SIBERIA Episode One Review: Somebody Here is Tommy's Murderer!

This could contain possible spoilers, and just like my WHODUNNIT? reviews, if you don't want to read this review for SIBERIA, go somewhere else.

For the rest who are interested, here we go in...





Three...






Two...





One!

After seeing the promos for SIBERIA on NBC, I decided to give it a try. This has a SURVIVOR feel, because of the atmosphere and the show's intros. Frankly, I haven't seen Survivor in eons, so why not?

Sixteen contestants--eight men and eight women--flew in via helicopter from London. This cast, representing eight countries, were blindfolded, not knowing where they would land. Voila! As they took off their blindfolds, they are on a grassy land surrounded by the abundance of forests. They don't realize, these guys were in northern Russia.

The first task of the 16 contestants: race to the cabin with flags. Sixteen started, but fourteen remained. It appeared that one of the contestants threw a flag to the ground, making it hard for Berglind, a photojournalist from Reykjavik, and Harpreet, a graduate student from Washington, DC, to find it. It took them a lot of time, and as a result, both were eliminated. I'm assuming sabotage played a role considering someone abandoned a flag. This means somebody in the cabin is going to die!

Days and nights followed, and the remaining fourteen found frogs and mushrooms. I was hoping someone cooked the frog on the makeshift campfire. I was also very skeptical about the mushrooms, whether or not they are poisonous. I tweeted that those mushrooms could contain a value of either '1000 points or a 1UP.' In other words, the Super Mario Bros. series of games were on my mind once I saw the mushrooms.

There were lots of friction inside the cabin at the midpoint of the episode, typical of the reality show genre. A clue was discovered where a horn sounded. However, it was later on where a penultimate fate is about to happen to one of their own. It all started when a cameraman had blood on his face, and from there on, it was a dark atmosphere. The announcement that Tommy, a philanthropist from Boston, was killed. Thirteen remaining for the next episode.

So was the flag thing with Berglind and Harpreet intentional? Could they--based on their early elimination from the flag race--be suspiciously accused of Tommy's murder? Or did the Whodunnit? killer cross networks and struck his/her first victim--on NBC? So many leads after this very first episode of SIBERIA. Keep watching the next few Mondays.

Sam the Brooklynite gets my quote of the night: "When you get hungry, you get mad!"

And as Dana, the cardiac nurse, from Whodunnit? said after Sheri's death in the first episode: "Somebody here is a murderer!"

As for the scorecard:

ELIMINATED:
15. Harpreet (flag race elimination)
(tie) Berglind (flag race elimination)
14. Tommy (murdered?)

Remaining: Miljan, Sam, George, Sabina, Carolina, Irene, Daniel, Anne Marie, Victoria, Johnny, Neeko, Esther, Natalie