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Survivor 16 premiered tonight with a new twist - the contestants were all survivor fans or favorite players from past Survivor games.  For the most part tonight was the typical season premiere: shelter was built, alliances were formed, an immunity challenge happened and finally tribal council took place.   The biggest surprise of the evening came when Johnny “Fairplay” got the boot.

I was surprised to see Johnny on this episode at all considering that it is Fans vs. Favorites and although I suppose that he is one of the best known notorious contestants I didn’t realize that he was a favorite.  Throughout the episode Johnny is doing 1 of 2 things: 1.) Trying to assemble an alliance that he can direct, 2.) Talking about his 7-months pregnant girlfriend.  He appears to have actually assembled such an alliance and disabused people of the notion that he was just a liar.  And then he goes and messes it all up.

Johnny has his entire alliance convinced to vote for Eliza.  THEN right before the viewers eyes, he stops wanting to win.  Instead of concentrating on how he will get all the votes against this person, he starts to propose the idea of people voting him out instead.  He claims to want to go home and concentrate on being a dad and that he is just in a weird space and not focused on the game.

I honestly thought the whole “pregnant-girlfriend-please-send-me-home” act was a set up.  So it is quite the under-statement to say that I was a little surprised when Johnny got the boot.  In fact, I am so confused by the end of this Survivor that there are a couple different things I’ve been pondering:

• Johnny Fairplay became famous for lying about having a recently deceased grandmother.  Because he intentionally lied during his first Survivor competition, all of the other tribe members found it hard to trust him at first.
• Johnny Fairplay kept claiming to have a 7-months pregnant girlfriend and that he couldn’t really think about anything else besides this.  Because he lied so much last season and he made such a big deal out of the pregnant girlfriend, I would really like to know if there truly is a pregnant girlfriend or if it is a lie that he somehow devised as a trick to get more sympathy, votes, increase likability etc.
• Is there a greater conspiracy at work here?  Maybe the sitiuation is not as simple as it seems and is not just that Johnny had to get himself booted out because he couldn’t quit. 

• He seemed to annoy host Jeff Probst a lot so maybe he exceeded his welcome and was given a “no alternative” solution, pretend to be booted off or get kicked off the island. 
• He was so upset by losing the not-so-well-hidden immunity idol to Yau-Man that getting himself voted off at the first tribal council meeting was really the equivalent of a poor sport tantrum.

I’ll be really interested to find out if any of my suspicions might be true.

Rating: Missing an extra half-star for being one of the few primetime shows STILL broadcasted in standard-definition. As usual, Survivor starts out slow, but this show never fails to pick up interest as the season progresses.

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