Survivor: China: It’s Coming!

Survivor: China begins in a week! Whoo-hoo!

Well, it’s kind of a subdued “whoo-hoo” right now. Every season, I start off a little detached and unenthusiastic about Survivor, not really wanting to expend the energy getting to know another group of 16 (or more) people. But even just looking at the CBS website, I’m starting to get sucked in yet again.

First off, I love that they’re back down to 16 people (at least I assume they are, barring another “Bobby Jon and Stephenie appear on the top of Mayan ruins”-type trick that started off the Guatemalan season). After years of research, I’ve learned that my brain can only hold 16 Survivors before they become indistinguishable from each other and I get annoyed.

The people on the CBS site who most draw my attention right now are:

  • James, the muscular pit-bull-owning gravedigger.
  • Ashley, the WWE wrestler, who I hope to see interact with Leslie, the Christian radio talk show host.
  • A man named Frosti. Only time will tell if I crave the Wendy’s creamy dairy dessert whenever I hear his name.
  • And, of course, a chicken farmer named Chicken (pictured right), who I think looks like Robin Williams. (Wait a minute … remember when former NFL quarterback Gary Hogeboom went on Survivor as “Gary Hawkins”? How brilliant would it be if Robin Williams posed as a chicken farmer on a reality show! It could spin off into a children’s story, a movie, a Broadway play: The Robin Who Played Chicken. Mark Burnett, please contact me so you can direct-deposit my royalties.)

I won’t be using this space for comprehensive, blow-by-blow, “who retrieved the tree mail,” “how the challenges were set up” kind of recaps. (Truth be told, my brain isn’t wired for challenges — the Probstian instructions wash uselessly over my brain, and then I annoy my husband with questions as the challenge unfolds. Kind of like how I watch Star Trek episodes with my husband, asking him in the last 15 minutes, “What’s going on? The ship was broken and now it’s fixed somehow? How’d that happen? And who’s the guy with the mountain range on his forehead?”) This blog may include previews of upcoming episodes or my predictions of who will be booted, but it will mostly be things that strike me as interesting — things that will propel me toward my workplace’s water cooler so I can discuss them with coworkers.

Here’s hoping for another season of non-dead grandmas, people getting whacked with machetes, slacker boys proclaiming love at first sight, and people swearing oaths upon whatever they can think of — their children, their word and even almighty God — just for the chance to win some money.