Now I'm Stuck with the Two Old Guys

This is the 1st episode of Survivor: French Polynesia.

Challenges
Immunity Challenge: Challenge Name How it works. Winner:

Day 1
We start with an overview shot of the beautiful islands of the nation of French Polynesia as two separate speedboats are driving towards opposite sides of a large island. Jeff Probst is standing in a third speedboat not seen in the previous wide shot, speeding along the coast of the French Polynesian Islands.

The camera then switches over to the boat speeding along the other side of the island.

(intro plays)

The newbies and veterans are both brought to opposite sides of the island they’ll be inhabiting, and all they are given is instructions to get off the boat to their campsite, and nothing else. Both the veterans and newbies are equally confused, as they don’t know what to do at their campsite.

We focus on the newbie’s beach first, as the castaways place all their belongings down on the beach and start talking with one another.

The tribe laughs at Jovany, before Albert joins in the conversation.

As the men, along with Mercedes, Tessa, and Lauren started working on the shelter, Ambrosia quickly found some excuses for her to do less strenuous work, such as searching for the water well. Wade points out that Ambrosia’s been gone for a long time, and goes to search for her. He finds her sitting under a shady tree in the forest.

Wade goes back to the shelter and tells the rest of the tribe about Ambrosia’s slacking, angering Albert. Albert thanks Wade and compliments him on immediately coming to them, all the while Tessa is analyzing the situation.

Before going to bed, as the shelter is done, the newbies gather together to formally introduce themselves to the whole group.

The other castaways introduce themselves as well, the only other thing of note being the awkward silence when Ambrosia mentions being an “exotic dancer”.

The camera switches to the returnees beach earlier in the day, when they start building the shelter. Sebastian and Andrew both direct different groups, unaware that the other is also taking up the leadership position. About halfway throughout the shelter building process, they realize that they were building the shelter separately, and now they have two disjoint half-shelters.

The castaways stand by awkwardly as Andrew forces himself into the leader position over Sebastian.

Savage starts to rips apart Sebastian’s part of the shelter without giving any consideration to the ones who built it. J’Tia, who was part of Sebastian’s group in building the shelter, gets mad.

After the argument, J’Tia rebuilds the part of the shelter that was broken, and adds on to it to make more room while Andrew and the rest of the tribe works on his side of the shelter. When he’s finished, the tribe is shocked to see that J’Tia’s shelter looks even better than Andrew’s. J’Tia invites anyone who wants to to sleep in her shelter, and after checking it out and finding it stable and comfortable, Daniel, Agatha, Sebastian, and Kass all move to her shelter, leaving LJ, Christa, Tijuana and Andrew in the other shelter.

Now that the shelter-building was done, the switch for game mode turned on as everyone started talking to one another about strategy.

The first group shown is between Agatha, Sebastian, and Daniel, as they all immediately agree to stick together as members of Survivor: Caucasus, all three excited about working together.

Meanwhile, walking around to find treemail and the waterwell, J’Tia and Kass talk about an alliance.

Meanwhile in Andrew’s shelter, the Pearl Islands returnees plus LJ are sitting in the shelter, and after some pushing by both Andrew and Tijuana, Christa and LJ agree that the four of them should work together on the tribe.

After solidifying the foursome on the tribe, Andrew and Tijuana take a walk down the beach and reconnect with one another after not seeing each other much since the Pearl Islands. No alliance is made, but the two are obviously enjoying one another’s prescence.

After the first day of strategy, the veterans finally go to sleep in their respective shelters, considering what has happened to them on the day that’s now ending.

Day 2
All 18 castaways are woken up with a letter in treemail, direct them to an open space in the middle of the island between the two campsites. Jeff Probst appears on the side of a helicopter, landing in the middle of the clearing, between the two tribes. He then calls the tribes in, the newbies first. Next, he brings in the veterans, one by one, and the castaways are all shocked to see that they will be playing with returning players.

The castaways are curious to what Jeff Probst means, as Jeff hands all eightteen contestants a clipboard with a pencil and paper attached.

The camera shows quick glimpses of the newbies writing down their choices on the paper and handing them to Jeff, before he turns to the returning players.

The camera once again shows quick glimpses of the veterans writing on their paper’s intensely before they hand it to Jeff Probst. Jeff then goes off and tallies the votes for both the new players and the returning players, before coming back.

Jeff Probst then instructs the new players, telling Ambrosia, Leopold, and Mordecai to stand on the pink mat, Albert, Jovany, and Lauren on the orange mat, and Tessa, Mercedes, and Wade on the blue mat.

He moves onto the returnees, instructing the Cagayan returnees to go onto the pink mat, the Pearl Island returnees to go onto the orange mat, and the Caucasus returnees to go onto the blue mat.

The castaways grab their buffs and put them on, before Jeff continues.

Jovany crinkles his eyebrows at this.

Jeff Probst dismisses the castaways, all still shocked at what occurred, and emotions still running thin.

Author's Notes

 * Because I liked all the characters so much, I had to random.org the person to go this episode! Thankfully, that’s kicked me off, and the rest of the boot list should be done in more normal ways.