Trek

Unlikely. I don’t think they have it in them. For example, the scene last season where Eph had to make a choice whether to shoot his now turned wife through the window while his son was nearby was a pretty blatant rip-off of Morgan’s scene with the rifle in TWD S01E01 in an attempt to draw the viewers into the emotional conflict facing the survivors. Only Lennie James and TWD writers nailed it while it came out as ridiculous on The Strain. One can hope though, that the plot result is going to be the same. That revelation was a sad event in the TWD, but will be a cause for celebration for us if the Strain copies that too.

I like Mitch as well, and hope how the show left off this episode - with Mitch being startled awake (due possibly to the cougar getting more aggressive) is a mislead and not an indicator that the next episode will be his tap out one. I like Mitch for being the most aggressive in trying to progress his situation into a sustainable one. Where most others are more or less near their start points (Brant, for example, appeared to have just stayed exactly where he was dropped off, drinking brackish water for 6 days. WTF?) Mitch scouted the most aggressively, to the extent of building a makeshift boat out of his tarp, to find the best location he could. On fire, he was the first to get one going with the curling technique and now he has char cloth to conserve his ferro rod. While others are still foraging – whether for mushrooms or bull kelp (essentially “hunter-gatherer” stage) – he’s taken a first step in trying to achieve a fixed sustainable/renewable food source (“food farming” stage)via fishing nets. With each move, what I see is a guy approaching this game almost like a settler rather than just “surviving day to day for as long as I can and hoping that it’s longer than the other guys.” That’s interesting to me and I hope it doesn’t end up costing him by drawing the attention of Mr. Cougar.

Heh,glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that the task was definately NOT photobombing. ... Trump playing favorites has gotten worse and worse every season. Infinity wins 5 and lose 1 and he fires the entire team. Meanwhile, Vivica and Geraldo lose 5 in a row and are still hanging on. At least in the first CA -with the exception of Omorosa- it was based more or less on competence (love him or hate him, iirc Piers has the winningest rescord on Apprentice, celeb or otherwise, ever). I much prefer a battle of competence over ego and faux drama. Leeza vs the Jonas brother would have made a good jingle face off.

Hell no, that’s way too many bios to check! You are right of course that for it to be scientifically sound, it needs to be crossed-referenced against the job distribution of all players who have played the game in each season. However, even for seasons I remember well e.g. Sekou, Billy, Flicka and Cao Boi being the obvious “no-collar” reps of their respective tribes for CI, I’d still have to re-check all to make sure that Sekou was not an accountant or something by day and only a musician at night. Mine was only ever intended as a back of the envelope style peek.

IMO, the chances of getting lambasted increases exponentially if you try to backtrack from your game (mom or otherwise), and top it off by throwing words like “integrity” around. Whether older (Lil), younger (Amanda) or male (Coach). Missy, for example, played both the mom card and the integrity card in her opening jury speech. That makes knocking her back fair game. Missy, in fact, played a decent game, she was actually the glue that kept the main alliance together. It was her that kept Jon in for as long as he needed to be when the guy was teetering to flip 3 times. Kelly and Dale were all her and she had a bigger hand in both the Josh and Jeremy blindsides than Nat (who didn’t even know about the latter one). Did she mention any of that? No. She played the game with “integrity” ooookay then.

With nothing better to do, I went back to have a look at the past winners and tried to categorize them according to the theme of the upcoming season as announced on the reunion show. Note that I was going by my categorization so may be a bit arbitrary (e.g. While some jobs don’t require them getting their collars dirty like car salesmen (Heidik) or flight attendants (Todd) I still consider Blue, while those in entertainment/modeling (Danni, Jenna etc.) I consider to be no collar.) The historical statistics suggest that Blue Collars are top as far Survivor is concerned. They have the winningest record and includes all three that tops virtually all “best survivor of all time” lists. Boston Rob (Construction), Parvarti (Boxing –although some have said it was more “lingerie boxing” thus making it entertainment and ergo No Collar), Sandra (various jobs for the military, non- commissioned). Notable white collars: Hatch, Yul, Earl, Kim Last three winners: Natalie (Crossfit coach/physical therapist – Blue), Tony (Cop – Blue), Tyson (Cyclist – no collar).

Heh. I actually watched ASS before Marquesas (I started watching at S07/S08 live before going back to the older seasons) and remembering going WTF, Maraamu's terrible. To be fair, they only had 2 good performers in the tribe (challenge wise) and BRob voted the other guy (Hunter) off! Marquesas wasn't a great season but it did have some of the most hilarious THs ever; "Cleopatra landing on the beach", "Robfather", and http://funny115.com/v1/79.htm amoung others.

That’s actually not quite true. America in particular has a very, very long history of actually actively supporting virtually every tyrant in the world - both petty and large - as long as they were non hostile to US interests. Marcos, the Shah, “baby doc” Duvalier, Pinochet, many unelected gulf leaders to this day etc. all got US money and they couldn’t really do much shit in return for it apart from being non-communist, non-jihad or non-whatever… unlike a Rumpletyrant. “I can scry for you the location of a 50billion barrel oil deposit for, oh say, two Navy Seal teams to be assigned to my Island on rotation as ‘honor’ guard for 10 years. Do we have a deal deary?” “What do I want for deradiating every single uranium atom in N. Korea?” Heaheh, I love it when they ask me that.” “I can indeed expunge your part in the Iraq has WMD debacle from collective memory, but all magic comes with a price!” (To a Senator) “I can guarantee you the Presidency in 4 years if your youngest would like to be my apprentice. Deal Deary?” “I have the potion that completely eliminates cocaine addiction right here in my hand dearie. Ah ah ah, I didn’t say it was free.” I can see deals getting done, above and below board. No shortage of demand - I actually have a harder time thinking up things that Rumple would want in return than what people may want from Rumple. His medical abilities alone (complete heals for all but the most serious ailments, re-attach limbs like he did for Whale, conduct non-surgical complete heart transplants in 30 secs with a 100% success rate, and ‘rewind’ people back to youth) is going to make him richer that Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the world association of plastics surgeons combined. PS. He is also immortal. Does this mean immune to bullets, definitely. Can he create a magi- dome Cora style for anti-air, he’s more powerful than her so that’s a yes. Can he take a nuke? Uhmm, maybe not, but if the US/UK or some other is thinking a strike (don’t forget he absorbed the seers power so has early warning), he “purple-mist vaporates” to China and provides services there. Anyone going to nuke China? No. Rumple lives!

Oh I agree with you on the management of bad luck and some people would be far better at it than others, (but didn't want to add in extra permutations on an already very long post). For example, I would say that while Michelle staying may have made YM more expendable, it would have made the highly unreliable Dreamz even more so (and I'd strongly suggest that his social/alliance skills would make it far more likely that he stays over Dreamz in most scenarios). With Dreamz out earlier, YM wins F4 (Earl was hopeless at challenges) - or at miminum gets to keep his car, heh, which is an improvement to what actually transpired.

I agree with you about the “all-in” but I think he’d actually go far in most games he plays in your 100000 simulations for two big reasons: 1) The luck factor should even out over the course of the statistical samples and those that benefited from some good luck would get some bad, and those with some bad would get some good. In other words, we have to factor out luck in the same way that a large statistical sample would automatically do – and by luck I mean anything that affects the outcome but in which the player has no influence or control over, whether it’s picking buffs out of a hat, or a key ally getting medivaced etc. For example, by my calculation, the chance that Yau Man would be screwed again by a twist that eliminated Michelle is only 1/9 * 1/29 (or once in every 261 simulations) so his overall record should improve with multiple simulations. On the flip side, Kim say, is very unlikely to again benefit from the opposing tribe going to tribal despite winning immunity (through no doing of her own whatsoever) since it has only occurred once in 29 seasons and if it does occur again then it is her tribe that’s going to be filled with buffoons and does it, undermining her game. (Heads or tails evening out in the long run to 50:50). In the case of BRob specifically, he’s actually been a pretty unlucky player. Heck, even in TAR, after dominating his season - most legs won (5), highest average placing (11 legs in the top 3) - he ended up getting a shitty cab driver for the last leg while the decidedly average Uchenna and Joyce lucked out on a superb one. Anyways: In ASS, out of all the possible permutations with 10 players left, the chance that Amber and only Amber would be swapped was miniscule. If there had been no swap or if it had been anybody else other than Amber being swapped, he wouldn’t have made the two deals (one with Lex and one with Alicia as his backup plan) that directly cost him their two votes. BRob wins ASS, easily. In the Marquesas, the swap was a disaster not because it put him badly down in numbers (although that certainly wasn’t good, but since his tribe were down in numbers going in, that was statistically probable –not bad luck) but because it also left the Rotu 4 completely intact (which was statistically highly improbable). If any of the Rotu 4 had been split up with one or more of Kathy/Paschal/Neleh remaining, it most likely would have been a completely different ball game even with the numbers disadvantage. In HvV, the Heroes couldn’t win a challenge when the BRob and Tyson were in the game while the Villains couldn’t win one without them. (Actual number was villains win 7/9 before and 1/5 after). The crucial turning point of the game – Tyson voting himself off- is well remembered by all. However, what people forget is that the villains should not have been at tribal at all because they won the preceding challenge. It occurred because of an idiot twist where both teams had to vote off a tribe member. They did not lose a challenge - a precondition for a team going to tribal in what, I don’t know, maybe 180-200 of the pre-merge tribals before and since in 29 seasons? Without that twist, BRob and Tyson would almost certainly have made the merge and the merge numbers would probably be something like 8 villains/2 heroes. What happens then is anybody’s guess but if we accord that twist with its correct distribution in a simulation - say once or twice every 100 tribals,- the chances of BRob making it to the merge if he is in a “strong in challenges tribe” is extremely high. Which brings us to challenges… 2) IMO, Boston Rob is the best challenge asset in the game, ever. Unlike many other challenge beasts who excel only in their specific leg of a challenge, Boston Rob not only does that (and is probably also the most well rounded – including puzzles) but brings out the best of the entire team as well. Examples vs other "highly rated" challenge performers. Strength challenge vs James (and or Tom) HvV: Make stairway with huge heavy cubes. BRob not only does most of the heavy lifting but solves the puzzle as he is doing it. Villains gushing with praise, Tyson says, “we need you, man, we really need you.” Meanwhile, Tom on the other team is looking completely befuddled while James does very little lifting and uses most of his energy yelling at Steph to “shut up, Shut up!” Agility/sports vs JT In the catch the slingshot ball challenge, JT is all kinds of heroic even loses a tooth trying to make a catch. His team loses. When BRob had this same challenge in RI, he specifically instructs Nat to fire short to Grant and Grant only, meanwhile he would act as a “free safety” in the entire backfield (not just his own pole) to compensate for the mismatches in other positions e.g. Ashley vs Mansweater. Grant catches 4 balls, while of the opposition balls, BRob swats away 4 and intercepts 1 for a perfect 5-0 victory. Ability + team strategy trumps ability alone every time. Water challenge vs Ozzie In ASS, there was a challenge when players had to dive down to a boat, remove 2000lbs of ballast to bring the boat up, bail the water out and paddle the boat back to the finish line. As the boats come up to the surface everyone starts furiously bailing with buckets… except Chapera. BRob tells his team to haul the boat up upside down onto the platform and even instructs Amber to sit atop the back to prevent it from flipping over prematurely. Only then do they flip it over and, in so doing, clear the water completely from the boat in one shot without having to bail at all. Chapera wins by a huge margin. Ozzie in such a situation may have dived a little faster (and even that is questionable considering that BRob prime could outswim Colby, Lex, Ethan and so-called fisherman king Rupert) and help them that way but Ozzie doesn’t have the ability to come up with the huge winning strategy for the team that BRob does pretty consistently and would just be cussing out the team for not bailing/paddling fast enough when they lose. The point being that while there are many players who are great at challenges individually (including BRob himself), in terms of team contribution he is IMO, by far, the best. In a schoolyard pick, I’d take him first every time. Specifically, this makes him very valuable to keep to the merge, whereas for others who are only individual challenge threats, that’s a good reason to get them out before the merge. Methinks BRob's average placing in 100000 runs is going to be pretty darn high. ETA: Yikes! sorry for the wall of text.

Heh, I have posted on that thread in the past (and will again!) Walkers stumble over rocks but apparently they can climb stairs. They got up many flights of stairs to get to the chained roof-exit door when Merle was handcuffed on the other side (real quick too).

ITA. Where is the guy once voted the 9th(or was it 7th?) hottest bachelor in NY whose book launches were glitzy “Tony Stark” style events with plenty of champagne and girls wanting autographs in private places. Now he is kind of Laurel (from Laurel & Hardy) and his book launch is basically a joke meme. The buffoon act for cheap laughs is nowhere near as fun to watch as Nathan's witty humor of the early seasons IMO.

Sounds like you are a fun couple. Now you need to give Glenn and Maggie some tips! There’s pretty much guaranteed 24hour wind once you get above 8 stories, so attach a wind chime onto the end of a pole and stick it outside a window. If any walkers get up there, they’ll just follow the sound and go “Raahr argh, raa …KER SPLAT.” The 9th floor on up are yours and, whilst a straight up barricade policy may result in a huge walker accumulation downstairs, this walker ‘revolving door’ method will keep the lower levels relatively free should you want to access them.

Sorry, when I said generic, i meant random scences from past episodes rather than specific items associated to speicific characters. "Away with you" is indeed from clear but to be Carl specific it'd have to be his hat or something (IMO).

Yes, they burnt it in the tunnel when they reunited on the way to Terminus. It now shows up in the opening credits. In order it goes; .357 Python for AL/Rick, Angel wing jacket for NR/Daryl, Watch for SY/Glenn, the burning photo for LC/Maggie. Everyone else gets generic backdrops when their name comes up except for MMB. (Why I said Maggie’s symbol was a bad omen, heh.)