Survivor Guatemala: Survivor Live Recap, Episode 4

It’s time for the next episode of Survivor Live, CBS’s Internet interview show with the most recently booted contestant(s) from Survivor: Guatemala. The show is hosted by Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly and Survivor: Amazon winner Jenna Morasca. My own occasional comments are enclosed in square brackets like this [I see the headlines – Brooke Struck Down!].

This week’s guest is Brooke Struck, the almost-invisible law student from Oregon. [OK, that’s a little unfair, she was seen as the caller in the blindfolded part of the tent build, but we didn’t hear her speak very often. Today, hopefully that changes. I also note, this is the third week running there’s been a “hot chick” booted!]

As usual, proceedings begin with Dalton welcoming Brooke to the show. His first act is to comment on her lack of face time. The hosts thought her lack of face time was a positive for her, meaning that she’d probably be around for quite a while. She agrees, “It was pretty brutal that I wasn’t shown a lot.”

Brooke tells us that she and Jim were the ones who led the team through the jungle [that didn’t help Jim much at voting time, either.] It was frustrating to her that this wasn’t really shown.

She caught 18 minnows the day the tribes were switched. No one had ever done better. Jenna notes that Bobby Jon and Stephenie are taking up a lot of the camera time, to the detriment of the others.

Jenna was happy to see that Jeff Probst echoed her words that maybe it’s Stephenie who’s the bad luck charm. Dalton notes her record is now 4/21 in challenges.

Dalton wonders why Brooke was booted since the weak were being booted, noting that Brooke was physically active, does a lot of camping, wasn’t sick and didn’t mess up in any of the challenges. She had established that she was strong with her initial tribe, but didn’t have a chance to reestablish that in the new Nakúm. In the week two challenge [“Web Over Water”], where they had to climb across the spider-web of ropes to get bags and bring them back to the mat, she and Danni went for and got the bags that were farthest away.

Brooke adds that Lydia was physically active in the courtball game, she was running non-stop and never stopped smiling [enthusiastic yes, effective no]. Conversely, Steph was lying on her back gasping for breath [perhaps the result of putting in more effort?] Brooke goes on to say that Stephenie isn’t a team player and doesn’t work well with other people, especially other strong women.

Dalton thinks Stephenie is freaking out over losing again, and starting to get a bit too whiny about it. Jenna feels Steph’s “America’s sweetheart” status is taking a beating. [Not true – see the bottom of this article.]

Dalton asks about Judd flipping sides. Brooke hadn’t seen him talking with Stephenie and Jamie, but Margaret pointed it out. She wasn’t really worried because she believed it was going to be Lydia voted off first, “and then Stephenie, hands down.” [Unfortunately, this was just a group of three (Brooke, Cindy, Margaret), and that’s no majority.] There was little time to absorb and react to Judd’s conversation with Margaret because that was five minutes before they left for tribal council, but that was her first indication that things were in danger of going awry.

Judd claimed he hadn’t bonded with the rest of his original tribe, but Jenna wonders if he’s the kind of guy that’s really into bonding. She calls his decision to align with Steph and the rest “the stupidest move ever” because it puts him at the bottom of the pecking order in someone else’s alliance.

Brooke feels Judd doesn’t have the mental game. He doesn’t look two steps down the road, he just thought that joining with other strong people like Jamie and Stephenie would keep him safe for now. She now sees it took no convincing on their part to flip him.

Judd showed her on day two he wasn’t a team player when Blake was ill. Brooke says that Judd stayed away from camp instead of pitching in to take up the slack. When Judd then got sick, he got very defensive because “Judd never does anything wrong in Judd’s eyes.” She concludes by calling him “phony” and saying, “I think he sensed we didn’t trust him.”

Dalton says, you gotta wonder about a guy wearing a sweatshirt in 114-degree weather. Jenna wonders where the thermometer is to verify these temperatures. Jenna also wonders why isn’t anyone sweating? Jokingly I think, Brooke says they were too dehydrated to sweat. She relates that at challenges, Jeff Probst would announce the temperature.

Our first caller this week is Penny from Ohio who asks, since we saw so little of the women on Nakúm, what were the tribe dynamics? Brooke says that on original Nakúm, everyone got along well. Judd was a little on the outskirts, he was more negative and like a bull in a china shop, would get frustrated at challenges if things weren’t going well. The four women were tight.

Jenna notes that both Stephenie and Judd had real trouble breaking the tiles in this week’s immunity challenge. Steph took 30 or 40 tries but neither she nor Judd would step out and let someone else try. On the other hand, Danni did it in only four tries.

The clip of that challenge is run. Jenna found it fun, interesting, exciting, and not just brute strength [I agree, it was a good one].

Dalton mentions that Gary couldn’t step up and play, because he can’t show he’s got the arm of an NFL Quarterback. [Had he made some accurate 30-yard throws, it might have convinced them he couldn’t be the real Gary Hogaboom! OK, bad joke… my inner Jenna came out there!]

Jenna is getting on my Danni bandwagon, noticing she’s doing so well on the challenges. Dalton reminds us that Danni and Brooke were allied. At the switch, Brooke was disappointed to lose Danni and not Judd.

Dave from Michigan asks Brooke what was her favorite challenges, and where did she do best? She replies, “The ‘funnest’ challenge was probably the basketball one” [courtball, actually]. Her best was crawling under the rope web to get one of the farthest bags [in “Web Over Water”], and also the jungle hike, where she didn’t get them lost.