10 Thoughts On… The Tester (Season 3, Episode 6)

Welcome back to my weekly thoughts on The Tester Season 3!

Last week, perhaps the most important reward was given out when Akilleez, D1ddy, and Krysti all got to visit Santa Monica Studios and meet with various team members there. Akilleez made himself the front runner to win the whole thing with a couple of strong performances. They also got to play a mystery game, which is still bugging me. Did those lucky bastards get to play an early God of War IV? Why didn’t I sign on to be on the show? I would have welcomed the chance to be the token fat guy!

Anyways, there are only five contestants left. Who’s going home this week?

1. How the great have fallen. Reality was the front runner out of the gate, with strong performance after strong performance. A few stupid comments and a brain fart later, and he’s sitting at the bottom. Apparently everyone is really sad about Kwaja leaving last week. Reality almost has to apologize because of it. Don’t fret though, because apparently Kwaja left Krysti a note full of supportive comments! How close were those two? How long does it actually take to run through this competition? As far as I can tell, they haven’t known each other for more than a week at most!

2. Akilleez gets some screen time to complain about the fact that Suzkaiden is still around. He goes with the idea that she is a weak member that has been carried by strong teams. He’s kind of full of it. She’s been a weak player on weak teams, but she’s so loud and persistent, that the judges have been letting her slide based on her “passion”. It also helps that she has thrown a couple of good performances in the past couple of weeks. He then states that he wants team challenges to be done, so that the weak will finally be culled. That’s a good point and all, but it’s not like there are a lot of people left. Like a lot of seasons, there’s really only one or two strong players, and someone is going to get into the final without ever having shown to be a top player. My money is on one of the girls. Have to have a girl in the final, and neither Suz nor Krysti deserves to be there.

3. Survey time! Meredith shows up with a bunch of packets filled with questions. These are not gaming related, but rather ask silly opinion questions like “who’s the coolest” and the like. I can see where this is going from a mile away, but some of the players are a bit slow here. Only Reality seems to realize that the these questions will come out into the public, but even he doesn’t realize to what extent.

4. This week’s guest judge is Dylan Jobe. He’s the director of Lightbox Studios. They would be the ones behind the upcoming Starhawk. He’s also credited as a top guy for War of the Monsters and Warhawk. In other words, he’s made some stuff that nobody cared about after they came out. I do actually own War of the Monsters. What little good came out of that game was probably from David Jaffe, not this guy. He’s probably the least impressive guest so far.

5. It will be individuals after all! The challenge this week has two parts. First, the aforementioned questions will be asked again, only contestants must vote for what they think was the most popular answer. Getting that right gives them twenty seconds to work on building a tower out of large plastic cards. The winner is the one who gets the highest stack at the end. It’s basically a couple of Survivor challenges put together. Honestly, though, this is probably my favorite concept, as it will actually show you something about each person. The winner gets immunity, as well as Starhawk and a 3D Display Television.

6. Right away, the questions gets personal and telling. “The leader of the group” is given to Akilleez, while “most annoying” goes to Suzkaiden. In fact, all of the negative associations go either to Suz or Reality. It’s mostly Suz. Akilleez comes out looking like a star, getting all of the most positive answers. Unless, of course, you count “sexiest”, which goes to Krysti. I guess they all dig tattoos. Most of these guys appear to have never built a stack before. They’re laying them flat and not building a real tower. In fact, Suz does this with the whole stack and doesn’t make any changes. D1ddy shows off some killer balance and dexterity. His tower is very lean, yet ends up by far the tallest. A good breeze would have killed it dead, but he gets lucky. The others never even get close.

7. D1ddy is declared the winner! He even continues to stack his tower long after it is apparent that no one can catch up. One can see the criticisms coming a mile away. Suz made a lazy stack of cards and stopped building quickly. In fact, her sole strategy was in counting on others to fail. D1ddy won, but was far too risky for my tastes. Krysti kind of gave up, and the others never really got in the game. Suz ends up with the shortest stack, proving her to be an absolute moron. If there’s any justice, then she’ll be going home. This wasn’t passion. It was laziness.

8. Back in the loft, everyone starts in about how D1ddy is a warlock for keeping such an unstable tower together. In fact, the tower collapsed outside when they closed the door! Then they get into how the questions were answered, which means discussing how Suz got the brunt of the negative. Hearing this, she gets up from her sojourn with Sackboy and starts yelling. Rather ironically, she states that hasn’t been annoying at all, whilst being extremely annoying. D1ddy calls her Quasimodo at one point, though this is a jab at her isolation rather than looks. This does lead to Krysti saying “go back to your bell tower”, though. That’s my favorite thing she’s done all season.

9. Elimination time! They start off by congratulating D1ddy, but rightly point out that he took a huge risk that he didn’t need to by continuing to build as time was running out. It’s clear that he’s not someone they want winning this thing, even though he’s looking to end up in the final. They mention how Akilleez is viewed as the strongest player, but grill him for his poor adaptation when building the tower. He blames a lack of dexterity on his loss. They really don’t go after him anymore, but this is the guy’s first screw up, and he’s well liked. They’re now going after Krysti for sticking with a bad design and resigning herself to failure. She’s really bad at defending herself, and concedes without much of a fight. Finally, they get to Suz. They go after her for being the brunt of all the negative questions, as well as for her piss poor tower building prowess. They rightly don’t buy that counting on others to fail was a solid strategy. Everyone goes after her now, including Reality. I guess this means that the alliance is off. They go after Krysti a bit more, and it’s clear that she and Suz are the the ones in the most danger.

10. Ding dong the witch is dead! They finally cut Suzkaiden out the competition. Sadly, they still claim she has “unchanneled passion” and don’t realize that all she really has is a motor mouth. Anyway, after that dismal performance, there was no way to keep her and make it look legit. It’s really not looking good for a woman getting to the finals. Krysti has been a subpar performer since the start, and has only been saved by others being worse. It will be extremely lucky for her if she makes the final. Could it be that we avoid the traditional “two men, one woman” finale?

Next Week: There’s a bunch of trivia and a dunk tank to promote MLB The Show. However, the big thing is that the preview STRONGLY hints that Reality is going to be taken out. I’m sure the guy is more than capable of shooting himself in the foot, but Krysti making the finale just seems wrong. Come back next week for my thoughts on the penultimate episode!