Mike Teevee

Thanks for posting the clips to old episodes. I much preferred the older days of soap operas, just the pacing of the plots, the richer complexion of the stories, and the quieter and more natural writing and dialogue. I think the changes we've seen in soap operas are a sign of the times. More style, less substance. In the days before VCRs, or when they still weren't too common, soap operas had to tell stories at a slower pace, where if you missed a couple of episodes, you could hop back in. But the plus side of that process was that you had a lot of scenes of people gossiping or just talking to each other to let them (and the viewers) know what was going on. It might have been Monica and Gail having coffee in the hospital cafeteria, or Steve and Rick meeting for lunch at The Floating Rib. But it made you feel like they were people you knew. More recent soap operas feel like there has to be some "event" to get you to tune into. The old-timer characters, instead of acting as a sounding board (or at worst, exposition for the audience) are rarely seen. And the characters are plugged into big and noisy plot lines with little regard to how consistent those plots are for the background of those characters. Oh well, at least we have You Tube.

Started watching as a kid around '79 because my sisters (junior high age) were fans. I didn't care much for the Luke and Laura romance nonsense, but even at age 10, 11, 12, I loved the mystery of the show. My absolute favorites were the murder mystery stories - Susan Moore (it was like an Agatha Christie story unfolding daily) and Diana Taylor a couple years before that. The best thing about the Diana Taylor murder was how it unfolded. You had the Jeff-Anne-Diana triangle, all the while Jeff's wife (Heather) was locked up in Forest Hills Sanitarium. One day, while Heather is visiting her mother Alice - housekeeper for Rick and Lesley - she finds and steals a gun from the Webbers. Back at Forest Hills, Heather stashes the gun in the plastic head of the doll that her roommate Sarah carries around. Then Heather swipes a nurses uniform. With her hair up, she resembles Nurse Shelly Vernon. She overhears how Shelly stores a spare key to her car under the bumper because she's always locking herself out, and voila! Heather has an escape route to visit Port Charles and spy on Jeff. She hates Diana for taking her son Steven Lars (now known as PJ), and she hates Anne for her romance with Jeff - so Heather decides to kill Diana and frame Anne for the murder! Of course, it helps that the virginal Anne finds out about Jeff's one night stand with Diana, creating bad blood between the two. On the eve of Port Charles Founder's Day celebration, Heather dons her Shelley disguise, and sets out to execute her plan... Thirty-five years later, and I still remember details of this story like it was last year. That's how detailed it was as it unfolded over a couple of months. So much fun to watch.

From my perspective, the people who voted for Brian (Helen, Jan, Ted, Jake) did like him. Helen, for instance, was pissed at him for not telling her she was getting voted out, but she liked him. (At least before she watched the season on TV.) But I think that's a distinction that's often missed in Survivor, but critical for a player's jury management.

Again, I'm all for critiquing the players, their gameplay, and their jury vote. To say Troyzan's jury vote is stupid, or petty, or bitter - fine. All I'm saying is that it's not "wrong" because there are no rules for voting. Once you explain why a vote is "wrong", you've introduced rules for voting. If I say Troyzan's vote was "wrong" because Kim controlled the game better, well, now I've introduced the principle that a jury member *must* vote based on who controlled the game better. OK. In my defense, I never suggested "THE JURY VOTE FOR WHO THEY LIKE BEST AND YOU CAN TELL BECAUSE THEY SHOW THAT THEY LIKE THEM BEST BY VOTING FOR THEM". In fact, I said the opposite, that we have seen jury members vote for players they don't like the best. Nor would I suggest "THE WINNER DESERVED TO WIN BY VIRTUE OF WINNING". I would, however, agree that the winner deserves to win by earning more jury votes.

You appear to have misinterpreted my comments. I didn't say a jury will never vote a certain way, I said they never have voted that way. I stand by that. Richard was liked better by the majority of the Borneo jury (Rudy, Sean, Sue & Greg). Tony was liked better by the majority of the Cagayan jury. Have there been individuals who voted for someone they don't like because they respected his/her game? Sure. But never a jury. Not yet, anyway. This is what I explained in my statement: "You need to figure out what your fellow players on the jury value, then explain to them how you performed in a manner that they will reward." Of course you can say you're dissatisfied with the jury, or you don't agree with their vote, or you would have voted differently. But to say someone voted "wrong" runs counter to what you said above:"There is no rule." If there are no rules on how to vote, how can a vote be wrong? And if no votes are wrong, then the right person ALWAYS wins.

The beauty of Survivor, in my opinion, is that there are no "should haves". The person who is supposed to win ALWAYS wins. Because the only rule for winning is to earn the most jury votes. That's it. There's no other score that counts. The best game player will know how to earn those jury votes. Will the jury vote for the person who does well in challenges? Will they vote for the most aggressive player? Will they vote for the person they like the most? You need to figure out what your fellow players on the jury value, then explain to them how you performed in a manner that they will reward. Russell couldn't do this, therefore he wasn't the best player and didn't win. Natalie (the "blonde girl" who won Samoa) played a great social game. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate to great tv. So Natalie, and players like her, get a raw deal from a lot of the fans, IMO. I wasn't expecting Natalie to win until the final tribal council. She explained to the jury that the first people voted off that season were the aggressive female players, so she needed to find another way to play. The jury member responded to her that this was the type of strategy explanation the jury was looking for. At that point, I figured she would win. Russell will never win unless he learns jury management. That was the difference for Boston Rob between All-Stars and Redemption Island. A jury has never -NEVER! - voted by saying "I prefer the person sitting next to you, but you had great strategy so I'm giving you the million dollars". The jury always votes for the person they like better. Which is why, after 29 seasons, Survivor is still a social game, no matter how hard Probst and others try to shove "big moves" down our throats.

Certainly, they even aired it on the show. They showed Vecepia studying from her notebook, while the other players were asking her for the answers. And Paschal thought the most fair approach would be for everyone to compare notes, LOL. The easy fix if they didn't want that to occur would be to ban notebooks and writing instruments as luxury items. Of course, nowadays they don't have luxury items because we wouldn't want any of the players revealing a personality that wasn't created by the editors. [/sarcasm]

What killed the Fallen Comrades challenge was the producer screw-up in S3 Africa. They asked a question about a Survivor with no piercings. Kim J. answered Kelly, and Lex answered Lindsay. While both answers were correct, production gave the point to Kim J. Cut to the Africa Reunion, when the S16 were watching the final episode. Lindsay is watching this challenge for the first time and tells Lex he WAS correct also, she has no piercings. Of course, by that time Marquesas had already finished taping, and included the Fallen Comrades challenge, but going forward producers decided to stay away from the challenge. Meanwhile, the story is they made retribution to Lex by giving him 2nd place prize money, and a guaranteed slot on the All-Star cast.

Just last year, Linda Holmes (you may know her as Miss Alli from TWoP) wrote a piece about Jeff's sexiest behavior. I thought it was interesting. I have to confess, I typically fail to see sexism unless it's pointed out to me. Or maybe if it's blatantly obvious. But much of what was written in the article, with the exception of the cheesecake bikini shots, goes right over my head. http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/10/10/231398615/the-tribe-has-broken-how-sexism-is-silently-killing-survivor The other factor here is I'm very good at tuning Jeff out. The obvious conflict of interest between his roles as host and producer make me angry enough that I typically half-watch the show while I multi-task, and almost always ignore Jeff's commentary.

I would say this is as much about the evolution of the players as it is about the twists in the game. I recently re-watched a few earlier seasons and saw a lot of missed opportunities for strategy by those players. I don't think they were "worse" players; they just had less experience to draw from. As far as "punch" and "excitement", I think it depends on what you enjoy watching. I liked watching players trying to brave the elements, and would love if that were still a big component of the show. But I'm likely in the minority there, and the days of the show I preferred have probably passed. Some things I would like to see (besides what I mentioned above) - No more than 16 players, and end with a F2 instead of F3 The losing tribe compete in a second immunity challenge for individual immunity. This should probably be in place of hidden immunity idols - which I don't have a problem with in theory, but it's become overused and they are too easy to find. I loved the fake merge twist at F10 in Thailand. I don't know if they could recreate it, but would enjoy something similar. Or maybe do a merge at F12' then split back into two tribes at F10 for the next couple of challenges. I'm fine with returning players, but only for a 2nd appearance; we don't need to be seeing these clowns for a 3rd or 4th time. My biggest complaint is with casting/editing. When I re-watched earlier seasons, I remembered every player and most of them had a unique personality. More recent seasons seem to have more forgettable characters who blend together. If you have 20 minutes to kill, go to YouTube and watch the opening credits from every season. I find it's the players from the earlier seasons that I have clearer memories of, and I think that's based on how they currently cast and edit the show.