Culturally Preconditioned

First up, a little cursory fuck-you is in order to ntv7 for yet again failing to bring us the latest season of Survivor.

As I’m feeling a tad generous, I am making the Episodes of Survivor Cook Islands available for direct download, so that people without torrent or mirc knowledge will be able to watch the show with me. The file size is 350 Mb, and if you wish to download, either leave a comment at this blog (your email will only be viewable by me) or email me at izadsyah at gmail dot com. The number of downloads are limited, and the episodes will stay on the server for a two weeks before being taken down again.

Survivor recaps are available at the official CBS website, and also I would like to take this opportunity to once again give a shout out to the folks at Armchair Survivor who is once again, back for this season’s podcast with their weekly recaps, thoughts and predictions on the show.

I will make my general comments on the overall show pretty simple this time around, since we have 20 people to familiarize with within the 60 minutes. How I wish they would go back to the 90 minute show premier like they did with Pearl Islands. Anyway, as have been mentioned before, the tribe is divided into 4 ethnic groups.. the Whites, the Blacks, the Latinos and the Asians. If you think I’m going to be politically correct and call them African-Americans, Hispanic, Asian-Americans and Caucasians.. well you’re wrong. I really can’t be arsed. And I don’t think I will ever call them by their actual tribes names, cause… why bother?

Anyway, slight thoughts on the contestants on this premier episode :

Asian peepsies : I think Cao Boi is going to be the new Rupert. Yuck. I’m loving Yul and Brad. Jenny looks like a man. Becky reminds me of a colleague of mine who I just want to bitchslap.

Black peepsies : Nate and Sekou did a really foolish thing during the whole ‘choosing the person to Exile’ moment. WTF were they thinking distancing themselves from the women. And unfortunately Sundra’s comments made it pretty clear to everyone else in the different tribes that there might be dissentions within the African-American tribe. If Nate is wise, he’d hook up with Stephannie to break the Sundra-Rebecca bond.

White peepsies : I think Candice may be the one to watch on the Caucasian tribe. I like Jonathan and I think he will definitely be this season’s villain.. but he will crash and burn (won’t stop me from rooting for him though). I give Courtney Part Deux one more episode before she really starts getting on my nerves.

Latino peepsies : Not getting much from the Latina tribe. Ozzy’s a great narrator, we may see him for quite a bit. And I want to a super hot threesome with JP and Cecilia.

That said, we have a lot, a LOT of eye candies this season. And I have a gut feeling they’d be eye candies WITH at least some personalities. Jeff Probst hinted that we will see a lot of blindsides this season, so I really have high hopes with Cook Islands.. oh and Exile Island is back. Woohoo!!

Opening credits speculation :

Everyone knows I’m a nut for Opening Credits ’spoiler’. The theories are so out there, but sometimes it works. For those who wants an in depth analysis of th.e Survivor : Cook Islands Opening Credits video, it can be downloaded here (4 Mb). (Right-click and Save As)

Jonathan’s “fire” has never been seen in all 13 Survivor seasons so far. The fire absolutely CHARRED his picture really good. We’ve seen fire burning pictures before, but they never really showed the charred remains like his. Not saying he’s gonna win, but possibly an indication of how he’s gonna fare in the game (like Jerri’s and Colby’s in ASS).

Only four other contestants had visible fire in their pictures.
Becky’s fire was ablazing as did Jessica’s. Ozzy and Cecilia both had flickers. Although he did NOT have fire in his still picture, Cao Boi was shown carrying the torch not once, but twice, in his actions pics.

All these talk about fire.. We know that Fire = Life in Survivor, but I find the shot of the Survivor logo in the water, followed by Candace’s action shot of looking into the water seems a little peculiar to me.

That’s all I got for now, folks. Oh and don’t forget, the latest season of The Amazing Race will be aired on AXN tonight at 8:30 pm