Survivor: Exile Island - Survivor Live Recap, Episode 1

This week’s guest is Tina Scheer. My own occasional comments will be enclosed in square brackets like this [I see the headlines – Lumberjill Gets the Chop!]

[Let me lead off by saying that, since I had predicted Tina to be in the final four, I’m already getting all the surprises I can handle this season. Even after seeing the episode, it still made little sense to me. This was the strangest boot since that of Hunter Ellis in Survivor: Marquesas. Maybe today’s interview will help explain things.]

The show starts with new graphics and instead of the usual haunting tribal music, some snazzy rock and roll intro music. Sorry, I can’t name that tune. Dalton starts things off by welcoming us to the show. We also find out that Pittsburgher Jenna is going to the Super Bowl.

The camera shifts to Tina, and she’s still got her big hair. Dalton admits he is a little surprised Tina is visiting this show so early in the season. He refers to the CBS roundtable [available on the CBS site] where of six writers (including himself and Jeff Probst) all predicted Tina would go far and four, including Probst, picked her to win. Tina thinks she ended up on a wrong team for her, where she was seen as a threat.

The following discussion was about tribes voting off strong members first. Jenna says they did that in Amazon. Dalton notes that in Palau, Ulong voted out their strongest member first [Jolanda], and we know how that worked out for them. [It happened in Thailand as well.] Jenna thinks that strong and popular Tina would be hard to get rid of when the tribes were combined, so she needed to be ousted early. Tina admits she hadn’t thought ahead in the game as to how that might play out. [Bad! Always be thinking ahead.]

[We learn that lucky dog Dalton was onsite in Panama at Survivor: Exile Island for some of the filming! He has a lot of goodies to share with us.] The first is, the setup with four teams doesn’t last long (two episodes) and the never-popular pick ’em method is used to build new teams. [Those of you collecting Survivor buffs better have deep pockets this season!]

Jenna calls the young men’s tribe “useless.” Dalton was amazed watching them play baseball when they had no fire, water or shelter.

Jenna opines, “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the many seasons of Survivor it’s that young people just do not work as hard. It’s obvious that the older men and women are going to get it together. We saw the younger men and women are indecisive. I think it’s just work ethic, the young people just don’t have the same work ethic.” She continues also says, “They don’t have the experience, they don’t have the maturity,” and, “We rely on the older people to just do everything,” and laughs, because she knows that describes her Survivor: Amazon game too.

Dalton thought the older men were doing really well, they had a great shelter which he wishes they’d shown. However, the older women were doing pretty well also. [Due to Tina’s efforts… we’ll see who starts the fire after the rains put it out.]

Tina is used to being outside and although “I didn’t know exactly what to do,” the ideas of fire, water, and shelter seemed obvious to her. Unfortunately, “going scouting” was also on her list.

The first caller of the new season is Doug, from Wisconsin. He asks Tina if she had planned a strategy going into the game, and did the format of “teams-of-four” cause her to change? She didn’t have a planned strategy because she didn’t know what to expect. She hadn’t planned to be the hardest worker or a leader; she just wanted to react to the situation she ended up in. When Tina looked at her team she figured she would have to be the leader.

Don in Toronto wants to know if there was anyone on the tribe she might have connected with. She names Melinda, but it never happened. When they first got to the island she went to scout the surroundings, the others didn’t come with her. [Doh!] When she came back, the other three were bonding at camp. Tina avows she wasn’t willing to change her nature just to do better in the game. [Double D’oh!]

Jenna suggests she might not have been the outsider if she stayed at camp. She continues by saying that maybe that’s not “changing,” just “adapting.” Tina agrees that would have made sense, but was more focused on exploring.

Tina relates that besides the fish, it was not shown on TV that she also found oysters. She ate some, but decided not to tell the others about them – it was going to be her secret stash for later in the game.

They run the heart-rendering clip of Tina off by herself and thinking about her son, Charlie. Dalton apologizes for making Tina watch it. Tina is in tears watching, so is Jenna. Dalton mentions that emotions become amplified in Survivor. Tina says that staying home didn’t seem like a better option to her, because it [her grief] follows her everywhere. She hoped being in a different environment would be good for her. Tina adds that she was having fun out there.