Survivor – The most diabolical player ever

Jeff Probst promised that we’d see the worst villain ever in the history of Survivor, and it looks like he’s going to be able to deliver on that promise. How could someone play the game with a shit-disturbing strategy and expect to win? Indeed.

I’m pleased to see that there are already several distinct and exciting personalities on the show, across both tribes. Even better, so far the tribes appear to be evenly balanced. And Jeff couldn’t resist throwing some more “twists” our way.

It was interesting that right off the top we had two racial stereotypes explored. One was that Asian people are smarter — based on sight alone, Elizabeth was chosen as the smartest member of her tribe.

In an interesting stereotype reversal, Jaison was correctly identified — by sight alone — as a strong swimmer. Immediately after this we got a shot of Mike being surprised by his selection, because African-Americans aren’t generally good swimmers. Gotta love people!

The silent opening was intriguing. The tribes had to select a leader before any of them could talk to one another, and then those leaders selected various members they felt were the strongest in several attributes. That’s what led to those stereotypes mentioned earlier.

But the dominating force of this episode was Russell H. I feel sorry for the other Russell on the show, the voted-leader of his tribe, because if Russell H. sticks around, he’s going to have way too much money being pure evil.

I was trying to figure out how someone could come in wanting to win this and play in a purely heartless and wicked way, and Russell H. explained it. He’s an oil company owner (not helping our stereotypes of oil company magnates), and if he’s not lying, he’s a millionaire as well. He doesn’t care about the money; he wants to show how easy it is to win this game.

He’s just screwing around with people, and does so by dumping out all their water, making secret alliances with all the “dumb girls,” preying on the New Orleans tragedy to make up a sympathetic lie about himself having survived it, and really anything else he can think of to create chaos at camp. It’s surreal to watch, and I’m not sure what I think about it.

He tested his strength of persuasion by orchestrating Marisa’s elimination for no real reason at all, other than her saying she was worried about him and not sure what to think.

If he does win, will that negate the strength of the format? Probably not. If people want to play the game just to screw around now, has Survivor jumped the shark?

If Russell Hantz wins, it would prove that no one strategy is a guarantee for victory.

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on Sep 18, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT