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clown shoes posted:I didn't watch last season. Did I miss anything good? I think the current consensus in the fan community is that it was the best season in years and probably a Top 5 season overall.
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Feb 16, 2019 19:49
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I can't tell if I liked the double-misdirect of showing everyone openly agreeing Reem would be the first boot moments before the vote to make us think they were really voting Wendy when they really were voting Reem the whole time. I probably would be more angry at it if I didn't like Wendy so much and was just relieved that she stayed. Anyway the episode was completely fine if unspectacular. I liked that the returnees didn't dominate the screentime (like in 22 and 23), although I think the newbie cast is a little weak on the whole (especially compared to 37). Also chalk me up as someone that thought the ending was spooky and well-produced even though the twist itself is kind of dumb. I sort of feel bad for Reem because it's hard to imagine her winning her way back into the game and even if she does it's even harder to imagine her winning, and yet if she quits she comes across as the weak older lady she hated being perceived as. She's sort of forced into ~30 days of very hard and incredibly boring suffering just to save face. Hope she proves me wrong and either leaves and enjoys her paid vacation or wins her way back in and kicks rear end though! ETA: I re-read my own post and am worried that it sounds like *I* think Reem needs to stay on Edge of Extinction to save face. I don't think that at all, I just worry that Reem (and most other players that go to Edge of Freakin Extinction) will think that. It's a weird lose/lose situation where you can easily talk yourself into thinking you have no chance of winning but also it would be too embarrassing to admit defeat. mancalamania fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 05:14
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graventy posted:I hate Exile Island. It wastes time and keeps me from getting to know the actual ongoing contestants. They said pre-season they were open to creative ways of including Edge of Extinction in the episodes (like just flashing there for literally a few seconds to remind us it exists and everyone is miserable) so I don't think it will take up much episode real estate unless really interesting stuff is happening there. It's not like Redemption Island where we need to see a few minutes of set up + a 7-minute duel every episode. Also you know this poster garthoneeye posted:That’s how Ex Island works. You have to keep your new torch lit. If it ever gets snuffed again you’re eliminated for reals. Your goal is to snuff the other players torches. Anyone who’s torch remains unsnuffed gets back in. was joking, right???? 
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Feb 23, 2019 20:07
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STAC Goat posted:For me I think the "shield/big target" argument is maybe a little overblown. Like sometimes that matters but you never really know how that stuff like that is gonna play out with numbers and what people see as the biggest threats. Yeah I agree that the "shield" strategy is useless *except* as some insurance against getting swap-screwed. Post-swap pre-merge is the one spot in the game where a one-person buffer makes a huge difference, and in the current era of very frequent swaps I'm definitely sympathetic to the idea of keeping the returnees around for that purpose. I guess even then there's some danger that the "shield" is avoided as a target to outsmart a possible idol, but I think in a season like this if you swap onto a tribe with a legendary returnee and the returnee is in the minority and you have a free shot at them, you take the shot right away (like Malcolm, J.T., and Sandra going out back-to-back after swaps in Game Changers). Also no guarantee you even get swapped onto a tribe with the returnees. Keep in mind this season was filmed right after Ghost Island which had 2 tribe swaps AND a post-merge one-round "swap" where Malolo got screwed every time and picked off, so this is probably very fresh on their minds. If I'm the blue tribe my goals are (roughly in order): (1) staunch the bleeding by cutting bad challenge performers to reduce the odds of swapping onto a minority on both/all tribes, (2) keep returnees around as a buffer, (3) try to keep everyone as united as possible with safe consensus boots so if blue *does* end up on a majority on one post-swap tribe they can keep that majority without someone flipping because they feel like they're on the bottom. mancalamania fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Mar 1, 2019 |
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Mar 1, 2019 07:10
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Fast Luck posted:I know Australian Survivor does it mostly because they're trying to bleed as many TV hours as they can out of their taping, but the extra time really really works in terms of introducing all the players and sharing their stories. Not sure I agree on needing more challenges though! They're an important part of the game but I feel like we get all we need out of them. Actually I think the bit where Jeff explains how the challenge works is the most skippable part of any episode, it's not like it's hard to follow along with what they're doing out there. I actually think the international Survivors have made me realize the only good minimum runtime is 44 minutes. The 60-80 minute episodes are great when there happens to be stuff to show (premerge AU2016, postmerge AU2018 and almost all of AU2017), and are real slogs otherwise (postmerge AU2016, premerge AU2018, and ~80% of the NZ episodes). SA 2018 is the only international version I’ve seen to stick to a firm 44 mins and it’s also the only one that kept me glued to the screen every episode even in the slower weeks (of which there were many). The ideal format is Netflix style where the episodes can vary in length depending on what they have, but that’s pretty unrealistic for CBS unless they start posting extended episodes on CBS All Access or something.
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Mar 1, 2019 21:41
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I think David and Rick were actually in a tough situation there but probably made the right call. They should all be operating under the assumption of a swap at 15, meaning the closer you can get to a unanimous vote the better. If they vote out Wentworth 4-3 then Wardog and Lauren go into the swap with no loyalty to anyone left on blue; whereas in this scenario, the only person they've potentially alienated is Wendy who is (1) unpredictable anyway, (2) probably easier to reassure since she didn't seem to have any particular bond with Chris or anything. Now if they *couldn't* foresee the swap at 15, I actually lean towards it being the wrong call. Wardog/Lauren/Wentworth seem pretty unbreakable, so by voting out Chris they can't do better than a 3-3 tie. Sure, David and Rick could probably throw Wendy under the bus for one round, but in a universe where they don't swap at 15 maybe they don't swap at all until a merge at 12, and is blue keeps losing there are 2 more boots after Wendy that could very easily be Rick and David in some order. If they vote out Wentworth, then sure Chris could flip back to Wardog/Lauren, but there's no obvious reason he would do that-- Wardog would have just written his name down the night before. Rick/David/Wendy/Chris are probably a tenuous 4-person group on that tribe of 6 then, and while it's not exactly stable I would take an unstable 4-2 advantage over a stable 3-3 advantage any day. In this scenario, who cares if Chris can't keep a secret if he ultimately votes the way he says he will? If you're up 4-2, just tell Chris the plan at the last minute so he can't leak it, or better yet give him the wrong name and have a 3-2-1 vote. Maybe Chris leaks the fake name you gave him and you get Wardog/Lauren to waste an idol too! Of course, this is modern Survivor where tribes don't last for more than 3 episodes so everything is made up and the points don't matter and they were probably right to just pile on a consensus boot.
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Mar 7, 2019 06:26
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Making fun of an outsider might sometimes be an effective strategy but it's hardly this necessary unavoidable part of the game. I guess we don't see 24/7 footage, but I kind of doubt that recent winners like Adam or Wendell would really be rallying the troops to laugh at a teammate with a visibly bruised ankle. There are plenty of other ways to unite a group against a common enemy besides uglyish bullying, and while those other ways might require more work they're probably worth it both on the level of basic human decency and also on a strategic level (probably easier to gather jury votes at the end if you consistently kept all your blows above the belt).
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Mar 8, 2019 07:28
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Something that always bug me when they swap into tiny tribes like this: what happens if you get down to a small enough group where everyone has an idol? It's not that crazy of a scenario: if the green tribe ended up being, say, Lauren/Aubry/David/Wardog/Rick, then they vote out Rick and Wardog in some order, and at some point David finds the green idol, then you are left with a 3-person tribe where everyone has an idol but there's still (presumably) one more round before the merge. Anyway I thought the Tribal was fine, but the "tiny tribe loses and takes the loss really hard and we see them be sad and talk about how much they love each other and Survivor before someone must meet their untimely demise" editing trick only works so many times before it gets old. Also I totally misunderstood the preview at the end of the episode. At first I thought the people running on EoE were doctors and someone was getting med-evaced from EoE, but I went back to watch it again and it looks like it's just some weird twist where the EoEers are racing to find something. Which, if so, weird? What could they possibly be trying to find? What point would it be to give one of them an advantage if only one person is going back into the game anyway?
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Mar 14, 2019 07:00
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Vernacular posted:And 2-to-2 splits somehow remedy this? I think 2-to-2 is better than 2-to-3 because the bigger tribes give the players a little more room to maneuver. The tribes in a swap-to-3 season are so small that you *maybe* get one exciting vote and then if the tribe goes to TC again it's always a super boring down-the-line vote. And swapping to 3 smaller groups increases the odds of one tribe being inherently weaker and thus losing most of the challenges anyway. I think 3-to-2 is actually the best because it is very unlikely any pre-swap tribe has a majority on a post-swap tribe, so each tribe is bound to be interesting; with 2-to-2 or 2-to-3 usually each tribe will have a majority consisting of a pre-swap tribe (unless it's exactly tied or, like this weird swap, a post-swap tribe consists entirely of members of a pre-swap tribe) so if the majority tribe doesn't want to budge there's not much the minority can do. In terms of comparing seasons from a historical perspective, two of the seasons you listed (Redemption Island and South Pacific) didn't even have swaps, and the post-swap stuff in BvW1 was pretty good! I think the producers got really lucky that the swap-to-3 worked out in an exciting way the first two times they did it (31 and 33) mostly because different tribes kept losing Immunity and the players were playing aggressively. In 34, 35, and 36 all of the post-swap tribals were pretty boring by-the-numbers votes with little suspense except when there was an idol involved. I guess the swap in 37 worked produced 2 out of 3 good episodes, but I'll chalk that up more to the great cast than a good format. Also even in the seasons were this type of swap worked out well, any time a post-swap tribe had to go to a *second* Tribal it was a boring vote even if the first was interesting (Varner getting voted out in 31, Lyrsa in 37). With only like 4 people voting there's only so many ways the show can even pretend the vote can go.
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Mar 15, 2019 06:51
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There's been some discussion on RHAP this week about the exact mechanics of how someone will return from Edge and how it'll probably just be a regular endurance challenge but that it might be cool to bring back the vote-someone-back-in mechanic from the Outcasts in Pearl Islands. It made me think that the most interesting challenge would be a hybrid of the two: bring back the coconut chop challenge (i.e. answer questions correctly to "chop" other players in the challenge, 3 chops and you're out)! Making the re-entry a straight vote incentivizes weird strategies like purposefully wasting your vote on someone you think won't get a lot of votes, while making the re-entry a straight challenge (endurance or otherwise) will always inevitbably favor one particular body type over another which feels inherently unfair to the people without that body type that just wasted 2 weeks of their life starving on an island with nothing to do. But the coconut chop challenge combines the best of both worlds: no one body type is favored, having social capital is worth more than anything else, and it plays out in real time (so you don't get the weird thing where 3 people throw their vote away on Lillian and she wins a slim plurality of the votes and comes back). Bring back the chop!
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Mar 20, 2019 06:05
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Spergatory posted:Survivor is an interesting tightrope walk from a production standpoint. You want them to have it rough, but if they have it too rough, they won't do the crazy stuff that makes good TV because they just won't have the energy. The endgame of the second season is pretty much a textbook example of this; nobody was doing anything and everyone was miserable because they were all legitimately starving to death. Yeah, I find it weird that they've been doubling down on the roughness of the conditions the past few seasons (giving them less rice, no bathing suits, etc.). Besides the general danger (almost killing Caleb wasn't enough for them???), it's just strange from a production standpoint because at some point people get so miserable that they can't really strategize or do anything fun.
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Mar 24, 2019 18:09
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I didn't necessarily mean that production was directly culpable for what happened in that challenge (although I don't think they're completely innocent either given that 3 of 14 people went down, and IIRC they purposefully changed the challenge to be more physically demanding at the last minute for some inexplicable reason). I just meant that you would think after that semi-recent close call they would generally be more careful and err on the side of caution with respect to the physical demands they put the players through.
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Mar 25, 2019 00:47
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STAC Goat posted:Ok, back to the good game show. Was it just me or was EVERY ONE an idiot this week? I'm with you. Kelley handed the Kama 6 victory on a silver platter by selling out Devens so quickly and the Kama 6 completely threw it away. Everyone not in the Kama 6 was, against all logic, willing to work with them and the Kama 6 lied to literally all of them for no good reason. If the other six can get on the same page (and that should be plausible since all 6 were blindsided, just in different ways) they can get it to 6-6 and also have 3 idols between the six of them. If they just play all 3 idols they have a 50% shot of getting one of the Kama 6 out on a 6-0 vote, and if they misplay them then (depending on who has the immunity necklace) they'll either have a 4/6 or 5/6 shot of surviving the rock draw in tact. Doing a bit of WarDog math, if they do get on the same page and play all 3 idols then there's a ~90% chance someone in the Kama 6 goes out next week.
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Mar 28, 2019 03:45
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People are way underselling the odds of the non-Kama 6 banding together. Last week was completely different, where none of the 5 Lesu's knew anything about the dynamics of Kama because they were literally all just meeting them for the first time. Even Joe and Aurora didn't know where they stood with the group because they never actually had to go to a vote and Joe had a bunch of weird promises and side deals with Ron and Julia. And even if Joe and Aurora did know for sure they were on the bottom, they don't know if the other 6 are completely cohesive or just loosely working together by default. Obviously as viewers we can see that grouping of 6, but the other players didn't (for whatever dumb reason)... until now. There's no better way to shine a spotlight on your big dominant six person alliance by lying to everyone else and voting out a secret target with exactly six votes.
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Mar 30, 2019 06:02
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If they ever do another Auction they need to use one of the two auction twists they used in the last two Australian Survivor seasons. In AU 2017: first item was a covered item; the winner of that item was out of the auction but got to sit at a separate side table and got a copy of every single item for the rest of the auction. That person gorged themselves on an absurd amount of food and even got a copy of the advantage when it came out. In AU2018, to subvert expectations: first item was again a covered item. This time the winner also bought themselves out of the auction and had to sit at a separate side table, but they did NOT get anything automatically. Instead they were at the "Beggar's Table" and were the only person at the auction the other players could share with, so each auction winner had to decide what amount (if any) of their food to give them.
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Apr 7, 2019 17:44
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That was cool but I'm driving myself crazy trying to figure out why there was no Reward Challenge. I had assumed there was one that got cut for time, but Victoria tweeted there was no Reward. In 38 seasons of the show has there ever been a post-merge episode without a reward challenge (besides the obvious situations like double-boot episodes, the finale, or the Redemption Island seasons with no Reward Challenges)? They break the formula for the first time in almost 20 years and they just happened to get one of the craziest Tribals ever the same episode??
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Apr 11, 2019 03:39
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The "double-boot episodes are decided by when the most boring vote outs are" is a weird urban legend that never dies but doesn't seem to have any basis in reality. Those episodes never have reward challenges and occur in a very compressed timeframe, so they are definitely pre-determined. Granted, they likely plan them to be in spots where they expect the least amount of action, but they definitely don't decide what the double-boot episode is *after* filming. The one weird exception seems to be what just happened this season, which seems like it was almost certainly supposed to be Part 1 of a double boot (all took place in one day with no reward) that got spun off into its own episode because of the crazy Tribal, and now next episode is the double-boot to make up for it. It'll be interesting to see if the second part of next episode includes whatever reward challenge they originally planned or if they edit it out for time (or if they scrapped it while filming depending on when they made the decision to spin this round off into it's own episode).
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Apr 13, 2019 22:04
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I don’t think Wentworth talking about Lauren’s idol is a huge deal. Jurors talk about that stuff in Ponderosa in other times and no one has ever blurted secret info like that from the jury at Tribal before. And by the time the next person comes back in the game idols will probably be over and even if they’re still good for another round or two there’s a good chance Lauren will have already played it.
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Apr 19, 2019 16:48
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Not only are there no real alliances left, but I'm pretty sure each of the 8 people in the game has voted on the opposite side of the vote as each of the other people left in the game which feels like some sort of record.
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Apr 21, 2019 03:05
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There's an alternate universe where Victoria doesn't come up with that plan, Rick idols Aurora out of the game and then teams up with Ron, Julie, and the next Edge returnee to pick off Victoria, Lauren and Gavin. I mean *we* know Rick got burned by Ron and would be hesitant to go back to him, but from Victoria's perspective gee Ron and Julie sure have been getting weirdly close to Rick the past few days and are leading the charge on getting him to vote Auroria. I think this episode makes more sense when you remember the context from last episode. Wardog/Ron/Rick's "take out the goats" plan basically rallied Lauren/Victoria/Gavin/Aurora together as a goat alliance to stop them. Rick is the next biggest threat given his Edge connections, but if they can't get Rick out Ron is the next highest priority (and it's also equally important to save Aurora to protect their numbers).
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May 3, 2019 03:38
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Here are my takes: -Devens is fine but would be an unsatisfying winner because we've seen "Everyone vs. one guy who keeps being immune and then that guy wins" twice in the past few years already. It doesn't really matter if he's a slightly better or worse player than Ben and Mike, it's still an overly familiar story that plays much better as a "once every 30 seasons longshot" thing then a "once very 4 seasons" thing. -As a follow-up to that, I think the way to fix the idol "problem" the show has here (it's debatable if it's actually a problem I guess) is for the show to be more transparent with when and how idols are hidden. The Season 35 players all said the big reason they didn't follow Ben at the Final 5 is they were under the assumption that idols weren't re-hidden that late in the game. Similarly this season, most of the players left are assuming idols aren't hidden at the camps. Any situation where one player has a better understanding of the game mechanics than others will lead to weird lopsided advantages like this which are frustrating to watch. I have no idea if more transparent rules would have changed the actual outcome of 35 (or 38), but at the very least it would be easier to stomach if the other players lost because they were lazy instead of because they had to take a wild guess about what rules the producers came up with that season and guessed wrong. -I feel like the probability of a 3-3 tie next round is being way undersold. As far as we can tell, Devens and the next Edge returnee (I'll just call them "Edge") will be huge frontrunners to beat any of the other four at Final Tribal. Gavin/Victoria/Lauren are drawing dead if they can't get Devens and Edge out before Final 3 and they have exactly two votes to do this; if they miss one of those two votes they have to put all their eggs in Final 4 Immunity/Fire basket, and if they miss both of those shots it's game over. If the 3 of them turn on each other at 6, they're screwed because Devens/Julie/Edge will control the 5 vote and both Devens and Edge will be in the Final 4. On the other side of things, Devens/Edge know all of this and have no reason to turn on each another because if they do the other will be out next with no way to get through the Gavin/Victoria/Lauren firewall except for idols and immunity. Julie is really the only wild card and based on last episode it seems hard to imagine she would turn on Devens. Of course, a 3-3 tie doesn't necessarily mean rocks if Devens and/or Lauren play their idols correctly. In fact, it could very well be a Cambodia Final 6 vote situation where only one person would even draw rocks (say, Lauren/Devens immune from idols, Gavin immune from necklace, Victoria/Edge immune from being tied, and Julie the one person who can draw a rock), meaning whichever side wins the Final 6 immunity would control the vote.
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May 12, 2019 17:28
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(S40 casting chat) Cochran would absolutely be on the Season 40 cast if he was willing and able. Like him or not, he's one of the few names that almost every Survivor fan (casual or otherwise) could recognize right next to Parvati and Russell. The thing all 3 of those players have in common are being name-dropped during seasons they're not even on (both by players in game and by Probst at the reunion), and always come up in the "What player are you most like?" pre-game questionaire. I'm sure that if he was on there would be a vocal minority of fans loudly whining online about how overrated he is but production loves that kind of stuff because at least it gets people talking about the show. They'll take a polarizing player like Cochran or Rick Devens over a straightforward player like Gavin any day of the week. The easiest explanation for why he's not on is that he currently works for CBS and/or is too chummy with Probst, and the next easiest explanation is he's too busy with work and can't get / doesn't want to take the time off.
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May 19, 2019 23:17
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:36 |
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Shneak posted:Sure, maybe it shafts screentime for more Sandra/Rob confessionals but we'll see. Yeah, one advantage Ghost Island had is when it was a boring player going there they could quickly yadda yadda through the whole segment in about 1 minute. That feels less likely to happen with Rob and Sandra there.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:22
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