‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ premiere review: History of the worst kind

Whenever you watch a good episode of “Survivor,” there’s a feeling that comes over you almost like you have a electricity bouncing around from your ankles to your brain. You’re hyper, you’re excited, and you want to do nothing other than watch more “Survivor.” There’s a reason that this show has been on for 26 seasons, and there’s nothing more annoying than hearing people complain that the show is still on when they watch reality TV that is inferior (which is basically every other reality show on television).

Wednesday night’s “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” premiere was phenomenal, and by far the strongest first episode we’ve seen since “Redemption Island.” To be fair, that may not be a good barometer on a season since that was a pretty poor season from the merge on, but there is so much potential here across the board. Every single one of the Favorites is an interesting character, and what we saw go down this week may go down as one of the most humiliating things in the history of the show. It’s bad to be voted off first once; but twice/ That pretty much makes you, without question, the worst “Survivor” player of all time.

So congratulations, Francesca Hogi!

What makes Francesca’s downfall so interesting is that on paper, she should be a good player. She’s very smart, physically fit, and a lot of people like her. The problem is that she plays so hard in the first few days she has everyone nervous. This has actually been the downfall of just as many first boots as weak challenge performers, especially in recent seasons considering that Michelle Chase left before Gillian Larson, or Carolina Eastwood left before Sandy the bus driver. The funny thing here is that had Fran not tried so hard to ensure that she was safe, enough people probably would be convinced to vote off Andrea, who found herself in a similar position this week.

There are some people playing pretty well on the Favorites tribe right now (Cochran and Dawn have a great alliance, and Phillip is actually playing to win …. which could ironically cause him to be voted out earlier this year), there are also some playing like crazy people. For one, why is Brandon Hantz going ballistic already next week? This is not “South Pacific” were bonds are binding, and being on the wrong side of an alliance early means nothing. Meanwhile, we’re a little nervous about Malcolm: he’s safe for a few weeks thanks to his physical strength (even though he did choke away his second straight immunity challenge), but he didn’t really do anything this time to make us believe that he could play deep into the game.

We love the Favorites, and we honestly could have watched the full 90 minutes of them rather than even checking out the Fans once. When we did, what we found were a group of annoying, unlikable people who despite their labels, seem to be clueless about the game. You have Shamar, telling someone to “shut up” fifteen minutes into the game. Then, you have an alliance of four people (Eddie, Reynold, Allie, and Hope) thinking they could keep themselves on the down-low while distancing themselves and having a cool kids’ party on the beach. Um … has anyone told you guys that there are ten people in your tribe? The guys are safe for a bit, but unless something crazy happens, Allie and Hope are the first two out.

The only people somewhat interesting on the fans right now are Matt (who has some personality, despite not wanting to commit to anything), Michael (the most level-headed dude there), and Sherri, who based on the little screen time that she had, could go pretty far in this game. Most of these Fans just looked like idiots / recruits and were boring, and Michael and Sherri are the only two that have a chance at winning this game right now in our eyes without some sort of crazy immunity run.

Finally, some assorted top moments from this week:

-It’s sad to laugh at someone in pain, but Cochran’s sunburn was classic. Plus, Malcolm clowned him with the Boston Rob shoulder tap at tribal. Genius!

-The sad thing about Corinne was that she insulted nobody at all this week.

-The super-cheerful Brenda is so much more fun than the black widow Brenda.

-Shamar really just needs to go home for saying “break her wrist” at a challenge. Seriously. What a d-bag move for someone with military history. The only person we’ve seen do something worse is Ben Browning in “Samoa,” who we’re pretty sure deliberately tried to injure people.

Now, it’s time for you to chime in. Did you dig this “Survivor” premiere? Share your thoughts below, and be sure to check out how we predicted this season would go over at the link here.

Photo: CBS