Survivor: Cook Islands – Survivor Live, Episode 9

Following hot on the heels of the ninth episode of the season of Survivor: Cook Islands is the latest episode of CBS’s Internet interview show, Survivor Live. Co-hosted by Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly and Survivor: Amazon winner Jenna Morasca, it features interviews with the most recently eliminated contestants. This week they have two guests, challenge-challenged makeup artist Rebecca Borman and blindsided realtor Jenny Guzon-Bae.

But first, my trivia question. In every Tribal Council this season, only two different Survivors have received any votes – the booted player, and just one other. This is especially surprising considering this week’s surprise vote; plus on Raro the reasons for voting seem to change every week! My question is: Has there even been a full season when no more than two Survivors received votes at every Tribal Council? As usual, the answer will be near the bottom of this article.

The show begins with Dalton telling us that next week, Survivor will be airing on U.S. Thanksgiving Thursday, and not rescheduled to Wednesday as has sometimes happened in previous seasons. However, THIS SHOW (Survivor Live) will be delayed to Monday. So if you’re a kid pretending to be sick so you can stay home and call into Live, reschedule that cough accordingly!

Dalton also announces that he has a bottle with a secret message in it. He promises it won’t be opened until near the end of the show.

Attention now turns to the two booted players. Both ladies have cleaned up very nicely, though Rebecca is starting to lose her voice from doing so many interviews. I find the raspiness rather sexy.

Dalton notes that Rebecca didn’t have her parting words shown on the air. Rebecca says, “You know, that really bothered me, too.” Asked by Jenna if she said anything good, she tells us, “I said I was pissed at Jenny and Nate for not telling me I was being voted off!” She saw those two as her closest mates.

I couldn’t figure the segue, but after Jenna says she doesn’t hate Jonathan, Dalton jumps in and says, “Yeah, you hate Jonathan.” Jenna settles for saying, “Really, he’s SO abrasive.” Wonderful, this falling before the four-minute mark. This could be a long one…

Jenna’s anti-White Power rant this week reveals that she thinks a final four of the Raro four would be boring. Dalton adds that it would be all the more remarkable because of how poorly the white tribe did at their initial camp. Plus, generally they aren’t shining in the challenges.

Dalton asks Rebecca about Nate. She doesn’t know where it went wrong between them and she needs to check with Nate why he didn’t warn her the boot was coming. She knew she was in danger after not swimming well in the previous challenge. Jenna suggests they guys aren’t helping much and they should just get rid of all the guys.

Turning to Jenny, she confirms for Dalton that her desire to boot Candice and Jonathan was strictly because the Candice/Adam pairing needed to be broken up. Her original alliance was with a pre-Candice Adam, and she wanted to get him back to that position.

Jenna notes Candice is getting a free pass for jumping tribes. It’s her opinion that it’s in the way Jonathan comes across that makes him more the target. Speaking of Candice, Rebecca confirms, “We were well aware that she jumped to be with her man. She’s in love with that boy. And that’s the only reason why she decided to mutiny.” Neither player can understand why someone from the core alliance on the other team would swap teams.

Our first caller today is week one evictee Sekou. He’s called to say he loves them all, and does so several times. Sekou just submitted a new Survivor song he wrote to Mark Burnett and hopes he can play it at the finale. He promises to take Rebecca and Jenny out to dinner in L.A.

Sekou has questions for our guests. He asks Rebecca about not using a gender alliance to vote someone out this week. She didn’t consider gender and wishes she’d played it differently. Perhaps that might have worked against Jonathan, but the female allies of Nate and Adam would not have gone along with any such plan. It’s apparent Rebecca was tabbed as the one to go by most of the tribe and all the women were unlikely to buy into saving her.

Sekou notes Jenny won a lot of challenges with her initial tribe and asks how it affected her confidence to start losing so often. She gives the credit to Yul’s intelligent planning for the early wins on the Puka tribe. She found it was upsetting be losing so often once she joined Raro.

Dalton runs the clip of the reward challenge from last week (called “Make Your Point”), where communication was again an issue for Raro. It seems to me like they needed a talking compass with a pointing hand because neither pair was confused about where they were supposed to be digging at times. Dalton points out that Adam speaks in a very annoyed, frustrated tone at this challenge. Jenna thinks Jonathan does, too, and I say Candice has the same issue. Jenny says someone was voicing frustration at almost every challenge they participated in.

Jenny tells us Jonathan disoriented her when he started out in the wrong location. Jenna says, “It seems like Jonathan gets easily frazzled at challenges,” and reminds us that Jeff Probst got him mad last week. Rebecca says, “He doesn’t work well under pressure,” and laughs. Jenny adds that when they returned to camp, he tried to give them a pep talk, but the rest of them were so down that they just didn’t want to hear it.

Shawna in Tennessee is the next caller. She wonders if they finally get to see their letters from home when they are voted off. No. Rebecca says, “You don’t get anything when you are voted off.” Good question, though.