Player Intelligence -- The True Survivor Exile

Survivor kicked back up again tonight. It is without question the "junkiest" bit of "junk food TV" I watch, but hey... most people have a show like that. And if you're still reading this post by this point, you probably watch it too, so let's all "eat junk food" together, shall we? My random observations about tonight's episode:

Man, a lot of stupid players in this installment of Survivor. Where to begin? As always, I'm baffled how people can go on Survivor and not prep a few basic outdoor skills in advance of going. But this time was even worse than usual.

We saw Cirie, so afraid of the outdoors that she won't even turn over leaves. Even I'm not bothered by insects that much.

We have the Younger Men, who were trying to start a fire in their cooking pot. And they had flint to start a fire with, but still couldn't get it done! (As an aside, I find it odd that all the tribes did have names -- as seen on their flags and in the opening credits -- and yet the on-screen subtitles always just referred to them as "Younger Women," "Older Men," etc. Oh well. Easy reference, I guess.)

For the Prince of "Unprepared," witness Shane. Not only did he not bother to learn any survival skills before coming onto the show -- he didn't even bother to quit smoking in advance. He apparently just decided to come on and give up cigarettes when they pushed him off the boat. Wow. New heights (depths?) of dumb.

Misty gets exiled first and separated from her tribe. They're all bonding without her, and yet somehow she comes to the conclusion that the thing to do when she rejoins the group is to lie to her team and imply she found the immunity idol. She's lucky they didn't lose, cause they would have had every reason to call that bluff.

Then there's Tina. She thinks she got voted out because she came on as too big a threat and that she ended up with "the wrong people." Nope. She is simply the latest in a long line of dumb Survivor players who suck at the "public speaking" game. She totally shot herself in the foot at Tribal Council. Jeff asked her, "is everyone at camp pulling their weight?" Now, I for one think that lying is a-okay in Survivor -- it's a game, people. But even if you're not wanting/able to lie, she had an out. She could have twisted away from the whole fire and water thing and focused on the unbelievably kick-ass shelter those women built. I guarantee she didn't do that alone -- the other women had to have helped. She could have simply said, "oh, we definitely all rallied together to build the shelter." That would have easily ducked the question, and been the truth. But nope, she took the rope Jeff threw her an hanged herself with it.

Finally, there's "Astronaut" Dan. Okay, actually, I'm not disliking this guy. It's just an observation: at the end of the challenge when they showed him standing with his tribe, it was a straight-out-of-Sesame-Street "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" moment. He was the pastiest looking guy I've ever seen. I guess you don't get to see much sun when you're doing astronaut training all the time. Actually, he and Terry might be the closest to "players I'm pulling for" as I might get this early in the game.

Tune in next week, and we'll watch the idiocy continue.