‘Survivor: Kaoh Rong’ recap, episode 1: Scot Pollard waves at a man pooping

The conceit of Survivor: Kaoh Rong is simple: Three six-person tribes based on Brains, Beauty and Brawn. The idea is that Brains will be great at puzzles and be the schemers, Brawn will be a bunch of strong people with no social skills and Beauty will be attractive people. Naturally, Brawn needed a former professional athlete, and the good people at CBS found NBA champion Scot Pollard.

Pollard began his journey by cackling like a maniac for no real reason.

The three-tribe concept meant that we didn’t get to spend a ton of time with the Brawn tribe. Socially they seem the least interesting. Pollard appears to be escaping the famous person trap of having people gun for him immediately. In fact, nobody ever seemed to notice that Scot Pollard is Scot Pollard -- which is fair, because most people probably don’t recognize Scott Pollard.

Darnell decided to poop in the water way too close to shore.

Scot waved to him.

Tai is amazing. A 60-something year-old man who is on the Beauty tribe but doesn’t know why. He is self-deprecating and joyous. He thinks people will make fun of him when Survivor is over because he is on the Beauty tribe. There is nothing he isn’t good at. Tai is perfect.

While it’s important to keep an eye on Pollard, we need to watch Tai. Tai is for the people. Tai is everything.

Everyone seems to trust Scot. He’s allied himself with bounty hunter Jason, and the two of them seem to be running the show. Everything is flowing through them and the small tribe size means two strong people can easily pull in a third to gain at least a tie vote. That’s precisely what’s happening here.

When it came time for the challenge, they let Darnell step up. The team had to dive into murky water to retrieve paddles, row to shore, push their boat on the land and complete a puzzle.

Darnell lost the team’s only set of goggles immediately when he dived in. This caused Brawn to be way too far behind, and despite being in a race for second with Beauty, they lost. Scot was not impressed at tribal council.

Darnell’s late pleas to stay fell on deaf ears. Some in the tribe wanted to change their votes, but not Scot -- and everyone is following Scot’s lead. Now he has a numbers advantage and it remains to be seen if anyone can oppose him.