Episode Report Card Sara M: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Fans vs. Favorites vs. Probst
By Sara M | Season 16 | Episode 15 | Aired on 05.11.2008
Probst asks James how happy he is to have people in his Stupid Immunity Idol Holders club with him. He certainly looks it. Probst says that, as dumb as Ozzy and Jason were, they "pale in comparison" to Erik the super-fan. "Dumbest move ever? Perhaps!" Probst says, while the cast and crowd break into sympathetic "awwws." "It's true!" Probst shrugs. Don't you sell him your sympathy, because he ain't buying it! And they go to break.
To play us back, there's a montage of all the "favorites" being trotted out for the "fans" in the very beginning of the season. Alexis says that it's challenging to play against the "favorites," since they've done this before, but the "fans" also have an advantage in that they know the "favorites'" game. Unless, of course, they aren't "fans" at all and have never seen the show before but were cast because the casting people thought they were hot. Probst asks Jonathan if the "favorites" had an advantage over the "fans" this season. Jonathan says they absolutely did, and at one point the "favorites" figured out that they had a year's worth of days in this game between them. So they were shelter-building, food-catching, cave-finding, fire-starting machines. I'm not exactly sure how being on this show before would make one better at finding caves, but I'll give him the other points. "They couldn't catch us, honestly," Jonathan says. Eh -- I went back and read some recaps of the beginning of the season and it looks like things were pretty even until Joel basically destroyed his team by insisting on taking out Mary and Mikey instead of the people who were losing the challenges for them. Probst asks Yau-Man about the disadvantages of being a "favorite." Yau-Man says that the "fans" know them and how they play, while the "favorites" have no idea who the "fans" are. Probst rather meanly asks Yau-Man if that's why he's sitting all the way at the end, and Yau-Man says he'll take any excuse. And that's all we'll hear from Yau-Man tonight, so I hope you enjoyed it, Yau-Fans!
Probst asks Ami how it felt to be "the first 'favorite' to go before a 'fan.'" Ami clarifies that Jon and Yau-Man went before her (like, way to do the math there, Probst), then says she definitely felt the game turn when she went out. Suddenly it was "everybody for themselves." Ami has played this game before, right? I mean, wasn't she the first person to acknowledge it was every person for herself when she was the one running around Malakal trying to get an alliance with the "fans" going? Maybe that was her other personality. Ami says "it's been awesome" to do Survivor again and she's been doing a lot of charity work with her fellow Survivors. Ami is always quick to point out what an awesome, caring person she is. Notice how she doesn't plug the charity itself so that we can look it up and perhaps even donate to it. She plugs her involvement. How self-less.