Survivor China: Season 15, Episode 3

Recap

Well, Dave is still around. I honestly don’t have much to say about Zhan Hu — I guess we can check in on how they’re doing at camp and — oh, OK Dave is still building his fire pit. The only, ONLY, thing I will add is that — actually as I was typing that sentence I realize I had more than one thing to add, Dave just brings out the bullet points in me:

• He might have the worst personality I’ve seen on the show yet —he is an insufferable combination of patronizing and stupid. If he were a middle school teacher he would LOVE to ask kids “I don’t know, CAN you?” when they ask to go the bathroom
• I was clenching my jaw during this incident: Dave overhears the others discussing the fire pit, gets up to grab another brick when it is not needed, mutters under his breath like HE can’t believe he is on a tribe with such dummies, is corrected about the need for the brick, makes a comment about how he is “checking himself” despite the only evidence of that being him constantly reminding everybody that he is “checking himself”
• fuck dave

What this episode made me realize, is that I should actually want Fei Long to lose, because we get to see their post-loss dynamics which contain a modicum of intrigue (OK, I’d take one more Zhan Hu loss to give Dave the boot). I don’t really have a sense of any tribal lines at Zhan Hu except for Dave vs. Everybody. Over at Fei Long however…

I’m officially on-board with the Todd/Amanda alliance — I’m not sure if they are being given a particularly favorable edit, or players talk like this in most seasons, but it is satisfying to watch players talk through the logistics of voting off strong/weak players earlier/later in the game. Additionally, their sub-alliance they have within the three-person alliance with Aaron seems like it should put them in a great spot moving forward — they’ve obviously lined themselves up against Jean-Robert and James (how dare JR corrupt sweet James though), and Todd even seems to have like a little Stanford Blatch/Carrie Bradshaw dynamic with Courtney (maybe a stretch), which gives Todd and Amanda a soft four they can rely on moving forward into the merge.

I also appreciated Aaron’s logic for voting off Leslie — I think when you’re choosing between a set of people who are all relatively weak, keeping Leslie over Courtney will make much less of a difference in the near-term challenges than the potential impact of keeping Leslie, and having her flip post-merge later.

What I did not appreciate, from a purely competitive standpoint, was HOW BAD COURTNEY WAS in the immunity challenge. I was recently having a discussion about how everybody in Survivor is probably a lot more fit than we give them credit for, but I am pretty sure Courtney would lose a one-on-one game of tug-of-war against one of those Wacky, Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Men (sick burn). What was actually irksome was how she kept turning around, shrugging her shoulders and eye-pleading in a cute-girl-wants-to-stop-chopping-ropes way (a classic expression). Then in tribal, she went from comparing herself to a Chihuahua in a horse race, to expressing her discontent at her tribemates attempts to hide her from challenges like any NBA team trying to hide Enes Kanter on defense (he would have killed that rope-cutting competition though). Because, although I don’t think every verified empirically, Chihuahuas are quite bad at horse races.

Ultimately, though, we’re really only looking at three more immunity challenges — if Fei Long loses the next one, they can give Courtney the boot. Then if I were Tomanda, I would try and rally up Denise, who has been on the proverbial Exile Island of this season, to link up with themselves and Aaron. I have a feeling that tribe doesn’t even lose two more immunity challenges before the merge, and if they do lose one more, they could vote out JR to remove a potentially strong player early and still go into the merge at an even five.

Also, I had some hopes for JR, but UGH — that was disgusting watching him talk about getting “a million dollars and some ass.” Worst of all (OK not worst of all), he dragged James into his little mental cesspool. I went back to the tape, and it as really something like this:

James: *Makes good joke about Leslie*

Jean-Robert: Haha, yeah and Courtney doesn’t do SHIT either, am I right?

James: She actually does move stuff around camp

Jean-Robert: Yeah, whatever. Bet you think she’s HOT though, huh?

James: Uh, I don’t know. Everybody is so dirty around camp, it’s hard to say

Jean-Robert: The only thing dirty around camp is us dirty dogs! Gimme some skin, my sleezeball!

Jake: *Sigh*

Until next episode, in which, my god if Dave isn’t voted off, I will reach back in time and beat his ass like I’m Sarah Connor and he is a whiny-ass Terminator (I actually haven’t seen Terminator, but believe this reference holds up).