It was a rough night for Shirin Oskooi on Survivor: Cambodia-Second Chance. When wielded properly, that recency became a weapon, used to take down someone like Vytas Baskauskas. He feels close to Shirin, and wants to play the game with her, but now he’s a little anxious. Ahead of the season, however, she was doing her best to turn that negative into a positive. She refused to talk to anyone outside of her old-school pre-game alliance, and she’s constantly talking sh** about everything under her breath.
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So I’ll be doing the review a bit differently this week. And the fact of the matter is people are not tolerating this behavior. Certainly not me. And I can’t wait to see what happens next. Jeff sees them as two heads on one snake. Jeff asks what that says about second chances and the ability to change.
Tom Santilli: Jeff Probst at Tribal Council drew a few comparisons between you during your first season and Abi this season.
Never once did I imagine that Shirin would go next. Thankfully, Jeff Probst called her out on it!
Jeff tells us why Spencer or Shirin needs to go. I would be happy with either. He says he likes playing with Shirin, and having a solid person to play with was something he was missing his first time around. She whispers to Spencer to give them hell. This is rational! He screwed them over, now he’s screwing us over. It also went to show, like, OK…the audience needs to sort of know, like, why is Abi not getting voted out? Next day at Bayon, Kass thinks she has a much better tribe than the last time she played. They even called Jeff over, believing they had solved the puzzle. I was caught red-handed. So that’s really why and how I got voted out. Abi smirks and says “That’s not my style”. There is no way this guy is making it until the end. But in terms of making optimal moves and being calm and stable, Spencer and Kelley were my peeps, and Spencer in particular. Hikes are cool. I’m with you there….Even pics of your toddler chasing giant bubbles are fun for everybody to see, but just don’t staple on that Oscar Wilde quote with it, please. I love him to death.
It was tough because we had such a bad reputation for over-strategizing as it was. So when she was told that it was me or Spencer being targeted, she had already known that I had been caught red-handed and she knew there was nothing we could do about it. So that’s why it looked like she so easily flopped over. And I was just not emotionally capable, in that moment, of going to her side. She actually advised against me talking to Terry. Shirin was so mopey and dejected, bringing up her fight with Wil from last season (again!).
But that’s not to say there’s no bad blood between Shirin and anyone out on that beach. “She’s a saleswoman”, Jeff says, and this is the pitch he takes to Kelley, telling her that one of the two need to go. What she ended up with was a mixture of the ideas, prominently featuring prospective brigadier Abi-Maria Gomes – someone Shirin could not gush about enough when we spoke at Ponderosa. Shirin says that she was a part of an alliance, but things change quickly.
It’s day 6 at Ta Keo and Jeff tells Abi he’s ready to work with her and says her voice is music to her hears. Instantly, I was like, ‘Oh, my, god. Jeff, however, thinks that someone as universally hated as Abi is the ideal ally to potentially win him a million dollars.
Tribal Council begins with a distraught Spencer and Shirin. Shirin says it’s because she did not have a choice. So I’d say that this time around, it was definitely a more lighthearted experience. I also loved Woo shutting them down as well, as I always felt like he was so easy going in his season. I’m not Joey incredible. He wanted to stay Terry’s lap-dog, and so I was voted out. Abi says she was hurt and that it was Terry who had come to comfort her. Then she blabs that the Old School Alliance is going to vote off Spencer or Shirin. Terry says he would have her back if she wants to side with him. I don’t need your vote. If you missed it we have a full and detailed recap, right here for you.
Peih-Gee and Wigglesworth are on board with voting Spencer. Andrew watches the group laugh at her behind her back and feels that Abi is a person and no one deserves that kind of treatment. Shirin walked away, but things escalated between Abi and Peih-Gee.
Shirin pulls Abi aside to make sure they’re still “okay”. I couldn’t deal with it in that moment. When Jeremy walks off, Fishy accuses him of idol hunting. Andrew realizes that Jeremy just got choked up, but then tells Jeremy what Stephen said. You can not control this. “You put that up with the hashtag “#backtoback”. “You can not contain it”, says Shirin. With five votes to Spencer’s four, Shirin is the second person voted out of Survivor, Second Chance. But she did not walk away as She Who Must Not Be Named, either. She’s basically orgasmic upon opening the idol and seeing the little trinket. But it was back at camp where the entire tribe was laughing about the situation that left Abi feeling ostracized. He was bullied a lot. And so, I just felt like my alliance was being turned on, so I tried turning it on Jeff. I wonder what Joe’s going to build with all that stuff? It’s harder to compartmentalize the game this way. “I went down for being loyal, but it was for a greater good”.
“The thing for me is that I’ve already done nearly everything you can do in this game”, she tells me. I got to do a lot.
“But for me to go out pre-merge?” I may not like Abi that much, but Shirin should have treated her better than that. People are getting skinned up and taking hard tumbles.
Te Keo loses steam when their muscle is unable to move their crate as fast as the muscle on Bayon. Ice Queen Kass! That is literally the most emotion I have ever seen out of her!
Stephen says Joe is like #SurvivorMacgyver and is always building things. But even super-fans of Survivor can have momentary lapses. It’s such a great game.
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Shirin has to look for votes and she works on Woo, telling him that he will get cut at the merge. Shirin is shocked and asks if they are still in their alliance. “She is not afraid to hide her true self”. She buries it instead of keeping it on her person.
