I suppose I will begin by telling you the process by which I found myself watching "Survivor: Amazon".
Fact 1: I am married. Fact 2: We have two televisions - one of which is hooked up to a VCR. Fact 3: My wife likes two television shows that air at the same time on Thursday night: "Survivor" and "Friends". Fact 4: (see Fact 1)
The astute, and/or married, readers will deduce that my wife watches one of those shows and tapes the other. So my viewing choice yesterday evening was between Jeff Probst and the castaways OR six severely overpaid and underfunny movie-star wannabes. So I settled down into my chair and watched the Survivor drama unfold.
Since the original Survivor I have not been the biggest fan of the show. Many of the contestants have been morons and many of these morons have done very well (sort of an anti-Darwin theme). Aside from being morons many of them are sleazy. I don't like sleazy. Well, let me rephrase that a little bit...I don't like Reality TV shows that have sleazy people on them. I know, I know. I hear you saying to yourself "You HAVE to be sleazy to win Survivor". No, you don't. Ethan was a straight-shooter and there have been other morally straightforward folks who have done well too. In fact, it is usually the punks and bossy folks who are the first to go! (The latest casualty Ryan falling into the first category.)
Anyway, I believe it was Alexander Hamilton or Winston Churchill who said "All evil needs to be victorious is for good men to do nothing." (I would look up who said this famous quote but that seems like a lot of work. I'm sure everyone gets the point.)
In Survivor-speak that phrase has become "All morons/sleazebags need to win is for good contestants to do nothing."
However, I was drawn back into the Survivor fold this week as the interesting twist of same-sex tribes appeared (it's an "interesting twist" from an outside vantage point...from the inside I'm sure it's no fun being in an all-male tribe).
From the way they played up the arrogant attitude of the male tribe you could see their defeat coming. In actuality one shouldn't be too hard on the male tribe because their defeat was primarily due to Dan who has a sense of balance comparable to Moe of the Three Stooges. (After watching his pathetic performance on a rudimentary balance beam one wonders how he manages to walk upright at all.)
However, it wasn't Daniel who paid the price for defeat but his buddy in inner-ear disability, Ryan. After the male tribe's failure in the immunity challenge Ryan recognized his perilous situation and understood he would be targeted. Ryan went into an offensive mode and even managed to round up three votes for Roger's ouster. Unfortunately he fell one vote shy and was summarily voted out. Ryan tried to be gracious in defeat but it's hard to buy that he learned a bunch of life lessons after a measly three days in the Amazon.
The situation only gets more interesting as the male tribe has now acknowledged their overriding arrogance and is more focused on future immunity challenges. Since the female tribe can't even get a shelter built it will be interesting to see what happens next week!
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