Survivor Samoa: Betsy Kicked Out Of Her Tribe

48 year old Campton, New Hampshire Police Office, Betsy Bolan, was kicked out of her tribe tonight on Survivor Samoa.

This was a strange episode of Survivor. There was only one challenge, a combo reward/immunity challenge. The winner got immunity and some fishing gear.

The challenge was a bizarrely rough game of fighting to get balls, then throw the balls to other tribe members, who tried to throw the balls through a hoop. First team to make 3 hoops wins.

There was tackling, head butting, all sorts of rough stuff, so much so that Jeff issued a warning that anyone getting too rough would get booted. Soon, bad boy wannabe, Ben, tripped an opponent. Jeff stopped the game and kicked Ben out. A Survivor first.

Ben's tribe was then outnumbered and quickly lost. The winning tribe got to pick someone to go with the losing tribe, to observe. Why, I don't know. I guess for drama potential, which it did provide, quite amply. Yasmin was picked to go. Jeff gave her a rolled up piece of paper with instructions to read it in private later.

Of course it was directions to a hidden immunity idol, which we earlier saw my new favorite Survivor, Russell, find, without a clue and in full view of his tribemates. Found it after bragging that this was what he was going to do. Even approaching Jaison and telling him of his plan to find the hidden immunity idol, which Jaison commented that we did not even know if one existed. Short time later Russell has it in hand, showing it to Jaison.

Back at the winning tribe, Shambo took off fishing, caught none and lost some of their newly won fishing gear. Thus painting a huge target on her back, should her tribe ever lose a challenge.

Meanwhile, back at the losing camp, Yasmin was raising all sorts of aggravation, offering to coach the tribe out of their losing ways, offering to help them with strategy. Then she pulled Ben aside and proceeded to berate him for being a sissy boy in the challenge, being a dude, knocking down a little girl like her. To which Ben called her ignorant ghetto trash, among other things.

The entire Ben/Yasmin exchange made for good TV, but it was not pleasant.

I must back up. After the ridiculously brutal challenge, Old Man Mike, on the losing team, was in bad shape, bad color, woozy. The Survivor medical team was called in, conveniently arriving via a SUV. Sort of tampers with the illusion that they are roughing it in the wild. Mike's blood pressure was way too low. The medical team took Mike out of the game.

Since Mike was on the losing tribe, I figured there would be no tribal council. I was wrong. There was some discussion of getting rid of Ben, due to his contribution to them losing, due to him making noise all night long hacking on wood and due to his overall unpleasant personality. But, they all deemed Betsy the weaker link and voted her out of the tribe.

Really made no sense to me. I would have wanted to get rid of Ben.