Survivor: Blood vs. Water Preview

Twist thoughts

I hate that Redemption Island came back.It ruins the flow of the episodes, leaving us with no true closure at the end of an episode (since the bootee gets put into Redemption Island) and starts off the next episode with something important, but tangentially related to the game being played at camp. It also messes with the actual game a fair bit.

With that said, I think that if you were ging to bring it back, this is the bestway to do it. Giving the loved ones the option to take the place of a competitor in Redemption Island, which then leads to the mixing up of tribes is actually an interesting twist. I hope that it gets used and actually impacts the tribe's inner workings. But most of all, I hope that it only lasts until merge. Make post merge the standard game.

The loved one twist is also intriguing. It is being done in the only way it could (putting pairs together immediately would be disasterous for Survivor; the game would become a battle of tribe immunity challenges.) It also allows for some interesting game play post merge if both loved ones make it. Do you add the loved one to your existing alliance? Can they just slide into that alliance without issue? Will your alliance mates be threatened by the presence of your loved one, thinking that it would lead to a natural final 2 pairing? And finally, will somebody vote out their own loved one? (I doubt this very much.)

All in all, what looked like an uninspired twist is actually shaping up to be interesting. Which is all that I ask for.

Least Likely to Win:

Laura B and Rupert B

That's right. My apologies to the Bonham family, but there's no chance they're winning. They're loud, opinionated, not exactly liked by the returning players and woefully lacking in self awareness.

Colton

Colton gets listed here because I don't know how he makes it past the Day Zero part. Why would the returnees say "You know, that Colton sat around and did nothing, said horrible things and in general caused trouble for his tribe. Let's keep him"? S he's going to go to Redemption Island, where his only hope is to switch with Caleb and get on to the newbie team. From there, maybe he can work his magic and get an alliance together. This just seems like a giant long shot.

Most likely to win:

Vytas

Like brother, like brother. Vytas seems like a physical threat and he seems to have a good social game. Hopefully his brother Aras imparted some lessons on the strategy of Survivor; if he did then Vytas has a great chance to win.

Hayden

I think that Hayden's Big Brother win will be overplayed by others; the games are sufficiently different that you just can't say "Well he won Big Brother so he's going to win Survivor." But you can use it to get an idea as to how he's going to play Survivor and that is a strong game in Survivor as well. I'm not as convinced about his strategic game as he had the other Brigade members to work with and do a bit of the heavy lifting. But he does have a social game, and he is a challenge threat. That adds up to a top contender.

Aras

His only downside is that he is a previous winner, so he has a target on his back. But he's made for this game: strong social game, strong strategic game, and can win challenges. He has to be rated number one on this alone.