samoa

(S19E11) Oh my. Evil Russell from Survivor looks like some sort of deranged Buddha gone bad in this screen capture from tonight's episode. Tonight, like every Thanksgiving episode, was the clips show boasting previously unseen footage. It's not surprising that they do this each year. With the format of the show, they can't run a real repeat. And, if they were to air a new episode on the holiday, many folks would end up missing it. I'm usually disappointed with the footage shown, but tonight we did have a few surprises and interesting bits -- nothing earth-shattering, mind you.

(S19E06) Well, this was the most unusual episode of Survivor I've ever seen. Mind you, I've seen all of them since the first season. I won't get into why it was so unusual until after the jump just in case you've missed all of the hype over the injured castaway in commercials all this week. But it wasn't just the injury which made it unusual. It was all discombobulated.

(S19E04) So far we've had one of those lopsided seasons on Survivor. We've seen this happen before -- one tribe keeps winning, the other keeps right on losing. The numbers on the latter are decimated going into the merge which allows the stronger tribe to keep picking them off one by one. I prefer things a bit more evenly matched. The tribal losses affect both the strong and weak players across the board. Once a tribe keeps losing every challenge, morale goes down. Then they lose some more.

The unveiling of the Survivor cast probably isn't "exciting" (cough) as the unveiling of the Dancing with the Stars cast because those cast members are celebrities. We don't know these people, but we do know that there will be hot chicks that look good in bikinis, older people that will probably be voted off fairly early, and a villain. CBS says this season's cast will feature the "biggest villain ever."

Oooooooooo!