KimberStormer

Watched from the merge up to the big two-part episode where Fishbach goes home. The pre-merge was The Age of Abi; this part was The Era of Ciera. And what an era that is, an amazing sequence to watch; Ciera is a flawed hero no doubt, but still, an amazing performance. While I still think voting Woo out instead of Savage was a dumb move, I'd forgotten that nobody had even slightly expected such an early merge so there was no way to know that Savage would immediately be out of danger. (Similarly, I'd forgotten that they went directly to tribal for the Vytas vote, which very slightly excuses them for not voting out Abi...although it wasn't like people were voting all over the place, so I guess they knew what the plan was beforehand.) And while inserting herself in the weird merge drama was bizarrely pointless, Ciera's play-from-the-bottom hustle is in the league of Tracy from Micronesia to me. Of course Kelley Wentworth's idol is the key to the lock, but it is Ciera who oils the hinge, it is Ciera who walks through the door. With barely any allies and a huge army arrayed against her, two episodes later Ciera is dictating the vote at the reward as Tasha can only shake her head in frustrated wonder. She manages to deflect Ciera's aim from Jeremy to Kelly Wiglesworth once, but the next time she is voting for Stephen with her, and it's only Jeremy's own game-changing idol that can stop this momentum. Amazing. Something I had forgotten, and I would have told you was absolutely false a couple days ago: it is Jeff Probst, not Stephen, who coins the term "voting bloc", and does so during the Kass vote, which is a normal, boring alliance vote, no voting blocs in play. I can only assume that he was noticing the Abi Effect of the pre-merge, the way that Abi swung wildly to whatever side she felt benefited her at that moment, past votes be damned. (Also, so funny how once Ciera is gone, Abi is back to being a force of chaos.) In any case it's fascinating because the term clearly took on a life of its own and informed people's way of looking at their alliances, a very unusual case of Probst affecting the game. Such strange editing choices this season...two scenes which seem to have had game-changing consequences, the Varner-Tasha "we got a rat" meltdown (as everyone calls it) and the Kass-Tasha merge confrontation, both almost entirely left out of the actual show. It's bizarre.

Fourth is nothing to sneeze at!

Like the next-time-on-Survivor! previews, our guesses are Always Wrong.

Rewatching Second Chances while I wait for the new season to start. (I don't think there is a catchall Season 31 thread, and I don't really want to go through this whole board looking to see, so here I am in this thread instead.) I've gotten through the whole pre-merge. It's interesting to rewatch. For one thing, although it's a season full of great players, so far every single vote has been incredibly stupid. The presence of Abi and Varner, and especially the fact that they were both on the same team, is just an amazingly huge, destructive force, they dominate the game together by being so crazy bananas. Like putting Joe, Jeremy, and Savage all on one team is unfair...but putting Abi and Varner together is even more unfair, since they reflect and intensify the tribe-annihilating effect of each other. Another thing is that I find I'm reacting to not only the show but my memories of this board. I'm afraid having watched it again, I'm even more convinced that you were all insane when you hallucinated that Monica was obsessed with the women's alliance and terribly disloyal and Kimmi was totally justified in voting her out; everything about that is factually false. The only person obsessed and disloyal is Fishbach, tbh, with his Joe fixation. It's extremely entertaining, though I wish the quality of game was up to the standard I remembered it being. Hopefully, the post-merge is as good as I recall. Kelley Wentworth, for example, has been hardly present since her star turn in episode one (the tension of will-she-get-the-idol at the challenge was just as intense the second time around...even though I knew she would, I was convinced she wouldn't.) The one person, of course, who is playing a great game, a sort of surreally great game, is Jeremy. It's incredible how he's working people. One of the greats, I truly believe it.

But her name is Natalie, so she's going to be in FTC. Or will those two things cancel each other out and leave her a weird and unsatisfying merge boot like we've had a lot of lately? (Except for Chris, which was a classic and hilarious merge boot: Virgin Jessica, Hali, Michelle, Kass, people even I'm like ".....who?" about like Kelly Remington and Julie McGee...)

I agree that's what it means, but it's frustrating to me since both Malcolm and Jay were social gamers with some bonus physicality, not the other way around.

Why not just say you're just shy of your 21st birthday or something like that? I honestly don't really know why to hide your age in the first place though.

I mean, if you've only seen one season, wanting to play like the winner of that season makes sense to me?

I would say it depends, because some athletes can't function without a lot of calories. I'd say he has a good chance to be more on the challenge monster side of things, though. I'm not a huge fan of Mike or Cochran but it's better than saying he wants to play like James or something. I'm fascinated that he attributes his wrestling success to his political acumen. Never would have thought I'd be intrigued by a guy like this, but I am!

Mr. Schneebly? I've still never seen TAR so no opinion really but it's hard for me to imagine him on the island.

I hate her already!

I was thinking about "good episodes from bad seasons" the other day (I rewatched MvGX episode two, which is sooooooo gooooooood although that season is garbage) and that made me remember this, which I'm not sure I ever shared with the class. I don't know who made this, but it is amazing.

I mean, I dunno. I think Fairplay played a sound game, certainly running rings around the rest of that dull crew, led by two self-important no-strategy-allowed morons in Savage and Rupert. And using Gorgeous George-derived self-conscious pro wrestling heel performance paradigms as a tactic in a reality TV show is sort of an amazing conceptual move. Especially when you consider that his ultimate goal was to somehow make himself, so tiny and skinny, into an actual WWE star, an ambition so bizarre and grandiose that "Win Survivor" was just, like, step one; it amazes and delights me. I am very glad that he did not inaugurate an era of clownish trolling in Survivor, but I would have loved to see his FTC performance. Lil was his ideal opponent there, the only person, probably, he had a chance against -- but the chance was there. Could he have thrown Fairplay off of himself and become Dalton? And told them it was all kayfabe? They couldn't possibly deny the outrageous performativity of it all. Like, with Phillip or whoever, we know everyone was hoping he'd reveal his whole thing was a put-on, but Fairplay was throwing his weird gang signs and shit from day one, they couldn't possibly deny that of course it was a put-on, the crude rubber mask was always barely fitting and slipping around his head.

Ah! But I didn't see her in that trailer at all? Or did I just miss it?

So am I right in my understanding that Pike will come on to be Lorca II but we don't get any Number One, who I suppose will stay in charge of the Enterprise? Whyyyyyy But I find I am looking forward to complaining with you all again next season.

Parvati had a baby!

Not only did Courtney say "Stuff it, Probst!" but also my favorite withering "Thank you, Jeffrey" when he suggested the Villains should vote her off instead of the Big Strong Men They Need For Challenges. Wendell's banter with Jeff at challenges is one of the reasons I love him, and I think I'm not the only one -- honestly I think it's a mark that the editors want people to like you, because everyone loves it when you talk back to Probst!

Aw, they made a desk for Libby. I am an old softie and I love to see people from opposite tribes be friends after the game. Although I complained about this season, it sometimes occurs to me (like at work today, for no reason) that Wendell won and it actually brightens my day. That is the kind of thing I cannot admit in real life, because it's so silly. But I can't help it, I love the guy!

My guess is a very good deal of Osten's troubles were because he was stuck freezing in his underwear all day and night because he so, so stupidly sold all his clothes in the first episode. That might well be the worst move in Survivor history, honestly. He was muscley but no fat on him, it's no surprise he was miserable with no insulation. I've always thought the reason James did so much better than your average Survivor Buff Dude (ah-ah, I see you, don't fight me on this -- James dominated China's premerge in an almost unparalleled way, the only competition I can really think of is Tom in Palau) is that James used his muscles at work digging graves, not just in the gym. As for David VS Goliath, my early assumption is that the Goliaths will clash with each other and want to vote each other out ASAP, which often is a disaster even for the winner of that battle -- though as we saw this season, with the Dom/Chris rivalry, not always. I wouldn't be surprised by a David win at all.

You can't win if you go to the end with Dom and Wendell either. The result is exactly the same, especially in Laurel's case: she made it to F3 but was on the jury anyway! Except without getting to eat peanut butter and a giant cheeseburger at Ponderosa like everyone else. I agree Donathan should have gone for it when he had the chance but I don't think that makes him the worst; everyone had their shot at the Dynamic Duo at some point and blew it, and a rock draw is a much riskier proposition than many of the other scenarios (and would guarantee keeping Dom around; the odds of getting rid of Wendell would be very slight!) As Rob C has pointed out, Kellyn could have taken out Wendell with her double vote instead of wasting them on Laurel. Angela could have not immediately run to spill the beans. And so on.

If getting to F3 is a great game, then Russell Hantz is a great Survivor player. He was just trying to get to the end! Who cares about winning! Just advancing your position, that's what counts on Survivor, right? I can't answer for social media since I don't use any, but I don't think there's anybody out there saying "Wow what a great game Kellyn played, we should appreciate her" so there's nothing to push back against. Kellyn played a terrible game (in fact probably the worst out of everyone there tbh, since she was all-in on the disastrous Naviti Strong doctrine, and completely failed to capitalize on several chances to take the game in hand), so did everybody else. IMO, Dom and Wendell included, since they should never have taken each other as far as they did. Desiree at least tried, and Donathan at least tried. Social media is stupid. Being able to tweet at people makes this whole process weird and aggro. Hassling Laurel directly is not OK, to me. If I met her IRL I would say nothing but good things to her, because she is a good person and being bad at a game show is nothing to be ashamed of. But I don't think there's any reason not to call a bad game bad. It was bad.

How weird! I stand corrected. OK, but then you're not playing to win but just to get a little money. I have no respect for that personally (though who cares what I think.) If it were me, everyone would get the same money except the winner, from the two who never got put on tribes at the beginning of Palau to Katie and Ian.

I love the new FTC format in general, but this one was bad, or badly edited. I know they love Michael more than anything but there was way too much of him and so many people left mute. I want them to debate it out -- having each other fact checking together is great IMO -- but everybody should get a chance to speak. On TV. I don't want it to be another chance to further unbalance the edit. Final 4 fire challenge has to go. It's not Survivor, it's some other game.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "the winner wouldn't have gotten here if it wasn't for me" has never, is never, and never will be a winning argument. All it means is "I threw the game at your expense, jury." The only way you get respect of the jury, if you're aligned with the top dog, is to vote that top dog out before FTC.

OK I have the biggest smile on my face because I finally got to watch (they didn't put it up online until SO LATE last night) and the tie was great and the winner was great. I am full of Survivor glee. Believe me when I say this. BUT. Every single person is such a moron. Even Dom and Wendell, because if you're in a position to be a TIE VOTE of all things then you have surely made a huge mistake at some point. (Wendell, take out Dom when he's grandstanding with the fake idol, and you get a unanimous win for godsake!) You're all being insanely generous to Laurel: she sucks and deserved exactly the goose egg that she got. I don't want to hear any "well she would have been out next" baloney: she can say that but it's absolutely not true, there is no reason it would be true, and who cares when you go out if you don't win? There's win, there's lose, that's it! At least if you go out you get to enjoy Ponderosa instead of having the expression on her face she got when she realized she got no votes because she's a huge useless goat. Don't put yourself in a position to feel that way, to know nobody respects you. Listen to Ciera. Play to win. Speaking of which, I think Dom should have gone through with his cockamamie idea to give immunity to the two women and tried to take out Wendell himself, if he really thought he had the best shot of making fire. That would be playing to win, instead of playing to get to F3. They're all so dumb! Angela's incredibly dumb! Sebastian is incredibly dumb! Donathan at least tried and voted correctly for Dominick but he told Laurel the plan so he too is dumb! Luckily the tie was so fun and the perfect ending, and my favorite won! Whimsy this is simply 100% not true. I didn't watch the reunion. I only watched the finale. Just like every season, Jeff announced the winner at the end of the actual episode and then said "stick around for the reunion!" You can go to cbs.com and see it for yourself.