Miss Scarlet

I find Jim to be insufferable. Not surprised that he would patronize Michele and that the preview for the season shows him calling her "sweetie". Good for her for telling him off about it.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Spencer would bond with Jeremy. In some ways Jeremy is similar to Tony - an older father figure, with a physical "blue collar" job that Spencer can look up to. And if Kass is to be believed, Spencer was in awe of Tony.

rose711 - I totally get your point and I've been thinking about some of those things too. It's just I feel that Kelley has actually been somewhat quiet, except for finding the idol, which they had to highlight and Abi gets an unusual amount of airtime because she's such an unbelievable trainwreck. I don't understand why people like Ciera, Kass, Monica and Kimmi can't get more confessionals. I'm sure they'd be just as interesting as Savage's or Jeremy's. And I do think they have a tendency to have the women's stories/plans/strategies omitted or articulated by men. It is an issue with this show. But I think I've also become cynical because of the abysmal editing that Survivor has had before. Like NutMeg said, we'll have to see how it plays out.

It's really interesting that the show recognized viewers' unhappiness with the sexism of last season, yet they still see no problem with giving most of the female contestants poor edits to the point where some of them are basically mute. They seem to think that the only way women's voices should be heard is through stories that male players tell in an attempt to humanize themselves (Savage last week, the totally awkward and cringeworthy discussion Spencer had with Jeremy this week, Jon talking about Jaclyn's infertility problems). I'm so over this.

I don't understand the tears for Savage's story. I burst out laughing during his dramatic pause and kept laughing hysterically for the rest of it. It was so ridiculous. Abi's chimney moment with Pei-Ghee was a close second for most hilarious moment of the episode. She is an amazing trainwreck.

I said it last week and I'll say it again - Savage is insufferable. How does he get through life continuously bragging about himself without anyone ever telling him he's incredibly self-indulgent and to stfu? Or maybe they do and he just doesn't listen to them? I am actually curious about this. It's fine to say you don't like someone or that you don't want to work with them, but to say such extreme things like "they have no morals and no values" is just vitriolic. I feel like he was trying to say that Stephen has no morals or values because he's unmarried, meaning that he doesn't live his life the way Andrew does or hasn't made the "right" life choices? I don't even understand what Savage was actually trying to say. I really hope the main point of his whole edit this season is to show what a giant asshat he is to himself and to everyone else and get him accosted on twitter. Although if he didn't learn anything from his awful behaviour on Pearl Islands there's probably no hope for him. As others have pointed out, Stephen is his new Skinny Ryan. Savage really is just like Probst, not just in age and appearance, but in personality. They cannot stand men who are "intellectuals" because they're envious and it's too threatening. They also cannot stand men who they feel are "beta" males and who do not spend every waking moment trying to become "alphas" because it reminds Probst and Savage of what they don't like about themselves and invalidates their life choices/the need for their facades of manliness. Or because they just need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves. Yeah and it is so frightening. Of course he defines his wife only through her attractiveness. That's the only thing that matters about women to him. He is such a sexist prick. Apparently there's a secret scene that got edited out with Stephen talking about how easy he finds it to live outdoors. I also noticed that in the IC he made it up to the top of the second pyramid on his first try, while Savage slid back down and had to try again. But of course the edit only presents the narrative of Stephen as a bumbling nerd. Does the show seriously not understand that it's better not to force people into archetypes and that they'd have a much more compelling product if they showed the players' multi-dimensionality? Why do they think we want to watch a show where all the "characters" are walking stereotypes? Because it's easier? Because Survivor has the same audience that Two and a Half Men did? You're killing me, show.

I think Rob understated how much Vytas's creepiness affected his ouster last week. Yes, Vytas was probably seen as a threat because of his connections, but the creepiness was still an issue, not just some fabricated storyline. Rob did the same thing with Vince last season. Obviously Rob is not a woman and doesn't know what it's like to be so uncomfortable because of men like that, but I would think that after doing the podcast and hearing about these issues he would have less of a blindspot about stuff like this.

Yeah, I loved her reactions to Drew and the others on her tribe. I would have been rolling my eyes too.

I loved how everyone else that got a confessional about where they went wrong the first time they played said one thing and Abi got a whole montage. Hehehe. I think Varner showed his hand a little too much at tribal. He didn't have to tell everyone that he was going to play so hard. Although I guess they were about to find out a few minutes later anyway.

After his first confessional where he talked about having the perfect life my exact thought was "Savage - still insufferable". I think that's a good point. It really is just when the recipient wants attention and so when it works it's a reflection of them and their needs, not Vytas's "skills". I liked Kelley in SJDS. She was smart and quietly competent, but not the most compelling player and I know she got a lot of hate online for being boring. So I feel like she's trying too hard and overcompensating for that. She was just a little too animated and overly dramatic during her idol hunt and subsequent confessionals in a way that didn't seem very authentic.

The show needs to calm down about Joe. He's not God's gift to the world or to Survivor. He seems inoffensive enough, but I can't see anything particularly special about him. It's so weird to me that this is the type of guy that people drool over. He's definitely the type that Jeff falls in love with so maybe Probst is using his EP credit to brainwash everyone else to think the same way. I...don't get it. It will suck if this season is basically a love letter to him? This show takes an amazingly stereotypical and reductive view of all its contestants. As amusing as the sequence with Stephen and the tree branch was, it was also ridiculous. It's too "alpha males are x, beta males are y". I don't think it ever occurred to anyone that works on the show that you can be an intellectual and still be athletic and socially skilled. I mean, Stephen wasn't at his social best in this episode for sure, but since when are bumbling nerds also 6'2 and muscular? And apparently Savage and Joe are the epitome of alpha males, even though Savage is some sort of lawyer/supposed intellectual and Joe is pretty soft-spoken and wasn't even the leader of his alliance last time - Jenn was. So I don't even really understand what the show believes alpha and beta men are and wish it would stop trying to force commentary about masculinity. It was like when Jeff kept exclaiming how different Malcolm and Cochran were and how strange it was that beta Cochran could win the show and Malcolm didn't and Malcolm was basically like "actually Cochran and I are very similar and that's why we get along so well" and Probst was like "nooooo, that can't be true". I know that this is what reality TV is and even if people didn't want to edit the show that way the time constraints make it difficult to flesh out the "characters", but I think the show needs to realize that people are dimensional and can have a range of qualities instead of forcing them into archetypes that don't even fit. But of course I know that will never happen. Sigh. Still don't like Savage and Terry. I don't understand the fandom for them at all. They are both dull, humourless, socially inept men who think everyone should defer to them and bow down at their feet. I never liked the way Savage treated Skinny Ryan and I never liked the way Terry treated any women. They can both go anytime for me. Also, Savage? Telling Joe that your daughters have a crush on him is weird and embarrassing for both Joe and your daughters. So just stop. Kelly: "I've been thinking about this for the every day for the last 15 years" Me: "Yeeeah, I don't believe that." Shirin and Kass are both interesting to me in that they have such poor awareness in how others see them, but they are actually pretty perceptive about people. I thought Kass was right about a lot of the observations she made in Cagayan, especially about Spencer's immature behaviour, and both her and Shirin had Vytas pegged exactly how I've always seen him and how he came off in this episode. I wonder why they can't use these observational skills for the way people view them. I have loved always loved Varner and wanted him to come back. He can be a bit of a try-hard though, so I hope I don't get sick of him if he keeps getting tons of airtime. I think he's going to go really far.

I would hate being stuck on the island with her, but I have a soft spot for Abi Maria. For some reason I just love her and think everything she does is hilarious. I guess it's the entertaining trainwreck factor? I also remember being so impressed with her Ponderosa clip from the Philippines. She seemed very sweet and mature there and I give her all the credit in the world for dealing with RC as well as she did.

I'm not sure why she keeps saying it was her dad that ruined her game. I remember it was actually that Jon Misch found out that Kelley had been trying to get rid of him at Hunapu and so didn't want to work with her after the swap. I thought she acknowledged in her exit interviews that this was true and didn't involve her dad. Oh well. I guess they are really trying to push that narrative for all the Blood vs. Water people.

I'm not the biggest Shirin fan, but just FYI women standing up against sexism or abuse is not man-hating. It's bravery. And you can do that while appreciating and having close relationships with many men. Terry hasn't learned anything from his first time in the game. I don't look forward to watching him this season - he's dull and interchangeable with Savage.

I get why the narrative she had in Cagayan would make people like her, but I never warmed to her. I'm not a fan of players that make it through the game just with immunity wins. This is not a decathlon. I love the description of her as "the female Terry Dietz" and I think it's spot on. Kass has described her as self-righteous and I definitely see that. I liked how in one of the confessionals she said "last time I was nice Tasha" and they showed a clip of her berating her tribe. Well played, editors. Well played.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I don't think of it as a "bad edit". To me this edit confirmed the way I've always seen Vytas, and Shirin said it perfectly, which is smarmy. I hated the last time how he said "the only thing women love more than a bad boy is a reformed bad boy". Yes, because women are all simplistic and reductive like that. It's like he's taken all his knowledge about women from some book about "what women want" that was actually written by a pick-up artist (or Vince). I loved the pregame interviews where the players totally had Vytas's number. Shirin talked about how his supposed "charms" didn't work on her, Kass compared him to a sociopath and Spencer said that Vytas thinks everyone buys into what he says and does, but people actually don't. That's when I knew this was going to be a good season. If Vytas was smart he would take this opportunity to learn about appropriate behaviour towards women.

From the Xfinity interview "I went from cool yoga instructor to creepy in 30 seconds." Me: No, you were never the "cool" yoga instructor.

Wow. I had pretty much the exact same experience with a friend of mine who made an ethnic slur and when I told her it was offensive she said "no, it's not" (side note - I love it when people who are not minorities think they get to tell minorities which ethnic "humour" is and is not offensive) and then proceeded to go around badmouthing me to all of our mutual friends, claiming that I was causing problems in our friendship. It really is amazing how people are so blind to their own ignorance and insensitivity and then blame you for it, just as your high school friend did. And the person who did that to me was someone who claimed to be a "liberal", "socially-conscious" person! And her best friend was from the same ethnic group that she made a slur against and she pulled the "I can't be prejudiced, my best friend is from that group" and "I know they're not all like that, my best friend is one of them" and it's like...then why are you promoting stereotypes and slurs that could be used to discriminate against or harm your so-called "best friend"? Why would you want to perpetuate that? Anyway, I did the same thing you did and completely cut her out after that, but the whole thing was so disgusting. Props to us for dealing with that crap and cutting those horrible people out of our lives! There really needs to be so much more education on discrimination and prejudice of course, but also on what people think is this "innocuous" othering (like the type of stuff Merline was saying about Swapnil in the first episode). People really have no concept of how offensive they're being or what "othering" even is. Or they do and they just enjoy othering people because they know if they do it to someone else then they're not the one being othered. I don't even know what to say about this. It's so pervasive and rampant. It's awful. Hear, hear! You've perfectly articulated how the dangers of these "jokes" far outweigh the amusement people get from them. I so agree and this is something that I'm "humourless" about as well. Just know that for every person who thinks you're oversensitive when you don't laugh or criticize them for their slurs, there is someone (and hopefully more than one person) who agrees with your perspective completely and would be thankful to you for speaking out about it. It makes me so glad to know that there are people like you out there.

It really is quite amazing. I think it comes down to 2 things - 1) it's their way of retaining power in a patriarchal society (like "I'm gay, but at least I'm not a useless, dumb woman!") plus anger at being compared to women and 2) I'm sure they're just bitter because women never want to buy the clothes they design. So instead of listening to their customer they assume she's idiotic and wrong and that everything they're doing is so fabulous that women just can't see it. Sorry, I'm not quite following what you're saying. I said larger or unattractive, not larger and unattractive and not assuming that those two qualities always go together. And the examples you listed also put people with opposite qualities on separate sides of the transaction. I just used these descriptions and this example because it seems in-line with what has been discussed over the last 7 pages. Again, I'm not saying this is how I interpreted what happened on this episode of PR. From what we were shown it seemed like Ashley (for whatever reason) was treated unfairly. But I'm just pointing out that sometimes there are women who are automatically labelled as "Mean Girls" when it's not really the case and that it can be unfair to them.

Between the small amount of time devoted to the Mean Girl story and the choppy editing, I can't really tell what was going on. After Ashley was picked last someone mentioned that the teams just chose their roommates and friends. I know they showed it in the first episode, but I can't remember who's roommates with who. Is it Merline, Laurie and Ashley in one room and Candice, Amanda, Kelly and Lindsey in the other? I've found it very interesting that whenever situations like these arise on reality shows, people seem to assume that the thin or pretty women are the Mean Girls and the larger or less attractive women are the victims of the situation when a lot of times in real life I've actually seen the opposite scenario play out. I've seen many larger or unattractive women who were completely unfairly mean to the thin/pretty women, yet it's the thin/pretty women who get unfairly labelled as Mean Girls. I remember I once saw one of the "Cool Kids" in a high school smile and try to be friendly to one of the larger girls in the class and the girl actually angrily screamed back at her "Why are you smiling?!" and started berating her to the point where she nearly cried. Not saying that this was the case on this episode of PR or that Ashley's actually a mean and angry person, just pointing out that it does happen even though a lot of people's assumption are that it works the opposite way.

Brian and Cynthia were so humourless that it was almost hilarious.

Taylor was really determined to get a Hitler joke in there, wasn't she? I guess she felt it was her best shot at being "edgy". She's been good so far and I could definitely see her winning the whole thing because Amy Schumer didn't win her season and they don't want to miss out on the next possible Amy. The fact that so much of Keenan's judging/opinions relies on stereotypes freaks me out. I thought it was gross when he talked to Sheng about his "Asian intelligence" and last season when he told Aida she needed to look less attractive in order to be seen as funny. Ugh. And yet, even considering that, he is still a better judge than Norm. Norm is the worst.

Merline's TH about wanting to be cool made me sad. It never ceases to amaze me how some people never get over not being one of the "cool kids" during school and spend the rest of their lives trying to adapt their behaviour in order to be cool. There's so much more to life than that. I'm having Survivor flashbacks watching PR because Merline's behaviour really reminds me of Shirin, Lindsey has the exact same voice as Courtney Yates and Amanda looks just like a slightly older version of Baylor. It really is starting to feel like reality shows just recycle the same people.

I agree and that's what showed me that Probst didn't really care about addressing the sexism this season. He wanted to attack Dan because Dan had criticized the show and his edit in his exit interviews. Probst did it under the guise of addressing the season's misogyny, probably because he knew that would appeal to fans, but it wasn't what he was actually doing at all. If he wanted to address the sexism, he would have called out Mike and Rodney too. But Jeff doesn't really care about that stuff and is a sexist jerk himself, which is why I said throughout the season that he was not the right person to address this.

I hope to never hear about the #dirty30 ever again. I don't understand how this season got so over-hyped. I mean I understand why this cast of narcissistic psychos thought it was the best thing ever, but I don't know how anyone else ever bought into it.