YAY CIRIE! She deserves everything she wins in this game!
Though Cirie won a reward challenge in the area of her strength -- knowing her tribemates, having been an astute observer and character analyst -- she knows that any challenges with a physical component are not likely to go her way. (Witness this week's "terrible tangle" and the reward loss for her threesome with Shane and Aras). Everybody loves Cirie, but for her to get to F-2, she has to clear the board of the people most desirable for the F-2 spot (i.e., most annoying!). As Danielle also recognized (she talked with Terry about it this week), Courtney was the best candidate for that spot, so the first player Cirie and Danielle needed to clear was Court. Cirie did it! She knew Danielle would also see the sense of the strategy, and she knew Aras stood to gain from it as well, so she pulled what might be the neatest little play ever! I can't praise her enough! Shane and Terry were both planning to make Courtney F-2. Shane (who thought he had orchestrated Danielle's demise) and Terry (who thought he had all the ducks in a row to take out Aras) were both left stunned! I love seeing a woman pull the strategy string!
Shane is clearly the leading candidate now for F-2, but Shane never thinks of himself in that light. Who among the others will see that now? It would be great if Cirie would see that Shane is an even better F-2 candidate than Danielle, and Cirie would round up two allies to take him out next week.
When a cast carries a pawn/loser along because of a couple of strong people see this person as ideal for F-2, they make the vote of the jury too predictable, and there is no suspense at the finale. Palau was a good example of this. It's far more fun to see seasons in which the jury might split 4-3. That's why having some cast members who are smart enough to fight for the F-2 spot improves the game immeasurably. We haven't seen this happen before, at least not as openly and dramatically as it happened this week. Moving to eliminate the most annoying people is in the self-interest of people like Cirie, but is also virtuous (my "Bond of the Best" strategy -- take people of character and worth to the finish; play against the best; in Guatemala I still ache to think of Judd defeating Margaret in that heated Tribal Council).
As mentioned last week, Courtney certainly has good things to be said about her. Her care for Bruce, her respectful tribute in maintaining the rock garden, her entertaining with her luxury item -- these show character and personality. On the other hand, her interpersonal skills were generally weak, as evidenced by her being voted most annoying and most several-other-things. She was a mini-Shane: moody, explosive, over-blunt by times. It was interesting to see her promise Shane this week that she would have his back, and then immediately desert to Terry when he courted her.
Finally, a comment on Shane and his "Blackberry." I admit to a high degree of technological illiteracy. The only blackberries I have known are the ones I can pick in August on a good hike around edges of fields and woodlands in the mountain-plateau acres here in the Pennsylvania Wilds. But Shane called up images of Greg Buis, one of the craziest and most fun guys ever on Survivor and one of my absolute favorites from Season One or any season -- Greg with his "nature phone" made from half a coconut that kept him in touch with the world. I loved Shane being imaginative with a piece of rock like that. It's a little-boy thing, it's letting the kid in you still exist after you've grown up. Children can find things in clouds and stones and pieces of bark or wood, but when people do it after they're seven years old, others try to stifle that creativity. Now I like Danielle, and I know somebody was interviewing the whole cast and baiting someone to make a statement that Shane was weird playing with his Blackberry, and they found that person in Danielle, but that commentary was what Mark Twain would say is "civilization speaking," in the wrong sense of "civilization" -- that pompous, pretentious, grown-up stuff that we're supposed to buy into that takes the spark and the fun out of life.
If I were out there and Shane got a Blackberry, I'd be jealous inside that he found it first -- but I'd look for one too, and see if we could text-message or something. In fact, get one for everybody on the tribe and see what we could bring in as news from the rest of the world! Could be a great game -- imagining all kinds of newsflashes, cool new sports records being established, maybe even peace in the Middle East (or Washington, D.C? or would that be going too far?).
We weren't allowed to have our game clothes in Palau, but my hat was red, and my three shirts (the "Game clothes" list told us we could bring one sleeveless, one short-sleeved such as a tee shirt, and one long-sleeved) were all dyed purple. It was to make a statement for those in tune with it. Sing! Play! Be imaginative! Have fun!
As the folks in the Red Hat Society will tell you -- LIGHTEN UP! So this week -- Yay Shane!
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