Duke Silver

This season proves to me that, much like the rest of American film and TV, the on-screen talent should be pulled from the U.K. and Australia. Fuck...this cast suuuuuuucks. Well, tbf, I guess I don't hate a few of them, but man, the bad ones are so fugging bad. Bhanu vs. Q in the cage match of Survivor Suck. We'd all lose having to watch that. I can't even bother to gather my thoughts beyond that. It's not worth the effort for this shit show.

I think I'm a little in love.

^^ Same. Venus comes across as a bit abrasive, but I can at times as well, and some of the best people in my life are assertive/abrasive.

It sure feels like Maria is a good position going to the merge: she seems to have Charlie on side (who is tight with Ben); Tim thinks she is his #1 based on his manly man convo w/ the other alpha males during the journey, thus, maybe a tie-in w/ Q+Tiff and Hunter+Tevin. I'm glad I actually like her.... I still don't understand what Jem thought she was gaining with the beware advantage wild goose chase. Oh well, doesn't matter as she goes home with an idol in her pocket.

If Bhanu wasn't gone after this ep, I seriously would've stopped watching. I honestly think Hunter has made a mistake showing how much of a challenge monster he is; I think he should've sandbagged a bit. YMMV. But yeah...he's gone once the merge happens; too much of a "threat" I presume, in the eyes of the weaker players. Curious to see if Jem's wild goose chase comes back to bite her. I wonder if at some point she's wondering "uhhh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. No real upside."

So....they did 8 of these, and one of them was.....Big T?? TBC, I have zero issues with her. I just don't understand why she got one of the eight out of all the Challengers we've watched over the last 2+ decades.

YES! ^^this^^. It's not him being weepy/feeling sorry for himself/thinking he's god's chosen alone that bugs. In total context, it's his quick trigger to crazed fury that makes me dislike him, not merely sideye him. More Bhanu is the last thing I want.

3 episodes in and I have had zero fun. No one for whom to root. Weepy Bhanu is already bugging the ever-living hell out of me. Gonna go back to watching S11 of the Australian Survivor; a much better show than S45 & thus far, S46, of U.S.

As a new show watcher (S45 was literally the first time I've ever watched even a single episode of Survivor): is it typically like this where one tribe is treated like a rented mule, losing all the time, and thus we don't get to see/evaluate members of the other tribes? ---- OT: it's weird for me to say, again, as a new watcher, that, based on a couple comments I've seen about the AU Survivor show, over the last few days I have binged fifteen (15 !!!) episodes of season 11. YMMV and all that, but I soooooo much prefer the AU version.

Yeah, I fully admit my bias in favor of Challengers, especially the mainstays like CT, and I am trying hard to have empathy, but I just can't get there and feel bad for MJ. She was a floater; she didn't do much of anything but hang with her fellow network friends; she contributed very little to the prize $$. Upthread I probably wasn't sufficiently precise in my evaluation?, I guess, of how the final votes/stalemate played out. As far as how CT handled it: he did exactly as he was I indicating in his talking heads, I think. He made it pretty clear (to me) that Trishelle was the only person he fully trusted, and whether it made objective sense or not, it didn't matter who the third person was: he was gonna vote them out if he could.

As an observer of CT for close to two decades, I can say that, ohhh, 10? years ago, I'd 100% agree that he played the end that way purely in order to take more $$$. However, the CT I've observed the second decade? I believe him when he says he wanted to vote MJ simply because Trischelle was sincerely the only player he fully trusted and just wasn't gonna take the chance on MJ.

Liz (I think?) really loves herself some Liz, huh? Hubris runs especially high this season... between her and Jelinsky, lots of, uhhhhhh, confidence.

Heh, the prize pot would be significantly smaller were it not for CT, so yeah, for me, based on that plus his ability to reason through things (something we Challenge fans have seen form him), he deserves the win. I just hope it's not a Bravo-lebrity.

Jelinsky might be the sweetest guy in the world, with an awful edit. However, all I'm able to see is delusions of grandeur. What exactly is he good at other than convincing himself he's a legend in the making? I'm just glad I don't have to think about it going forward.

I preface this by saying, yes, I know...sometimes I can be an asshole, but Soda is gonna get on my last nerve if she keeps up with the sing-along stuff. Seriously. It's gonna take me a while to find someone to back in this, only my second season of watching this show.