Bob The Survivor

I have decided that Bob is my favourite cast member on the current season of Survivor. He's always been on the list because he's low key yet industrious, but what he did over the past couple of episodes has cemented my opinion of him as the smartest player to probably not win this game since Yau Man didn't win.

Some of you may be wondering how he accomplished this. Well, the sequence goes something like this.

1. Bob goes to Exile Island for the first time. Unlike Dan – the first player sent to Exile – but like Sugar, he finds the first clue to the hidden immunity idol and follows them through to the end. At the end of the trail he finds nothing. And so he spends his time in a little art project, making a fake Immunity Idol (and by far the most convincing of the fakes yet perpetrated). He then returns to the Nobag camp with his fake. Charlie is voted out.
   
2. Bob shows his fake immunity idol to Sugar. She immediately sees the potential of the fake Idol in getting rid of Randy. Bob resolves to give the fake idol to Randy if Randy asks for the Immunity Idol.
   
3. Bob is sent to Exile a second time, this time by Kenny. After finding that the clue is exactly the same one that led him to the dead end in his previous time at Exile, he goes on a bit of a personal safari.
   
4. Which of course Randy does, because Randy has been acting like an even bigger horse's ass than usual – something that is hard to believe since he was already a Clydesdale sized horse's ass – with the expectation that Bob has the Idol.
   
5. Randy stays obnoxious at Tribal Council to the point where Crystal makes her goodbye statement loudly enough so everyone can hear her.
   
6. In the vote Corinne and Randy vote for Susie. So does Bob.
   
7. Randy plays the fake Idol. Jeff reveals that Idol that Randy played was fake. Bye-bye self-declared "King of Gabon," don't let the palm leaves hit you on the ass on the way out – or better yet do.
   

Now there are a couple of things here that I don't think some people get. First of all there's this from Wikipedia: "Not knowing that Sugar had the Hidden Immunity Idol, Bob told her that he did not have the Hidden Immunity Idol and showed her the fake idol that he made." While I mostly agree that Bob doesn't know for sure that Sugar has the Idol, he has to be pretty sure that it's not there and since Sugar is the only person left in the game who has been to Exile – Dan having been eliminated – it follows that Sugar has the Idol, since in the past they've returned it to Exile with a new set of clues if the owner either plays it or is eliminated, and Bob has followed clues that have led him to a spike in a tree in the jungle; the perfect place for an Immunity Idol to hang. And as we'll see in the next paragraph letting Sugar know helps him to sell his plan.

Next, why does Bob vote for Susie? He has to know that she's not going home right? Of course he does, and it doesn't matter. In fact it is a brilliant strategic move because it tells Randy, Corrine, the jury members and anyone that Sugar hasn't told about having the Immunity Idol that he believed he had the real thing. Sugar's barely controlled glee at seeing Randy play the fake sells the idea that she knows it's a fake. It not only reveals that Sugar has the real Idol to anyone who doesn't already know – how else would she know that what Randy played was a fake practically before he played it – but it makes it obvious that it was Sugar, and not Bob who made the fake Idol. After all, why would Bob give what he knew to be a fake Idol to his ally Randy? Bob has to have believed that it was the real deal and he wouldn't if he made it himself.

For the life of me though, what I don't get is why Corinne and Randy – but particularly Corinne – believed it was impossible for Sugar to have the real Immunity Idol while they were absolutely certain that Bob found it. I mean anyone who looked at the situation with even a modicum – a bare scintilla – of logic would come to the conclusion that the odds of someone who had been sent to Exile Island five times in a row were at least twice as good as the odds of someone who had been there twice. In the end I suppose that it comes down pure hubris on the part of Randy and even more so Corinne. For reasons which surpass any understanding, they believe that Sugar is simply too stupid to have found the Immunity Idol despite five consecutive trips there. Corinne has even come out and called Sugar stupid because she can't see that Corinne hates her. Presumably they believe that without a brain (Ace) to guide her, Sugar would be useless in the game, too stupid to "outwit, outplay, or outlast" the supposedly smart people. And what is their basis for believing this? Because she looks the way she looks and talks the way she talks and claims to be a pin-up model so how smart can she be? In fact she's an actress whose IMDB credits include appearances in Gilmore Girls (she played Jess's girlfriend Shane if that means anything to you) and For Your Love. She was also vocalist in a band called "Sugar Spit." Not a "rocket scientist" to be sure but hardly too stupid to survive.

I don't expect Bob to survive for too much longer sadly. The problem is that with the exception of Corinne, none of the other cast members is as isolated and friendless as Bob. His ties with Crystal, Matty and Kenny are non-existent, and his link with Susie has to be even more tenuous than his relationship with Sugar. In fact his only semi-solid alliance is probably with Corinne, cemented by his decision to vote for Susie. I expect Corinne to go home next week followed, sadly, by Bob the Survivor.