In case you haven’t heard, I’m a hardcore Survivor fan. Which means All-Star versions of my favorite show are simultaneously the greatest and worst thing I can imagine. Jeff Varner put it best:

On the immunity challenge, “Yeah that challenge was hell. I was in hell.”

Cuts to Varner confessional, “I am in HEAVEN right now.”

That simple back and forth was a great summation of how I was feeling for the two hour premiere last week.

Best fangirl voice, “OMG SANDRA AND TONY WORKING TOGETHER!!!! I’m in heaven right now!”

Best horror girl voice, “NO! WHY ARE YOU TWO FIGHTING? WINNERS DON’T FIGHT! STOP IT! I’m in hell!”

Yeah…I really get into this stuff.

Take a jump with me and I will take you into the Survivor future and I’ll tell you all about goats, meat shields and killing chickens.

Like I alluded to above, I have come to the stark realization that each and every vote out this season is going to be tough on me. Except for Troyzan’s, ‘cuz, meh.

So instead of reliving every painful moment I’ll just give a brief overview to the previous episode and move onto where I think the show is heading. Hopefully I will do this every week. If I accomplish writing about an entire season, I will be a true game changer for this blog.

Last week Ciera (the good one) was #blindsided by the tribe. Probably because the rest of the tribe’s moms told them to go after Ciera. Moms can be petty ya know?

The only real good thing about the Ciera blindside was that I successfully called it right here in this blog! Hell yeah! I know what I’m talking about! I’m batting a thousand, life is good! And…oh shit, Tony the llama caller just got voted out and there goes my perfect season. And my favorite player of all time. Dammit. Let’s just move on.

One thing about Survivor that you should know, the edit is extremely important. There’s even a group of people who dedicate their time to coding each player’s perceived edit so that they can try to figure out who wins the season. It’s called Edgic. It’s pretty interesting and it’s usually spot on. Personally I don’t pay attention to Edgic. I use my own observations to try to get a sense of where the season is heading. Here are a few things I noticed.

• Two terms were thrown around more often than normal. Firstly, goats. Now in Survivor terms a goat is someone who gets dragged to the end by a highly skilled player so that player can get an easy win. In this episode goats referred to physically alive goats that the players were considering hunting. This is the kind of fodder that editors love playing with. When someone said the word goat it flashed to an image of a goat and then to a player. That player? Why none other than your mom’s favorite fourth time player Ozzie. And another time they cut from Culpepper to a goat. This could be the editors playing a trick on fans like myself or it could be a clue that these two get dragged to the end. Which makes sense for Culpepper but not so much for Ozzie, which leads to my next observation.
• The other term thrown around? Meat shields. This is a strategy where you keep around big targets to help protect yourself. You always want someone else around that other players want to get rid of or eventually you might be the big target that people want to get rid of. This strategy has been around for forever but was recently popularized by Survivor Cambodia winner Jeremy Collins. This time around a few people mentioned the strategy but the person who mentioned it the most? Malcolm Freberg. So does that mean Malcolm keeps Ozzie and Culpepper around as meatshields and goats at the same time? That would be quite the impressive feat but it is plausible and it’s my current theory to how this season ends.
• Another thing that stuck out was Cirie’s story. Cirie was basically in charge of the entire Nuku narrative for the two hour premiere. Sure Nuku won both immunity challenges and never needed to vote someone out but the editors were laying the groundwork for either an early Cirie boot or an underdog story for Cirie. Please let it be the latter. We’ve already lost Tony, don’t take Cirie from us!
• And finally, Tai and the chickens. In his previous season Tai famously was awarded $50,000 from pop star Sia for keeping Mark the Chicken alive for 39 days because we live in a very strange world where weird things happen. For some reason I thought Tai wouldn’t worry about the chickens this time so that he would lay low and not cause any issues. I was wrong, Tai is playing for that Sia money! The thing that caught my ear was JT (I think) saying they will have to kill Tai if they kill the chicken. I doubt JT will turn to murder but I don’t think this will end well for Tai.

Okay that’s the layout of how I see this season going based on some possible clues. But what do I foresee in the immediate future? Well we know two things based on the preview, the tribes are being switched up and JT is stranding his tribemates in the middle of the ocean. I wouldn’t make too much of the latter event, it’s most likely just previewing a funny moment but I suppose it could lead to JT finding a hidden idol. Either way the focus is on the tribe swap. We should expect them to divide into three tribes as has been the norm of late for Survivor. Which makes it extremely tough to predict what will happen next. But I will try anyway!

With three tribes there are only six members on each. That means that weak challenge players are exposed. Which means players like Sandra, Varner and Cirie should be nervous. But also smaller players like Hali, Sierra, Tai and Andrea since they are usually better at individual balance challenges than big team ones. I narrowed it down to seven. And now I have to take a stab in the dark and guess. I’ll go with Andrea. Why? I have no idea but she was my third boot in my original rankings so that’s good enough for me. (Bonus guess: her and Malcolm get swapped to the same tribe and Malcolm leads the charge to get rid of his old friend Andrea.)

Alright that’s all I have for this week. This blog is going to evolve like a Charmander throughout the season so please leave comments or suggestions below and thanks for reading!