That's right, I hate Brandon more than anything Russell ever did. And I'll be perfectly honest, a lot of it is because of Russell, but that doesn't change the fact that Brandon himself is a pretty s***ty person and well deserving of being bottom 30 or so even without the Russell connection.
Summer 2011, and rumors are flying about that Survivor 23 will not be a Russell-free season. Instead of the man himself, we will be seeing his 19-year-old nephew. And when the bios hit and confirmed this, I almost didn't even want to watch the season. We just sat through three seasons of Russell, and now we were going to hear about him even though he wasn't in the game. I held out hope that his edit wouldn't be 90% about being related to Russell, but I knew that that was a long shot. Oh, and by the way, being 19 and married with kids isn't a good thing. It doesn't mean that you found your true love early in life. It just means that you were an idiot one night and thought you could seem like less of a prick by doing the "adult thing" and marrying the girl you knocked up. And my theory is supported by the fact that he was divorced by the time the season finished airing.
So, the season begins, and immediately we have it shoved down our throats that Brandon is Russell Hantz's nephew. Like, seriously, it was even listed as his occupation. I did however get a kick out of when Jeff brought in the helicopter with "two returning players," Edna, still oblivious to Brandon's identity, turned to Brandon and said, "Let's hope it's not Russell!" So anyway, Brandon only tells us about twelve times in the first episode that he is Russell's nephew and wants to redeem the family name by playing the game honestly and as a good person. But he doesn't want anybody to know that he is Russell's nephew because he feels that he will be voted out immediately. Unfortunately, this is going to be hard to hide, as he has a tattoo that reads, "Li'l Hantz" on his shoulder, meaning he can never take his shirt off.
On night 1 he finds himself on the beach with Coach, Sophie, Albert and Rick, and the five of them form an alliance. And to their credit, I believe that this is the largest alliance in Survivor history that lasted from day 1 until they were forced to vote one of their own out at the end. So now we know Coach has his back and he's probably going to be around for the long haul. The next day he's going out fishing with his shirt in an awkward position as to cover the tattoo, and Sophie immediately recognizes that something is up, and he totally plays it off like nothing happened. So so far Brandon is annoying the crap out of me but I don't quite hate him yet.
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