TV Guide Channel Helps Us Meet the ‘Survivor: One World’ Contestants

It’s almost Survivor time again! You know what that means, don’t you? A TV Guide Channel special preview for the season. The preview show actually aired a little while ago, but I just wasn’t in Survivor mode again yet. I was afraid that if I watched it that soon, I would just be torturing myself until the show actually began. Now that Season 24 begins this week, it’s an appropriate time to watch the preview and recap it for you fine readers. As I usually do with this show, I’ll be focusing on the players, twists, and Probst’s thoughts.

As we already know, Survivor: One World features the first time both tribes will share the same beach, and also a return to tribes that are initially split up by gender. Host Jeff Probst says they’ve been toying with the idea of having the tribes share one beach for around five years now. Really? And they went with Redemption Island first instead?

Anyway, Probst thinks alliances will get interesting with this format and wonders how players can trust their alliance as much as in the past when it’s possible the players could have a whole other alliance on the other tribe. Considering you can’t really trust your alliance in this game anyway, I don’t know that there’s necessarily much difference! Plus, he says you have a better chance of doing it and not getting caught, but it seems to me that if you spend a lot of time consorting with the other tribe, you may be pegged as a traitor whether you have another alliance over there or not!

Probst says any time they divide men and women, the women flirt and the men fall for it. I’d like to say he’s wrong, but, well, he’s not. So with them living together, he expects it to be amped up even more – and he thinks there will be more women at the end and a woman will win.

While Redemption Island is gone, hidden immunity idols are still around. But there won’t be any clues because people don’t seem to need ‘em. Another idol-related twist is that if you find your tribe’s idol, you can keep and use it; but if you find the other tribe’s idol, you have to give it to someone on the other tribe before the next Tribal Council.

We get a preview on the start of the show with Probst telling us it will begin with the players coming in on trucks laden with supplies, and they have a minute to unload as many as they can. The women get a ton of stuff unloaded, but as they’re getting it out of the truck, at least one of the men is grabbing it and moving it to their pile without the women noticing – until it’s too late. Ha! Awesome.

The first contestant to whom we’re introduced is Troy, aka Troyzan. He used to live with monkeys, whom he adopted. Probst says Troyzan is funny and likeable and “no dummy – he knows the game and knows how to play it.” Good news for us fans! He’s been applying for years and “is one of the older guys,” though he doesn’t look 50.

He tells us he’s already got his eye on some players who look really smart (considering these interviews were done before they were allowed to even speak to each other, I’m not sure how you determine if somebody looks really smart, but okay), and he’s going to try to get rid of them. But he’s also open to a relationship with any of the women if it happens. Looking at him, I’m thinking not. Stick to strategy, Troy.

Next is 29-year-old Kourtney, who is a mechanic and a single mom of a seven-year-old boy. She says she typically gets to a point in her life where things get to be too much and she flees. Hmmm, do we have a possible quitter-in-waiting here? Having her son has forced her to stay put – well that’s good news!

Probst thinks she’s there to show that she’s a new person. She seems to agree. But if she’s there for personal reason, I’m thinking she’s not likely to actually play strategically and win.

The third contestant we meet appears to have gotten on the show due to having the same name as the actual person casting meant to get. Sabrina’s info kept popping up and casting liked her better than the one they had originally picked. Well, that must be great news for the original. I don’t know about anybody else, but I would be totally pissed to find this out if it happened to me.

Probst loves Sabrina and says she has a great smile and infectious energy. She teaches in a dangerous neighborhood and Probst thinks she may kick some ass in challenges. But her opinionated nature may intimidate some of the other castaways, as she tells us she feels like she’s “gonna go to Hell on a scholarship.” OK, I love that turn of phrase and am going to try to work it into at least one conversation tomorrow!

Sabrina tells us there is another contestant who looks “sweet as pie” but she thinks “he should be on Glee and not on Survivor.” Who is it? Colton, the 20-year-old gay Republican (I still don’t understand how that’s possible, given the current GOP climate) and huge Survivor fan who wants people to underestimate him. Probst says Colton is smart and knows the show, but telling too much about it “can become annoying.” Hmm, anybody think he might be referring to a certain contestant from last season?

Another fan – who has watched every season (hooray!) – is 27-year-old Jonas, the sushi chef. He grew up in Hawaii, so he feels more comfortable than most in this climate. He even knows how to weave fronds for a shelter roof and thinks he can make fire with bamboo (though he doesn’t know if he’ll show off with that yet).

Probst thinks Jonas’s biggest problem will be getting into an early alliance because he’s not aggressive enough. And if Jonas’s tribemates are expecting great things from the chef, he says they shouldn’t – he’s not planning on “going overboard” with the provider aspect. Also, he admits he’s a bad liar, even though he plans to give it a shot.

Our next contestant is NFL wife Monica, married to Brad Culpepper (not the Culpepper most of us thought it would be), who played nine years. She doesn’t plan on telling anybody about her husband’s occupation because “that’s a one-way ticket out.” Bingo. Now the question is if she can actually follow through on her plan, because we’ve seen so many people say they won’t disclose something and then doing it anyway.

She’s so busy at home, she almost will see Survivor as a vacation – at least that’s how she portrays it. Personally, when I go on vacation, I tend to eat more than usual, so I may have a different definition than she does. Anyway, Probst hopes Monica lasts a long time but she may be more fit than anybody else, which could work against her. I’m thinking it will help her in the early going when the women will need strong competitors.

Matt, the 33-year-old lawyer, takes the screen next and tells us he plans on keeping a secret of his own – that he’s a lawyer. He doesn’t want people to think he may have an advantage with the jury. So he’ll pretend to be an average Joe, and he’ll further downplay the relationship he has with his girlfriend so he can try to get a strategic advantage with some of the young ladies in the game.

Other issues with Matt? He think he may do too well in the challenges and plans to back down if he starts to stand off too much. And he’s a poor follower, but he also knows leading makes a player a target.

Probst has blunter words for Matt, calling him somebody who will be seen as arrogant, misogynistic, and condescending. I can’t understand why, considering that Matt tells us, “I’m probably a favorite to win this game right now.”