[S39: Elizabeth Beisel]

Considering how phony her apology was and how much damage she did (based on how many men on social media are saying things like: "See! Women lie about this stuff all the time!"), she deserves all the trolling she's getting.  If it's so traumatic for her, she can always just stay off social media.  (I always find it annoying when adults whine about being bullied on social media.  You can always, you know, just put the phone down.)

[S39.E09: Two for the Price of One]

1 hour ago, huskerj12 said:

I am so weirded out that people didn't think Aaron was black!? What in the world?? Haha

It wasn't obvious to a lot of people. I personally thought he was Hispanic or possibly of Italian descent.  D'oh!

6 minutes ago, Bryce Lynch said:

Missy seems to have decided that all other black people get credit and blame for what she does and that she gets credit and blame for whatever all other black people do.  

I don't think that's what she was saying at all.  I'm not a Missy fan but I can certainly understand why representation is important to people who come from a minority background. 

[S39.E09: Two for the Price of One]

Ok so I guess we’re going to pretend like nothing happened and everything is all good now. Cool, cool. Thanks, Survivor. 🙄 The only saving grace was we got to see Elizabeth lose her 2 strongest allies. Suck on that!

In lighter news, Noura celebrating her victory while her tribe mates all mourned the loss of PB & J was hilarious! I kind of love her.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

Quote

Producer:  "Do you want us to intervene?"
Kellee:  "NO."  

Kellee took action.  She just didn't take the action most of us wish she had, because she had other plans in mind. 

That's the point.  The onus never should have been placed on Kellee for all the reasons previously mentioned.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

11 hours ago, himela said:

We watch a show, we talk about it, we make theories, but when the time comes to learn the true story, we don't.

But we do know the whole story.  There is video proof, multiple witnesses and most of the people involved have acknowledged that it was a serious matter.    Saying things like "There must be more to it" or "We didn't see everything" is basically the same as saying "I don't believe her."  

1 hour ago, himela said:

If she really does that, it will tell me that the harassment issue we are all talking about was not that serious for her since she won't be treating it with the respect we all want to treat it with.

This is so disheartening. If a victim doesn't respond the exact way we want her to, that means it wasn't serious? Yikes.

[Survivor In The Media]

Kellee interview with a little more info here.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

There's a good interview with Kellee here.  A lot more info.  For example, in regards to whether Production should have pulled Dan:

Quote

I did not know about Dan getting a personal warning until I watched the episode. If production was going to give Dan an official warning, they should have just pulled him from the game

And in regards to Missy & Elizabeth:

Quote

I draw the ethical line at using something like this as a tool. The reason is: I needed to be believed, and production needed to step in.

[Survivor In The Media]

I've often wondered if Varner was encouraged by a producer to out Zeke at TC just for the sake of drama.  Not that it makes any difference really, he's the one who chose to go ahead and do it, but I've still always wondered.

15 minutes ago, Lantern7 said:

Richard? Buddy? When you chime in, we gotta remember you grinding on Sue in S8.

Grinding on Sue while he was NAKED.  Shut up forever, Hatch!

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

18 minutes ago, Bryce Lynch said:

As for the Fan Favorite, am I the only one who suspects they brought it back as a damage control move after the nastiness?  At any rate, I certainly hope and expect that Janet will win it.  Between that, and hopefully some Sia money, it might turn out that courage and integrity pays. 

I 100% think they brought it back just for Janet and, while that would normally bug me, I'm totally fine with it this time.  In fact, I would be totally fine if they didn't even give you the option of voting for someone else. I still want the Sia money to die in a fire but, if it has to exist, it better go to Janet!

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

3 hours ago, laurakaye said:

I follow Survivor on Instagram and I was kind of jarred to see a post this morning, asking fans to remember to vote for Fan Favorite.

I'm so glad they're bringing back the Fan Favourite vote.  Janet FTW!  

2 hours ago, Bryce Lynch said:

But, production did take action.  They investigated, met individually with each participant to remind them about inappropriate touching and gave Dan a formal warning for his behavior.  

And when said behaviour continued, they did absolutely nothing.  So, yeah, pretty much in sync with the real world.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

1 hour ago, himela said:

if the producers remove Dan now, who's to say this won't be used as strategy in later seasons? False accusations to have a big threat removed from the game?

But that's not the case here at all.  This isn't a matter of false accusations.  There is video proof of Kellee telling Dan not to touch her (multiple times) and video proof of Dan continuing to do so.  We have seen with our own eyes that Kellee was telling the truth.  

1 hour ago, himela said:

To sum up, if the players want, they can just vote him out.

I've seen a few people say this and it just makes my anger at Production grow even stronger.  Could they have just voted Dan out if he made them uncomfortable?  Sure.  But why should Kellee or any player have to change their strategy and waste a vote-out just to get rid of someone who has been told multiple times, including an official warning from the show, to stop touching people?  It's not the responsibility of the players to fix this.  

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

1 hour ago, Drogo said:

Kellee was clear to the producer that she felt everything would work itself out and she didn't want the show to intervene.  She felt similarly the next day when they met with everyone again privately and off-camera. 

Why would any of us be fine with the show intervening after Kellee was clear that she didn't want them to? 

This is exactly what I'm most furious about when it comes to Production.  Kellee never ever should have been put in the position of making that decision.  It's difficult enough to speak up about things like this in the first place, the onus of reprimanding the other person involved shouldn't fall to the victim.  And the main reason for this is that, 9 times out of 10, the victim will downplay it or sometimes drop it altogether because they already feel like a troublemaker for coming forward and don't want to get blamed even more.  In an office setting, when someone complains about sexual harassment, it's not up to them whether or not that person gets fired.  Filing the complaint is all the victim has to do, it's then up to the people in charge to take action.  In this case, Production never should have put Kellee in the position of having to decide whether she wanted to remove Dan from the game, they should have just removed him.  Period.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

1 hour ago, Lamima said:

 Jeez some of you guys are so black and white about this and there IS a gray area, you know.

When a woman tells you not to touch her, there is literally NO gray area.  None.

12 minutes ago, After7Only said:

Realistically, how would you police that going forward?   Survivors touch each other all the time.    The issue is somewhat subjective.   

The big difference is that, in this situation, Kellee told Dan several times not to touch her. At one point, they showed us a clip where she literally had to run away to get him to stop touching her.  It's not subjective when someone has been told to stop doing something and they continue to do it anyway.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

9 hours ago, amazingracefan said:

I'm still uncomfortable with people talking like Kellee was raped. 

Nobody has ever said that Kellee was raped and nobody has been talking "like Kellee was raped".  People are talking about her being sexually harassed and sexually assaulted, which she was.  Multiple times.  On camera.  It's not on us to sugarcoat the terms.  It's on Dan to not do it in the first place.

1 hour ago, sadiegirl1999 said:

and Missy and Elizabeth’s apologies are non-apologies in my book. Those are “sorry we got caught “ apologies 

Absolutely 100% agree.  Maybe don't issue your public apologies within minutes of each other if you want people to believe they're actually genuine, not word salad from a PR machine.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

27 minutes ago, Lamima said:

How do you KNOW it is?

Isn't it convenient that when Dan feels the need to touch someone because it's freezing cold, or he has to get by them, or run his fingers through someone's hair for a random dirt check, or tickle someone's toes for no reason...it's always a woman?  Funny how "Gosh, I'm just an affectionate guy" Dan only seems to have that affliction when he's around the women.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

3 minutes ago, himela said:

No, Dan was not the only player who wanted to let it go. When the whole confrontation with Dan, Janet, Missy and Elizabeth happened, they all said "we are good now" and the story was over. Then Jeff brought it up again in tribal

Yes, and everybody was fine discussing it at TC, the place where these things are supposed to be discussed.  Missy and Elizabeth said they were "good" during the confrontation with Janet because they were getting called out on their lies and wanted to end that awkward situation.  But the only person who was legit pissed off that it was brought up at TC was Dan.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

8 minutes ago, himela said:

To be honest, neither I or you can know the real truth

Yes, we can.  There were cameras there. We can take what we saw with our own eyes, combine them with what Kellee was saying through her very distressed tears and we can believe her.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

13 minutes ago, himela said:

What I understood from the story was that Kelley was more paranoid about being touched than normal people

Kellee told Dan she didn't like being touched by people because, as with most women, they're made to feel as if they have to apologize and blame themselves for calling out men who act inappropriately.  Add in the fact that this is a game, Kellee had to walk on eggshells to get her point across but not jeopardize her place in the game.  Even if Dan did nothing wrong (he did) and it was all her paranoia (it wasn't), the bottom line is she asked him not to touch her. Several times. That should have been the end of it.

13 minutes ago, himela said:

the players decided to let it go but Jeff wanted his drama.

The only player who wanted to let it go was Dan.  

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

2 hours ago, DEL901 said:

There was an article/meme about Keanu Reeves that made it all the way to CNN.com showing photos of him with his arms around women/fans to take photos and while his arms touched them, his hands were bent back at the wrists so as not to come in contact with them. 

Keanu Reeves is a precious angel and if they ever perfect human cloning I'm ordering 20 of him.

32 minutes ago, Ms Blue Jay said:

Damn, there was just so much potential for good stuff happening this episode and it all went awry. 

I know, right?  I was thinking how awesome it was going to be to watch Kellee and Missy, two savvy players, go up against each other for the rest of the season,  then Kellee didn't play her idol (WTF??) and it all went to shit.

[S39.E08: We Made it to the Merge!]

This season is wild. I swear I change who I’m rooting for every 5 minutes.

I feel really bad for Janet. I do not feel really bad for Kellee. Congratulations on your 2 souvenirs. Somewhere, James is sooooooo happy right now!

[Survivor In The Media]

14 hours ago, Eolivet said:

Last year was Feb 20, but before then, it's pretty much consistently been the last week of Feb.  Kaoh Rong (Feb 17) and Game Changers (March 8 ) were the outliers until now. So, this is extra early.

I was sure they usually started in mid-February so I checked to see if I was just losing my mind and, according to Wikipedia, it looks like the majority of them premiered in early/mid-Feb up until about 2014, then it started premiering later in the month.

[Survivor In The Media]

Is it really that early though?  I'm pretty sure most of the "winter" premieres usually happen around mid-February.  It seems like it's only been the last few seasons that it's premiered closer to March.

[S39.E07: I Was Born at Night, But Not Last Night]

Not to be *that* person, but I purposely avoid spoilers and that last part of your post basically just gave away some pretty important info about next season. You might want to edit that out.

[S39.E07: I Was Born at Night, But Not Last Night]

Yes but Kellee didn't hesitate on purpose because she knew there would be a better offer.  She probably didn't think twice about it when Rob offered her a better deal. 

[S39.E07: I Was Born at Night, But Not Last Night]

On 11/10/2019 at 5:47 AM, himela said:

there are Rob and Sandra and they will offer you a challenge, remember to hesitate so they sweaten the deal for you".

I don't think they know the deal can be sweetened by hesitating. We, the viewers, know that, but if I were playing, it wouldn't cross my mind to decline the first offer in case there's a better 2nd offer.