simplyme

Here's the thing: Both BB and Survivor are social games. In order to win, a player has to eliminate people who will vote for them instead of whoever else they are up against. That means they need to read their competitors correctly. Josh actually had a better read on the jury overall, and his strategy of using the goodbye messages to come clean and throw Paul under the bus was more effective than Paul's strategy of "sic others on them and act innocent." Paul didn't lose because people were bitter. He lost because he played an inferior social game to Josh. As Jeff Probst will tell people (and Russell Hantz), the game in BB and Survivor isn't about who the viewing audience likes or thinks played the best. That's (usually) a different game. It's about who the JURORS think did so. So a player can make the viewers ooooh and ahhh as he/she works their way to the final, but that just guarantees a better placement/more money. One cannot win without jury management, and Paul blew it again. And yes, I do think that Paul could have managed to get Mark, Elena's, or even Cody's votes had he handled things differently. None of them were huge Josh fans.

If it makes you feel better, elsewhere he's listed I think eight (?) people to watch. I seem to remember them as Alan, Desi, Mike, Ryan, Patrick, Roark, Ali, and Chrissy, but I could be misremembering them.

I'm taking a moment here to be glad she's not a Kardashian/Jenner and that her diploma IS her greatest claim to fame. :P

Jeff is Jeff. He has to hype the season somehow, folks. I kind of feel that no matter what he would say, people would be grumpy about it. Are the challenges getting repetitive? Yes. Hopefully they'll do something new with some of them. The theme is dumb, and I don't care, just like I didn't care about it in MvGX and it ceased to matter after a certain point no matter how much Probst applied his pointy little stick of "speak in generational generalizations!" (Say that five times fast.) Having looked through the cast... I have some decently high hopes. That could mean I'm going to be horribly disappointed, but there are a number of castaways who appear intelligent and somewhat humorous in their print interviews. Hopefully that translates to the screen. (If nothing else, in terms of eye candy, Cole Medders has a freaking 8 pack. Not a 6 pack. An actual 8 pack. And it's not a plastic He-Man chest. *boggles*) I really enjoyed MvGx. It was the first full season of Survivor I'd watched in years. Having now recently gone back in the past 6 months or so and watched or rewatched 21 seasons, I don't think the most current seasons are really any worse than the first 20 seasons. We're just more jaded. Honestly, taking a few years off Survivor was probably the best thing I could have done to sustain my love for the show and I didn't even know it. It let me get over my issues with it (casting Brandon, casting Brandon again) and focus on other aspects.

Just wanted to remind people that Tuesday, Sept. 19th is the real International Talk Like a Pirate Day, not to be confused with the contestant with a holiday name on this season of BB. International Talk Like a Pirate Day wikipedia link Talk Like a Pirate Day website (by cofounder Ol' Chumbucket) Special thanks to @Nashville for actually referring to Whitsunday as ITLaPD. It reminded me it was coming up.

I just took it as her being proud to have earned her degree. For some people, that's a really big deal (for various reasons). As to whether she's using her degree in her job... 1) She could be. We don't know what her duties are. For example, if she helps handle the celeb's communications, there are several areas of study that are applicable. 2) You can view college as training for a job/career, or as one way to continue to educate yourself. I happen to be a fan of education, whether it's formal schooling or using the public library or getting the old guy next door who knows how to fix everything to teach you a few things. ;)

No, but if the winner of the Superbowl or World Series was an experienced NFL or MLB team that only had to play collegiate teams to get there and win and had an occasional assist from the refs/umps, you can bet I'm going to mock the hell out of them.

And how are we doing the actual player pick? Post them here? Would it just be first to post gets the player they want, or do you want us to each create a ranked list so you can draw names from a hat or go in order of sign ups and give people the first player on their list who is undrafted? I apologize for making this so complex. :P I blame my past experience in a fantasy football league, where I was known as the woman who broke players.

One more question... As it's Heroes, Healers, and Hustlers, the season is pretty obviously starting with those three tribes. When picking who gets immunity, I see that we put the tribe name. In a three tribe situation, do we get the points as long as they don't go to tribal, even if they aren't the tribe that comes in first? Also, just reiterating that even while in the multi-tribe stage(s), our pick that week for voted out is still supposed to be an individual. Tell me now if I misunderstood that. ;)

I'm also in, though maybe a bit confused. What I got was the first 17 of us plus @Daisy draft a player and get points based on how they finish. Sign ups #18 plus don't get a player or their finishing place points, but based on the points structure of weekly picks, that can be overcome. In addition, each week all pool members (whether they got their very own castaway or not) predict an immunity winner and who will be voted out. Correct picks get points. Pool member with the highest point total at the end wins. Is that basically it?

Yeah. I think my favorite comment was this one: Her remarks about other players seem really petty, too.

This guy is a lot more interesting to me after reading his comments about other players in Josh Wigler's "Meet this Castaway" series. I feel like in his bio and the video, CBS was going for a Tony-esque vibe with the manipulation and lack of trust. But I am finding his pre-game reads on the other castaways interesting (and in Cole Medders's case, hysterically funny), and he seems a bit more grounded and principled than Tony. I also like that he ended up on the healers tribe because of the way he explained his job to Probst. (This was in Wigler's overview of the Healers tribe.) Joe told Probst that Probst didn't understand his job; that being a probation officer was about being there to help people who were going through a transition period, but also holding them accountable for their actions if they screw up. The urologist Dr. Mike is also interesting me a LOT after reading his comments about other players.

For those upset that Josh didn't publicly stand up to Paul and out Paul's game, I think Josh has figured out that subtle is the way to go in that area. (I know. I felt weird typing that.) Think about it. Anyone who has publicly expressed any objections to Paul has been eaten alive by the house. Josh has seen both Raven and Alex lose their partner courtesy of Paul and then continue to do Paul's bidding. Any time Josh has expressed his reservations to Christmas, she's shut him down, sometimes viciously. So Josh knows that he has to wait for Paul to actually backstab these people and make sure they know then, when Paul can't get out of it, how badly Paul has been playing them. Let that betrayal rankle as they sit in jury. In the meantime, as far as I can tell, Josh has woken up and is trying his hardest not to let Paul make him do his dirty work. If Josh can make it to the end, it may work for him.

I agree with this, and wanted to add that since Maggie's husband competed on ANW last year, too, with both of them cheering each other on, I imagine there was additional pressure for the divorce to be Maggie's back-story focus this year.

I don't think there's any shame in moving on to another season for a while and maybe retrying from where you left off some other time. And to me, there's no shame in admitting you just can't get through a season if you've given it an honest try a few times. (I can't do S1. I know it's iconic. It just isn't for me. Six tries told me that. :P) That said, my advice for watching/rewatching is that I thought focusing my attention on Holly and Fabio made it more tolerable. I noticed that Fabio acts like an idiot, but he knows immediately when someone misuses a big word. Watching Holly go from crazed and falling apart to a strategic, dominant player was interesting. Also, the less energy and attention I gave the really hateful characters, the better, I say.

Both an Othello reference AND a Gone With the Wind reference tonight? You realize this crowd watches a trashy tv show, right? ;) (No, seriously, loved them both.) Huh... What would that... Oh. Yeah. That's probably more, um, exact. To keep Matt at a distance? Although I rather like the theory @MrHufflepuff floated about ice skating.

Not a star, no, though as someone who watches a lot of NFL I knew the name. I could tell you he played defense but not position (cornerback mostly) or team (s). So from Wikipedia, the summary is basically: Drafted in the seventh round by the Cowboys. Made the practice squad his first year and then got activated to the lineup when someone was injured. He also played for Houston, Jacksonville, Chicago, and Arizona, and several years he was starter-quality. Right now he's a free agent. He's had some issues with injuries. I did note that he was also a track star in college.

That's pretty much exactly what I thought. Although to be fair to Probst, Spencer's own mom and sister thought the same thing. That said, Probst and I do not always agree on what makes a great castaway.

Interestingly enough, in this Hollywood Reporter article Probst singles Patrick Bolton out as the one person he doesn't see winning. (The interview was conducted hours after the season began, so all 18 castaways were presumably still in the game at that point.). The relevant question and answer:

Well, Alan Ball dislikes clutter and wishes he could bring baby wipes. Maybe the two will bond. The new JT and Fishbach could be an NFL cornerback and a urologist, I suppose.

I did like this bit from her bio:

I think Cochran, Andrea, and Brenda could all have beaten Phillip at the end IF they let him get there. That's a big if. They may have decided to take him out after the Three Amigos.

Great. I get excited that Jason sticks to his guns, then it's right back to hoping for a meteor to hit the damn house. This level of disgust is not healthy for me.

Paul must have really fucking boring conversations in his life if no one can ever espouse a varied point of view without it being an insult. I mean, I'm picturing him surrounded by a bunch of Stepford Friends. Zzzz.

One thing I've considered is that Production actually wants an Alex win. She's gotten a fantastic edit so far. Also, Julie has made a comment about Paul getting too arrogant, and now the DR seems to be at least hinting they should think about Paul. And now that I've been such a ray of hope and sunshine, gifting you with visions of an Alex win, I'm going to see myself out. Quickly. PS Sending prayers and well wishes your way, @Katesus7