‘Survivor: Blood vs. Water’: Redemption Island is back, but with a sadistic twist

You may have spent all summer praying that it was not going to happen, but it is: Redemption Island is returning to “Survivor” for “Blood vs. Water.” While this is not on the same level of awfulness as the Medallion of Power or the Haves / Have-Nots (and not the “Big Brother” kind with slop), it’s still not exactly a twist that fans have embraced. It’s basically used to over-emphasize the importance of challenges in a game based around strategy, and to think that Ozzy nearly won “Survivor: South Pacific” after being voted out twice is pretty crazy. The same almost goes for Matt Elrod on “Redemption Island,” though he was not able to re-enter the game for a second time.

So why bring it back now? Well, there is a new wrinkle to the game that could make things interesting.

Let’s say, for example, that “Survivor: One World’s” Monica Culpepper is voted out, and her husband Brad realizes that he is a dominant physical player, and can take out the competition. He can volunteer to switch places with her at Redemption, and allow his wife to take his spot on his tribe. It’s an interesting idea, but also a kind of unfair one since if you are a beast of a player, you can just send yourself to Redemption and clobber person after person. It’s still a bit of a risk, and we don’t know who in this game would be crazy enough to take it save for maybe someone like Brad or maybe Rupert, who just wants to protect his wife.

Basically, this twist is pretty cruel in the end: If you don’t save a family member, you can look selfish and it basically pits people against each other that would otherwise be allies.

We’re going to have full spotlight articles for every pair this season starting very soon, so be sure to bookmark our tag page here and come back to it periodically. Also, you can see our general impressions of people here, in case you missed it from yesterday.

Photo: CBS