Survivor season premiere recap: One 'Psycho' Premiere

Monty Brinton/CBS

I love each and every one of you. My love knows no limits, no boundaries. There ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from you. Okay, you’ll have to forgive me for going a bit overboard, but this season of Survivor: Tocantins is all about first impressions so I figured I would try to make a good one right off the bat so you didn’t vote my TV Watch off the EW.com island and instead go and make friends with the Grey’s Anatomy recap where characters have supposedly taken to having sex with ghosts. (How am I supposed to top ghost sex? That’s impossible! Jeff Probst could start breakdancing at Tribal Council and it still wouldn’t top ghost sex.)

Anyhoo, it’s the start of a new season and before we get to the action, I have a few exciting notes about some Survivor-related stuff here on EW.com. Once again, Jeff Probst will be blogging his little heart out after every episode. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if you want to know how awesome Jeff’s blog is, just check out the other people who have also started celebrity blogging here since he started: Chris Harrison now blogs The Bachelor, the cast of Friday Night Lights is taking turns guest-blogging their incredible drama, and the Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan kicks off his host blog on Monday. We’ll also once again be providing you with exclusive deleted scenes after every episode. These are outtakes from the most recent episode that you can’t find anywhere else. You can see this week’s at the end of the column, or, if you’re super impatient, you can click here and get your fix.

Finally, a lot of you out there wrote on the comment boards last season that you really missed Survivor Talk, the EW.com video show that Josh Wolk and I co-hosted. This made me very happy seeing as how most of those episodes involved me physically or emotionally torturing Josh somehow, and it was nice to know that you all enjoyed that as much as I did. In any event, it’s back — and better than ever! Well, I don’t know about better, but it will be faster — as least faster getting to you. Instead of going up on Mondays, Survivor Talk will now be posted on Friday afternoons, so make sure to check back for that. Josh and I will be interviewing the most recent cast-off, and for the first five weeks, we’ll also be having some very special former Survivors on as guests — tune in to see who.

Okay, enough housecleaning. Now let’s talk about the premiere of a new Survivor season that I still cannot pronounce, and the huge out-of-the-box twist of transporting the entire show back to the year 1988! I know, I know, it was a bit confusing, and I didn’t figure it out myself at first either, but where else could they have picked up a dude with a sweet hairdo like Coach? Many have tried and failed to properly wed the hairstyles of action hero Steven Seagal and Keyboardist #2 from Animotion, but leave it to the soccer rocker himself to finally get the combo down cold. So after extracting Coach from the set of Under Siege 2, the show jumped back to 2009 to the Brazilian highlands where we were warned of heat! Storms! Wildfires! And possible motion sickness! (I’ve been on a few of those bumpy Survivor truck rides and they are none too fun.)

NEXT: The game — and the recap — begins!

The truck finally stopped and Probst told the tribes — Timbira and Jalapao — they had 60 seconds to gather supplies that they would want to haul on a four-hour trek to their camp. Jalapao, apparently deeming things like “food” and “water” to be overrated, decided to grab neither. But then, Probst had an announcement to make: “We’re gonna have our first vote and one person from each tribe is not gonna make this journey.” Ooooh, careful here contestants: Remember the fake merge from Thailand where he sent the two tribes to live together but never actually said they were merging? Well, unless he says the words “voting out” then nobody’s going home. Sandy (who everyone referred to as “older lady,” which I thought was nicer then simply “old lady” because one can be older instead of just plain old; the same way someone can be crazier instead of just plain crazy, although maybe that’s actually not the best parallel to use in this case) and strep-throat Sierra were picked out of their tribes and then given the good news that they were not, in fact, kicked out of the game. Instead, they would be comfortably helicoptered back to camp while everyone else had to endure the four-hour hike with gear. (Message to fellow contestants: Hey, if you didn’t hate these two before, you sure will now!) Sandy then started celebrating until she was kindly informed by Probst that most people tend not to celebrate after being told by their peers to get lost.

So off the tribes went on their trek, which appeared to be significantly less brutal than the 11-mile hike that kicked off Guatemala (in that no one’s eyes were rolling back inside their heads á la Bobby Jon). Jalapao couldn’t figure out how to use a compass while over at Timbira, Seagalimotion was busy dubbing himself a “renaissance man adventurer.” He then went on to talk about American Indians, Norse Vikings, samurai warriors and — presumably after the cameras turned off — lots of other manly-man things that no doubt included Guinness beer, Winchester rifles, and the entire GNC line of liquid protein products.

Meanwhile, non-trekking Sandy was dropped off by the helicopter at the Jalapao camp. She celebrated by talking to herself, then crying, then giving herself a pep talk, and then crying some more. She finally stopped shedding tears long enough to read a note that told her there was a hidden immunity idol at her camp. Oh, the dilemma — to help set up camp (and try to get in the others’ good graces) or spend your time searching for the hidden immunity idol? Proving she is a maverick in the truest sense, Sandy instead decided…to do neither! This was especially shocking considering how insanely easy HIIs are to find these days on Survivor. (For example: Sandy’s first clue was to dig where, “A stick marks the spot on your biggest beach” — and there was literally one obvious-as-hell branch sticking up out of the sand. The only way they could have made the whole thing any easier was to have Probst walk up with the idol in his hands and offer the clue “Look at my hands.”) Had Sandy used her time wisely — and knew what the hell a “pace” was — she could have easily found the idol and done enough around camp to make it look like she had been working there as well. Instead, she accomplished absolutely nothing except creeping all of America out by stuffing her idol clue into her bra and asking if her boobs looked even.

NEXT: Survivors gone wild! And naked.

The next day Psycho Sandy (as her tribemates so affectionately dubbed her) did go idol searching. She began by looking for the stick on the beach which may as well have been flying a flag that said “Hey, idiot. Dig here!” Then, even when the clue told her EXACTLY where to go, she got confused by what “10 paces” meant and it was all over. For her part, Sierra decided to work on setting up the camp while the others were still hiking. How nice. Na?ve as hell, but nice. Sierra talked to the camera about how her tribe had misjudged her and how she has a lot of strengths, only even she didn’t seem to believe any of it. And, unfortunately for her, upon returning to camp and seeing all the work she had done, Seagalimotion said he still wanted her gone. Ah, but it wasn’t all sore throats and Darwin theories run amuck at camp Timbira. No, there was also crazy, wacky, zany, kooky Tyson who was determined to break the land speed record for fastest Survivor to get naked. For someone who in his bio describes his favorite hobby as “looking awesome,” this was a curious decision, because I didn’t catch a whole lot of awesomeness going on there. Oh, Tyson, you’ll bury us all, you mischievous little scamp!

Challenge time! How much I wanted Probst to follow his trademark “Wanna know what you’re playing for?” line with, “Well, I’m not gonna tell you, because if, 18 seasons in, you don’t realize that you’re playing for fire in the form of flint and immunity, well, there’s no hope for your sorry asses.” The challenge involved people going on to retrieve puzzle pieces that would then be used as steps to build stairs, followed by another puzzle that would release the tribe flag. But all of that was secondary to the main purpose of the challenge, which was to feature as many gratuitous boob shots of Carolina as possible. I mean, I’m used to one or two of these per challenge — and mind you, I’m not complaining — but this was really over the top. In fact, it was so over the top that a thought occurred to me: Carolina is going home tonight. How else to explain producers trying to cram a season’s worth of T&A shots into a single episode. It was as if they were pissed at the Panamanian hottie for getting herself voted out so early and were determined to get their money’s worth out of her stay regardless.

The challenge was certainly not the most inventive, but was exciting nonetheless thanks to the back and forth element of teams taking turns in the lead. Timbira was in front after the puzzle retrieval section, but then Psycho Sandy proved she could also be crazy good in challenges, helping Jalopa to a commanding lead after the puzzle stairs section. At this point, I thought Timbira was toast. They were well behind, and Sierra apparently had decided to take the opportunity to start auditioning for horror movies by screaming at the top of her lungs as if being attacked by a monster of some sort. She must have scared the living bejeezus out of her tribemates because Erin and Brendan (whoever they are) blazed through the last section as if a beast of the Brazilian Highlands was right on their tail, overtaking Jalopa for the win.

NEXT: Dalton’s episode 1 pick to win it all!

More clues about Carolina’s ouster popped up after the challenge when the tribe started to sour on her constant complaining about working around camp. By the time Tribal Council rolled around, the only question left was whether Psycho Sandy had figured out what a pace was. She hadn’t, evidently, because she did not have the idol. In his first highlight moment of the season, Probst dispensed with all pleasantries and asked straight out, “Sandy, you a little crazy?” “Oh, I’m a lot crazy,” came the reply. That, of course, is why she was cast, filling a favorite role for producers — the middle-aged female whack job (think Wanda from Palau and Kathy from Micronesia). Personally, I’m not a big fan of that type on the show, and would much rather have had Carolina around for another week. And I’m not just saying that because Carolina is hot. Mostly.

As far as the episode itself, it was fine. Not bad. Not great. But then again, that’s how most first episodes of Survivor are (with the exception of Amazon and Pearl Islands which were both brilliant from the get-go). It takes time for the cast — and us viewers — to settle in. Probst promises this season is a really good one, but then again he also said that only the winner of the challenge would get fire, and then he flipped a flint over to Jalopa at Tribal Council so who knows if we can trust that guy. The one thing we can count on him for is a highly entertaining blog, so check out what kind of behind-the-scenes scoop he will be providing on this week’s premiere episode. Also make sure to enjoy the deleted scene below. And curious as to what Carolina has to say for herself? Then check back Friday afternoon for our season premiere ofSurvivor Talk, where we also welcome a mystery former contestant to the show. But now comes the most important thing of all — YOU! It’s time to unleash yourselves on the message boards. Who do you like? Who’s already getting under your skin? What’s your favorite Steven Seagal movie? And what do you think of my episode 1 pick to win it all? Nope, I didn’t forget. This season I’m going with Brendan, although it’s not a slam-dunk feeling like I had with Yul, Earl, and Todd. But Brendan’s a bright guy, did well in the challenge, and seems like he may be able to lead while deflecting most of the attention onto Coach. Who’s your pick? The boards are open for business, people!

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