Mon, December 4, 2006
Dustin Checks In—10:19 AM
The Survivor column is running late again. (I suppose you can expect a lot of that. I admire ARCC Joe Mulder's courageous ability to pull the plug on the Athletic Reporter when it became an onerous chore, rather than waiting until the quality started to suffer – the quality of the writing and his quality of life. Having long ago passed the opportunity to "go out on top," my only choice is to keep slogging along. It was a great episode this week, though.)
Of course, for your adventure-reality dollar, you can really do no better than The Amazing Race, which suffered a crippling blow this week when beauty queens Dustin (Miss California) and Kandice (Miss New York) were eliminated after two uncharacteristically slow legs. Came down to bad luck, mostly, plus a little navigational foul-up last week and a faulty Detour call this week. It's a shame because they were by far my favorite. Initially, I adored them for all the obvious reasons (plus the added benefit that I just knew Miss Alli would hate them simply for being pretty, and I love to love the contestants she unreasonably hates). But it turns out they were excellent racers, bright strategists, and tough competitors, so I was able to keep on loving them guilt-free and they were able to stay around and be loved. (Astonishingly, Miss Alli recognized these qualities in them, too; fortunately, her true colors shone through by about mid-season, when she started blaming them needlessly for imagined transgressions, just like most of the other contestants did.) They raced hard; they raced smart; they ran their own race, with little regard for what others were doing. For these reasons alone, I loved them. That they were ebullient, charming, and ridiculously hot was just icing on the cake. (Also, Kandice has always reminded me of Amanda Detmer, which is just fun in and of itself.)
But they slipped in all these areas a bit during the last two episodes (cockiness? fatigue?) and so there's no one to blame but K&D for their elimination. Still, it's such a shame to see them go. No one remains whom I'd like to see win. But, let's doff our cap to Tyler and James, who have essentially wrapped this thing up. It would take a monumental fuckup for them to lose now (not that they haven't made a few). All three remaining teams are equally poor navigators and strategists, but James and Tyler are the strongest physically and by far the least dysfunctional, which ordinarily equals one million dollars. (You can't see it, but I'm doing that Dr. Evil pinky thing right now. Not because I'm trying to bring it back, but because it was never gone!)
AC — Mon, 12/4/06 7:24pm
Bah!! I hadn't seen it yet! I clicked through thinking this would be a Survivor column and now the pooch has been screwed!
For a second I thought you were joking about liking them and them being voted off. Then I realized that you don't like the Survivor blonde, Candice, and I had seen LAST week's episode of TAR last night where they DIDN'T get eliminated. It's so hard to keep up these days.
AC — Mon, 12/4/06 7:29pm
And since I mentioned Survivor, what an excellent two episodes we've had the last two weeks! The one with Jonathan as the swing vote was amazing. I had to stop the TiVo and spend 15 minutes (literally) puzzling out loud which move would be the best if I were he. I think I resolved that siding with Raro would have given him a slightly better shot than what he ultimately chose, as my entire goal from the point the idol was revealed to me would be to get rid of it. But you can make a great case for him going with Yul too.
I really needed my Survivor-friends around to help with the discussion that night!
Bee Boy — Tue, 12/5/06 10:00am
You're absolutely right. Had Jon voted with Raro after convincing Yul's group to eliminate Nate, he could've gotten the mini idol out of the way, eliminated a dangerous element from the Raro group (i.e., the only one who kind of wants to win), and possibly held a few Raro voters on the jury. I think it would have been a better move, but this season is reinforcing the 24 hour news cycle that Survivor has adopted lately – the only things that affect a TribCon vote are the most recent behaviors, so if some other dustup occurs, everyone will focus on that and forget about the betrayal. (Also, at this point Yul would be an idiot not to want to go F2 with Jon, so in that sense it was good strategy – but can he win the jury vote?)
Sorry about the spoiler!