Trick Question

Josh is basically the only one we've seen "playing the game" so far in terms of strategizing and aligning votes, and even then his plan to toss a vote Baylor's way was really weird. So, it's very hard to predict a winner at this point since we've seen so little of the other tribe's dynamic --- Jeremy seems to have a few plans cooking, but we'll have to wait and see. I'm not too impressed by anyone in the cast yet, frankly, though obviously this is a product of how the episodes are edited. It almost feels like one of those half-returning player, half-newcomer seasons where the new players seem really out of their depths and they're just used as pawns for the vets....except there aren't any vets here.

What would be the protocol be during Tribal Council if someone actually wrote down the wrong name of the person they meant to eliminate? Like, Drew strolls up to the parchment and somehow still writes down 'Josh' when he means to vote for Reed. Would the vote not count? Would Probst stop everything and ask for clarification, like he did way back in S5 when Clay wrote down some obscure nickname rather than Ghandia's actual name?

Rocker so thoroughly burned his bridges with the Braves organization when he was released that I'm surprised Wes didn't automatically dislike him just for that. I agree that Rocker trying to use 'John Wetteland' as an alias was hilarious...if anything, Wetteland might be more famous than Rocker, being that he was a former closer on a Yankees championship team. Good opening episode, and I like the return of a seemingly vintage version of Exile Island. It depends how they send people out there after the reward challenges....presumably the winning tribe picks one of the losers to go, and then one of the winning tribe volunteers themselves?

Re: the All-Star tribal swap. Probably the single most influential tribe swap in Survivor history, no? If it's ANYONE other than Amber who is the one person stuck with the other tribe, Rob doesn't make the personal appeal to Lex to save them, if it's Alicia, Rupert or Jenna going over, they instantly get voted out. That potentially keeps the Rob/Lex/Tom/Kathy alleged pre-game alliance intact into the merge and who knows what happens then when things really start breaking down and Amber gets added to the mix. Maybe Tom, Kathy and Lex realize that Rob and Amber are an unbreakable unit and break them up at F5 or even earlier. Ah well, that's just general alternate-reality Survivor chatter. I like the conspiracy theory that the first Fans vs. Favourites season came about specifically because the producers wanted to bust up any pre-game alliances, so they cast 20 returning players and then cut 10 at the last minute, dropping the remaining 10 into the game with the ten newcomers.

This was also my working theory for the Departure after reading the book. This isn't really a book spoiler since the scene has now been portrayed on the show --- Nora was describing that final moment with her kids and husband and said she was so frustrated that she wished them all gone and then they actually did vanish. That said, your counter-argument is a good one. Even if you limit it to only people who were being wished away at that specific second of 2:23 pm on 10/14/2011, that still probably means that every major politician in the world and most celebrities Depart instead of only some of them.

This is a really good theory. There's been relatively little discussion of how the world is "exploring" the Sudden Departure aside from Nora's agency, though I wonder if two percent of the animal population also vanished. (Admittedly, this would be a lot harder to investigate and/or prove.)

In response to the Rob/Tom/Kathy/Lex pre-game alliance from All-Stars, the producers have used some trickery in other seasons when at least half the cast is returning players. For Fans vs. Favourites, I believe they cast 20 veterans who all believed it would be another 'All-Stars' season but then cut 10 of them just before filming and introduced the newbies instead. While we can assume that 'most' of the ex-Survivors know each other from media and fan events, there are also obviously a large group of former players who aren't nearly as social in that world and thus are still somewhat immune to pre-game deals. Now, CBS is most prone to re-cast the more outgoing veterans so some alliances can't be avoided, but there's also the option of bringing back players who have mostly stayed off the radar since their original appearance. Someone like Chris Daughtery apparently is somewhat of a hermit who may or may not even have internet connectivity or even a phone on his farm, so I doubt he's exactly making the rounds at fan events. The most recent pre-game alliance apparently just happened, if you believe the scuttlebutt that Tina, Katie, Vytas and Aras all had a pre-game deal planned. This still, however, doesn't strike me as particularly shady given the nature of both the season (the new blood vs. water rules) and the fact that Tina and Aras are both winners. Tina's previous appearance in S8 saw her voted out first solely because she was a former winner, so I could see her teaming with Aras as a united front against this happening again. Other seasons have also seen veterans targeted (I'm thinking of S25 when Jeff Kent was gung-ho about eliminating returning players, which forced Penner and Skupin to team up) so I can't blame them for joining forces or having an unspoken agreement going into the show. It also depends on who the specific veterans are --- Amanda didn't want to team with Parvati again in S20 since she'd already lost to her once, there's no way Rob and Russell would've teamed up in S22, etc.

A bit of background on that issue of National Geographic....as this link explains, Christine's sleepy mumbling about 'the spider that lives underwater' is a direct reference to that magazine, plus Kevin's walkie-talkie squawks "Cairo" in his dream (also one of the stories mentioned in the mag) and there's a feature about the Minoans, an ancient Greek culture whose disappearance still hasn't been truly solved by archeologists.

Great, was almost to the end of this very interesting episode when I realize my PVR was triple-booked and cut off the last few minutes. Last thing I saw was the teacher (I'd presume the one Nora's husband was sleeping with) looking around and realizing Nora wasn't there. Anything happen after that?

Because by that time Colton had quit again and the other producers soured on him too, so they aired the footage of Probst throwing him under the bus. I should've clarified my "Probst hates quitters" stance to omit S21, since while he NaOnka and Kelly were indeed allowed to be on the jury, the show was stuck in a hard place given that booting the two entirely would've meant a very short-handed jury. I can see Probst and company literally not having a plan for such an occurrance since it was so far-fetched to have TWO quitters in the final eight, so they were forced to have them on the jury through gritted teeth. Probst has also been pretty soft on players who quit because they're seemingly going through some type of trauma (I'm thinking of Kathy from S16) as opposed to people who quit since they're seemingly just tired of being out there (i.e. NaOnka, Kelly, Osten, Colton, etc.) Speaking of the hated S21, the biggest off-screen development to occur during that season was Sash's alleged attempt to bribe Jane, which was never shown or alluded to on the actual show. It was discussed off-camera at Tribal Council and contributed to why Sash grew to be so hated amongst the other players, yet presumably that's another case where nothing could be done since they couldn't just evict Sash and thin the jury ranks even further. With this in mind, you have to wonder if any other players have tried to use real-life promises (money or something) to buy votes in the past and it's been covered up or otherwise quietly buried by the producers.

Another factor in the infamous S24 decision to surrender tribe immunity was the twist of having them both on the same beach. Because they were such close proximity and the woman were openly begging for deals, the men could all see how badly they were doing and thus didn't fear them at all, and thus felt comfortable in giving up one challenge. Had the tribes been on separate beaches, the men (even despite their success in challenges) might've still seen the woman more as an unknown entity and not been so keen to give up their advantange. It was still a dumb move, yet not quite 'the dumbest move in Survivor history.'

I can't TOTALLY blame Probst for this since he's pretty consistently been against players throwing challenges for any reason, so throwing a challenge to vote out one of the producer favourites was just doubly bad in Jeffy's mind. Then again, that season also had the biggest in-game producer manipulation of them all in Redemption Island, a gimmick literally signed to help more experienced "popular" players with no social games remain alive after getting voted out. For all of the rules in place to regulate game shows (in the wake of the old '21' scandal), I'd wonder if Survivor is able to skirt some those rules by being a 'reality' show rather than a strict competition. That's a terrific point made about the producers using return visits as a carrot to contestants, as it's pretty clear over the last 10-15 seasons that we're getting more and more players being characters (i.e. Sugar, Coach) as opposed to seemingly trying to actually win the million bucks.

A few more book/show changes...

My big problem with the GR's stunt isn't that it failed as the climax of an episode, but it disregarded what seems to be a clear tenant of the cult's ethos --- breaking and entering is actually a crime. Before, they weren't doing anything illegal by standing around, or holding up signs at public events, or standing a few feet outside school property, etc. By breaking into houses and removing photographs, however, they're actually breaking the law. I guess the only loophole would be if they were going into their own homes and removing pictures, though obviously that's not the case (unless Meg is related to the Dursts in some way). Four episodes in and I'm becoming more and more convinced that Carrie C*** is stealing this entire series. If they do another solo character-centric episode, I really hope it's about her.

Watching S1, I theorized that the series would end with Frank becoming POTUS....but for a very brief period of time, maybe even just a day or two before he met his end in some ironic way (either purely by accident to show that not even the great Underwood can control everything, or by one of his many victims getting revenge). He would thus he'd get his comeuppance by all of his scheming and maneuving ultimately make him only a footnote, remembered throughout history only as the answer to a trivia question about who America's shortest-serving president was. This could still technically happen, though I suspect S3 will last longer than a few days or few months, and there's also the possibility of future seasons. And by this point, Frank and Claire have almost moved 'beyond comeuppance' in a way, in that even if Frank's presidency is brought down by some kind of scandal, it won't be appropriate justice for all of the evil he's pulled over the course of the series. Now, I'm approaching this from the perspective of a viewer who soured on the show throughout S2 (really, more like near the end of the first season) as things got increasingly over the top and the Underwoods went from being manipuators to cartoonish near-supervillians. I also got increasingly frustrated by the fact that through two seasons, the show still hasn't come close to creating any actual rivals to the Underwoods --- Tusk is the only one who's ever really been a step ahead of Frank at any point, and even Frank overcame him in the end. There's also the fact that I may be in the minority of viewers who actually want to see Frank and Claire pay for their deeds whereas many HoC fans delight in their unabashedly evil ways, so S3 could be more of the same in that respect.

This. Having seen Coach over his past two seasons, Sophie (correctly) predicted that Coach was a terrible Survivor player and could be easily manipulated into "leading" their alliance and thus taking all of the heat along the way. The crazy thing is, that alliance/tribe was made up of so many weak players whose games nobody respected (Rick, Edna, Albert, Brandon) that Coach would've actually beaten any combination of a final three that didn't have Sophie, so the fact that he didn't recognize this and ditch her was another glaring flaw in Coach's Survivor resume. Favourites: Sandra, Rob Cesternino, Rafe, Yul, Earl, Yau Man, Kim, Eliza, Andrea, Denise, Malcolm, and my all-time favourite Cirie.

I'm also curious how the book's premise and characters can be stretched into a multi-season TV series, though given Lindelof's past issues on "Lost," I suspect he might already have an end-date planned out in advance. He and Carlton Cuse infamously felt they were spinning their wheels midway through the third season of that show, so they went to ABC and arranged that "Lost" would only run for three-and-a-half more seasons (that were shorter than usual network seasons). It could be that Lindelof and Perrotta already know Leftovers will be a three-or-four season show at the most, unless they veer into much different territory than the novel. While it feels like the creators may have erred in assuming that non-book readers would be able to easily understand and get into this world, I'm still very interested in seeing how the series expands on some of the underexplored or somewhat unexplained aspects of the novel. The mystery behind the Sudden Departure will more than likely end up being a macguffin that's never actually explained, though am I wrong in believing that Perrotta gave a hint of an explanation in the novel?

Wow, good catch. That totally makes a lot of sense, though why would the government/insurance companies go along with the charade of a benefits cheque when they could just, y'know, ask the questions? Wouldn't the Departed's loved ones want to figure out what happened and willingly give the info? (Even if it's for dumb things like traveling to Brazil or number of sexual partners.)