Survivor Nicaragua: Episode 1 Thoughts

The Old vs. Young gimmick is both a win and lose situation for us viewers. It's a lose because we're going to be subjected to the not-that-interesting puzzle dominated challenges. Any physical advantage is going to have to be negated, or else we would have an Ulong situation on our hands. But most of the puzzle challenges are not interesting unless you have teams that end up bickering as they lose. Until the young tribe experiences multiple losses, we will not get that bickering.

Now, the show is a win because they've put all of the young punks who think they know everything together. So instead of getting two tribes where youngsters want to rebel against the old, there is one where they can and will feed off of each other. Meanwhile, we get an older tribe to cheer for as the underdogs. This is a big win.

Because of the divide, poor Wendy stood absolutely no chance of making it past her first tribal council. The old tribe are less likely to take offense should somebody do something that seems like taking a leadership role, so they're going to instead look for the weakest and annoying to pick off. To her deterement, Wendy falls under both categories. Of course, she did absolutely nothing to help her cause by (a) complaining that nobody attempted to get to know her (using the fact that nobody knows her age as an example) and (b) interrupting Jeff just before voting started in order to give a speech where she says she's valuable and uses the fact that she doesn't have blisters on her feet as proof of this. Somebody who's that out of tune with the social aspect of their tribe is just asking to get voted out.

(Aside: I really think that the CBS.com profiles are somebody's idea of a rib. Wendy's profile has her say that she is nowhere close to being similiar to Shambo. And yet, watching the show, that's the obvious comparison - though Wendy did not last anywhere close to as long as Shambo.)

Before I finish, I should probably say a few words about Jimmy Johnson. As the most famous person to ever play Survivor, we were bound to get a lot of him in the first episode. What we got was pure Jimmy Johnson, forever in coach mode. I do think he made a critical mistake though; by calling the tribe together and then announcing that he knew he wouldn't win but hey, one of them could and he could help them with it, it confirmed the suspicions of some, and made others suspicious. If this was something he mentioned to a select couple of people, he would have been fine. But announcing it to the tribe just drew even more unwanted attention to himself. It's probably going to be a short journey for Jimmy; let's hope he provides some more entertainment.