Tribe Visits With Family On Survivor 17: Gabon
By: Mary Cavaliere

The show started with conflict over Randy’s blind-side.  Bob was angry that Sugar was taking so much pleasure in humiliating Randy at tribal council.  I like Bob, and he’s a pretty cool guy, but I don’t feel sorry for Randy one bit.  Sugar said it and I agree – he brought it all on himself.  This conflict was followed by an argument between Sugar and Corinne, another contestant I personally have little tolerance for.  She said she is “nice to people she likes”.  That to me shows a glimpse of her true character, which is hateful.  When people are nice to people they “like” and mean and nasty to people they don’t like, that means if they like you and you tick them off you will then end up in the latter category and they’ll start slinging mud at you without batting an eye.  Does this kind of person deserve to win the million?  I think not.

The first challenge was two teams of three racing (or more like dragging themselves) through a swamp to retrieve puzzle pieces. The team of three to put together their puzzle correctly to raise their flag competed in a final round to solve a slide puzzle.  The winner’s reward was a personalized Sprint video message from home plus food to enjoy while viewing.  At the beginning of the challenge teams were drawn and Corinne was not chosen by either team.  I laughed when she said at this point she wasn’t sure what she could to do “save herself”.  How about keep your mouth shut and stop being a hater Corinne?  That might just work!  In any event, Bob won the reward which was even better than everyone originally thought.  While eating his reward and viewing his video message from his wife, she snuck up on him live and in person, which of course brought him (and us the viewers) to tears.  In fact, one of the producers of Survivor must have had a soft moment, because after spending some time with his wife, all of the other family members were brought to camp to see their loved ones as well.  It was touching, especially when Matty proposed to his girlfriend after making her a tribal necklace.  I just hope he doesn’t regret his decision once he gets home to his real life!

The immunity challenge consisted of answering questions about Gabon.  If a tribe member answered correctly they were given a ball as a reward.  At the end of the questions each member threw their balls into a target, divided by zones (sort of like skeeball) in the sand.  The person who threw their ball closest to the zone center would win immunity.  Good thing Bob won immunity since his back had a huge target on it for this week’s elimination. There was a lot of strategy going on and as usual, what we witnessed at tribal council is not what the editing of this week’s episode pointed to.  We all thought Matty would get blind-sided and sent home but I think it was Crystal (I’m still not sure at this point) who voted differently than she agreed on and Corinne was sent packing.  Hip-hip hooray!!!!!  She proved my point about being a hateful person when in her departure speech she wished everyone in the tribe a miserable life.  But really, the joke is on her.  Hatred only hurts the person who holds onto it, and this girl has a lot of anger and hatred within.  That will result in broken relationships, rejection by many, and even worse, disease in the body.  If she was really as smart as she claims to be, she might have figured that out already.   But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, intelligence is not necessarily a sign of WISDOM. 

You can read more of Mary’s television blogs at www.myspace.com/italiangirl57
 
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