I've been watching SA: Panama and realized that I haven't made a post so here we are! tbh I was kinda expecting more from the premerge and found it kinda uneventful and slow. It was still watchable, but nothing too exciting. Rana seem like nice people as a whole tribe but they were kinda boring because each TC besides the Don boot was just like "UGH we all like each other so much
this is so tough!" and yawn, no thanks.
Aguila was much more fun as a tribe mainly because of ~Surfer Boy and Brigitte Bardot~ alol. The Mzi/Sam feud didn't really do much for me tbh because it literally only lasted for one episode and their fight while trying to start fire was so unintelligible that I can't even make out what they were saying, but I did appreciate just how bad Sam was at scrambling when he realized he was on the bottom. His entire pitch was like "guys if you split me and Brigitte, whoever stays will be MAD... do you guys not care about strength and power and who's been working hard and been happy and smiling and made fun jokes and had good times?!?!" and everyone was immediately like "um no we don't"
However, the highlight was the Nico/Brigitte feud
I will admit it did take me a while to get there because for most of the premerge we just got like one bitchy side confessional from each of them or a random "hehe I hid Nico's cigarettes to piss him off" that was literally never spoken about again (how the hell did he even have cigarettes out there to begin with???), but then it all EXPLODED in the last premerge episode, where Nico was like talking to dead fish and he and Brigitte could literally barely stand each other's presences, to the point where they just started throwing jabs at each other nonstop for the entire TC
and then somehow Nico got the last laugh bc he knew he was on the way out so he stole the flint with him?
I love how that's randomly a commonly petty action to take in Survivor SA, like when Zan basically turned Utara's flit into a makeshift Idol in SA: Champions to keep Buhle safe
I've been enjoying the merge a lot so far! This season's pretty quaint with only 14 people and then a merge at 7 but Aguila serve as cute underdogs. Even Vanessa, someone who I did not care about *at all* during the premerge, has been a fun MORP presence in the merge, to the point where she asked Mark at TC if she could quit to spare Mzi and Mark had to talk her out of it by saying that there'd be a vote regardless
but I'm enjoying the gender divide in Rana! I can always handle a steamroll or a Pagonging when there's a lot of in-alliance fighting and tension and that's exactly what is happening so it's enough to keep me interested. Zayn is all about ~honesty~ and ~playing with his heart~ despite being in an alliance that he just calls an agreement to make himself feel better, and Lezel and Jacinda are NOT having it and it's glorious so far
ALSO, I have no ****ing clue if my edgic ratings are correct for episode 9 because the first 10-15 minutes of the episode are randomly missing
so I'm certain that I missed some important stuff like the Reward Challenge and probably Brigitte's arrival at Dead Man's Island. This irritates me!!!