S36.E10: It's Like the Perfect Crime

[Nashville]

7 minutes ago, Special K said:

This was another producer miscalculation -- making it have to be a unanimous decision whom to send to GI.  With so many early swaps, there was bound to never be a consensus.  And now that they're drawing for teams, it's even less likely to be unanimous. 

Only possible chance for a unanimous vote this season would be if the “random” team pick resulted in the winning team being all-Naviti or all-Malolo - and depending upon alliance cross-pollination, that wouldn’t even necessarily be a guarantee.

 

7 minutes ago, Special K said:

I wonder if it would work to have it be a simple majority decision?  

Not so long as they still have the ‘out’ of going to rocks, to sidestep making a public declaration of alliance/preference.

[RedbirdNelly]

30 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

How would producers manipulate a schoolyard pick, with Standards & Practices out there?  And why would they?  

I think it's Occam's razor.   The most likely reason is it's not that interesting.  They used to show it and really the only time I found it interesting was when (I think it was) Bob in Gabon was picked last, and he went on to later become a challenge monster and winner.  

not saying you are wrong but am wondering if they've just named it schoolyard pick but it is really not a true schoolyard pick. I agree there are times it would be dull but seems like there are at least moments when it would not be. Given the uproar that has happened when "so and so cut my rope in the challenge and now I'm flipping" it just seems there would at least be some good confessional drama out of it. just seems odd that it gets skipped every time (at least every time I remember them saying school yard pick).

[peachmangosteen]

I think they would probably show the pick if it turned out to be a part of the story they were telling. But most of the time it's probably just not significant enough for them to waste airtime on.

[303420]

1 hour ago, Nashville said:

Rocks is a cop-out - but, strategically speaking, a totally understandable one.  Another Survivor 101 lesson: whenever possible, avoid manufacturing targets on your own back.

Well yeah, it's the smarter play, but the show shouldn't let that happen. They should force exposure, dammit. Also, it makes me grumpy.

Also, why has no one yet talked about how Sebastian spelled Desiree's name?

[peachmangosteen]

1 minute ago, 303420 said:

Also, why has no one yet talked about how Sebastian spelled Desiree's name?

I can't remember exactly what it was but I remember loling over it.

[LanceM]

1 hour ago, peachmangosteen said:

I can't remember exactly what it was but I remember loling over it.

Here you go.

 

[ByaNose]

21 minutes ago, LanceM said:

Here you go.

 

Well, phonetically it’s on point. LOL!!!!

[Cindyluwho]

3 hours ago, LanceM said:

Here you go.

 

To be fair, I know someone who spells their name like that.

[SVNBob]

9 hours ago, Nashville said:

Rocks is a cop-out - but, strategically speaking, a totally understandable one.  Another Survivor 101 lesson: whenever possible, avoid manufacturing targets on your own back.

Doubly so once the jury starts forming.  Picking someone to go to GI gives them a reason to not vote for you at FTC.  But if they go because  they drew the odd rock out, then it's on fate.

[Oscirus]

12 hours ago, OldWiseOne said:

If Kellyn doesn't question why Laurel went to Dom with the info about Des' secret plan, they she deserves to get booted next. She is so flabbergasted that anyone would target her, she is not thinking about where the info came from.

Theres a long list of people who should be questioning Laurel.  Malolo needs to be asking her why she made a unilateral plan to reject des's offer and out it,   Especially when said plan wound up with their being at the numbers advantage. Chelsea needs to question why Laurels throwing her name out there when she didn't say anything to her, Don needs to question when she wants to make a move.

57 minutes ago, SVNBob said:

Doubly so once the jury starts forming.  Picking someone to go to GI gives them a reason to not vote for you at FTC.  But if they go because  they drew the odd rock out, then it's on fate.

That and you don't want to be the idiot that gave a potential boot an advantage.

[djlynch]

16 hours ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

How would producers manipulate a schoolyard pick, with Standards & Practices out there?  And why would they?  

S&P is there to keep CBS and Mark Burnett out of legal trouble. All the law really says is that you can't predetermine the outcome of something that appears to be random and that you can't claim something is fair when it isn't. So as long as there isn't something specific to the Survivor rules that prohibits the producers from getting involved, the rock draw isn't rigged, and the captains have the final say on who's on their team (even this is probably debatable if your defense is "nobody said Survivor is fair"), the producers can do whatever they want to get the teams to line up a certain way.

[Guest]

I would think calling a production-arranged team a 'school yard pick' is misleading enough to be over the line but mileage varies.  And I just don't see the justification they'd have for doing it.  No matter how they arrange teams, they can't predetermine a winner that way.  So why bother?  If they truly wanted to pre-select who wins something, there are much easier, more invisible ways.  Just sneak their chosen one puzzle clues off camera, in private, or something.  The school yard pick must be in front of dozens of crew members and the whole cast.  

But I know that everything in reality tv is subjected to the grassy knoll theories, too.  

Quote

and the captains have the final say on who's on their team

To me, that's a school yard pick, not a production-selected team.  Or do people think the producers and team captains sit down and hash out an agreement?  

Edited April 28, 2018 by Guest

[Nashville]

17 hours ago, LanceM said:

Here you go.

 

Nice to see Hooked on Phonics is making a comeback.

 

16 hours ago, ByaNose said:

Well, phonetically it’s on point. LOL!!!!

Great minds think alike.  :)

[ByaNose]

I think Jeff said that airing the school yard pick takes too much time to show. Back in the day it would show the alliance hierarchy which was fun. I can’t even recall when it was even shown last. I has it’s been years and years ago. If they didn’t have stupid Ghost Island it would be fun for them to show it again. 

[Hera]

On 4/26/2018 at 8:43 AM, Haleth said:

I certainly hope Laurel has a plan but she is not going to win without making a move.  Although she seems like a lovely person who gets along with everyone she was outed as Dom and Wendell's spy.  She and Donathan are competing for 3rd place right now.  Time and potential allies are running out for getting rid of Dom and Wendell, and she knows they both have idols.

This is what I've been saying since last week. I think Laurel is all in with Domenick, Wendell, and Donathan and I don't see how she wins if the final three contains either Domenick or Wendell. I had high hopes for her because she did so well in making connections with people pre-merge, but I am incredibly disappointed with her post-merge game so far.

17 hours ago, Oscirus said:

Theres a long list of people who should be questioning Laurel.  Malolo needs to be asking her why she made a unilateral plan to reject des's offer and out it,   Especially when said plan wound up with their being at the numbers advantage. Chelsea needs to question why Laurels throwing her name out there when she didn't say anything to her, Don needs to question when she wants to make a move.

I agree with all of this. Plus, it would have made Desiree a goat to the Navitis on the jury. This reasoning is also why I think Laurel won't win if she gets to the end. The original Malolos will resent her not just for not working with them, but for actively thwarting two plans that involved getting one of the Naviti leaders out and advancing the Malolo 5/4 (which included her). And I think the original Naviti, who will make up the majority of any jury she faces, will see her as riding the coattails of any Naviti(s) who make it to the end with her. Her votes and refusal to flip on Domenick and Wendell are totally rational, but in terms of making jurors feel better about their own losses, "I was playing rationally," doesn't cut it for most people.

On 4/26/2018 at 7:08 PM, LanceM said:

So reading Desiree's interview today and she cleared up one mystery from the Chris vote and why she voted for Libby. It was not as many people speculated that her and Angela voted that way in case Chris has n idol. Nope. She voted for Libby because Kellyn and Chelsea did not tell her of the plan to vote out Chris. Given this knowledge it is a little more understandeable why she would turn on Kellyn though I thinka  better choice would have been to try to target Dom or Wendell since Kellyn seemingly had no thought that Des might betray her.

 

This touches on my major issue with this season: it is obvious that there is a lot about tribal dynamics and individual gameplay that we are not being shown, in the interest of keeping Tribal Councils suspenseful. I realize that they cannot show everything and that every season there are players who get the short shrift because their gameplay doesn't end up influencing the winner's path to victory that much. However, I think this season is particularly bad for it. I have no idea what Angela, Jenna, Chelsea, or Sebastian are up to or who they see as their closest allies (for two of them I can guess, but that's because information that is available since the game ended). I also don't really know what Donathan and Michael are thinking in terms of their planned route to the end of the game—I assume Michael is in the "take it one tribal council at a time" headspace, but we aren't being shown that.

Furthermore, since the merge, there have been incredible super-majorities in the Tribal Council votes, which means there's some sort of information flow between the original Naviti and original Malolo about who the boot is—except for some reason, Chelsea and Desiree are being kept out of the loop, while Angela and Sebastian (who don't appear to be in any alliance) are in it. Who is talking to whom? Is Kellyn the only one talking to Chelsea and Desiree?

Additionally, both this episode and the last one have shown Kellyn and Domenick conferring with each other about the vote—what's that about? Do they have a genuine side alliance with each other? Or is this an expedient alliance until one or both of them decide to slit the other's throat? Kellyn was so adamant about voting for Michael during their talk this episode, when did she change her mind, and why?

On 4/27/2018 at 1:09 PM, 303420 said:

And not only is it lame that so many people have not been able to play, but the fact that it's a game of chance is stupid too. It should be something that the person has control over. What if they had to solve a super-hard puzzle that could maybe take them all night? They have to decide whether it's more worth it to go to sleep or stay up for the advantage. Watching them do the puzzle would be boring, but watching them stress out over their decision might be cool. I don't know. Or a challenge against a clock. I don't know. Anything other than this fucking dice roll.

I hadn't thought of this, but it's a good point. One roll of the dice to decide if you even get a shot at an advantage and then another one to get the advantage itself (risking your vote in the process). I agree that it would be much better to have them do a task to "earn" the advantage instead. They could make the challenge really difficult with a non-trivial chance of failure, for instance, by making people complete the task in a certain amount of time. They could keep the vote sacrifice as is, or have it so that a player can sacrifice his/her vote at the next tribal council in order to make the challenge much easier.

Edited April 29, 2018 by Hera
Correcting typos

[MissEwa]

From what I've picked up over the years, there's a whole lot of business around picks and challenges. Draw rocks for captains, captains each pick, then their first picks take a turn picking, then their picks take a turn, and so on until the teams are filled, and there's often some sort of rule about men picking women and women picking men to keep the teams even. THEN they go through the rules of the challenge with Jeff (and maybe the challenge team) and ask questions, and there's this whole thing where if one team asks a question they make sure the other team gets that information too so it's 100% fair. THEN they get their 'minute to strategise'. It all takes a long time and we only ever see bits of it if it affects the outcome - in recent seasons that has almost always been someone volunteering for something in the strategising and then being terrible at it.

Would seeing the schoolyard pick be fun? Maybe, once or twice in a season, but a lot of times you can kind of work it out from looking at the teams, and I get the feeling the picks these days are more about perceived challenge strength than alliances anyway. They've all gotten too savvy about not giving things away so I doubt we'd learn much. I think if you ended up with a truly puzzling scenario (ie. an Ozzy/Joe-type player left unpicked) they'd show it. 

I kind of accept that when they whittle 3 days down into 43 minutes, a lot of that business-end-stuff will get cut, and while I personally know if people who've only just just discovered Survivor, I feel like 99% of the audience has been watching it for years and so production's attitude is 'eh, everyone's seen this before, skip to the challenge'. 

[violet and green]

4 hours ago, ByaNose said:

I think Jeff said that airing the school yard pick takes too much time to show. Back in the day it would show the alliance hierarchy which was fun. I can’t even recall when it was even shown last. I has it’s been years and years ago. If they didn’t have stupid Ghost Island it would be fun for them to show it again. 

This.

They stopped showing them entirely several seasons ago, and then one random time in a recent season they showed a schoolyard pick because something particularly telling occurred during it, and Jeff again explained to Dalton Ross on EW why it was shown and why they didn't show them anymore usually - but I can't remember when it was or what it was. I always enjoyed them, but they have other things to show - like boring noble backstories that telegraph when the next person is going to be voted out later in the episode.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, MissEwa said:

They've all gotten too savvy about not giving things away so I doubt we'd learn much

I agree.  I think this is also why we don’t see the ‘cut the rope’ reward challenges anymore.  Players are too savvy to reveal much and instead just all collude to get food to the most neglected, if I recall right from was it San Juan Del Sur we saw it last?   Yes, I think Jeff even stopped the challenge in frustration.   I think the auction is something else the players have learned to outsmart so it’s fallen by the wayside.  

[ByaNose]

1 hour ago, violet and green said:

This.

They stopped showing them entirely several seasons ago, and then one random time in a recent season they showed a schoolyard pick because something particularly telling occurred during it, and Jeff again explained to Dalton Ross on EW why it was shown and why they didn't show them anymore usually - but I can't remember when it was or what it was. I always enjoyed them, but they have other things to show - like boring noble backstories that telegraph when the next person is going to be voted out later in the episode.

I’m thinking it was the Debbie Wanner season. Didn’t she go all loco saying she was the best at something but then blew the challenge?! I could be totally wrong though. Now, I’m second guessing myself. It might not have involved a schoolyard pick. 

[violet and green]

1 hour ago, ByaNose said:

I’m thinking it was the Debbie Wanner season. Didn’t she go all loco saying she was the best at something but then blew the challenge?! I could be totally wrong though. Now, I’m second guessing myself. It might not have involved a schoolyard pick. 

I think it was!? I do recall that. But who knows, I might be suffering from false memory syndrome at any given time... Anyway, it was recent, and it happened.

[dustoffmom]

Yup it was Debbie and I remember it as well.  Wasn't it something about balance or obstacle course sort of thing and she claimed she had been a noted gymnast?

[MissEwa]

39 minutes ago, dustoffmom said:

Yup it was Debbie and I remember it as well.  Wasn't it something about balance or obstacle course sort of thing and she claimed she had been a noted gymnast?

It was Debbie. What they showed was the 'moment to strategise' that Jeff gives them. She dibsed the balance beam part of the challenge because she'd been a professional gymnast for ten years, then she completely blew it and had a tantrum about it later (although there's talk of timeline shenanigans with the tantrum). There was no schoolyard pick involved though - it was pre-merge.

Edited April 29, 2018 by MissEwa

[KimberStormer]

5 hours ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I agree.  I think this is also why we don’t see the ‘cut the rope’ reward challenges anymore.  Players are too savvy to reveal much and instead just all collude to get food to the most neglected, if I recall right from was it San Juan Del Sur we saw it last?   Yes, I think Jeff even stopped the challenge in frustration.   I think the auction is something else the players have learned to outsmart so it’s fallen by the wayside.  

Right, Natalie Anderson destroyed the rope challenge just as Tony and Spencer destroyed the Survivor Auction.  She almost destroyed rewards in general that season by constantly volunteering to go to Exile and giving away her rewards.  Personally I hate it when post-merge reward challenges are group challenges instead of individual, and I wonder if Natalie is somewhat to blame for that being the seemingly overwhelming preference lately.

Totally agree they've blown it with Ghost Island and it ought to be a challenge, not a random chance (it should never be a rock draw to get there either.)  In the past when Exile Island had a hidden idol, it was always a thing you had to work for, not just a coin flip -- think of Yul triangulating, or Sugar wading through the muck.  Since Ghost Island is the theme of the whole season (and the strategy back at camp, frankly, is not that fascinating) I think we can spend a minute or two more over there with a challenge of some kind, instead of learning about everyone's tedious sob story (except for poor Purple Jenna who is apparently only interesting to the producers when it comes to lingering shots of her butt.)

Edited April 29, 2018 by KimberStormer

[SVNBob]

24 minutes ago, KimberStormer said:

Natalie Anderson destroyed the rope challenge just as Tony and Spencer destroyed the Survivor Auction.  She almost destroyed rewards in general that season by constantly volunteering to go to Exile and giving away her rewards. 

The reward giveaway was more a Jon thing.  He was definitely the ringleader of it during the Touchy Subjects challenge in question here.

And as I recall, Natalie only volunteered the once to go to Exile, and that was when two people would be there, so it was a strategy move to shore up an alliance.

 

And it was Mike that broke the auction...

Edited April 29, 2018 by SVNBob

[ByaNose]

17 hours ago, MissEwa said:

It was Debbie. What they showed was the 'moment to strategise' that Jeff gives them. She dibsed the balance beam part of the challenge because she'd been a professional gymnast for ten years, then she completely blew it and had a tantrum about it later (although there's talk of timeline shenanigans with the tantrum). There was no schoolyard pick involved though - it was pre-merge.

Yeah, I thought I had it wrong. You are right. They showed the pre-challenge strategy which they never show. I knew it was something that’s never aired but was confused by the schoolyard pick which they haven’t shown in years. I too suffer from false memory syndrome. I’ve been watching Survivor since Day 1 and even I have revisionist history of the game. It’s like when the Survivors do their exit press and say they knew this and they knew that when they didn’t at all. LOL!!!!

[violet and green]

From an interview with Dalton Ross on EW in 2015, re how schoolyard picks are done and why they are not shown:

We have seen so many schoolyard pick ‘ems this season, except we never actually see them take place. Explain the process of how they work in terms of choosing captains and deciding who picks first, because it has been a while since we saw one and people always ask me about it. Does it ever yield any drama?

Jeff Probst: I think in the past, we’ve shown them a few times. But they just eat up so much time because imagine watching this, and it’s interesting, but then you have to decide what you want to give up. I explain the challenge, I say we’re going to do a schoolyard pick, I walk over with a bag of rocks. Somebody picks yellow, somebody picks blue—you’re the two captains, take a spot over here. We do shoot it. We shoot everything just in case something bizarre happens. But now you have the two captains, now they have to rock-paper-scissor. “Who’s going to pick? All right, you go first. Okay you’ve got that person. All right, let them get to the mat. Now you go. All right, now you go again. Okay, now it’s your turn. And you pick again and now you pick again. You’ve got one pick left, who do you want? And that leaves you with you.”

And then you do a little Q&A, “How does it feel to be picked last?” or “How does it feel to not be picked at all?” if it’s uneven numbers. So when you’re in the edit bay and you’re looking at what you have to cut from the episode, there’s almost always more interesting reality or a more dramatic challenge, or a more interesting argument at Tribal Council than what is ultimately a bunch of shoe leather that I can explain quickly by just saying “here’s who they picked.” And you can read between the lines: that’s who they wanted. So that’s why we don’t show it.

http://ew.com/article/2015/05/06/survivor-host-jeff-probst-rodneys-big-birthday-drama/

[KimberStormer]

22 hours ago, SVNBob said:

The reward giveaway was more a Jon thing.  He was definitely the ringleader of it during the Touchy Subjects challenge in question here.

And as I recall, Natalie only volunteered the once to go to Exile, and that was when two people would be there, so it was a strategy move to shore up an alliance.

 

And it was Mike that broke the auction...

I'll defer to you as il miglior fabbro when it comes to Survivor knowledge!  I have a distinct memory of Natalie constantly giving away rewards and driving Probst up the wall with this aggressive generosity, but it could easily be a faulty memory. 

But to my mind (not that I've ever seen the Worlds Apart auction) what Mike did was more like almost save it; the auction-ruining bullshit is people saving all their money for some advantage because min-maxing superfans on the Internet demand that this is the only possible move and if you don't do it you don't want to win, and it all coming down to a fucking rock draw with Tony winning the Tyler Perry Superidol because of course he would.  It was cool when Danni did it in Guatemala because she really really needed it and there was no way for her or anyone else to know that there was going to be an advantage (as far as I know?)  But once it's an economics textbook RATIONAL MOVE and everyone is saving their money then it's garbage.  Mike, if I understand it right, tried to betray everyone into spending their money so he could get the advantage, right?  That's at least something more interesting than nobody eating anything or taking a bath or having any fun but just being Utility Maximizing Rational Actors Responding to Incentives, and then pulling a rock literally to win the game.

The annoying thing is there's no reason for it -- they had advantages and disadvantages hidden in regular auction items for ages, and that was awesome.  Let them accidentally buy boiled bat soup and go straight to Exile without eating and be miserable with their useless money if they refuse to play.

[SVNBob]

@KimberStormer, we're drifting off topic here.  Meet you in the Past Seasons thread.

[SoCal Mema]

I'm sorry to be petty here, but did anyone catch Kellen chewing with her mouth open and smacking like a toddler during the food reward?  Argh, she was gross.