‘Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance’ spotlight: Will Spencer Bledsoe make the right moves?
There’s no question to us that on a personal level, Spencer Bledsoe is one of our favorite “Survivor” cast members out there. We do always root for the superfans, and it helps here that he is a smart, funny, and engaging in front of the camera. His journey the first time around was really interesting; going into the game, the perception we were getting from both him and Jeff Probst was that he was going to be some sort of villain who would struggle with interpersonal relationships. Instead, he would’ve been a slam-dunk to win at the end, and he was the ultimate underdog.
Going into “Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance” (premiering on CBS September 23), is there a way for Spencer to go the distance? That’s what we’re going to try to figure out in our latest edition of our daily show spotlight series.
History lesson – 4th place, “Survivor: Cagayan.” He started out on a pretty terrible Brains tribe that went to tribal council three out of the first four times. At one point, he nearly went home over J’Tia! (Imagine how history would have changed if that was the case.) He eventually worked his way into a better alliance going into the merge, but through Kass flipping, the alliance spearheaded by eventual winner Tony took power. Tony was able to occasionally use Spencer and some of his allies to make moves on some of his own, but ultimately he finished in fourth place after Kass won individual immunity before that tribal council.
What worked last time – Spencer’s smart, competitive, solid in most of the challenges, and he showed himself the first time around to be pretty loyal. Even if he plans to be more of a schemer this time, it’s not a bad reputation to have going into this game. The same goes for being likable; since everyone on a certain level wants to either be loved (or at least have people love to hate you), some people may want to flock to him.
What needs to change – He’s got to be a little less trusting of people, and to go along with that he also has to find some better arguments to get players on his side, and away from the majority alliance. Sure, he had the deck stacked against him last season (plus nobody wanted to deal with Tony’s Tyler Perry idol), but his inability to get more numbers was one of the reasons for his undoing.
Potential obstacles – He’s not going to be thought of as the biggest physical threat out there, but being as smart as he is, that will get some eyeballs on him. There could be some concern about him and Woo (who are both on the Ta Keo tribe together) already having an alliance, even though they were never really aligned on “Cagayan.” People just get paranoid about silly things out there. Another thing he’ll have to watch out for? Relating to people who are older than him. He is by far the youngest person on his tribe, and also the youngest person on the season.
Prediction – We go back and forth a little on Spencer. We could see him aligning with people like Shirin and Peih-Gee in the early going, but there could be people like a Jeff or a Terry who want to get him out. Unless the Ta Keo tribe is just terrible in the challenges, we do see him managing to last the first several weeks just because there are other people who are easier to vote out. Spencer’s going to be a big target after the merge since he can win such a wide array of different challenges, and he’s the sort of person who is tough to beat at the end. We see him going out as the third or fourth person on the jury.
Personally, we’re really excited to see what Spencer does this time, mostly because he had to play in “Cagayan” with his back so much against the wall. We’ve never really seen what Spencer in a dominant alliance looked like, or someone who did not have to scramble.
If you want to check out some other editions of our spotlight series for “Survivor Cambodia” (we’ve already profiled Vytas and Joe), head over to our new “Survivor” page! Also, you can sign up here to get some other TV news on all we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)
