LAST EDITED ON 06-07-15 AT 01:11 AM (EST)

Thanks to having Hulu Plus, I can finally revisit some of the seasons again. It's kind of slow in these forums, so I'm just going to throw out a bunch of random thoughts.

1. Was less than impressed with Aras in the first half of the game. He's doing the weird yoga thing, and then is openly telling Melinda shes' going home. Came off a little too pushy and gruff with people sometimes. He did a lot of stuff early on that the editors often roast people for today. He got better as the season went along.

2. I still don't like Terry. I wasn't a big Terry fan at the time and I re-watched because I wanted to see if I was just being grumpy. Because I want to look forward to him on the next season. But, no. The guy is sooooooooo incredibly dull. La Mina, in general, is one of the most dull tribes ever, and I think Terry's business-like and just "solid" demeanor contributed a lot to it. I'm sure I would think he's a nice guy if I met him, but I find him to be extremely boring television.

(Also, watching him try to make alliances with Casaya is painful to watch. I know it's going to be an uphill battle, but his deals are just silly. He can't even make a deal with a F2 goat like Courtney without having her get immediately voted out right afterwards.)

3. The Dan boot episode is stupid. I agree with the Survivor Historians, it's borderline creepy how much the show fawned over him. Dan wasn't even that interesting a character on the show. I would argue that Austin (the proto-J.T.?) is the only somewhat interesting character from La Mina, and even he has nothing to do this season.

4. Cirie is still amazing. She's kind of irrelevant early on, but she really sneaks her way into the Casaya alliance. I wish they would've shown us bonding with Danielle and Aras more, to show how she ended up infiltrating their core alliance. By the merge, it's just generally accepted she's with them.

5. Shane is awesome. Re-watching the season, it's a lot easier to get Shane's offbeat sense of humor and be in on the joke with him.

6. Not sure why Danielle ended up going with Aras/Cirie to vote out Courtney. I feel like her options are limited in winning the game in a Aras/Cirie/Danielle/Terry/Shane F5. She would then have to get to the end with Shane, and Shane was the one gunning for her. I guess I get it, since getting rid of Aras makes beating Terry in F3 risky. But I feel like her path to victory is through Shane and Courtney, not Aras and Cirie. Hindsight, she made the wrong call (knowing what the F3 IC was), but she couldn't have known in advance.

7. Poor Bruce. I really enjoyed Bruce again this time and felt bad for him, with how ill he got.

8. I'm still one of those people who really likes Sally. I don't know why, I just like her. Maybe because she was the underdog.

• RE: I just re-watched Survivor: Exile Island,michel2, 02:38 AM, 06-07-15
• RE: I just re-watched Survivor: Exile Island,clemsonbeav, 07:30 AM, 07-18-15
  • RE: I just re-watched Survivor: Exile Island,michel2, 07:23 PM, 07-20-15
  • RE: I just re-watched Survivor: Exile Island,PepeLePew13, 09:15 PM, 07-20-15
  • RE: I just re-watched Survivor: Exile Island,Jims03, 10:26 PM, 07-26-15

Exile Island is definitely one of my favorite seasons because of the dynamics and the hilarity in Casaya. You are absolutely right about Cirie and it's a shame they didn't show more of her game early on. When Aras, who had a horrible social game early on, told her she'd be either first or second to go, Cirie made an alliance with Danielle and Courtney that eventually included Bruce. After Melinda was voted out, she also went into a F3 alliance with Shane and Aras. Bob Dawg also thought he had an alliance with her. Cirie had them all wrapped around her fingers. If Bruce doesn't get removed from the game or if she wins the fire challenge, Cirie would have won that season.

Like many others, I'm with you on Sally but my favorite LaMina character was Misty. She was smart and beautiful and left much too soon.

As for Danielle voting out Courtney, I think the reason was obvious: By flipping to Terry, Courtney was about to hand the million over to the pilot. She had to be stopped. Courtney was so dumb that she even agreed with Terry that the Final 2 would be decided by the Final 3 challenge: The winner AND the second place finisher would automatically make it to the end. That meant Danille would have had to beat not only Terry but also Courtney. Considering they had no idea about the nature of the challenge and that Terry was winning them all anyway, it was worse than relying on the purple rock.

LAST EDITED ON 07-18-15 AT 12:45 PM (EST)

I'm almost finished re-watching Borneo. So different.

1) Rewards: A snorkel, a cheeseburger, getting awkwardly blindfolded by yourself and taken to a 'bar' to watch the show. Looking back, these seem like nothing.

2) On that note, the challenges are so much less elaborate on this season (hold your breath, bring in a raft and carry it down the beach, etc.); however, they did have a tie-in to the overall story of island lore/surviving to some extent.

3 An overnight 'parlay' to discuss the merger.

4) This was before a lot of the vocabulary had set in. 'island council', 'immunity council', 'ejections', etc.

5) Debating whether or not an alliance is needed. Also, trying to decide if an alliance exists.

6) At the challenges, the peeps actually seemed like they were having fun.

7) Making the survivors do things after receiving immunity. (Rudy: Flip over the remaining tiles, Tribe: go paddle out to get the idol.)

8) The episodes moved a lot slower because there was almost *no* strategy talk. Strange...the show was actually about surviving somewhat.

9) They gave them canned goods.

10) Getting to see Kelly sew, Sean build a bowling alley, etc. Really got you thinking about the fact that they're there 24/7.

11) Some of what I perceive as the early years of people's being okay talking about their sexuality. (Though I was only 15 years old at the time, it definitely seems like this is less taboo now.)

Also, hi Jims!

Beav: Proud member of the inoffensive OT Triumvirate.

Yes, it wasn't the same show back then and most of the changes are due to Probst's focus on strategy and big moves. The bulk of the episodes today are used on the challenges, the pre-TC scrambling and the TC itself which really should be called the "Probst show".

In Borneo and Australia, we rarely had more than 2 or 3 confessionals in the scrambling portion of the show and TC would run 6-7 minutes tops.

LAST EDITED ON 07-20-15 AT 09:27 PM (EST)

Thanks for the reminder of what I could do while up at the cottage for two weeks coming up soon! It's been a while since I watched both Borneo and Australia, and it'd be nice to watch these seasons again before Kelly, Kimmi and Varner show up on my TV again for the next season.

Hey beav!