S44.E03: Sneaky Little Snake

[rr2911]

Did Survivor change the sitting out of challenge rules?  I remember Jeff always reminding the contestants that they can't sit out back to back challenges.

[SVNBob]

On 3/15/2023 at 9:49 PM, North of Eden said:

Speaking of which, what are all the LINGO, and spy shows based on a 30-year-old movie...where is TAR?!?

Filming and/or editing.  It'll probably be back in the fall.

On 3/15/2023 at 9:12 PM, choclatechip45 said:

I've lost track of all the advantages.

Tracker thread is up.  It hasn't been updated to after episode 3 yet, but it is there.

On 3/15/2023 at 10:59 PM, mertensia said:

Why don't they put up dividers so you can't see the other stacks of cubes?

This was brought up during the podcast after the episode.  Peachy said that in this case it was impractical to do so.  As in building dividing walls tall enough to hide the solution for this particular challenge would not have been a good use of the challenge building team's time and resources.

But they have done dividers or other solution disguisers in the past; typically in the post-merge for the individual challenges, when the props are usually smaller.

 

11 hours ago, bunnyface said:

There were at least two people on the show last night I had never seen before.  I swear they sneak people in there to confuse me.  (It can't possibly be my fault...lol.)

Has there been a rule change?  Probst used to always say "remember, the same person cannot sit out two challenges in a row."  Yet Claire somehow managed to sit out three challenges in three episodes and it cost her her game.  

 

17 minutes ago, rr2911 said:

Did Survivor change the sitting out of challenge rules?  I remember Jeff always reminding the contestants that they can't sit out back to back challenges.

We talked about this last week too.  And as I said then, that rule does not apply when it's a season with combined RCs and ICs.  TCs reset the bench.  This has always been the way.

But they talked about it on the podcast as well.  Peachy thinks they may need to revisit and revise the rule for the new era.  So there may be a change in a future season.

[Cotypubby]

Production making fake idols that are indistinguishable from the real ones just adds an element of meanness to the game that I don't think I like. There needs to be some element of doubt about it in the player's mind. Why would a player ever even think that a production-created idol is not a real one?

[Nashville]

12 hours ago, rr2911 said:

Did Survivor change the sitting out of challenge rules?  I remember Jeff always reminding the contestants that they can't sit out back to back challenges.

Did a little digging - and so far as I can figure, that particular rule was a COVID casualty…

1. This show is a business first and foremost, which means Production lives and dies by its budget.
2. When COVID hit hard, newly instituted workplace safety protocols dictated a minimum two week quarantine for all contestants and staff - which meant Production was required to cover two weeks of payroll and associated quarantine expenses (lodging, food, medical monitoring, etc.) with absolutely zero work and/or revenue return to offset.
3. These new COVID protocols presented TPTB with a choice: how to account for the two weeks?  Tack on two extra weeks to the overall shooting schedule, and shoot an standard-length (39-day) season?  Or stick to the same allotted dates on Production’s calendar, and cull about two weeks from the length of the season?
4. As we all now know, TPTB decided to go with Door #2 - which collapsed the (formerly) “normal” 39-day season down to 26 days.  This no doubt made the bean counters in Accounting happier - but in accordance with the Law of Conservation of Energy, their stress does not simply dissipate: it is instead transferred to the showrunners, who must now figure out how to present an entire season with only 2/3 the time budget.
5. The 39 day seasons all pretty much ran on the same 3-day clock cycle - Day 1 was the Reward Challenge, Day 2 was the Immunity Challenge, and Day 3 was Tribal Council - so a 1/3 reduction in the shooting schedule presents a solution which is (conceptually, at least) pretty straightforward: lose one of the days, and cram everything together into the remaining two days.  And thus was the combination Reward/Immunity Challenge born.
6. The old “no back-to-back sit-outs in consecutive Challenges” rule can no longer apply, though, since you no longer have two discrete Challenges within the “new” two-day cycle for a single episode.

…so unless circumstances should eventually permit a return to the original 39-day game schedule, the old “no back-to-back sit-outs” rule is DOA for the foreseeable future.

[MMLEsq]

On 3/16/2023 at 6:12 AM, mojoween said:

Rookie mistake.  When you win a challenge like that, you gotta push over the answer.

Why?  There's no advantage to delaying a team from getting second place.  Whether the next team finishes in 1 minute or 30 minutes doesn't affect the winning team at all.  If there was some part of the challenge after putting together the puzzle, then, yeah, it would make sense, but not when the puzzle was the last task.

[KaveDweller]

16 hours ago, rr2911 said:

Did Survivor change the sitting out of challenge rules?  I remember Jeff always reminding the contestants that they can't sit out back to back challenges.

The rule only ever applied to two challenges within a single episode. When a new episode started, the count reset.

I am not sure if that is still true, since the challenges Claire sat out were in different episodes.

[DEL901]

31 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

The rule only ever applied to two challenges within a single episode. When a new episode started, the count reset.

I am not sure if that is still true, since the challenges Claire sat out were in different episodes.

Jeff gave an interview with ew.com and confirmed the rule is still in effect.   He also said that in the new era of Survivor there are fewer 2 challenge episodes so they will eventually revisit.  

[fishcakes]

4 hours ago, Nashville said:

• The 39 day seasons all pretty much ran on the same 3-day clock cycle - Day 1 was the Reward Challenge, Day 2 was the Immunity Challenge, and Day 3 was Tribal Council - so a 1/3 reduction in the shooting schedule presents a solution which is (conceptually, at least) pretty straightforward: lose one of the days, and cram everything together into the remaining two days.  And thus was the combination Reward/Immunity Challenge born.
• The old “no back-to-back sit-outs in consecutive Challenges” rule can no longer apply, though, since you no longer have two discrete Challenges within the “new” two-day cycle for a single episode.

They've been doing combined reward/immunity challenges since at least Cook Islands, which was back in 2006. And all of the shortened seasons (41, 42, and 43) have had separate reward and immunity challenges in some weeks and combined in others.

[Nashville]

6 hours ago, fishcakes said:

They've been doing combined reward/immunity challenges since at least Cook Islands, which was back in 2006.
 

uh, yeah - guess you missed the “pretty much” qualifier I stuck in there.  :)

 

6 hours ago, fishcakes said:

And all of the shortened seasons (41, 42, and 43) have had separate reward and immunity challenges in some weeks and combined in others.

No argument here; I’m just talking general guidelines, not The Law Of Canon.  😄
 

ETA: Looking back, I can see how my original wording (“thus was such-and-such born”) might have given the impression I thought the combined reward/immunity challenges started with the 26-day season - but that wasn’t what I meant; by “born” I meant adopted as general practice (but not unilateral law).  Sorry for any confusion.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Nashville

[Scatterbrained]

I think that TPTB are hoping that there will be a showing of idols after the merge (to build trust, etc) and then there will be confusion over what is real and not real.  Then the individuals who are actually socially savvy enough to get others to give them information and who are actually intelligent enough to figure it out may have be able to outplay and outlast the others.

[Taeolas]

On 3/17/2023 at 4:11 PM, MMLEsq said:

Why?  There's no advantage to delaying a team from getting second place.  Whether the next team finishes in 1 minute or 30 minutes doesn't affect the winning team at all.  If there was some part of the challenge after putting together the puzzle, then, yeah, it would make sense, but not when the puzzle was the last task.

Arguably there are advantages to drawing a challenge out. The challenge doesn't end until the second team completes it, so the longer that goes on, the more energy the other two teams are burning up and the more time your team has to relax in the shade. 

It also gives  you (and your team) more time to observe the rest of the teams and figure out who the dominant players on the other teams might be to target for elimination (or for alliances) after the merge. Information is king in this game, so the more time you can gather information while not having to do anything else, the better your own position would be. 

 

So yeah, knocking down the solution after winning certainly does have some advantages in the greater game sense. 

[Jobiska]

On 3/15/2023 at 9:01 PM, mojoween said:

I’m confused about Matthew’s injury.  If it was so bad, why did he play, and if it was even worse, why did he do the puzzle?

I think that the time he squawked, it was because it popped out, and then he popped it back in again.  So it would still hurt, but not like it was still dislocated, and it would still be (quasi!) functional.  

[blackwing]

I didn't care for Claire, because she was making herself out to be a victim.  "Each time, I chose to sit out because I'm a team player and I did it for the good of the team."  Translation:  "I AM the weakest link, feel free to tell me GOODBYE!"  If she thought "for the good of the team" that she should sit out the challenge, it means she was completely extraneous.

On 3/16/2023 at 8:41 PM, tracyscott76 said:

Yeah, that was 100% choreographed by Matthew. Even if Jaime ended up in the general vicinity of her own accord, he specifically said "how about there? That looks like mud to me!", obviously hoping she'd see it.

Jaime is so pure. I was loving that whole bit with the worms and her little potted plant and so on, until she talked about how Matthew was her bud in these activities. And then it all turned out to be a set up for the fake idol discovery. Bleh.

People finding fake idols (and the show's treatment of same) can be amusing if the planter isn't a dick about it (see: Yau-Man, though I don't think anyone found the one he made) or the finder is kind of a tool in general (see: Jason in FvF), but those qualifications don't really apply here. Poor Jaime :( 

Combine that whole thing with Matthew's apparent arrogance in not only taking part in the challenge, but taking on a lot of the key roles (except the digging! Guys, my shoulder!), and Matthew's on my short list of People Who I Would Like To See Leave Immediately. How short is that list? He's currently the only one on it.

Yes, I didn't like that either.  She is his closest ally, why would he purposely lead her to it and have her find it.  Wouldn't it have made more sense to tell her he made a fake idol, and the two of them let someone else find it?

I don't care for this guy at all, and I must be cruel, but I was really hoping something would happen to his shoulder on the challenge.  It would have been perfectly acceptable for him to sit out, but he refused, even though it looked like there was going to be a lot of physical exertion.

[Hanahope]

On 3/16/2023 at 3:02 PM, seacliffsal said:

If Jeff hates having someone sit out consecutive challenges then make one simple rule: a contestant can only sit out one challenge, period.  That's it-make the tribes strategize about sitting out survivors.  It would also balance the challenges a bit more as one tribe could not use only their strongest competitors for every challenge (if they have extras that need to sit out).

Well, back when they used to have reward challenges separate from immunity challenges, they had a rule that you could not sit out two challenges in a row.  thus, you either had to compete in the reward challenge or the immunity challenge, which prevented someone from continuing to sit out for everything, and thus go to tribal counsel without having competed in anything.

survivor's decision to combine the two and expedite everything, allowed someone to sit out 3 consecutive challenges.  

[Scatterbrained]

Claire seemed very manipulative.  When Frannie talked about voting for Frannie, her voice started cracking and she tried to make Frannie feel guilty.  “You would for me?  You would really vote for me?” She asked in pretend surprise shock and hurt.  Then with Heidi she wanted to be all huggy-huggy.  While confidently preening in confessionals like she is accustomed to getting away with getting others to do the heavy lifting in her life.  Good riddance.

Anyone else find Frannie’s post challenge upset in the ocean a bit scary?