Most undeserving winner of all time?

[simplyme]

9 hours ago, kikaha said:

Seems like many/most comments on the boards here all during game changers was how uninspiring the play and players were.  The exact opposite was true of HvV. 

I'd say YMMV on that. :)  I thought there were definitely some amazing, stand-out moments of game play in HvV (generally by the villains), and the same can be said for GC. That said, there were also an awful lot of people in both seasons who either did very little or actively shot themselves in the foot.

I think one of the reasons HvV may be better received is that Survivor wasn't in its 34TH!!! season yet and people weren't as jaded. But again, just opinion. I know I certainly have enjoyed Survivor much more after I took several years off. 

[kikaha]

The HvV jury had 5 heroes and 4 villains.  The heroes voted for the person who had nothing to do with booting them and against the one(s) who did.  The villains, who knew what really happened behind closed doors, all voted for Parvati, except one who voted for her best friend. 

Even with Russell's blind stupidity, this was a classic case of bitter jurors, as even two of them later admitted.

[peachmangosteen]

If the jury's that bitter, then you didn't play well enough imo.

[kikaha]

peach, Troyzan voted against Kim in One World.   Are you going to say she didn't play well enough?

[ProfCrash]

She won. She did not get his vote but she won. I am guessing she is not to upset that she did not get his vote.

Parvati behaved poorly enough that she did not get any of the votes from the Hero's. Sandra earned their votes. She did her best to keep them in the game but they choose not to listen to her. Sandra did not mock them, tease them or bully them. Maybe Parvati should not have been behaving as badly as she did at camp and she would have earned their votes.

Sarah stabbed people in the back but she was not an asshole around camp. She earned votes from a good number of folks that she voted out. Parvati and Russell voted people out while treating them like crap around camp. They did not earn any of those votes. Poor social game play cost Parvati the win. She, and she alone, is responsible for how she treated others. Treat people with respect and you can win even if you stabbed them in the back. Treat them like crap and you will never win.

Parvati got the votes of the people she was aligned with or played with the entire time. Sandra got the votes of the others because she tried to change the game and she didn't treat them like crap. Sandra won. Parvati needs to up her social game.

[Oholibamah]

5 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

If the jury's that bitter, then you didn't play well enough imo.

 

2 hours ago, kikaha said:

peach, Troyzan voted against Kim in One World.   Are you going to say she didn't play well enough?

 

Both of these posts are reasonable arguments: I think the concept of bitterness on a jury is too much of a grey area one way or the other. 

 

The Troyzan example is especially pertinent because he touted himself as a "gamer", but cast a vote for personal reasons. And it wasn't even that he didn't like Kim, but rather simply that he got beat. This is inconsistent. Tasha doesn't seem to get the same amount of flack for casting a blatant anti-Tony vote, but she also didn't shy away from playing the game personally. Does that make it better or worse?

 

Adam and Vytas cast votes to make good on in-game promises/threats. Was Brenda's bitterness justified given the brutal way she was eliminated? Or was Dawn at fault for not being able to achieve Chris-worthy jury management ass-kissing like we saw with Julie?

 

I think there can be bitter jurors, but not bitter juries. The litmus test could be that if a jury is bitter enough that you overwhelmingly lose, then you obviously misplayed the cards you were dealt. 

The grey area returns when the suspected individual "bitter juror" sways the win. You could argue it was Scot/Jason's bitterness (with an assist from the eleventh hour jury twist) that turned the tide. What if Kelly Goldsmith's pick-a-number gambit was the deciding vote? (I use her instead of Greg because he wasn't bitter and was always a Rich vote anyway). Were Helen/Ted's charges of racism against Clay reasonable? 

Having so many small examples that were forgotten because they didn't end up mattering is an interesting way to discuss the game-deciding examples, which creates more questions than answers. But I will say this: I don't think a bitter jury invalidates a player's win. We talk all the time about how luck and other dynamics factor into the game all the time, so why isn't the sentiment of the jury, bitter or not, seen the same way as a tribal swap or medevac?

 

We gauge players all the time based on how they capitalize on the situation presented to them, and in that way I think Michele, White and Sandra (and Cochran, who I think played a similar game to White, despite getting far more credit for it) rolled with the punches and played the best game available to them. Does a perception that Aubry, Hantz and Parvati deserved it more mean the others deserved it less? I don't think it has to mean that. I wish more seasons came down to nail-biting who's-will-they-choose television, but I guess there can only be one Fox for a reason. 

[MissEwa]

7 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

If the jury's that bitter, then you didn't play well enough imo.

Yep. And it's exactly this that makes Survivor so interesting to me, and annoys me about twists like Redemption Island and that Ghost Island thing that was floated for S30 or anything that removes people from the voting process. To win Survivor, you have to vote people off, but you have to do so in a way where, within days of the vote, with no additional information, they will still vote to give you a million dollars. If they don't want to do that, then you've failed. 

(Yes, it's theoretically still possible to play with no allies, never vote for the bootee but win every single post-merge immunity and get to the end, and for a jury to reward you for that. I think I would find that an utterly disappointing result unless you were the one Cirie in a season of Coltons, Wills and Dans, and even then I would still hate the season overall.)

 

16 hours ago, kikaha said:

Even with Russell's blind stupidity, this was a classic case of bitter jurors, as even two of them later admitted.

See, this doesn't matter to me. The game isn't 'get voted out, process it for a couple of months, talk it over with the person responsible, watch a bunch of edited footage and then vote'. By that logic, you could discount wins if *any* player comes out later and says 'yeah, I wouldn't have voted X out if I'd known Y was going to happen,' which I am pretty sure invalidates every single win, hindsight being 20-20 and all. If you get voted out of the game, you're done, and it doesn't matter if the reasoning behind some of those votes was incorrect, or if the players who voted you out later regret it, or if they got confused and put down the wrong name of if it was supposed to be a throwaway vote. None of it matters. Similarly, if you can't get the votes at FTC, you don't win. 

 

1 hour ago, Oholibamah said:

I think there can be bitter jurors, but not bitter juries. The litmus test could be that if a jury is bitter enough that you overwhelmingly lose, then you obviously misplayed the cards you were dealt. 

The grey area returns when the suspected individual "bitter juror" sways the win. You could argue it was Scot/Jason's bitterness (with an assist from the eleventh hour jury twist) that turned the tide. What if Kelly Goldsmith's pick-a-number gambit was the deciding vote? (I use her instead of Greg because he wasn't bitter and was always a Rich vote anyway). Were Helen/Ted's charges of racism against Clay reasonable? 

Having so many small examples that were forgotten because they didn't end up mattering is an interesting way to discuss the game-deciding examples, which creates more questions than answers. But I will say this: I don't think a bitter jury invalidates a player's win. We talk all the time about how luck and other dynamics factor into the game all the time, so why isn't the sentiment of the jury, bitter or not, seen the same way as a tribal swap or medevac?

We gauge players all the time based on how they capitalize on the situation presented to them, and in that way I think Michele, White and Sandra (and Cochran, who I think played a similar game to White, despite getting far more credit for it) rolled with the punches and played the best game available to them. Does a perception that Aubry, Hantz and Parvati deserved it more mean the others deserved it less? I don't think it has to mean that. I wish more seasons came down to nail-biting who's-will-they-choose television, but I guess there can only be one Fox for a reason. 

All of this. Jury management is part of the game. Even setting aside the bitterness levels Russell inspired, this is why Amanda has never won, despite probably "deserving" to, at least once. 

And that doesn't mean there aren't results I don't agree with (from my esteemed position on the couch). I still don't get Michele's win, but even if it was down to Scot and Jason's bitterness, that's just the game, same as if a gust of wind causes someone to lose a balance challenge or a tribe-swap rock draw takes someone from a majority to a minority. It sucks, but it happens.

Edited June 22, 2017 by MissEwa

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, Oholibamah said:

Having so many small examples that were forgotten because they didn't end up mattering is an interesting way to discuss the game-deciding examples, which creates more questions than answers. But I will say this: I don't think a bitter jury invalidates a player's win. We talk all the time about how luck and other dynamics factor into the game all the time, so why isn't the sentiment of the jury, bitter or not, seen the same way as a tribal swap or medevac?

 

We gauge players all the time based on how they capitalize on the situation presented to them, and in that way I think Michele, White and Sandra (and Cochran, who I think played a similar game to White, despite getting far more credit for it) rolled with the punches and played the best game available to them. Does a perception that Aubry, Hantz and Parvati deserved it more mean the others deserved it less? I don't think it has to mean that. I wish more seasons came down to nail-biting who's-will-they-choose television, but I guess there can only be one Fox for a reason. 

3

+1

4 hours ago, kikaha said:

peach, Troyzan voted against Kim in One World.   Are you going to say she didn't play well enough?

This was already answered better than I could ever answer it by @ProfCrash and @Oholibamah. Basically, Kim won, so she got enough people to not be too bitter towards her to vote for her. Parvati couldn't achieve that in HVV.

Edited June 22, 2017 by peachmangosteen

[kikaha]

The point I was trying to make with Troyzan is that there are bitter jurors, no matter how well someone plays.  Kim only faced one, and so she won anyway.  Parvati faced two (at least) and it cost her the win. 

Only one or two bitter jurors are enough, if the outcome is close.  In HvV I believe that is why Parv came in second, not first. 

[enlightenedbum]

The difference is Troy is an asshole so he was bitter that Kim kicked his ass.  Parvati spent too much time mocking her opponents and created bitter jurors.

[KimberStormer]

6 hours ago, Oholibamah said:

We gauge players all the time based on how they capitalize on the situation presented to them, and in that way I think Michele, White and Sandra (and Cochran, who I think played a similar game to White, despite getting far more credit for it) rolled with the punches and played the best game available to them. Does a perception that Aubry, Hantz and Parvati deserved it more mean the others deserved it less? I don't think it has to mean that.

Yeah this is is pretty much where I am.  As I always say, Clint Eastwood said it best:

To me this is a dumb topic, whereas "least satisfying winner" would be fine.  I care about "who deserved the win" as much as I care about the historical accuracy of Days of Heaven.  When it's "deserve" people act like it's some objective and philosophical state of being which can be reasoned and analyzed and cut into pieces with a scalpel.  A lot of Just World post-hoc explanation of how, since X lost, X deserved to lose, since Y won, Y deserved to win -- not just the anthropic principle, but the strong form! -- or for those who don't think the winner deserved to win, some special-pleading searching for where Something Went Wrong, some cosmic mistake, whether "Candice is a stupid asshole" (if you're me and wanted Parvati to win) or "the stupid fucking meat reward" (if you think Aubry should have won).  There is no deserve!  Deserve is not a part of the game, the show, or anything else Survivor!

There are some winners I find satisfying (Kim, Parvati, Fabio) and some I find unsatisfying (Bob, Yul, fucking Adam) and what has that got to do with "deserve"?  Nothing.  It has to do with taste, like art.  They all "deserve" it, who cares.  I want to be satisfied; I want to see something to amaze and delight me, to create a beautiful work of art.  What makes me feel that is not what makes you feel that, as everyone knows.  I felt an ankle-breaking stumble after a flawless parallel bar routine when Parvati lost HvV; but for others Sandra winning was a perfect Comăneci landing.  That's fine.  Doesn't have a thing to do with "deserve".

[MissEwa]

2 hours ago, kikaha said:

Only one or two bitter jurors are enough, if the outcome is close.  In HvV I believe that is why Parv came in second, not first. 

This is true, but IMO doesn't change anything. Kim lost a vote from a bitter juror and won because she got seven other votes. Parvati lost two votes to bitter jurors but lost because she could only get three others. The bitter jurors are so often seen as a deciding factor but they're just *a* factor - the jurors who voted against her because they liked Sandra better or because they thought played Sandra better are just as important. 

It's interesting that goats and jury threats are so commonly discussed and considered by the players, but the make-up of the jury isn't. Like trying to booting people before the merge because you know they'll never reward your style of play, or taking someone with you to F2/3 because you know they're an automatic vote against you over someone more sympathetic. Like I think about the Ami boot from Micronesia. Cirie had been agitating for an Ozzy boot for ages, and if she'd taken that opportunity then on the basis that her most likely path to F3 was with Parvati and Amanda and Ozzy was an 100% sure vote for Amanda (and even if Amanda wasn't there, that Ozzy would never vote for Cirie's game), while if she kept Ami that could be a vote in her pocket down the track. It's tricky because you don't want to think too far ahead but it's another dimension to playing the jury that we just don't see. 

[NutMeg]

And to the discussion about HvV, I'd like to add that most H were voted off unanimously by Parvati, Russell and Sandra (in alphabetical order), with Candice being the sole exception (unless I forget someone), so the "bitterness" of being eliminated must be about the "how", because the "who" was pretty even all along.  

[azshadowwalker]

On 6/21/2017 at 9:08 AM, kikaha said:

Seems like many/most comments on the boards here all during game changers was how uninspiring the play and players were.  The exact opposite was true of HvV. 

Board opinions don't mean much to me when evaluating a season. I often think people are watching a completely different show with some of their opinions vs mine. 

As for how "smart" the opponents were, I am not sure what difference it makes in this context, but the HvV cast wasn't any smarter than this season. That was the season of JT's love letter to Russell and Rupert following an unknown instead of a past ally. It was the season of Parv and Russell thinking they could be total assholes and still get the vote. Nothing particularly smart about the HvV cast. Beyond that, both Parv and Sandra were playing against the same cast, so I am not sure what difference it makes. 

[mac]

As far as I'm concerned, if they got to the end and managed to get the most jury votes then they must as deserved the win.  There's so much that goes on out there that we can't know.  The winner tends to be the person that the jury disliked the least.  With all the factors involved, I'm not in a position to sit in judgement.