18 new contestants form the Survivor: One World cast, without any recongizeable faces amongst them for a change (not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing). It’s a battle of men against women, all living on the same beach.
Kourtney doesn’t think she fits in just looking. Colton makes an extra effort to let the world know he’s gay. Greg wants to be called Tarzan. Tarzan, meet Troyzan.
They are divided into two tribes at the starting beach. The men are Manono (orange); the women are Salani (blue). Then they have 60 seconds to strip the truck and grab whatever items they can carry. Rather than work for anything, Michael just steals from the women, who are not paying attention to what they grab. Hidden immunity idols are in play. Because they beat it to death and completely ruined the twist last year with Ozzy, Redemption is dead. Finally.
Wanting to prove they’re big and macho, the men go nuts and try to carry half the truck back to camp with them. On the other hand, the division by sexes becomes apparent looking at what the women are carrying.
Alicia has already decided on her final 5 of herself, Kim, Kat, Sabrina, and Chelsea. So Kim just found out she’s in an alliance. Uh, yeah, I guess I’ll join you guys.
They spot some chickens when they get to camp, and they make a deal to each take one. After country girl Chelsea catches them with ease, now she wants to bargain. Attorney Matt is ready to sue someone.
There is much activity in shelter building. People from both tribes scurry about to get settled for the night. Then there’s Colton, sitting on the sidelines spectating. After doing that for a while, he decides to start openly playing the girl power game, making it blatantly obvious where his loyalties lie, or at least don’t lie.
Matt, Mike, Jay, and Bill have formed the game’s second alliance. This is the alliance of the young, fit guys. A threat to the other guys for sure, but is anyone really dumb enough to vote them out?
Memo to future Survivors: don’t wear jeans. Unless you enjoy chafing.
The men get a fire going quickly, a rarity in Survivor. Sabrina has been sent as the agent to make a deal. They can have their chicken back in exchange for fire. I don’t see anyone being dumb enough to fall that. Failing to charm their way into fire, the girls sneak over and steal some fire that the boys leave unguarded as they sleep. Nice plan. But the fire doesn’t last. The next morning, Kristina manages to make a deal to weave some palm fronds for them so they can have fire. Alicia’s response: she wants to punch her in her face.
Sabrina finds a hidden immunity idol in the second place she looks. I see they’re getting better at hiding things. However, this is a Manono tribe idol. That means that, as a non-Manono tribe member, she must give it to someone on the other tribe. She goes to the guy who’s been begging for his only possible saving grace, Colton.
At the immunity challenge, they jump off a tower and cross a balance beam and a rope bridge. We’re starting off just like the last girls against guys season (Amazon), where the men were humiliated in an early balancing challenge (before the women started to fall apart). The men take the lead on the tower diving, where the main concern seems to be the obvious threat of injury. Unsurprisingly, Kourtney has injured her wrist, which makes her a liability and an easy first target. As she sits down during the challenge, Probst calls for medical. They will be hauling her off for an X-ray. Without 9 people to cross the finish line, the women have lost. Do the men want to make a gesture of goodwill (aka stupidity) and keep going anyway? No.
The women act all shocked and surprised that the men didn’t take Jeff’s bait. As if they would have had the shoe been on the other foot. Their bone to pick: the guys should have been chivalrous and handed the game to them. Really? Woman up.
At tribal council, Alicia is whining about the fact that they have fire, and Kristina tells her to shut up. Hey, we were all thinking it. This brings us to a point. There is no structure, and everybody is just doing whatever comes into their minds.
Now an update on Kourtney. Her wrist is broken, and she is out of the game. Nobody else is going home tonight.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Survivor: One World Episode 2, which airs Wednesday at 8/7c on CBS.