survivor confession

I have a confession to make. I hate Steph. HATE.

I didn't hate her last season. I didn't love her, and could have done without the show cramming her down my throat. But she seemed like a basically likeable person with two strikes against her: her own total lack of understanding of Survivor strategy, and her bad luck to be on a team that couldn't get their act together.

Unfortunately, she seems to have spent the entire break between seasons reading her own press. She returns as Prom Queen of Survivor, a snot with a massive sense of entitlement. When she chirped "I'm finally on a tribe with as much heart as I have!" I wanted to strangle her. Self-reflection doesn't seem to be Steph's thing. She still doesn't understand that "heart" has nothing to do with winning Survivor. And her endless losing streaks are clearly the fault of everyone but her.

She's like Rupert, only worse. Rupert annoyed the bejeezus out of me but at least he did accomplish things for his team. Sometimes clever things, like that time he stole the other team's shoes and traded them for supplies. And he singlehandedly won several challenges. (though he singlehandedly blew others, like that "build a shelter" challenge.) Steph seems to think that being proclaimed a great athlete and beloved castmember is all it takes: you don't actually have to win anything or contribute to the team effort.

The ball game on Thursday was a perfect example: she waits until two seconds before her game starts, then says to two women who are clearly not athletes, "Do you know what a pick is? You look like you're going to go like this but then you go like this." And then she rolls her eyes and complains endlessly because they have no idea what the hell she's talking about. I didn't know what a pick is and I didn't get it from that. Why didn't she explain it to them in detail while they were sitting on the sidelines? She seems like a really bad team player who's quick to blame failure on everyone around her.

I also don't buy this hype about Steph being the greatest female athlete ever on Survivor. If we go by results, that title still goes to Kelly Wigglesworth. Even this season, Danni is a match for Steph and then some.

Steph might be a perfectly nice person in real life, but on Survivor she's insufferable. I can't wait for her to be gone so the show can stop telling me how much I'm supposed to love her. I just hope she gets the boot before jury selection.

(PS: Georg explained what a pick is after the show. I pretended to have the ball, he was the defender, and we used Jane as the person doing the pick. I guess "sit" is a useful command after all!)