Episode
3: "The Gods are Angry" (Air date: October 25, 2001; filmed July 17-19,
2001)
We stupidly picked: Boran wins
RC (okay,
good so far...); X
Samburu wins IC (nope); X
Clarence booted (55% likelihood), or Kelly (45%) -
real answer: Carl (dammit!)
All right, we give up.
Let's check the
CBS site, to see what morsels of excitement they have for us, eh?
A close call with lions awakens one of the tribe. Hmm,
Jeff Probst said this was Brandon in the pre-show press conference.
But the CBS preview indicates this is Tom and Kelly. Looks like the
previews are as dependable as always. Note, the wording here was later
changed to "awakens one of the tribes." So perhaps Brandon's
epiphany that "this @*%# is real" comes on a later episode? Hmmm.
While one tribe member is caught between loyalties to two factions
within the tribe, another tribe member takes the opportunity to cook
more food for his "friends" while his "enemies" are at the water hole.
Sounds like more fun at Samburu. Whoa, Brandon actually gets off his
ass and does something? Maybe it will be interesting, after all.
One tribe member crashes from dehydration. Will she be able to continue?
That would appear to be Lindsey. Signs point to yes, although
she was hospitalized in August. Two weeks is a little long to
be in the hospital for mere dehydration.
In summary: as always, a bang-up job, CBS! There's some news we
can use. Almost as helpful as that crap "Jeff Varner on Safari in New
Jersey" piece that stunk up the Early Show!
More useful evidence:
TVZap2it.com's previews for Ep.
4 and Ep.
5. Specifically, in episode 4, "Meanwhile, two members of
the Boran tribe, who are especially nervous about being the next to
be voted out of the tribe, make separate attempts to stay in the game."
If Boran wins immunity in episode 3, there should be three people, not
two, especially nervous about leaving (MamaKim, Kelly and Clarence).
This leads us to believe that one of those three is gone this week.
Kelly and MamaKim both fall in the ball-rolling race, and each lost
a challenge in episode 2, so they are the most likely to go. Kim
is the Boran cook, though, and neither she nor Kelly has gotten a lot
of air time (plus there's the "mamakim" nickname thing, which so far
has only been evident in one snippet of an Insider clip). Clarence,
on the other hand, has lots of votes against, and (as pointed out by
Snewser of Votedoff.tv), if Lex, Ethan
and Tom decide one of the women should go, all it takes is the other
woman to vote for Clarence, and all of a sudden, Tom's always-funny
vote to remind Clarence of his sins ends up actually booting him.
Now that would be some fireworks to see! As for Ep. 5, Zap2It's
preview makes it sound very, very likely that this is the long-awaited
split into three tribes of four people. Would this be necessary
if Samburu hadn't guaranteed dominance at the merge by getting an unbeatable
8-4 advantage?
Reward challenge
ETOnline has
revealed that this challenge is the reward challenge, and not IC, as
had been widely assumed. Ah, the Sisyphus challenge (despite what
Survivorfever has, we thought of this independently, so there).
Since dropping stuff during a fly-by seems much more reward-like, we're
guessing this challenge is the IC. Both teams appear to be rolling
large, rock-like (in a Disney kinda way) balls along a trail, presumably
in a race. The last shot could be the start, the middle, or the end,
for all we know. But the Samburu ball does at least appear to
move past Kelly, suggesting she has some catching up to do, if Boran
is all to finish together across the finish line. Interestingly,
a new commercial on Monday seems to show Boran winning this challenge:
Boran is all smiles, apart from Tom, who looks near death. Also,
the rolling-over-Kelly part appears to be near the start of the race.
Boran wins reward, which is 100 gallons of pure drinking water.
This might explain the "Boran strips down" part of the previews - they
are probably cleaning themselves (ick). This also explains why
Lindsey collapses from dehydration - Samburu didn't win.
Immunity challenge
It's possible that, as pointed out by Clewless at Votedoff.tv,
this one is a regurgitated version of a Survivor 1 reward challenge,
"Distress
Signal." In it, each tribe was supposed to create an SOS-type
sign visible from the air, and the best sign won the reward, which was
dropped by parachute. The preview pics of "Boran strips down"
show their clothes arranged in nice circular patterns, perhaps spelling
out "Please don't let us lose again!" It's also possible this
is simply Boran enjoying their aqueous reward win from the ball-rolling
frenzy. We should have known more on Thursday morning, from the
Early Show previews, but CBS decided it would be better to trot
out performing chimp Jeff Varner instead. So, based on close to zero
evidence, we'll go back to Samburu winning some unseen immunity challenge,
simply because they always do, and because this agrees with Zap2It's
preview for episode 4. We do know that Lindsey collapses on the
day of this challenge, because the clothes Linda is wearing when she
says "I guess Lindsey's not so strong now" are different from the ones
she wears on the day Samburu is collecting wood, which are different
than their RC clothes. Since RC is day 7, the collapse must be
day 8 (IC day), and Linda's comments were made on day 9. We don't
however, think Lindsey is significantly injured, nor do we think this
affects the outcome of IC: Samburu win.
Boot
Here, we're split between Clarence and Kelly. MamaKim would appear
to be the weakest, but she's also the cook, and doesn't appear eager
to teach Lex the tricks of that trade (and wisely so). Kelly would appear
equally vulnerable, and there's no visible arguments against booting
her, apart from her being younger. But suppose they decide to
vote off MamaKim (resurrecting Snewser's idea from above). The
votes are likely: Ethan, Lex, Clarence - MamaKim; Tom - Clarence. MamaKim
also votes Clarence, because she's the bootee-elect. Now, we would
predict that Kelly would be getting pissed off about now that all the
women are getting booted, yet Clarence is still around. She votes Clarence
out of spite. Tie vote: Clarence loses, because of prior votes
against. Alternatively, they could just target Kelly, for getting
rolled over in IC. In this case, MamaKim could defect and boot
Clarence, but we suspect she'd be more loyal, and go along with a Kelly
vote. So it's either Clarence or Kelly. Leaning slightly
towards Clarence. |