S46.E02: Scorpio Energy

[LadyChatts]

46 minutes ago, Rodney said:

Not possible, since playing the Shot in the Dark means forfeiting your vote.

Oh that's right.  I can't keep up-too many differences with all these advantages and idols and who gets to vote.  

Okay, so maybe one of those 3 (Kenzie/Q/Tiffany) could have put a vote on Bhanu instead just in case Jess did play her SITD and it actually worked.  

[gorgy]

I've fallen asleep two two-hour episodes in a row. Survivor 45 was the first season of Survivor I've seen in well over a decade and enjoyed the 90 minute episodes just fine, but these contestants are wearing thin. In the four hours (minus commercials) that Ive seen, I can barely remember any of them. Even the quirky ones are getting on my last nerve. Fuck off Liz. I'm hoping it picks up soon, because maybe I'll come back for Survivor 65

[jaigurudeva]

RIP Jess. RIP my affection for several early favorites (Soda, Tevin, Bhanu). RIP my eardrums listening to Liz's "cheerleading." Warming up to Venus, even though she really is putting her own foot it in at times, she doesn't deserve getting so cold shouldered by the whole tribe (except Randan? who I learned existed today apparently?)

I agree with commenters up thread, the three-tribe set-up tends to just set one tribe up for early, punishing failure, and not only is that not very fun to watch, but we get so little of the other tribes that aren't constantly losing and going to tribal. What little we got from Ben and Charlie's little music-off was cute. We should get more moments like that from the other tribes so we can actually start to recognize half of these people before the merge.

Are we not talking about Bhanu anointing himself with his blood? Dude's wildin and it's not even been a week.

[North of Eden]

7 hours ago, JudyObscure said:

Thank you @Fishcakes.  Your clip matches my memory but I thought I had to go back and check to make sure.

I've been rooting for the Asian women since Survivor began.  I just like their manner so much better than the Liz and Kenzie types who are just too brash and over confident for my taste. 

It's sad that the group as a whole seems to require that others brag about themselves before they grant their respect.

Shii Ann the She Devil, still my ALL TIME favorite castaway  ever!

Edited March 8 by North of Eden

[eskimo]

I wonder how things would play out if the winning tribe only won immunity, and the losing tribe got the...whatever...  Unless it was a reward challenge, of course.  

Not that it would be super awesome to watch, but it would at least be different.  This is getting very stale.  Isn't the punishment of losing immunity that you have to cut someone? But no, may as well hit the tribe with a cattle prod on the way out so they are even weaker than before.  Then Jeff can comment on how sucky they're performing at the next challenge, and at tribal, discuss the huge mystery of the orgin of the tribe's struggle. Major turn off.  

I also am bored of the three tribe set-up every season. Jeff said it's because smaller tribes make it harder to hide, but not really imo, because it makes it extremely easy for most of the people on at least one tribe to hide. They don't even have to show their cards for a good while.  So I think he's wrong about that. 

I got a good laugh when the yellow (?) tribe was imagining the challenges and rewards that might await them.  That was so funny to me and I rewound it a couple times. 

[iMonrey]

7 hours ago, LadyChatts said:

I mean no offense to Jess, but the fact that she couldn't take the hint about the idol, that Tiffany had to ask her why she was just standing around and not even looking in the first place...I mean she did have suspicions so she wasn't completely hopeless, but I think they worried too much for nothing. 

I get that people feel sorry for the way Jess was treated, and that her tribe mates seemed unnecessarily mean spirited. But honestly? I thought she was kind of dumb. And watching Tiffany try to lead her by the nose to the fake idol only for her to go wandering off in the opposite direction was literally the only part of the episode I got a kick out of. 

That said, the show always deliberately casts people who self identify as socially awkward and have a hard time fitting in knowing how that's going to turn out. And I have no idea why people who are self aware enough to describe themselves that way would ever try out for this show. 

Especially with the three-tribe format which automatically results in four people solidifying a majority on Day 1. Guess which ones won't make the top four? The socially awkward people who have trouble fitting in? Yup.

It simultaneously makes me laugh and pisses me off whenever Probst says Survivor is a "social experiment." Throw one nerd into a game of dodgeball with a bunch of bullies and call that a "social experiment" too.

[srhall79]

I was hoping the losing tribe wouldn't lose again, to shake things up. But no, it seems like the lousy players all end up in a single tribe.

Crying in Survivor bugs me (Tom Hanks yelling "there's no crying in baseball" hit me at a formative age) but I can get it as the days go on, the hunger, lack of sleep, the stress. But it's day 4! A lot of these players, especially on Yanu, seem like they frequently called to be picked up from a sleepover.

After rolling my eyes at Venus last episode, I'm warming to her. Hearing her monologue about her family and growing up, it felt like if she took one of the guys aside, gave a short version of that, "I've had to be strong all my life, strong Persian woman, and I'm having to adjust," she'd have an ally and turn into this season's Emily. I'm glad she's got an ally in Ramden now. Her reaction after the challenge wasn't great, but, I also get "you smushed my toe, I need some time."

I'm hoping Liz goes before her. "I don't need the money" has rarely been a good opening bid.

With the challenge, it seemed like maybe it would be better to build from one side? Trying to slip in the middle block felt like the hardest part. And as others have noted, made more difficult when you stick your smallest person in the middle.

I found myself liking Jess, but, it was pretty clear she wasn't winning this game. The fake idol felt unnecessary, and then cruel when they couldn't even guide her to its hiding spot. "Those guys are masterminds." No, hon, they just had the numbers and an easy target. At least they'll eat themselves soon.

[SVNBob]

1 hour ago, srhall79 said:

With the challenge, it seemed like maybe it would be better to build from one side? Trying to slip in the middle block felt like the hardest part.

That's how free-standing arches like this one are traditionally built.  Build up the two sides, then wedge the final block, the keystone, into place to force the other pieces to lock into place.  Granted, there's usually a temporary support structure in place to hold up the rest of the arch until the keystone is placed....

The problem with all 3 tribes is that they all kept overshooting the keystone.  They built their arches at least one block too far on one side or the other.  That's part of why they kept falling.  There wasn't any balance to the constructions.

[Heathrowe]

I like Jess and like to think she walked off happy to go get some sleep and be away from her tribe.

The arch challenge was hard - and it would have been nice to have seen anyone strategizing that tall person goes in the middle, smallest person delivers letters. But we seem low on critical thinking this season.

If you watched last season, this just feels too repetitive to sit and watch the same tribe get picked off every week. It takes so much of the shows focus to the detriment of getting to see the other tribes/players who will actually stick around for the majority of the game.

Metallica guy reminds me of Chris Kataan and I keep expecting Mango!

I like Tiffany & Q. I like the mom on the other tribe. I like Venus and her quest for REVENGE against her current tribe members. She might be whiny but they are being exclusionary.

Tevin seems pretty awful.
 

The woman who keeps talking about how rich she is also said at one point that she came from nothing - so that’s probably why her success is such a big deal to her, why she can’t be cool and not let people know. Possibly in her mind she feels like she’s letting people know that she is smart, determined, doesn’t give up - but all we are hearing is “I’m rich!”!.

Bhanu does not seem to be holding up at all.

So what has the loser tribe had to eat for four days? Just coconut & papaya & ants?

 

[JudyObscure]

7 hours ago, North of Eden said:

Shii Ann the She Devil, still my ALL TIME favorite castaway  ever!

Mine too!  I can still see her holding that bucket while all the big muscular people dropped.

[violet and green]

10 minutes ago, Heathrowe said:

The woman who keeps talking about how rich she is also said at one point that she came from nothing - so that’s probably why her success is such a big deal to her, why she can’t be cool and not let people know.

She also referred to herself, when announcing who was sitting out to Probst, as "The one and only Liz". So...

[Lady Calypso]

6 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I get that people feel sorry for the way Jess was treated, and that her tribe mates seemed unnecessarily mean spirited. But honestly? I thought she was kind of dumb. And watching Tiffany try to lead her by the nose to the fake idol only for her to go wandering off in the opposite direction was literally the only part of the episode I got a kick out of. 

It's hard, because I do think Jess made some blunders but it really does seem like her ADHD just made it harder for her to concentrate. She even said at one point that she wasn't getting any sleep. Factor all that in and I don't think it's being dumb, it's being sleep deprived and being unable to concentrate. Would she have been able to adjust with a couple more days? That part is unclear, but she was trying. I think the issue was that the tribe basically gave up on her day 1 or day 2. Kenzie even said she tried on the first day, got nowhere and then gave up and tried getting her out from there on. Everyone but Q was ready to vote her out on day 3 but it was Q's insistence that Jelinsky had to go. 

I don't think Jess was dumb; she clearly was smart enough to recognize what Kenzie was doing and she was smart enough to clock the fake idol (I assume she still played it in a 'just in case it was real' scenario) and she seemed to try to turn the tides on Kenzie, but there really wasn't anything she could do once she was seen as the weakest link for the challenge and perceptions from the first day were already set in stone against her.

[North of Eden]

1 hour ago, JudyObscure said:

Mine too!  I can still see her holding that bucket while all the big muscular people dropped.

Yes! She sure showed them especially that finger waggling jerk Alicia? And any time Rupert is defeated is good for me.

[Tango64]

Was Venus wearing fresh makeup in the interview where she was whining about her plight?

(I've given up on complaining about all the wardrobe changes.)

[Nashville]

On 3/6/2024 at 11:04 PM, bunnyface said:

If Bhanu screamed in my face in the middle of a challenge, we'd probably both be goners.  I'd beat the shit out of him and he'd be med-evaced and I'd be ejected.  That was some bullshit.

Glad to know I’m not the only one who felt that way.  There was absolutely zero thought going on in how that tribe was approaching the puzzle; both Jess and Kenzie (the shortest two) SHOULD have been on the extreme lowest ends of the arch, while the taller players worked the arch keystone (the second ‘S’) and its immediately surrounding blocks. 🙄

So, Bhanu: if you really want to vent on someone who was handicapping the tribe’s solution attempts, go scream at a fucking mirror.

[SnapHappy]

At this point, I think I'm honestly watching more for Jeff Probst than for anything else.  The pointed questions, then the knife twisting when the council-sitters don't want to fess up to what's really happening at camp.  

The contestants with few exceptions are so generic & interchangable, they bore me more often than not. 

We know he sees all the footage, they know he sees it all.  Why do so many people every season think they can hide things from Jeff? 

He's got some great snark and hasn't been shy about using it for quite a while now.  I've always liked him, but he's gotten so salty with these folks in the past few years that I LOVE him now.  

[peachmangosteen]

Jeff is heavily involved in casting (and everything else), so if the contestants suck now it's largely his fault. 

[Grizzly]

14 hours ago, Heathrowe said:

Metallica guy reminds me of Chris Kataan

 

Thank you! I knew he looked like someone.

[Rodney]

Bonus scene that didn't make the show:

Tim, unsurprisingly, is still obsessed with the gender divide at Siga.

[millennium]

On 3/7/2024 at 12:16 AM, Lantern7 said:

Watching Jess’s final day at camp was painful. She was already on the outs with her tribe. Why screw with her by making a fake idol? It was funny how Tiffany assumed Jess would find it if she put it in the exact spot where she found it. The remark about Jess going to remedial clown college? That was uncalled for.

Tiffany was so concerned about people seeing her as an angry black woman.  She should have been worried about people seeing her for what she really is: a mean girl.  Just like Kenzie.   They can rationalize it all as innocent gameplay, but the cruelty was the point of that fake-idol exercise.   The shot-in-the-dark is a 1-in-6 chance, hardly worth worrying about.

Can't stand Tevin, can't stand Bhanu, don't like Charlie ...  Great season.  🙄

Ben and his crying over the fire.   If only he had a hot dog.

 

Edited March 9 by millennium

[WatcherUp2]

I took the clown comment to mean their entire tribe kept screwing up. Jess seemed nice, but not cut out for Survivor. Since when are fake idols seen as evil game play? She had a choice to believe Q or not, and to play it or not. I'm not sure it should be up to other players to treat her differently in the game play because she's socially awkward. At camp, maybe. But just maybe.

Venus flip-flops between feeling left out and bragging that she's not there to make friends. I can see why it makes it difficult for her team to know how to treat her. And at least one of the clips with the idol tug-of-war showed Tiffany taking it from her to hand it to the people standing in the back, which makes me think Venus might be the one who didn't want to pass it around.

[peachmangosteen]

7 hours ago, WatcherUp2 said:

Since when are fake idols seen as evil game play? 

Personally, I've never liked it. I like it even less now that they make the real idols look like shitty little trinkets and they allow people to use the real idol note on a fake idol so there is actually no way for people to know whether they have a real idol or not. 

[SnapHappy]

16 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Jeff is heavily involved in casting (and everything else), so if the contestants suck now it's largely his fault. 

Partially his call, I will agree with that.  But no matter how contestants present themselves in interviews, video applications, etc., nobody ever REALLY knows how people will rise to the challenge or wilt until they are on that beach, and with their group.  

And people lie all the time about what they can and can't do.  And I never said they suck.  They are just basically the same types every season.  And there have been 46, so we've seen every flavor of character.  Because a lot of them are just playing a character.  (Hello, Liz!)  

[iMonrey]

11 hours ago, WatcherUp2 said:

Since when are fake idols seen as evil game play? She had a choice to believe Q or not, and to play it or not. I'm not sure it should be up to other players to treat her differently in the game play because she's socially awkward.

Jess did in fact recognize that the "idol" seemed to be made up of the same baubles that adorned all their bags. We have to remember a lot of this is editing - and I'm sure the show thought it was "funny" to make her look dumb. They really, really love when people play fake idols, they think it's hilarious.

4 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Personally, I've never liked it. I like it even less now that they make the real idols look like shitty little trinkets and they allow people to use the real idol note on a fake idol so there is actually no way for people to know whether they have a real idol or not. 

That's a very good point about making real idols look fake so it's easier to fool people into using fake idols. Because the show wants them to do that.

This is just one of the myriad ways the show loves to screw around with the players for our amusement. I don't know when this stopped being a legitimate game and turned into a production driven clown circus but it's been going on longer than the so-called "new era."

[leocadia]

11 hours ago, WatcherUp2 said:

Since when are fake idols seen as evil game play?

In general, I don't think that they are...in this case, it just seemed like an extra step just to be cruel.  They had the numbers, there was a ridiculously small chance that Jess would successfully play SITD and they could circumvent that by having one of the three vote for Bhanu "just in case".  Q, Kenzie and Tiffany were just too gleeful about making Jess look stupid and it was a bad look for them.  They were kicking her when she was already down.

[peachmangosteen]

6 hours ago, SnapHappy said:

They are just basically the same types every season.  And there have been 46, so we've seen every flavor of character.  Because a lot of them are just playing a character.  (Hello, Liz!)  

I agree and I think Jeff bears a lot of the blame for this.

[violet and green]

15 hours ago, WatcherUp2 said:

And at least one of the clips with the idol tug-of-war showed Tiffany taking it from her to hand it to the people standing in the back, which makes me think Venus might be the one who didn't want to pass it around.

That was Soda, who rudely and roughly grabbed it from Venus and made a point of passing it around to the whole tribe, as if to chastise Venus.

The next time they won immunity, Venus began to uncertainly hand it about and her new friend Randen pushed it back to her.

[BigRedCheese]

Quote

Since when are fake idols seen as evil game play? 

I don't really have a problem with the fake idol of it all, but the mean spirited way they were talking about her was really hard to watch. Apparently, Jess had already done her own idol search in that area, and come up empty, so that's why she was walking the other way. They also knew that she hadn't slept in days, and probably was a little loopy because of that. If you want to make sure someone feels safe, then sure, fake idol them, but the mean spirited comments are a turn off, at least to me.

[Diana Berry]

On 3/7/2024 at 12:35 AM, 30 Helens said:

That was a challenge designed for tall people, so of course the Purples lost. They had the shortest people. There was literally no place for Jess in that contest— she wasn’t strong enough to bear the weight of the end pieceand as her grasping upstretched arms proved, she wasn’t tall enough to place the middle blocks. I guess Bhanu thought if he screamed loud enough, he could scare her into growing a few more inches? 

I get Venus’s frustration, and I’m sure she was in pain, but she did not handle that conversation with Soda well. She could have earned a little sympathy with her injury, but instead she went on the attack. Forcefully telling someone “you have to listen to me more” is a good way to make them listen to you less. 

If I’m ever in a situation where Liz starts to cheer for me, please stuff a gag in her mouth. That was not support, it was a verbal assault.

If she actually broke her toe it’s no fun.  It took months for mine to heal and it hurt like crazy. 

Edited March 12 by Diana Berry

[millennium]

15 hours ago, Diana Berry said:

I guess Bhanu thought if he screamed loud enough, he could scare her into growing a few more inches? 

He was maybe one drink away from beating a woman.

[Lantern7]

Erik covers . . . to be honest, I don’t remember this scene.

[Nashville]

6 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

Erik covers . . . to be honest, I don’t remember this scene.

Well - Erik is the series’s resident expert on misplaced trust, so….  😆

[Duke Silver]

As a new show watcher (S45 was literally the first time I've ever watched even a single episode of Survivor): is it typically like this where one tribe is treated like a rented mule, losing all the time, and thus we don't get to see/evaluate members of the other tribes?

----

OT:  it's weird for me to say, again, as a new watcher, that, based on a couple comments I've seen about the AU Survivor show, over the last few days I have binged fifteen (15 !!!) episodes of season 11.  YMMV and all that, but I soooooo much prefer the AU version.

[blackwing]

A two hour episode with only one challenge makes for an excruciatingly long episode.  I get why the episodes have been extended this season, but if they are going to include filler, at least make it interesting.  The Taylor Swift / Metallica song names was beyond stupid and a waste of time.

I also don't particularly care about everyone's "journey", which too often is basically someone's sob story.  I don't like Venus so I don't care about her at all and I don't care how difficult things have been for her.  

Jess was hapless and clueless.  She was clearly the right choice to go home.  I did feel bad for her that she got duped by the fake idol.  She was smart to say that it looks like every strand of beads that is on everything.  But then didn't even question it further.

[SVNBob]

14 hours ago, Duke Silver said:

As a new show watcher (S45 was literally the first time I've ever watched even a single episode of Survivor): is it typically like this where one tribe is treated like a rented mule, losing all the time, and thus we don't get to see/evaluate members of the other tribes?

In this "new era", even moreso in the last couple seasons, it has been the case.  And one of the reasons is the game design.

With 3 tribes/6 players per to start, a death spiral can start almost immediately.  Once a tribe is down one member after TC, they may not have the "right people" to not lose an IC and prevent themselves from going back to TC to lose another member.  That means they may not have the "right people" at the next IC, etc....  And since it's the same tribe constantly going to TC, we do spend more time with them, since that's the tribal dynamics that we need to know about before TC.

 

It was even worse up to just 2 seasons ago, when the episodes were all just 60 minutes.  That meant even less time that had to be spread out among the 3 tribes.  Say what you will about 2 hour episodes being too long, but 90 minutes is just about right.  There's an extra 22 minutes that can be allotted to the other tribes so we can see their dynamics as well as that of the losing tribe.  For example, if this season was 60 minute episodes, we probably wouldn't know about the Maria/Charlie alliance on Green (or at least the "Charlie's Angels" setup to that), or why Venus is on the outs on Orange.  (We might know that she is...as part of Randen's idol search, but not why.)

[millennium]

On 3/11/2024 at 5:54 PM, blackwing said:

I also don't particularly care about everyone's "journey", which too often is basically someone's sob story.

I was thinking, if you audition and just tell the producers, "I want to be on the show because I believe I can outwit, outlast and outplay everybody else," you're probably screwed.