Team Rickshaw Reprazentn'

Although I do NOT plan on documenting the entire run of this season's edition of Survivor, I thought it noteworthy to at least chime in my two coppers on the premiere episode. And what an episode! Probst! The stunned ethnic faces! Probst! The chickens! Cao Boi! All the insightful comments about the race wars theme! Probst!!

The Survivor lustre has worn off long ago and this new season doesn't do much to restore the old excitement. What did I tell you?? True to form, the producers wasted no time in making Team Lazy (the blacks) look ineffectual and they crowned a King Lazy (Sekou, the jazz brother) in record time. Usually they will wait at least a few episodes to really start entrenching those stereotypes, but given that they have 4 groups of ethnicities to juggle, they figured that they needed to establish things on a even tighter schedule. But wait, I smell an underdog story arc brewing with this tribe. Or maybe, that's just the smell of....

Victory! I have to say, for a bland bunch of folk, Team Rickshaw (Punta.. or Puta in the show) made an impressive debut, taking first place in the reward/immunity challenge. Reprazent! Actually, no one in the group represents me all that well. They're all American and consisting of two Koreans, a Flip, Vietnamese and a Flip/something else mix. Cao Boi, the "eccentric" hippy-type nail salon manager has stood out as the true character of this tribe, cracking racist jokes before even landing safely ashore on the raft. And that scene with him curing metro-dude's headache with some down-home traditional remedy hoodu voodu was quite funny, if only to see Cao Boi actually fix the headache and not look like a complete crazy old coot.

As for everyone else on Rickshaw... MEH. We got two soft-spoken, chiselled fit guys who seem intelligent enough to handle those Challenges. The Flip girl is pretty boring but she looks buff, so again, good for those physical challenges. The Korean hottie girl... well, I already get the feeling she will be a whiner and possibly dead weight. In order for her to survive (and to keep my interest in the show), she will need to start prancing around in a ripped up bikini and hope Cao Boi starts getting on everyone's nerves.