loki567

I'm trying to figure out how a long of these leaks might jive with the endings in the books. For the life of me I don't know why there would be such a focus on Dany's ability or inability to get pregnant, if it's simply a case to make Jon potentially betraying that much more horrific. It would be very unsavory to me. I'm particularly interested in how Stannis and Littlefinger will affect these storylines. They're much more important characters in the books and I could see both of them holding on until book 7 (or later).

It's the same thing as Devens though. Survivor's all about perception. If so-and-so is perceived as a threat to win the game, they're a threat to win the game. Aurora's been on her own for a long time, somebody who needed to win immunity at certain points to stay, so she gets credit for it.

Bob groped Crystal at a reward challenge. Crystal and Kenny talked about it in interviews. Crystal was going to confront him at FTC and Probst told her that they wouldn't air if she did.

It's not really a case of Richard/Sue is just a Survivor fandom thing that nobody else will care about. We live in an era where there will absolutely be bad press if Richard returns. And that bad press can lead to the Bob/Crystal situation where Probst specifically told her they wouldn't air her accusation against him at FTC. And that can lead to who knows what else, as I feel like it's almost a guarantee there's something else out there that didn't pierce into fan consciousness because they were were able to keep it under wraps. And that could in turn lead to criticism about the way Survivor treats women in general. My point being why court any of that for Richard?

I'm not saying you're wrong because I've had this thought before too, but what would be the point of an All Winners season if you're just going to bring back the people who were guaranteed to come back anyway? It's season 40, seems to me the entire point is to honor their history. I hope the show steps out of their comfort zone a bit and the cast won't be made up completely of people playing their third or fourth times.

One of my great regrets about this series is they cast the perfect Jon but just as a different character. I thought Joe Dempsie would have absolutely nailed the role. Hell, I could have probably name half a dozen actors in this series that would have made a better Jon. Harington is the worst. In fact, he's so bad that I seriously wonder if it affects the writing of Jon.

Obligatory, "Please God, George, finish the books before I/you die." This episode felt like GoT at it's most frustrating to me. I'm suppose to be in awe of the spectacle but after about 20 minutes, I don't care. It's all CGI and action and those can get boring after awhile. I care about story and characters and these big battles episodes always neglect those. Particularly there feels like there's a gigantic amount of the Night's King/Bran story we're missing. I don't know if GRRM decided to keep that for the books (which to be fair would be kind of shitty thing for him to do) but the end of this story has to have more than what we saw tonight, right? For the last time, this episode hammered home to me that I really wish someone else besides D&D had adapted this series. These guys are borderline passable writers adapting one of the greatest series in literary history and they're giving us borderline passable results. Much preferred the first two episodes, which were written by two people. In fact, I'd go as far as to say I wish Cogman had been in charge.

Man, I'm glad this is the final "big battle," episode because this shit is boring and hard to see. I can easily watch an episode with all my favorite characters drinking and telling stories. Give me more than 30 minutes of one barely distinguishable army fighting against another barely distinguishable army and I'm sad I didn't get some sleep.

Christian and Gabby did literally the same thing last season and it ended with their boots over the next two episodes. I wouldn't necessarily bury him yet. He seems like he has a good ability to make the exact right pitch to the right people at the right times. Or maybe he made the move too early, we'll see. But either way, I'm enjoying him as a character and what's he bringing to the game.

Love it. I always thought Jeff, "it would be boring," was wrong. There are actually a lot of good characters in the winners' bunch and I imagine a few would be more entertaining if things weren't going right for them and they were pushed into underdog/blundering roles. My guess is there's probably three you can take right off the table though: Richard, Rob, Cochran. Richard probably doesn't get touched in the MeToo era (no pun intended). Rob has said he won't go back and I imagine he really doesn't want to taint his legacy ending on a loss. Cochran has also said he wouldn't go back but maybe there's some flexibility with it being an All-Winners season. And as much I hated Michelle's win with an all-burning fury, she might actually be a good choice? Like she'll probably want to play hard considering the years of constantly getting shit on by a large stretch of the Survivor fandom. Or she'll UTR her way to another win by virtue of being the least threatening winner. Whatever.

This start is definitely giving me Ghost Island-vibes and that's the worst thing I could ever say about a beginning of a Survivor season. Similar to GI, the twists are throwing the chemistry completely out of whack and the editors are showing the wrong things as a result. The focus on clearly doomed Wendy is giving me those Jacob flashbacks when the editors foolishly decided to focus their first two episodes on a guy who was voted out second. And frankly, considering how shitty most of these last couple of seasons have been, with an obvious huge exception in DvG, I'm glad Probst decided to get a new casting director. Casts are the lifeblood of any reality show and Survivor's casts have been weak for a few years now.

If Probst is responsible for Angelina and Lynn's responsible for all the various, "next Parvati," female cast members, then maybe is a good time for a switch. I will say that Big Brother Over the Top was way better than any regular Big Brother season has been over the past few years and it was primarily because its cast. Most impressively, that season was cast in about a quarter of the time because it started a week after regular Big Brother.

Something to remember about Sean's votes, all the former Pagong players had names with initials at the beginning of the alphabet (Colleen, Gretchen, Greg, Gervaise, Jenna). All the Tagis' names had initials at the end (Kelly, Richard, Rudy, Sean, Sue). So in a very stupid way I think Sean playing the game the same as everybody else on Tagi, get rid of the Pagongs but do it in a way he could claim he was being "honest and fair."

The show should take a HARD pass at Richard. We live in an era where no baggage stays in the past and CBS is currently going through massive upheaval over sexual harassment charges. The Sue situation would definitely pop up again, probably along with Ghandia/Ted and Crystal/Bob. That's just the stuff I remember off the top of my head. Who knows what else there is that didn't slip out into the fandom? That stuff can snowball very fast. I don't think Richard's worth the hassle to the show.

Several people on Pagong considered an alliance and IIRC somebody actually got voted out because they openly suggested the idea. When a million dollars at stake based off of who gets voted out, people banding together to vote out other people is inevitable. In fact, I go as far to say that Pagong was the more unusual group than Tagi.

I'm legit curious, KIMBERSTORMER, who would you list as your worst winner from a gameplay perspective?

That article pissed me off majorly. Not at Mark Burnett, mind you. But at the current trend of media/twittersphere where if you don't like a person's politics or don't like the politics of someone that person has a past/current relationship with, you try to rewrite their entire history as something sordid or despicable. This black-and-white thinking is just infuriating.

Here's the list of all the compiled spoilers at Spoiler Survivor: reddit.com/r/SpoiledSurvivor/comments/aaohw5/38boot_spoiler_posts_update/

Yet. There was just a picture that went viral of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bartending about a month before her election victory against her primary opponent.

I figure Mario would adore Angelina. Nothing he loves more than a well-edited character who is completely oblivious to the feelings and opinions of their fellow cast members. Might be too late for Angelina to make it on the current 115, but I won't be shocked if she cracks top ten on the next one. Hell, Natalia and Natalie might join her high on that list.

Generally, it does seem like returning player seasons spoil easier. Returning players hang out together at conventions and whatnot, information can flow pretty easy. All info is still very flimsy at this point, so I'd take it with a grain of salt. This twist was clearly geared towards Joe but I wouldn't be shocked if it completely backfired in a, "Andrea beats Matt," type of situation. Really there's no way this twist goes well. Based off of Redmond's description, they were hoping people would try to make other people leave with Russell-like shenanigans. More likely you have a bunch of bored people hanging out at the beach which will make thrilling television, I'm sure.

I'm fascinated to see what happens with this season considering this was the "last straw," for the producers and led them to firing Lynne Spiegel Spillman, their longtime casting director. On one hand, couldn't quite blame them as Ghost Island sucked and there were a lot of bland and boring casts before that. On the other hand, you figure DvG would have bought her some goodwill. I wonder if this season is enough of a train wreck to justify her firing. And if so, what part did all these various twists play into everything? We'll see. SpoiledSurvivor over at Reddit had some unconfirmed posts that Kelley loses at FTC to an early boot who makes it back and the twist blew up in the producers' faces because people were able to bond easier on IoE, than they would in a normal game setting. Once again, that's not confirmed at all.

Watching Mike's secret scene is getting me real excited about FTC. He thinks he's going to "spin things," when Nick's a lawyer and Angelina has an extremely high opinion of her negotiating ability. It might be a free-for-all and there's no better way for this season to end. That was always my same thought process with Russell, how much credit should you get when it everybody wants to get you to the end of the game because they know they can beat you? Same thing with Angelina. These two are almost cartwheeling to the F3 because everybody assumes they can beat them.

Reading these interviews and I'm legit jealous of the cast and crew that there was apparently so much more entertaining stuff that they got to experience and the audience will never get to see. I think it's a good indication of how great this season has been, I don't want it to end. These people sound so hilarious and competitive, I'd love to just put the entire cast on another reality show or something. Forget the next Survivor All-Stars, just put this entire cast back for season 40. I think my favorite bit of information from Christian's exit interviews, apparently Davie had spy shacks all around the island, at random times he'd grab Christian to tell him to trust no one, and then disappear back into the jungle.

It's funny that despite being a Christian fan, I felt perfectly fine with his boot. Probably because if he had won the game, he would had to go the route of HIs and immunity wins and honestly? I'm kind of bored of that winner. And I loved that what should have been such a predictable result, turned into an absolute scrum of backstabbing and clusterfuckiness. This season has been so good at keeping track of all the various personalities and giving everybody equal weight so the late game feels like it means something.