Heroes vs Villains
Our resident Survivor fan handicaps the Texas contestants
Coach and Colby battle it out. If only Colby knew what was about to happen tohim.Photo by Robert Voets/©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
The self-assured Russell HantzPhoto by Monty Brinton/©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Randy BaileyPhoto by Monty Brinton/©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Even though the Olympics are dominating TV right now, I can't wait for a new episode of Survivor: Heroes v. Villains tonight (7 p.m., Channel 11). The premiere proved to be everything I hoped for — the villains were lazy and cruel; the heroes, hard-working and valiant. It’s going to be a fantastic season.
Three Texans with strong personalities — our very own Russell Hantz, Austin’s Randy Bailey and Colby Donaldson from Cristoval — are dominating the early going. Of the three, Russell and Colby are the real competition. I think Randy will be out pretty fast. He’s not gelling with his team and he's lazy. Professional reality contestant Boston Rob (he's been on Survivor and Amazing Race twice each without winning) sets out to make a fire and Randy tells him to "blow it off" before he even begins. Why waste the energy? Boston Rob ends up making fire and Randy finds his place in the team hierarchy. (See clip below.)
Laziness is a problem for the villain team (Randy just verbalizes it more). Apparently a key point in the villain persona is to let other people do all the work. What do you do when the majority of your team has this mentality? If you’re Boston Rob, you try to stay patient. If you’re Russell, you keep working and stay quiet so you're not in Rob's line of fire.
Russell likes to start his game behind the scenes anyway. He’s already made alliances with two cute females, but they're definitely not the “dumb ass” girls from the first season. In interviews, both said they’d trust him as long as it served their purposes. One even mentioned she knew he was making alliances with all the contestants. Russell has a serious game cut out for him.
Then there’s good old Colby. It’s been 10 years since he played but people still remember him as honorable and a true hero. My greatest concern for Colby is that villains will take advantage of him. It's already happened in episode one. In their first challenge, Coach (infamous fabulist from Survivor: Tocantins) humiliated Colby as he literally rode him to the finish line, scoring for the villains (See clip below). On Survivor the good guy doesn’t always win, and Colby is a very good guy.
I haven’t read any spoilers but just the same, here are my predictions for our three Texans:
Randy Bailey — Clearly expendable. He’ll be out before the merge.
Russell Hantz — Makes it past the merge but doesn’t get to the final four.
Colby Donaldson — Makes it to the final three.
Boston Rob makes fire despite his lazy team:
See the first rewards challenge. Coach rides Colby to the finish line (5:50):
Hear the arrogance of Russell continue below:
