Survivor: Redemption Island: Boston Rob and Russell are back...Told Ya!

(Re-printed from Sean's Random Thoughts)
The premiere of Survivor: Redemption Island is exactly one month away, but as I reported way back on December 15th, aside from the ridiculous Redemption Island twist, this season will feature arguably the two greatest players of all-time squaring off against each other on opposite tribes.

That's right, Boston Rob and Russell are back!

Now, considering that these are two of my favourite contestants, I should be thrilled about this, right? The funny thing is that I'm lukewarm on the idea, for a number of reasons, primarily due to the fact that I'm not looking forward to this Redemption Island garbage anyways. Plus, as much as I love Russell, this is his third go-around in the last four seasons. We love Boston Rob because we miss Boston Rob...we haven't had a chance to miss the little sock-burning Hobbit yet.

A lot of people were expecting that this would have been announced at the Survivor Nicaragua Season Finale. Boston Rob and Russell were sitting across the aisle from each other, after all, which would have set up a Boxing-Weigh-in-Like face-to-face confrontation. But I figure that with all the rumours floating around already, they ditched that idea to reveal it mid-January when Survivor was out of everyone's mind. Why else would we be hearing this news and seeing photos and bios of the new cast over a month away from the premiere?

I will clear up one other rumour that had been floating around about this season, and it was confirmed by Jeff Probst earlier this week. Rob and Russell have not been given Immunity until the merge, as some websites are erroneously reporting.

This season was filmed immediately after Survivor Nicaragua, in the same locale. And due to the proliferation of Spoilers that made the rounds last season, there are a number of them floating around again for this season. Once the season starts on February 16th, I will be enabling Comment Moderation once again so that unwanted Spoilers aren't a part of this site. Just to give you an idea of how bad it has become for this once-heavily-guarded secret, CBS.com has now even introduced a Spoilers section in their Survivor Community message boards. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess... I doubt it will make much of a difference anyways.

I am once again committing to recapping the full season, although I'm still not enjoying the switch to Wednesday nights. I'll miss an episode or two when I'm in Las Vegas in the spring, but the recaps will be up as usual within 30 minutes of when the episode ends on the East Coast. I'm not going to bother even reading the bios of this obviously recruited group of models (yawn), but lets make it clear...after last season's bunch of idiots, any new cast will have to be an improvement.

What do you think? Are you excited about Rob and Russell returning? Or are sick of either of them...or both of them? And are you as annoyed about this Redemption Island twist as I am? Let's hear from you in the Comments section.

See you in February.