With summer upon us, the TV schedule’s pretty bare as usual, without much showing up for at least another month when America’s Got Talent 4 and Big Brother 11 help to fill out the schedule. With that in mind, I decided to dip into the archives and take a look back at Survivor: Borneo, the season that began it all. I was apparently one of the only people in the country who didn’t see Survivor: Borneo or Survivor: Australia when the series premiered 9 years ago. At the time, I was watching The WB… until I moved to a place that didn’t have that, so I stumbled upon Survivor: Africa and have been hooked ever since (the handful of seasons from a few years ago notwithstanding). Years later, I ended up catching about 80% of the first two seasons when OLN (now Versus) bought the rights.
The original Survivor cast of 16 survivors consisted of:
B.B. Andersen
Colleen Haskell
Dirk Been
Gervase Peterson
Greg Buis
Gretchen Cordy
Jenna Lewis
Joel Klug
Kelly Wiglesworth
Ramona Gray
Richard Hatch
Rudy Boesch
Sean Kenniff
Sonja Christopher
Stacey Stillman
Sue Hawk
The unique thing for the first set of castaways is that they had no idea what to expect, so it was a new experience unlike anything they can throw at them today (regardless of how many lame twists they come up with). That said, I for one would like to see them go back to basics like this at some point again and stop experimenting. No twists. Just Survivor.
The contestants are given two minutes to salvage whatever they can off the boat. Then they head to shore.
Tagi: Sean, Kelly, Rudy, Sonja, Richard, Susan, Dirk, Stacey
Pagong: Gervase, Colleen, BB, Ramona, Gretchen, Greg, Jenna, Joel
Rudy’s making enemies from the beginning on the boat ride over. He doesn’t like how the others are transporting the boxes.
Ramona is already getting sick on the boat ride over. She doesn’t like the motion of the ocean or the outdoors.
With Richard Hatch already looking down on them from his perch in the tree, Tagi is looking to build a shelter and a latrine first. They don’t seem overly concerned about fire.
Dirk is annoyed by Richard, who he says is trying to bring the team together and has some good skills. People like that are annoying to Dirk. Richard wants to get all these people on the same page so that they’re not just running around like chickens with no heads.
Over on Pagong, they’ve found a water map, so they send BB and Ramona to go get it and hopefully not get lost. They’ll be taking their water back to camp, but they need to get a fire going before they can drink it.
That night when everybody goes to sleep, the rats see it as a chance to play around in their camp.
Rudy’s tired of all the young kids. He’d rather have them listening to just one person, him if needbe, because that way they’d be a lot better off.
Sonja is already injured. Her leg has a gash in it. Dr. Sean patches her up.
Tagi has three or four fish traps. With a rat in each, they’ve got some bait.
Pagong hasn’t slept at all. The rats crawled on/around them all night long. BB believes he’s the leader of building the new shelter. Nobody else particularly wants to help him out, and he’s not giving them much reason to be around him either. Gretchen wants to help him, though, and doesn’t want him to spend all day in the sun. He refuses to listen to her when she says he’ll be worn out and burned.
Because BB has some bifocals with him, he and Gretchen manage to get a fire going. Tagi, however, is doing it the old fashioned way. Where there’s smoke, there’s no fire.
The very first immunity/reward challenge is to get a raft back to the beach and light all the torches. Each tribe member must have one hand on the raft at all times, and they must light every torch. Reward is 50 waterproof matches. Tagi gets off to an early lead. Pagong catches up and has a slight lead when they reach the beach, which they extend as the other tribe drops their raft. Pagong wins immunity, also denying Tago from fire for a little longer.
Dirk disappears on his own after the challenge. He’s off to read his bible.
Rudy has decided he likes Richard. He’s fat, but he’s good. Rich in turn likes Rudy and isn’t bothered by his directness, which others are finding rude and arrogant.
Hatch has narrowed it down to 4 possible nominees, of which he is one. Sonja feels responsible for her team’s loss. It was her falling in the challenge that cost them any chance they may have had otherwise.
Stacey and Kelly are already bonding. They don’t like Rudy, so they go to Sue and ask her to vote him off with them. She agrees, but she lies.
The good news when they arrive at tribal council is that they will get fire.
Votes
Sonja
Sonja
Stacey
Sonja
Rudy
Rudy
Rudy
Sonja
With 4 votes, Sonja has been voted off the island. The odd vote out was Richard Hatch’s. He voted for Stacey, though he didn’t know why.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Survivor: Borneo episode 2.