Surviving the Early Show: Rocky’s Interview

Survivor contestants are back on The Early Show again! We’ve been waiting for it all season, and it finally begins with Rocky.

The intro leading into Rocky’s interview replays him making fun of his tribemates for overeating at the reward challenge. Then his torch is snuffed and he’s sitting at the New York studio.

The host asks Rocky if he saw it coming, and Rocky says he kind of smelled it a little, but he was denying it to himself, which made it a shock. How would he describe his strategy? “Not a very good one.” Heh. He says he didn’t really have one, he just tried to wing it – obviously that didn’t work out.

The host notes that Ravu finally won a reward challenge and got a bunch of food, and Rocky was trashing them. Rocky says in his defense, everybody was talking about food while he was starving, so he just wanted to give a little bit back. He guesses they took it the wrong way.

The host says Rocky came across as negative and kind of whiny, and Rocky says it happens. The host continues saying that as a game strategy, he’s not sure that really worked for him. No? Ya think? As if the hosts on The Early Show are brilliant game theoreticians. Yeesh. Anyway, Rocky says the way he gets to know people and shows people he cares is he makes fun of them a little bit. If he didn’t like them, he wouldn’t pay any attention to them.

Time for the secret scene, which the host says is illustrative of Rocky’s non-strategy. It’s the night after they caught fish and they’re cooking ‘em up. Rocky is telling them to hurry because he’s starving. He makes several other comments and Edgardo tells us the problem with Rocky is that he’s affecting the tribe mentally. He’s tired of it.

Was Rocky surprised at what it was like out there? Rocky says he really had no idea what he was getting himself into. Everyone says it’s a lot tougher than it looks, but he really had no clue.

What was the toughest part – being in the environment or being with other people? Rocky says the toughest part was the mental aspect, losing all the time, trying to get to know everybody. Did he ever feel like leaving? Rocky says he wanted to quit every day, but his cousin Frank “would’ve beat the crap outta me,” so he didn’t. Heh.

The host says the game has been on the air all these years, you’d think people would get some idea. Well, yeah, if they paid attention – and if the producers picked people who actually knew the show!

With Rocky being the first person on the jury, he vowed (as we saw) that he would not vote for any of them to win. But Rocky backs off that a bit, saying he was angry and shocked when he said it. He says he takes in all the information available on the jury and votes accordingly. He wants to be fair.

The host says Rocky has “a terrific personality” but maybe “it wasn’t a match for Survivor.” Really? Brilliant deduction. And with that, the segment is over.

Unfortunately, the passage of time has not made these interviews much better. So if you want to read more about the things Rocky has to say that would interest you, I encourage you to click over to my interview with Rocky now that you’re done reading about this one.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent Survivor: Fiji articles here on RealityNewsOnline:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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