So another season of Survivor got underway yesterday with Survivor: Micronesia – Fans Vs. Favorites.
It’s a laborious title, but an ingenius plot device. Take a tribe of huge Survivor fans and put them up against a tribe of past Survivor players. Will having played the game win out over being a student of it? Only time will tell.
I don’t really plan on blogging about every single episode. As usual, I’ll just blog about it when I feel like it. In this case, however, I want to talk about what I consider a very dubious first episode.
One of the favorites that they brought back for this installment of Survivor is the infamous Jonny Fairplay.
He’s well known for getting everyone in a tizzy about his grandmother dying in a previous season.
The only problem with that was that his grandmother didn’t really die. He had people crying and giving up challenges to him because of that lie.
It is perhaps the lowest that any Survivor has ever sunken. Yet, he has his fans — it did make for some good television.
So he comes back for FvF only to basically quit in the first episode because he has a 7-month pregnant girlfriend back home that he just can’t get off his mind.
Touching, right? The problem? Who can believe Jonny Fairplay?
It almost feels like a plot by CBS to draw in Fairplay fans without actually having to have Fairplay ruin the season.
Perhaps he didn’t really want to be on the show, but CBS said, “Just come on the show. Then we can say you’re on the cast. You can quit after the first day. Just come!”And so he did.
Is it plausible to believe that it was all just an act?
We learned before that Jonny Fairplay cannot be trusted. If he can convince us that his grandmother died, surely he can convince us that impending fatherhood makes him want to quit the game.
To be honest, I question whether he even has a girlfriend, much less a pregnant one.
If CBS had no hand in it, then good for them, but I can’t help but leave this first episode with a bad taste in my mouth. It just didn’t feel right.
It really makes me wonder about the whole arrangement with the ‘favorites.’ Do they play by the same rules as the ‘fans’ or do they get paid as celebrities would?
I guess I’m a bit mistrustful at this point, but I’ll keep watching. Who can pass up Parvati and Amanda in bikinis?