Eolivet

I love reading this thread once the season is over. All the fun I missed. I'll never forget Mike White sneaking pot onto the David vs Goliath set, and potentially being disqualified. Good times. Or the one innocuous post back in like, late August before season 38: "hey, I hear some random guy comes back from EoE and wins." Ha ha, that can't be true ... or can it? And I'm so happy I cut out of here early before the real spoilers came. When I was last here, Kim was still the winner. (and now I know where all that "Adam is a pre-merge boot" stuff came from) I guess the "Ethan is a diabolical mastermind who goes deep" was a unique foiler from YouTube (a diabolical mastermind ... of love and positivity!) Thanks for being so diligent and keeping the spoilers out of the main forum. Love you guys!

Lacina, I was one of the ones who thought you didn't deserve your win on Game Changers. You deserved better in my eyes. And I apologize.

There's a whole LA/California contingent I'd expect to see if Peih-Gee is doing this. I have no inside information, but I wouldn't be shocked to see Adam among them either. With the news that LA County will likely extend its stay-at-home order through July, I'm guessing that puts a pin in any hope of Survivor filming until at least the fall. And beyond, if second waves of COVID-19 pick up around the country, that could present its own logistical challenges. I maintain we'll be lucky to get Survivor in 2021 at all.

As always, I don't know who's coming back from EoE, but I have a pretty good idea who isn't. Storytelling 101 indicates you have to foreshadow your potential returning character, and (I think?) the editors chose not to show the following players giving a confessional about how excited they were about the battle back challenge (which would remind us they are still there, and still interested in winning): Sophie Adam Jeremy Nick (I don't think?) Then there are players who got confessionals not really about the battle back, but more about EoE/the game itself (Amber about the island, and Yul about -- what else -- fire tokens). The rest of the players all got confessionals about the battle back, I believe, so they are fair game. I find it easier to rule players out than in, so I'm ruling the above 5-6 players out. Who gets in is anybody's guess, though I can't decide whether they'd make it super obvious (Natalie) or not that obvious (not-Natalie). I kind of lean towards the latter, that this was Natalie's "farewell to the queen of EoE" swan song episode. But sometimes the editors are just that obvious. I guess we'll see.

Any word on who's appearing or are they keeping it a secret?

I find it ironic that Animal Crossing depicted the exact opposite of what happened. Had that been CT's strategy (pile numerous heavy boulders in front of the bunker) instead of getting too cute by a half with the knots, I believe this challenge would've gone exactly the way everyone expected. But oh my goodness, I love this. Jay's red skull on his beanie. Bear with a literal bear hat! Josh crying for no reason! Genius. Thanks for posting.

I've been a Rhino fan, but he was terrible. "'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' would sound great as a halting, off-tempo country song," said no one ever. I really liked Kitty, and thanks to the smart posters here, I wasn't surprised who she was (though I still don't know who she is). I also thought Turtle was meh. Not fit to shine the Rottweiler's "Somebody You Loved" shoes. If the Frog is Bow Wow, I hope they start throwing in some Ex on the Beach clues, to make them think it's Romeo (especially given their recent twitter fight).

I was rewatching the episode and I wasn't sure if Nick said this wrong, or was technically right, but with an odd interpretation of these concepts. Nick was talking about how he had six fire tokens, but never had anyone approach him: "I have all the demand and none of the supply." Now if he has fire tokens (supply), but nobody approaching him (demand), wouldn't he have "all the supply, and none of the demand?" Unless he was interpreting "demand" as "I have demand for advantages" and "supply" as "advantages offered." Which is such an odd way to look at it, but maybe that's what he meant? Forget who's going to win the game: this is what's been keeping me up at night.

I can't tell what was more excrutiating: Jay being nearly concussed and having to be pulled from the game for not knowing where he was, or Jenna dithering about whether to quit because her boyfriend threw a hissy fit over her two-year old DMs.

Me at 9:50: Huh. We have 10 minutes left. Me at 9:56:

Emphasis mine. If Wendell or Adam win this season, the entire editing staff should be fired. Wendell was shown as an all-talk-no-action showboat in a ripped-from-MTV Ex on the Beach subplot with Michele, and Adam was shown as the basket case who couldn't figure out where to put his torch, alienated everyone on his tribe and then tried to play a podium to save himself. Forget firing them: if Wendell or Adam wins this season, whatever film school the editors graduated from should revoke their diplomas on principle.

I'm surprised nobody brought this up, but to me, this crystalized that nobody was watching this show from 8-9PM. Eight of ten were from the 9-10PM hour (Louis and Jovin were the only exceptions). The last five who performed all made it in. Whether they were really the five best, the producers wanted to push them or people just didn't watch until then, it's fascinating. I remember discussing "the death slot" (first) and "the pimp spot" (last) on Idol, but 8-9 ended up being a death ... hour. (And does Mikayla really spell her name like that? I'm going to get Survivor misspelled voting flashbacks. Mi-kay-la.)

So, the relatively older guy who got his start in the club scene and had been lounging in obscurity learned to edit and/or expand his craft to fit into the show's definition of fashion and won the season. Looks like Tim and Heidi aren't the only things this show "borrowed" from Project Runway.

This sort of came up in the episode thread, but my question is was this ever explicitly explained to the contestants? Because Jay has used this wording before, the whole "you send me in, you're taking away your own chances at a red skull," but nobody else has. So, I can't figure out if MTV never said anything and relied on them to figure it out, or if they spelled out explicitly what would happen (a.k.a. "every time you send the same player in, the number of guys/girls who qualify for the final decreases by one") and most of the contestants were too dumb or too arrogant to get it. I can't imagine the producers thought this would result in the same player being thrown in three times, but I'm trying to figure out if the players were told this and responded, "math is hard, mmmkay?" or if MTV stupidly thought the players would be smart enough to figure it out, and therefore the blame lies at their feet. I'm kind of thinking the latter.

Thank you so much! I'm still a bit baffled, though, because of this, which clearly states New York is one hour ahead of Lima: Unless timezone and "actual time it is now" are two different things (which they could be). https://www.travelmath.com/time-change/from/Lima,+Peru/to/New+York,+NY It's funny, because I had to look up times in Peru this past fall, so I ruled out Peru completely for this question, because it seemed to be an hour behind Eastern (like Mexico City) every time I googled, "what time is it in Peru."

I'm still scratching my head over Lima, Peru as the answer to Jane Fonda's question about which country sharing a timezone with New York City. When I google, "what time is it in Lima, Peru," I get one hour behind Eastern time. Maybe that's because when this was filmed, Daylight Savings Time hadn't started? I know everyone else has moved on, but that continues to bug me. I ruled it out immediately, because I thought Peru was Central time (like Mexico City). It's closer than Iceland, but again, maybe it was a Daylight Savings Time thing.

From another thread: I kind of have to dispute this, because I actually think Ben is playing a ... decent game. And in an all-winners season, if you're not going to win, becoming a good goat is kind of an art. Ben has yet to become so irritating, he's not worth keeping around (see: Adam). He's not seen as a threat, but he's come close to winning a few challenges and managed to make alliances with powerful people or those with perceived power (like Tony). He's found an idol for himself and helped Denise find one. He hasn't received that many (any?) votes. I don't know, Ben has done way more this season than I would've expected, given his first season. While people liked to lump Adam and Ben together, I think their divergent post-merge paths show how they were able to adapt (or not). If they were both vying for the goat role, Ben snatched it from Adam's grasp, and has yet to let go. And he's still there, unlike quite a few other, better players. Albeit with probably no shot at winning, but he'll still be taking home more money than those who were "better" than him. He's a goat who will laugh all the way to the bank.

Anybody want to relive MTV's most watched Challenge clip for the entire month of April? (no surprise) This never gets old, and I love how it's cut with the confessionals: Bananas' personal experience in eliminations vs CT, Bear crowing, "vintage CT is back," Tori declaring "Jay doesn't seem to have a strategy," CT's maniacal laugh. And how the crowd absolutely loses their minds when Jay wins. Although notable to me is that Dee is absolutely stone-faced. Which puts her in an even worse light, and reinforces how much she was using Jay and couldn't have cared less about him. This was fascinating and showed more strategy in what Jay was doing than the show did. He spent 10 minutes on ropes and chains, 10 minutes on dragging heavy stuff (although interwoven with ropes and chains). It also showed the flaw in CT's strategy, because Jay only had to move 4-5 heavy pieces, then focus on the knots. If CT had piled heavy things in front of the bunker door, I'm not sure Jay would've won. Working on the knots allowed him to take a breath and regain his focus. If Jay had to lift 10-15 more heavy things, he might've gassed out. CT needed to use his size against Jay, not his savant knot-tying ability. But he didn't, and we have an elimination for the ages. Still, CT overthought this challenge. With his size advantage, he needed to turn it into, "who can lift more heavy stuff." By not giving Jay enough heavy stuff to lift, he played himself.

And it's not like he's married to former Miss America (right?) Miss Missouri isn't exactly on the tip of everyone's tongue. Jenny isn't even from Missouri, nor did she ever do pageants. That, more than anything else, is the strongest evidence I've seen that she googles these things. I bet she wrote down the clue, may have deduced that was a Miss America-type crown, and googled something like "athlete married to Missouri pageant." There is absolutely no other way she could've come up with that answer. It makes no sense. At least her Kandi Burress guess was more within the realm of possibility and I believe she knew Rob Gronkowski without googling, but I don't believe she knew this one without searching something on the Internet. I did notice the orange scarf on Rhino this week! And how much taller he is than Nick Cannon.

Edge of Extinction came up in the editing thread, and I maintain if -- if -- they ever bring this concept back again, pre-merge people need to go to Ponderosa. Like, you get your chance to compete until merge, and then you're not the jury, you're just gone (I can see why they didn't do it during season 40, but for a bunch of newbies, absolutely). Following the merge, the jury can stay on Edge of Extinction, with the chance to come back at final 6 (like in season 38) or to be part of the jury. But then the winner is only being voted on by people who played together (including the Edge returnee, who would've rejoined the group). A pre-merge jury has several members voting for someone they've possibly never played with, who all you've seen of them is their tribal council performance. Unless the show is going to start showing Edge of Extinction folks the dailies, pre-merge jury should be killed with fire (not literally. Just the concept). Long story short: Pre-merge jury is ridiculous, and I hate it.

This was so cute. I thought it started out slowly, but you could see them all rediscovering their characters and they all got stronger as the episode progressed (except Rob Lowe, who must embody Chris Traeger because he was on from minute 1). Wasn't expecting to see the side characters, too -- that was fun! Although what was the deal with the floating lights in Chris Pratt's basement during the Johnny Karate demonstration. Anybody else notice that?

From the EW article. Jay gets it. Survivor logic! Pity it didn't work here:

I now hope that's what Tyson's "Adam's going to have a tough time" comment last episode was foreshadowing: Adam running too slow, complaining about being out of shape and falling down in the rocks during the challenge, as opposed to some flag-raising mental breakdown. Oh, Adam. Can't escape that fool edit. @peachmangosteen thanks for the video clip. No idea how I mixed up Kim and Nick's writing, oops. And I'm not even a little surprised the "writes so big it falls off the page" person is Tony.

I can't help but thinking this "win an elimination, get to the final" twist has backfired spectacularly so far. It's almost Big Brother-esque. I didn't blame them the first week when they threw in two rookies, and the second week I think is what the producers hoped would happen (an "any given Sunday" mentality). But after CT went home, it should be dawning on some of them the last person you want to throw in is Jay. He's had one weird upset victory, but every single guy (and most girls) is physically stronger than he is. You want him in the final as competition (unless you're Rogan and you're an idiot). He was a layup, but he's now a goat in Survivor terms: you take him to the end so you can beat him. If the girls keep voting for Jay, they decrease the odds he's their competition in the final. They need to throw their votes on a variety of weaker guys, to increase the odds of an "any given Sunday"-type upset, and to make their competition weaker for the final. Do you want Jay standing between you and a million dollars, or Wes and Bananas? For mid-tier guys, like the Joshes and Nelsons and Kyles (just my perception, I've only seen three seasons) this "keep throwing in Jay" strategy increases their odds their elimination challenge will be against someone stronger. Would you rather have Jay standing between you and a red skull, or Wes and Bananas? I guess their reasoning is throwing one guy in every time means there will be more weak guys to beat later, but it also stacks the deck for the stronger guys, because the more strong guys earn a red skull, the stiffer your final competition becomes. The goal for most of these players should be get as many weak people into the final as possible, but I guess they haven't figured that out yet. You want Jay and Swaggy C and Josh walking around with red skulls. They're layups in the final, and if you need to earn your red skull, they're ripe for the picking. But I guess that's not how Challenge brains work.

Huh, I could've sworn one of the only times we've ever seen Nick vote, it was in cursive (I thought I remembered, because it was distinctive). And Jeremy had one cursive vote. In fact, one player has always written votes in cursive, so I've been attributing them to Nick. Maybe I was wrong. (also Nick was extremely vociferous about not voting out Kim, seems odd he would've changed his mind). I'd like to know the player who wrote Kim like a three-year old, barely forming the "M." Alas, the editing has deprived me of one of my secret favorite parts of Survivor: learning the players' writing so I can figure out who voted for who.