Survivor Fever - Survivor Palau

Survivor Live Internet Talk Show Transcript with
Bobby Jon Drinkard: Episode 8 Survivor Palau Cast-Off
(Transcript by SurvivorFever.net 4.11.05)
About Survivor Live: Every Friday join hosts Jenna Morasca and Dalton Ross for an exclusive interview with the Survivor voted off each week, fan phone calls and in-studio guests. Visit the official CBS website to hear live interviews with past Survivor: Palau cast-offs

JM = Jenna Morasca DR = Dalton Ross

Segment 1:

DR: Bobby Jon is in the house, the ladies are gonna go crazy.

JM: Isn't he adorable?

DR: Bobby Jon welcome to the show.

Bobby Jon: Thanks for having me today.

DR: Tell us the transformation. You're out there beating yourself up. Is that just your game face?

Bobby Jon: I guess you just have to call that my game face. I got in the zone and it was like, okay if I'm gonna survive, I'm really gonna survive. I don't know if that means beating myself up in the face.

JM: We would see you carrying like six logs at a time. I'm like, this guy is the hulk.

Bobby Jon: Where I come from, my family and the people surrounding me have always been real hard workers. That's all I know. Working hard is great but don't always get you where you need to be.

JM: How'd you get the energy to do all that.

DR: Because you weren't getting the food like Koror.

Bobby Jon: They'll probably have a menu out on their beach next week.

DR: You seemed to be losing alot of weight. How much did you lose?

Bobby Jon: I think about 20 pounds. That's what I was told.

JM: That's like a pound a day.

DR: You're out there doing all this crazy work never slowing down.

Bobby Jon: During different circumstances and situations you just have to push yourself. You just have to push through it. There are going to be things in life that are harder than this experience. At the time that was really ranking up there.

JM: If you dig deep you'll be surprised what you can find yourself doing.

DR: Did you ever dig too deep? Was there ever a time when maybe you should have taken some time off... and maybe you did this but we didn't see it... and build up your strength for the challenges?

Bobby Jon: You just hit the nail on the head. I know that if I had conserved energy and saved myself and kind of laid around camp, I would have been better at the challenges. That's just not my style. I felt like "go hard or go home".

JM: Alot of times on Survivor you just can't change a person's true personality. If you're a naturally hard worker, you cannot physically sit around.

DR: And maybe you want to keep busy and not stew over your loses.

Bobby Jon: Working is a good release for me. I was trying to stay positive.

JM: I've never seen a tribe so together and so positive and so pleasant that has lost this much.

JM: You and Steph were always like "this is our time". How did you keep that energy up?

Bobby Jon: Alot of champions, Michael Jordan, Sugar Ray Leonard, they've been beat so many times before they became champions, we don't ever see that. We just see the times they won. Same thing with our tribe getting our brains beat in every single day. I didn't get on this show to quit. I don't think anybody else did. We were getting beat but we didn't have a tribe of quitters.

DR: Ashlee and Jeff ...

Bobby Jon: That was two casualties of war. Jeff was a strong player. He hurt his ankle.

JM: I still don't understand that.

Bobby Jon: I didn't either at the time. You have to believe him. He would have hurt us worse if he stayed. Ashlee was straight up with us. She said "this is just not my thing". It looks like a day in the sun but it's not.

DR: You thought that James had voted for you the week Angie left. Had you known it was Stephenie would it have changed your alliance with her?

Bobby Jon: Right then, no it wouldn't. That goes to show you that you can't bond with people like you think in just a few days. They tell what they want you to hear. She didn't really know me. If she had known me she would have known that she could have said..."hey I stuck that vote in there." She swore to God that she didn't, I believed her. It's a game. You make deals and break promises. If I had communicated with Ibrehem better... gone to him and said "I was thinking about voting you off", he would have said, "hey she was just over here talking about voting you off". But I was wishy washy.

DR: That's very dangerous. That's what Christy on Amazon and Dolly from Vanuatu did.

Caller: Would Bobby Jon have had a better chance last night against Ibrehem instead of Stephenie if he hadn't voted him off?

DR: I guess he means in the fire building contest.

Bobby Jon: Good question. I don't know. You go back and play back in your mind what you think you could have done. I don't know. Luck definitely wasn't on my side in this whole game.

JM: Your whole tribe sucked.

Caller: Do you know if there are any plans to get the rest of the Survivor seasons on DVD anytime soon?

DR: Australia is coming out now. If Australia does good I think they'll do Pearl Islands next because of Rupert.

Caller: Bobby Jon, were you and Stephenie trying to guess what the final IC between the two of you would be?

Bobby Jon: Yes we were, we guessed the whole time but of course in this game you can't assume anything. Is it going to rain the next day, are we going to stand on a block? We thought about getting rocks and tossing them to the line.

Caller: When they were doing the schoolyard pick 'em thing do you wish you would have gotten picked for the other team?

Bobby Jon: I always entertained the thought but at the time I was pretty focused on what Ulong had going on. I never wanted to be over there with them.

JM: Sometimes good players get in bad tribes.

DR: Stephenie. I did enjoy the fact that you had a very healthy respect for that other tribe. They were kicking your butts and you were obviously upset about it but time and time again you'd say "well, I guess they're just smarter. Tom, I just can't beat him."

Bobby Jon: When you get beat... you have to win like a man and you have to lose like a man.

JM: We thought you were going to win the reward challenge. You were shoving those eggs in.

DR: What was the consistency like, was it really crunchy? "Watch the beak" I heard Tom say.

Bobby Jon: It was mind over matter. Here we are Americans at a place where we don't eat Blutt. It wasn't that bad. It was more just stuffing it down, the consumption.

JM: Do you think you put too many in your mouth at one time?

Bobby Jon: I'm sure I did.

Caller: Do you regret keeping Stephenie? Is there a decision in the game you would change?

DR: We touched on that but when did you find out that Stephenie had voted for you?

Bobby Jon: Thursday night. That really didn't bother me though. What bothered me was when she went over to Ibrehem and said "hey we'll get him off right now."

Caller: Did your momma or any of your friends give you trouble over your explosion of snot rockets? Your chest... you scarred it up in the barrel run, will that impact your modeling career?

Bobby Jon: My chest healed fine. My friends in Alabama thought the snot rockets were pretty minor.

Segment 2:

Caller: What was it like to be paired up against Tom in the challenges, is there a certain intimidation factor?

Bobby Jon: I was getting beat alot. He may have kind of intimidated me some to be honest. There's so much physical stuff going on but there's alot of mental stuff too. I remember right before he and I would go up against each other I would always sense it that he was going to eat me for breakfast. I feel like I'm tough but he's old school tough.

DR: When you deal with life and death on a daily basis as a firefighter you're trained for that.

Bobby Jon: I enjoyed watching your work ethic. You cared about the camp and the people in the camp. I have a great admiration and appreciation for Stephenie. I was wondering during the camp time, her personality, what did you think about her person and her game play?

Bobby Jon: The only thing I know about Stephenie is what I experienced with her on the island. I never saw interviews or confessionals. I stand firm behind what I said about her. She's a great competitor, almost invincible. She's playing the game and playing it hard. You can't take anything away from somebody that's out there on Survivor. There's so many people that come on the show that think it's going to be a cakewalk and they do quit. For her to go on there and really play the game and play it hard, you can't say anything bad about that.

JM: She has to live at camp now by herself for at least a day. That's never happened on Survivor, you're never by yourself. That's a lot of work for one person to do. Fire, water, fishing.

DR: Imagine if that was Kim there by herself.

Bobby Jon: She would sunbathe.

DR: If I was sitting there picking teams I never would have picked her [Stephenie] because when she dove off that boat I would have said:
a) she's physical
b) she's cut-throat. This woman will do anything, she'll go behind my back. She would have worried me so much as the biggest threat in the game. I never would have let her in the game.

Caller: What one action are you the proudest of, and what was the one action in which you were the most disappointed?

Bobby Jon: The thing that I'm the most proud of is being able to go to Jelly Fish Lake. I really enjoyed that. The most benefiting, if nothing else happens, Jelly Fish Lake was the most memorable experience. The thing that I'm most disappointed about was voting out Ibrehem. He's my buddy and I thought I was doing what was best but hindsight is 20/20. I've talked to him since and we still have a good relationship. He doesn't wear his feelings on his shoulder, neither do I. We knew that this was a game.

DR: And he's not the type of person to hold a grudge.

JM: He's a really gentle guy.

Caller: First we lose the pope this week, now we lose Jesus. Do you recall that "walk on water" reference last night from Jeff Probst?

Bobby Jon: I do recall that.

Caller: On last night's episode you said you were pretty bad with puzzles. Why did they put you in charge of the puzzle?

DR: The floating puzzle challenge.

Bobby Jon: We had a small diagram of the puzzle to practice on. I was pretty much getting it before Ibrehem and Stephenie.

DR: Coby is getting a little goofy at camp.

<clip of Coby complaining about the rats and the lazy Koror females>

DR: Did you guys have any rats at all?

Bobby Jon: No rats.

DR: Would you have tried to catch and eat one?

Bobby Jon: I told myself that I wouldn't break down to bugs or anything but I would have I'm sure. I was eating crab shells and stuff. My philosophy was, it's calcium.

JM: Coby, he had a long confessional in this episode, which is making me a little weird that he's not going to be around so long. Next week he butts heads with the masters of their tribe.

Bobby Jon: The signs are there sorta.

Bobby Jon: We were having roommate issues.

Caller: Last night we saw Koror pretty confident that they all made the merge. Do you think that there will be no merge? Stephenie will have to play out the game alone? Or do you think Mark Burnett may decide, "I don't need a jury of 7 individuals, we're just going to use 5 and two finalists"?

DR: We've been saying every week that they're going to merge but we've been wrong every week.

JM: I don't think Stephenie can play the game alone. I don't think you can call it a merge anymore because it's one person. I don't think that you can play the game alone. There's always been a 7 member jury. That's gotta be a constant. Everybody including Stephenie has to be on the jury.

Bobby Jon: Everybody there now is on the jury.

Caller: Were you and Steph planning on merging?

Bobby Jon: We were planning on merging on day 12 or 15.

JM: You guys took everything to Tribal Council like 3 weeks ago.

Bobby Jon: The whole time Jeff has always told never to leave anything behind because you might come back and it won't be there. It was mostly my idea.

DR: There's alot of debate among Survivor fans about whether this is a good or bad thing. I loved seeing your tribe get decimated. It's something we've never seen on Survivor before. It's different. We get to see this little experiment how you guys react.

Bobby Jon: I agree and this is the 10th Survivor. Nobody planned it to work out this way, it just happened.

Segment 3:

DR: Who's gone next?

JM: Coby, he's gone.

DR: I don't think so. If you look at the Survivor Insider stuff, Gregg and him seem to be pretty tight. Gregg has a lot of respect for Coby and Gregg is in the power play spot in the middle.

JM: Who do you think is going?

DR: I think Stephenie.

Caller: What do you think about Stephenie getting rid of the stronger players?

Bobby Jon: I never felt like she called the shots except maybe day 2 or 3 when we voted off Jolanda. I didn't vote for Jolanda, I felt like we needed her.

Caller: Bobby Jon, Thursday night isn't going to be the same without you. I'm wondering what's next for you?

Bobby Jon: I've been living in L.A. for the last year and a half. I'm waiting tables and doing some modeling. I do have a degree in journalism. As long as my body will let me I'll keep modeling. And when it's time for me to stop that then we'll use our degree. And either stay out in L.A. or move to Bama. Or whatever.

JM: Would you do any other reality show?

Bobby Jon: Uhhh. We'd have to sit down and read the fine lining.

JM: Well you started with the best.

Caller: What do you guys think about the supposed alliance between Tom, Stephenie and Katie.

DR: I'm not buying it.

JM: I'm not buying it either.

Bobby Jon: I was aware of that on like day 2 or day 3. Stephenie told me about that. As we were losing all the time at our tribe, it did come up. She said "I know for sure when I get over there that me and Tom, we already discussed it and talked about it." In the first episode you see it happening.

Caller: Do you think Stephenie is the best female athlete on Survivor, ever?

JM: I would think in the top 3.

DR: Wigelsworth did very well although she lost to Gervase in the rowing competition and she's a professional rower.

JM: Alicia is a force to be reckoned with. But she couldn't swim. Stephenie is all around a very good competitive athlete.

DR: And she did win when matched up against other women.

Caller: Bobby Jon, thanks for being real. You're a real person and it's great for my kids to see real people on TV. How did you feel about your team going all the way down to two players. We thought it was really harsh mentally and physically on the two of you

Bobby Jon: As far as the other tribe having a good time, that's something I don't see. I know that they are beating us and life has to be better over there. As the game is going on you have to fight through it and keep yourself going. The whole time I could think of lots of worst places I could be. Mark Burnett lets you know that you can win a million but you're going to work for it. They have people that study it and look at the human body and know what you can take. They know.

JM: I think Coby is going.

DR: I don't think Coby is going. I think it's Stephenie if not, Janu.

JM: Janu's gonna quit. She's gonna quit.

DR: I think Janu's a goner if Stephenie gets immunity.

DR: Bobby Jon thanks for being here.