Early reports are that this season is brutal. Palau was a gorgeous island locale with beautiful beaches and scenery, while Guatemala is rainy, brown, and muddy. Contestants are plagued by clouds of mosquitos and packs of howler monkeys. Reportedly there's nowhere to fish, making one player's fishmongering expertise useless.
Minor spoilers follow: The show begins with a gruelling 11-mile trek through the jungle, with the winning tribe getting flint and first pick of the two base camps. Reports indicate the trek kicked players' butts, turning out to be far more difficult than producers expected. Which should, at least, make for some interesting television. But the bigger twist to the season is that two familiar faces get a second chance at the game. Stephanie and Bobby Jon from Palau's doomed Ulong tribe return to captain each of the Guatemalan tribes. It'll be interesting to hear their reasons for returning. For Stephanie, I can't imagine it being anything but an anticlimax. She was a tragic heroine last season and went out as one of the darlings of the show. I can't imagine players letting her get near the prize money this time-- I expect we'll hear a lot of players conspiring to vote them off quickly, although smart ones will choose to keep them around for a while to leverage their experience-- which means the second chapter of her tale will have a less glorious finish. But then, I never would have thought Amber would win All-Stars, so what do I know? Far stranger things have happened on Survivor.
Posted by Peter at September 14, 2005 05:20 PM | TrackBackI would expect them to have some kind of ad hoc rule forbidding the tribes from voting their assigned leaders off in the early rounds, if they learned anything from All-Stars.
I'll be watching to see if they have a ritual cannibalism challenge at some point.
Posted by: Rich on September 15, 2005 09:02 AMIt seemed like the smart thing to do would be to throw the 11-mile competition, accept the worse base camp, but conserve energy. But that probably only makes sense in hindsight. (And only if the other team doesn't also do the same thing.)
Posted by: Doug Orleans on September 20, 2005 08:31 AM