TV: Survivor South Pacific (ep. 3)

Week three of the new season of Survivor and things are definitely heating up in the South Pacific. Redemption Island comes into play with a duel plus people can't seem to keep their big mouths shut.

Let's take a look at the details.


We start out with Semhar and Christine at Redemption Island. Of course, Ozzy and Coach both make sure they are present for their tribes to watch the duel. The challenge will be holding a wooden totem atop a pole while adding length to the pole every few minutes. Of course, Semhar brings the entertainment by gracing everyone with one of her spoken word poems before they start. She says to calm her nerves. Jeff's reaction is priceless! Sadly, her words aren't enough and she's out of the game. A shame. I was looking forward to more craziness from her like that - but clearly the alone time at Redemption Island and her own personal abandonment issues did her in.

Back at camps, lots of secrets spilled.

Brandon, who can no longer handle the lies he's been telling, pulls off his shirt to tell everyone he is Russell Hantz' nephew. Then he further tries to justify his voting for Mikayla but only ends up causing further friction with the tribe. Brandon, seriously, if you have that many problems with lying, keeping secrets and scantily clad women running around, Survivor is not the game for you.

Meanwhile on the other tribe, Ozzy feels the need to let Keith in on the fact that he found the Hidden Immunity idol. Keith runs off and spills the secret to Whitney to gain her trust. Uh oh. Looks like Keith is setting up multiple options within the five alliance. Ozzy is going to regret this gesture of trust down the line. Mark my words.

The reward/immunity challenge is pretty cool. Run out with a wave board, grab a flag, be pulled back by your team via the wench. Nice! Great visuals and great use of the water. Then grapple the flags, pull them up, unfold them and rearrange in your camp's logo. Coach's team was on fire this time and pulled out a nice win. I was rooting for them. I like to see back and forth with tribes going to tribal, just to keep the game balanced some.

Before tribal, the writing is on the wall. Cochran is the "bluff" but the target is Papa Bear. He scrambles to search for the idol and, when he comes up empty handed, attempts to fake having found something. Ozzy, Keith and Whitney however know where the true idol is - so the votes are more than enough to send the Bear to the Island.

Sadly, the lamp in our big screen TV blew fifteen minutes into the show, forcing me to scramble to another TV to watch (not in HD). That kind of knocked me out of my Survivor-vibe for a bit. Live Tweeting sort of got derailed for me, and I had to catch the Tout videos from Jeff Probst after the show ended. Hopefully we'll have the situation resolved before next week.