Welcome back, everybody. As we all know, yesterday was an election/voting day, and in Oregon pot just got legalized. It was the biggest celebration by people in the city since it got announced that we got Bin Laden. Here’s the clip of every Taco Bell stockholder celebrating with the ghost of the original McDonald’s, Burger King and Pita Pit founders looking on in contentment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvAAYjmqkE&feature=youtu.be

I think every year Congress, the Senate, and The House of Representatives should all do a gigantic Tribal Council, where they have to vote out five people. Before that Tribal they should have to compete in a Survivor Immunity challenge, split up by political party. They could air this on C-Span, and I don’t know one person who wouldn’t want to watch that. A massive competition with all these old men trying to climb ropes and solve Survivor puzzles. It would be epic. It would be fun to watch politicians from the same party turn on each other in a Tribal Council scenario.

I guess, let’s talk about where we are with Survivor leading into tonight. Last week, Jon and Jackie, according to my theory/perspective, made the choice for all of us with what alternate universe of Survivor we will be living with for this season. We are like Marty when he goes back to the alternate 1985 when Biff got a hold of the sports almanac:

In Survivor this season, Missy has received the “sports almanac”. Missy, by getting Jon and Jackie to swing her way, has enabled herself to be in the pole position come the merge. I think it will be clear that she will not hesitate for a second to cut, shank, and slaughter anybody but Baylor in her way. This doesn’t mean she is guaranteed to win the game, but as I type this waiting for this episode to start, she has played the best game.

At the start of the season I bought almost all my stock in Jeremy. I liked his “meet the cast” video. He seemed intelligent, athletic, and poised to make a deep run into this game, but unfortunately, that same video didn’t show how Jeremy acts like a fourteen-year-old passive-aggressive, petulant teenage girl when he doesn’t get his way. I still think based on the low quality of social game players this season that Jeremy is still probably 3rd in an overall player ranking list. I just wish I had bought stock in Missy instead.

The big X factor to look at closely is Baylor. Missy can’t play the clean, focused game that she normally would have been able to play because of Baylor. When the merge happens it’s hard to believe that those two won’t be gigantic targets, but the beauty of it all is maybe they won’t be because of Jon and Jackie looking more like traditional targets on paper. If it plays out like that, Jon and Jackie being targeted before Missy and Baylor, then you have to give Missy the crown as the badass motherf**ker of Survivor. The problem will be if Baylor’s un-likeability rears its head again and she becomes an easy target because then Missy will probably be forced to do something that could affect her game both short-term and long-term. After writing all this pro-Missy stuff, I’m convinced that I’ve jinxed her and now she will probably do something idiotic and get voted out tonight. Let’s start the show as it’s just about 8 pm Portland, Oregon time.

8 pm

Previously on Survivor: The blue team made the worst trade since The Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees to finance No, No, Nanette. The show ended with us not getting to see Dale’s decoy idol being put into play. L

8:01 pm

Wow, that’s the first time I can remember that the show didn’t start off in the black-and-white vision. I’m a little jarred. I might have to hit pause and regroup for five minutes practicing my deep-breathing exercises.

8:02 pm

Missy takes accountability with Keith for the votes last show. She explains that they only did it to flush out the votes. Keith is not looking happy with this explanation.

I like Keith; he’s kind of the forgotten man this season. He’s in a tough place as he appears kind of on the outside looking in as far as being in a power position.

8:03 pm

Natalie and the blue tribe read the tree-mail that says the merge is coming.

Josh drops a sort of bombshell talking about wanting to vote out Jeremy. Is this the first time we have heard talk like this coming from Josh? This would be a huge shake up and a huge power move if Josh can get Jeremy.

8:05 pm

Commercial:

Already at our first commercial break? First, the no black-and-white vision and now a commercial four minutes into the show… This feels weird. It’s like when you watch Seinfeld on TBS and they cut to commercial at weird inappropriate moments, like halfway into a Kramer monologue or something. It’s always disjointed when you watch TV shows or movies on TBS for this reason…when they try to dub a non-swear word into a line where the character clearly says a bad word… only they do it in the most amateur way…like when I was watching Robo Cop (the original) and one of the characters said “motherf**ker” in a low voice. They then dubbed it with a robot-like voice that says “mother trucker” and it completely disoriented me for the rest of the movie.

8:07 pm

Back from commercial and we join the orange team as they get the news now about the upcoming merge. Jon and Jackie talk about merging-out together. Everybody else looks at them with the “first opportunity we get we’re voting you out” face.

8:08 pm

The merge happens and everybody looks happy to be merging. They get to eat lobster and other goodies.

Julie talks about missing John Rocker. She immediately comments on the pairs being big targets. I think she may quit; she has that quitting vibe. I think if she stuck it out she would be the token “take to the last three girl”.

8:10 pm

Jeremy talks about the level of play needing to change now that the merge has happened and nobody needs to take that advice more than Jeremy. He correctly points out that he needs the numbers on his side and that really means keeping Julie happy and stable.

Jeremy and Jon talk about business. They are talking about a group of seven to roll with. Jon says the first to go will be Josh. This is shaping up to be a pretty epic strategy episode.

Missy and Jeremy meet to solidify their pact in the seven. This is an interesting dynamic to watch as Jeremy is trying to be the vocal leader of the group. Does he know the power of Missy at this point? Is there a power of Missy or was I just way too reactionary about how well she has played?

8:13 pm

Josh acknowledges that Jeremy has been politicking big-time and knows that it’s a race to the numbers. Is Josh dead already and he doesn’t know it? Why am I asking so many questions this episode?

Based on what we have seen so far this episode it doesn’t look good for #TeamJosh. The numbers, it looks like, could already be at a place where he can’t overcome them.

8:15 pm

Commercial Break:

Can we talk again about how much I hate new parents boxing everybody in a corner with their “look at my toddler’s picture” Facebook posts? Like I have talked about before, what happens is that every one of her female friends is under martial law to reply with something positive and there is never a male comment at all; that’s because all of us males really want to reply with “ Meh….I’ve seen better” or “ Your kid kind of looks evil”. Just once I would like to see someone be the ultimate dick and post something like that, just to see what would happen. I’m pretty sure if it did, the mother’s group of girlfriends would host a candlelight vigil or something to that effect.

8:17 pm

Back from commercial and Keith watches Josh tell Wes “Happy Birthday”. He comically tells us that he forgot… and can you blame him?… They’re playing Survivor.

8:18 pm

Round two of politicking is Josh stating his case to get the pairs to stick together. The first person he approaches is Baylor. Baylor basically tells us that she is going to roll with Jeremy’s squad. Josh picks up on this and knows that he might be facing Survivor Death Row.

8:20 pm

Baylor shares with Missy the convo she had with Josh. Missy tells Baylor coldly to be phony with Josh. Missy is a stone-cold Survivor killer. If Missy and Baylor where Monopoly players, Missy would be Boardwalk and Baylor would be Baltic Ave. (for you non-Monopoly fans, Baltic Ave. is the cheapest property in the game, so now you see why my mother trucking joke is hilarious).

Missy tells Baylor to “Suck it up”. She’s putting Baylor on her back and it’s unfortunate because I would really like to see Missy play a non-Blood vs Water Survivor game.

8:22 pm

Josh sees the writing on the wall with Baylor and next approaches Jon and Jackie. If you’re a Josh fan you really have to be hating Jon and Jackie because you know they aren’t going to make any smart moves and they are just submarining people’s games left and right without even knowing it. I’m really not trying to be a douche when it comes to Jon and Jackie, but it’s really hard. I just think they’re playing a really dumb game and are having too big of an effect on the game. My hope in any season is that the one or two people that really swing a season a certain way are going to be players that truly understand where their moves are going to lead. I feel that Jon and Jackie are failing to see the gigantic buzzsaw that they are walking straight into.

8:24 pm

OK… a new preview for the movie Interstellar. Has anybody seen this movie yet? It’s the first movie I have really looked forward to since Terminator 2. Without giving any spoilers away, if you’ve seen the movie can you tell me below if it’s worth the hype? It’s really weird that Matthew McConaughey has made this huge transformation into an actor that gets taken seriously now. I mean, go back and watch the big moments in A Time to Kill; his emotional moments in that movie are just awful. One of these days I have to go back and write about his career arc, because I know all twelve of you will like it.

8:28 pm

Back from commercial and the big tribe is having a lively debate about food. Julie, I guess, stowed away some trail mix from the earlier feast. The rest of the tribe goes through her bag and finds the missing food.

I feel bad for Julie, but I don’t know why. It’s like when Ronald Miller gets exposed for giving Cindy Mancini a 1000 dollars to date him in Can’t Buy me Love:

I can’t explain, but I do feel sorry for Julie. Julie notices that everybody knows what she did but they kind of blow over it as they immediately cut to the Immunity Challenge.

8:31 pm

We get the battle of balancing a ball this week. These are always fun to predict. Without honestly knowing why, I am going to take Keith in this comp.

Jeremy and Missy are the first two out of the competition, which seems worth noting.

It comes down to Keith and Wes. I swear to god if Keith wins I had no idea!

8:38 pm

Keith wins Immunity! Wow, I am good! That’s a good win for Keith. Like I said before he’s kind of in a tough place. He’s like a man without a country in this game. It will be interesting to see where he will insert himself as, rightfully so, he doesn’t trust anybody.

8:40 pm

Commercial:

I usually tape Modern Family on Wednesdays, but I just saw that it’s not on tonight because of the Country Music Awards. Look, I will come out and say it… I am not a country music fan. In the last seventy years has country music evolved or changed at all? I just never got the Toby Keiths or the Garth Brookses of the world. I never understood the wardrobe selections or the hair styles, or why during the 2000’s everyone in the country world but the Dixie Chicks were staunch George W. fans.

I will say that Garth Brooks’ song about having friends in “Low Places” will always be in my memory, because during my freshman year of college in Los Angeles, my roommate Pat and a few other guys would always go to this bar in San Pedro called TC’s Cocktails. They would never card us and they thought we were professional volleyball players (I’m tall and I always rolled with a tall group, I guess) and in that bar they would always play that song at the end of the night. It always was completely random and out of place. I rate that story about a -2 out of ten.

8:42 pm

Back from commercials and my awful stories, we join Jeremy who is venting about his piss-poor performance in the challenges. He is feeling good with his numbers and his alliance moving forward.

Alec, being a douche, makes an over-the-top trail-mix joke in earshot of Julie. Even if you’re the biggest Alec fan you have to admit that he’s kind of a douche.

Julie wants to quit and Missy is desperately trying to convince her not to. Julie is not buying it.

8:45 pm

Jon is sharing with Jeremy that Josh wants to get Jeremy out. Jeremy tries to laugh it off, but clearly he might implode.

Josh is trying to make Jon and Jackie see the light. Jon is starting to come around, as he tells Jackie that voting out Jeremy is the move to make. In all honesty, I do think if I were a Jon and Jackie fan I would want them to align with the couples. It seems like the best move for them.

Julie’s quitting would be another pivotal moment changing one Survivor universe into something else.

8:50 pm

It’s 8:50 and so I’m guessing we’re not going to see a Tribal tonight. Jeff Probst comes to talk to Julie. Julie talks about not wanting to “compromise her needs”. I hate Survivor quitters. I hate the bullshit justification that they try to make to Jeff about why, when we know it’s just lame and weak. Look, I’m not in her shoes and I get that. What I do know is that there are many people who want to get on the show and to see someone willfully quit is tough to take.

8:51 pm

Jeff awkwardly tells the rest of the players to all sit on a log. He then breaks the news. Everybody is doing the math in their heads on what Julie’s quitting means except for Alec, who is thinking about that butterfly that is slightly off-camera.

Jeff continues the process group as everybody takes turns kicking dirt on Julie’s grave.

8:55 pm

The show ends with Josh and Jeremy each talking about getting the other one out. This definitely sets the tone for the next episode, which should be a good one.

Recap:

This was the most interesting episode of the season so far. If in the next episode Jeremy doesn’t go home, then we know for sure that Julie, like Jon and Jackie before her, has completely altered the path we were on this season. To me, even though I bought Missy stock at a near premium price, after tonight I feel even better about it.

Obviously, Jeremy and Josh are battling head-to-head now and Missy can hide in the weeds still. It is interesting to see how this season is really a three-person race. I would be interested to hear if any of you think that anybody but Jeremy, Josh, or Missy will win this season. I just don’t know who that person could possibly be. Keith is the only other player I like, but he’s playing with bad cards now.

I just think Missy is in the best spot. Early in the episode, she told Baylor to drop Josh from her mind. It will be interesting to watch that dynamic if Jeremy goes next. The thing is, Julie altered that possible destiny and now I’m thinking that Jeremy might survive next week. Maybe Alec continues on his quest to make the top-5 biggest douches in Survivor history, and in doing so, he gets himself voted out. Think about that swing if it happens… going from voting out Jeremy to voting out Alec…how differently the game will now play out.

Obviously, there are a million things that could happen, but Julie in quitting may have just found that Gray’s Sports Almanac, used it, and then tossed it on her way out the Survivor door and permanently changed the course of history.