Survivor

Air Date: 9/17/09

View Date: 9/23/09

This was the first episode of the season, and we saw the arrival of the 20 strangers on Samoa. The contestants arrived already split into tribes, and the first task was to pick leaders without knowing anyone. The leaders, after receiving a necklace identifying them as such, then had to decide who would participate in the first challenge. The yellow team is Foa Foa, while the purple team is named Galu.

The first challenge, with the prize of fire in the form of flint, involved swimming, strength, agility, and intelligence. Jayson surprised several of his teammates by being an African American male who was a very strong swimmer. What his team did not know was that he played water polo in college. His strong swimming pushed the yellow team into the lead, which was extended by Russell and Marisa on the next two legs. Liz finished it off with a victory for the yellow team. The purple team all competed admirably, with Shambo making up tons of time and pulling very close on the last leg. None of them gave up and finished their individual legs to the best of their abilities.

The teams headed off to their camps and started making their camps livable. The Galu leader, as chosen on the beach, actually took over the leadership role once they arrived back at camp. Unfortunately, they did have a group of very vocal men on the team that tended to argue about all the construction work around camp. The Foa Foa tribe saw the leadership role change for the time being to a self-proclaimed redneck who had a great deal of camping and survival experience. Also on the yellow tribe, Russell started making trouble right away. At this point, only one person, a female police officer, saw through him. He is going to make a hell of a lot of trouble until he gets voted off, especially once his tribe figures out that he wants to make life as miserable as possible for everyone else.

The first elimination challenge was a team obstacle course. The Galu tribe had some very ingenious ideas for conquering the obstacles, and worked incredibly well together. The Foa Foa tribe had some major difficulties at the beginning of the challenge, but stole some of Galu's ideas and were able to catch up pretty well. In the end, Galu won immunity as well as fire, and Foa Foa won a trip to tribal council. At the end of the day, Marisa was heading home, and Ashley had a close call.

10 words or less: Russell is just pure evil.