Trick Question

It occurs to me that if the original "winners vs. jury vs. non-jury" plan fell through but the show still wanted an all-returnee season, why not simply do another Second Chance online vote? The first one created a lot of social media buzz about the show, so I just assumed it was only a matter of time before that gimmick was revived. I guess "second chance" limits the player pool and prevents the likes of Sandra, Cirie, Ozzy from returning, but maybe just some kind of "third chance" theme?

I've read and re-read all three Funny 115s, though you're right, it's more about nostalgia than comedy. There are some funny bits (the 'CGI Brett' running gag is legitimately hilarious) and I enjoy it when Lanza finds something I'd never noticed within the show, though for the most part, the posts are prime examples of using 1000 words when 50 would do. It was funnier than it was about actual "moments" within the show, rather than writing these big long tracts about season-long "storylines" (the whole downfall of Hantz thing) or posts about a particular player that are just listing every goofy thing a player did during their season (like Coach as a whole being the #1 entry on the second Funny 115). I can't say I've ever picked up on any sexist element to Lanza's writing --- he regularly rips on Probst and the show's promotion of the alpha-male type players --- but since he pretty openly disdains modern Survivor and the gamebot style of play, I'm doubting Kim is one of his favourites.

So would Lord Sugar himself, I'm assuming. Though if someone has a fresh, sound business plan, they probably also have the sensibility to find more practical traditional funding methods than a 12-week reality show.

I actually thought the reward steal storyline was getting so much play because the producers were patting themselves on the back for coming up with this BIG NEW TWIST.

Oh, it's obviously a very difficult path to actually get to the 'popularity contest' portion of the game, a.k.a. the final tribal council. We saw that this very season, with seemingly everyone angling to get next to Hannah and Ken since they apparently had no chance. My point is that "nice/mean" are very arbitrary designations (which you agree with, KimberStormer, given your use of the quotation marks). If a player is blindsided by someone they like and respect, more often than not the reaction seems to be "aha, you got me, well played" rather than jury bitterness. (Or, if the blindsider is clever enough, they're at the FTC with someone nobody respects, so the eliminated jury member has no choice.) If a person you don't like or respect blindsides you, that's when you get the angry reaction. As Sandra put it, this is why she can vote Rupert out and he'll still pick her to win the million dollars. The truly well-liked players have carte blanche to pull "mean" moves since they're rarely given crap over it.

Monica Culpepper, by contrast, was a mother who was castigated by her jury for not being "mean" enough. Everyone wanted her to flip on Tyson and Gervase because they were clearly using her as a goat (of course, Ciera/Hayden/etc. all saw her as a goat for them as well) but Monica stuck to her alliance and got reamed for it. Check out this terrible prediction! Who was the idiot who posted this bit of....oh.

Amazon is one of my favourite seasons, and it was maybe the first 'modern' Survivor season in the sense that Cesterino was a one-man voting bloc in shifting between two alliances. The first five seasons had been a pretty straight-forward case of whichever tribe got ahead at the merge Pagong'ed the rest (except for Marquesas, which was like a reverse Pagong'ing after John Carroll got eliminated), whereas Amazon was more unpredictable since Rob was a bit all over the place in targeting different threats from week to week. Since "game-changer" is Survivor's new pet phrase, it's worth noting that Sugar was a major game-changer but not really for the better. While other players (Fairplay, Rupert, Cesternino) had been definitely playing up a persona to the camera prior to Gabon, they were all still clearly trying to win. Sugar felt like the first player who was specifically just trying to be a TV character and either didn't care about the actual game or realized early that she wasn't going to win so she just went into business for herself. Amazon and Gabon are interesting seasons to pair together like this since both were early cases of the Survivor editors not painting a clear picture for us. Jenna's 6-1 win was a shocker since she had been presented as a mean girl and Matt was presented as an odd but generally hard-working dude....in reality, she was very well liked and Matt was seen as a legitimate nutbar by the jury. In Gabon, the show steered into the Sugar curve by making her the central character and a "hero," in spite of the fact that everyone out there hated her. (Not that this was necessarily a knock on Sugar, since most of the Gabon cast seemed like lousy people.)

Oh man, I definitely would've preferred a winners vs. jury vs. pre-merge boots format. The fact that you have so many winners open to returning leaves the door open for the fabled "all former champions" season, which you have to figure will happen at some point.

I also can't believe Alana is in the final two, and I doubly can't believe that I think she's going to win. This might go the way of that plumbing/repair business that won last season...a fairly small-scale enterprise but a manageable one with a good profit margin. If Alana scales back her plans for country-wide sales to maybe just her county or something, she might clinch it. I guess it wouldn't matter to the seller if you threw the product away quickly....they've still got your money. That being said, yeah, Courtney's plan seemed pretty weak. He made a big deal about being able to spot trends and quickly coming up with products to fit those trends, but if only 33 of his 140+ designs were originals, that's less than one 'new idea' per month over his three years in business. That's not nearly enough volume for an online product-based business. This may be a case of Courtney's plan being the least-bad of the four, as Grainne, Frances and Jessica's plans all had more blatant flaws.

I'll be thankful if the jury sequester is the only change, and not an actual in-game move like another "vote out a juror" reward or something more terrible that would hurt Survivor's foundational concept (winning the votes of people you've eliminated). Are we allowed to discuss the full cast that has been revealed on other outlets, or should be wait until CBS officially reports something? For as many reservations as I have about this season or the 'big moves' stuff Probst will be cramming down our throats all year, I am always excited to see Sandra and Cirie play.

Wow, were the confidence tables ever turned in that exchange. Hannah was all "sure I was flirting with Ken, who wouldn't?" while Ken was all mumbling and blushing.

If you win 10-0, I'm assuming it's more than a sympathy vote. But thanks to this season's wonky editing, I don't know if it was more a case of Adam winning it or Hannah/Ken losing it --- we weren't shown much either way to indicate why Adam would win a blowout or why H/K would lose a blowout. For me it's less Dave Foley and more the Miz, for all you wrestling fans out there.

Frances did make the point that although she's lost 8/10, it's rarely her fault since she has only been in the boardroom twice. (And even those two times it was in teams of five and three, so there wasn't much choice.) I have no idea who's going to win, though I guess technically we never do since we don't know anything about the business plans. This season, in fact, have we heard ANYTHING about anyone's plans? In past years it feels we've at least heard a few tossed-off comments from candidates (usually when trying to save themselves) talking up their plans to Sugar in the boardroom, yet I don't think we've heard anything from any of the five yet. Grainne or Trishna both should've been fired for ignoring Frances' calls and getting drunk on the job. That seems automatic to me. Makes me wonder if Sugar would've fired both had it been earlier in the year, or if maybe Grainne's plan is really good and he has an eye on hiring her anyways.

Gotta love any pre-finale episode that eliminates two people who didn't have a hope of winning. Now we're going into the last episode with six people left and it's still very much up in the air about who wins. Jay and David are the favourites in my book, Ken has an outside shot, Hannah mayyyyyy have a small chance, I think Adam is toast and a Bret victory would be the single most oddly-edited Survivor winner's tale ever. I loved that immunity challenge. You take a simple puzzle and make things very difficult by putting the plinko timer on the process. If Adam hadn't been helping Ken, I honestly wonder if that challenge could've gone on for way longer, it looked like everyone was having trouble with it. It's times like this when I wonder if this is a case of a goat knowing she's a goat, and trying to arrange things to help her friend win. Hannah is nothing if not lacking in confidence, so she might not feel she has a shot of winning any FTC scenario. If that's her mindset, she'll try to help out her friends David, Ken and I guess technically Adam.

I don't think Adam has a chance in hell of winning. The show loves him since he seems genetically engineered to be the ideal Survivor superfan/big movez! type of player, and he's very good at narrating everything in his interviews. But I get the sense that among the actual players, they all kind of see him as a weasel who will flip at a moment's notice. Ken and Hannah have more of a shot than Adam, but you're right, it really goes seem like David or Jay are the clear favourites. I feel like Adam won't bring up his mom's health at a FTC or elsewhere...bringing it up with Jay was simply because of the unique bond they shared with the family visit reward, I doubt he'd use it as a sympathy ploy. Now, if Jay gets voted out and Adam makes it to the final three, I wonder if JAY would inform the other jurors, either at Ponderosa or during the final tribal council itself.

The last few finales have included a reward challenge and two immunity challenges, so they really could start this finale with six people if they just run three immunities.

Frances' "the branding is utterly pathetic" talking head needs to be GIF'ed immediately. (And could be applicable to at least 50% of the show's episodes.) Sugar's VR intro was so cheesy but hilarious. With all the glitching, it felt like the show was five seconds away from turning into Black Mirror.

Survivor is literally nothing but a popularity contest, which the producers have tried to obscure for 33 seasons by trying to make it all about persevering over the elements, personal discovery, making "big moves," etc. It's far easier to promote a show based around big blindsides and vote flips than it is to promote a show based around treating other people decently for 38 days. The only way to win Survivor is to get to the end next to a person less liked or respected by the jurors than you...note that this doesn't even mean you have to be liked or respected yourself (i.e. Brian Heidik), as long as you're next to a less-appealing option to the majority of the jury. For the majority of viewers, the "here's what I would do if I were on Survivor" fantasy consists of pulling blindsides and swinging big vote after big vote. It doesn't involve something as simple as getting along with everyone for five weeks.

So much terrible gameplay. Adam playing an idol he ultimately didn't need to play, Will's big flip being totally negated by Adam's idol and so Will essentially flipped for nothing, and Ken almost blowing the whole thing by tattling on Will. Probst's insistence that you need 'big moves' to win Survivor is beyond annoying, as is the fact that so many players mindlessly parrot it. You know who had a lot of big moves on his resume? Russell Hantz, and he didn't win because he was a dick.

Funny, I thought Paul was kind of the backstabber there, picking Frances for the boardroom after praising her all task and sending her into the subteam to clean up Jessica's mess. Sofian has seemed to be on auto-pilot for weeks now, he should've been in Frances' place. Grainne and Courtney are both impossibly low-key, yet they're continually put into these public selling situations. It's one of the season's better running jokes.

Crazy episode. A note on Bret and Zeke's comments about David's anxiety. It seemed mean-spirited, yes, though tensions were obviously quite high at that tribal council. And remember, only we Survivor viewers are seeing 'David the likeable underdog' edit --- we don't really know what was happening out there on the island. It wouldn't be the first time the show has highlighted one player in a heroic way because they're good narrators or good TV, when in fact they weren't liked by their fellow players. Can't blame David for not putting his HII on Hannah, since I get the feeling Hannah has a "omg, they're voting for me, I just know it" epiphany every other week. Which is weird, since openly admitting "you can't trust me long-term" would seem like a death knell on paper. But in this case, it was a logical argument.

That was incredible. Usually these tasks are rather poorly-designed, since it all comes down to one high-ticket sale --- Nebula crushing it in the lower-end stuff to the tune of 2000 pounds doesn't really matter when you're dealing with $20K boats, but in this case, it was just an ass-kicking all around. At least we got Karthik's absurd talking-head about his "project managing" his child's conception.

It was too early for Sunday to make her move. Her main alliance is with Chris and Bret, and then she's looking to Jay/Will/maybe Hannah as part of the old 'green tribe' group. Taylor was never part of her plans anyway, so why not eliminate him now and get Jay/Will even more dependent on you in the future. Sunday can certainly wait at least one or even two more rounds before moving to oust Jessica. It would be pretty wild if Sunday, of all people, emerged from editing no man's land to suddenly become a threat in this season, but I guess stranger things have happened.

I mean, it wasn't even mentioned that the one sub-team was late for the deadline? I'm surprised Rebecca didn't make the point that at least her team was on time, when it came to accounting blame for the task. Even if she'd actually found a tagine and the black soap, it may not have mattered given the time penalty. The scavenger hunt task is always my favourite, and having it at night is a nice twist.

Easy solution to both points....if Taylor wins a food reward, Adam steals it from him. Only person really mad in that situation is Taylor (and Jay/Will, probably), rest of the tribe doesn't mind since Taylor is already over-eating.