There's something very excellently super about seeing such breatheless pain, suffering and uncontrollable heaving and knowing it's not happening to you - it can keep you trippily happy for days.
The first episode of Survivor Guatemala got off to a very wierdy start, with a zing that was totally different.
Everything about it from the mist to the spewy waters to the ancientness of the ruins to the first sucky challenge made it all feel soo difficultly unglamorous. Like in contrast to the tropica of previous islands there is no relief in the idea of where they are whatsoever.
The impact it had was huge as they crazily loved each other as tribes never have. It was their first three days and by the end of them they all seemed to be very okay with each other. It was hysterical because there are already a number of them who are defs Pigs and yet every one of them got along, forced to by the exhaustion and sickness of that first challenge.
It had lots to do with how they got divided into tribes at the start too. Them not having to choose or get involved in the process changed their initial attitudes towards one another, making them more united.
The first glimpse we got of them had them their tribes already, divided like this:
Nakum - Blake, Brandon, Brooke, Danni, Bobby Jon, Jim, Judd, Margaret and Cindy
Yaxha - Amy, Brian, Brianna, Gary, Jamie, Lydia, Morgan, Rafe and Stephenie
I'm dying to know how they grouped them - they said they couldn't talk to each other before so the whole set-up of them finding out who's where must have been very unemotional.
Jeff, looking gorge as per, greeted them and set them their first challenge which was to go on an 11 mile hike through the jungle which seemed easy capeezee to me - until they started doing it. They walked through the night, all the dudes in Nakum (including Bobby-Jon) vomited and cramped themselves to near death yet still managed to win.
As their prize they got flint and the best shelter - which they sickly collapsed into - while Yaxha built a bed out of leaves and spent two days getting to know each other, eating fruit and corn which they'd gotten at the start.
Then they got summonsed to their Immunity Challenge where they had to pull rowing boats up the shore, Nakum's wounded managed to do okay-ish but couldn't keep up and Yaxha beat them, winning immunity.
The Old in Nakum, Jim, pulled his arm out of his socket during it, went comatose with Bobby Jon and Blake and got voted out as the unfittest of the survival.
All of it was very like Mark Burnett's sporty Eco-Challenge - espesh when Bobby Jon lifted his sock to show his gross-out pruned feet. There were a few moments when I actually wondered whether he was deliberately going so beserk in his eye-rolling to make everyone think he wasn't a threat but then decided that he really, really was feeling as terrible as he did.
What's so brilliant about it is that it all took it to a brutal new level. Everything about everyone is being stripped away first to get them to an equal primally King Kong footing and then, as they start to create their society's, they'll have to pay more attention to each other - i.e. the Pigdom.
While it's very strange not feeling any sort of loathing towards anyone in particular it's also quite refreshing. Like there's no need to have to kill them and instead it's more fun to know exactly how Blake feels - such a thing has happened to me - and to know that it's over.
What I didn't understand with him was why none of them considered that those thorns were full of poison or something else grisly. Margaret's explanation that the shock made him sick to his stomach was ridiculous coming from a nurse who's supposed to know so much.
Maybe this is why Jim voted for her? The vote for him at Tribal Council was unanimous, he could have voted for any of the other sick ones and yet he voted for her. Was it because she's older too? Did he want to throttle her for nursing him? Did he simply go senile towards the end? It was very odd I thought.
So is that Jamie's hairstyle - it's the most ridiculous shape I've ever seen. Obviously it's supposed to be in the currently trendy dude-style of a pudding-bowl long-fringed mop but it's too curly so it doesn't work. Sort of like the moustache on Debbie's top lip. How could she possibly have been a model?!
They're quite a bunch of uggers-lookers aren't they? Like that long bean-pole cannibal Gary who's lying to everybody about being NFL. Jeff clearly thinks they're very unsexy too 'cos he doesn't have Julie's ring around his neck so he's making sure none of them think he's potential. Like if he has the ring he's able to lurve but if he doesn't he's only tough.
The cool thing was how brilliantly the chicks handled it. Some of them, including Stephenie of course and - I think her name's Brooke - they looked very fresh and clean, as if they'd taken no strain at all.
That magician's assistant Morgan too - she even thought to put lippie on. This obviously means that chicks really do have more endurance than guys which must be why so many of them live longer.
Yaxha seem very happy with having Stephenie around and aren't planning on immediately getting rid of her because of who she is. As she said, the pressure on her to be the best Survivor ever is actually huge - which must be why Bobby-Jon collapsed. He felt it too and couldn't cope the way she did.
She's looking super fit and lived up to their expectations, espesh Lydia's who has some mega fitness issues going on. Her and Amy, the police sergeant. It's whacked how it really is true that police-people are always supposed to be chasing criminals yet are always too doughnutted to do it.
With it all being about the survival of the fittest if Yaxha had lost Immunity I'm absolutely sure one of these two would have been voted out and Nakum had no other choice but to vote for Jimbo.
The awesome thing is that if this is the way it's all begun it can't go any other way but to get worse. Bobby-Jon in the trailer for next week was too much - he does have a reputation to live up to and I can't wait to see him breathing it.
The way it's started so ominously is perfectly true to the ways of the Mayan's and how they just disappeared with no trace. What could possibly have happened to them?
I reckon they all had TV's and hid them and archeologists haven't realised that they had 213 seasons of Survivor and all died playing it!