The Survivor Thread

[GoGo Yubari]

Episode seven of Nicaragua. Holy shit.

Also, open question; who would your five for the next list of inclusions for the Survivor Hall of Fame be? First class was Hatch, Boston Rob, Sandra, Parvati, and, ugh, Russell.

EDIT: Sentences I never expected Fabio Birza to say; "Yes, I'm actually a little bit familiar with Freudian psychology."

[Pizza]

Just finished the Palau finale.

The final 6 was pretty good. Ian the worst liar ever was hilarious, especially after he did so well getting rid of Greg. He probably had a shot against anyone other than Tom at the final jury if it wasn't for his game falling apart on the Karen and Jen days. Katie's final jury performance was hilariously bad, especially refusing Janu's question. Watching Probst read the votes, when he gets to Cobys vote for Katie even she looks shocked that she got one. Really liked Tom's game, even if he got handed the win by Ians collapse and Katies general uselessness. To come out as such a strong player so early and just power through the game was impressive, the only time he was really even in trouble was the day that they voted out Greg. Reminds me of Ethan where everyone knew he was going to win if he made it to the end, and he still made it.

[GoGo Yubari]

Yeah.

I'm still just baffled at Ian. I have to assume he was at the point of exhaustion, knew he couldn't beat Tom, and decided to save face on national TV rather than fight a losing battle (you will see the absolute inverse of this a few seasons from where you're at). Unfortunately, now he's portrayed in Survivor lore as a good guy but also an idiot.

Also, to answer my own question;

The hardest thing with my five is two things;

1. Is pop culture relevance/status more important than in-game success?

2. Should one or two seasons be allowed to dominate a class of inductees?

In any case, my list is as follows.

1. Tina Wesson (Australia) - this one was a lock. Possibly the third-most famous winner behind Rob and Richard Hatch, first woman to win the million.

2. Amanda Kimmel (China) - I'm not the world's biggest Amanda fan, but she was the first player to make it to Final Jury twice. If Russell's allowed in, Amanda's allowed in too.

3. Rupert Boneham (Pearl Islands) - Another player I don't love (certainly not as much as he seems to love himself) and I won't vote for him when voting opens for the next class, but he was voted America's Favorite Survivor for a reason.

4. Jerri Manthey (Australia) - One of the most iconic villains in Survivor history, and the first femme fatale the show ever had.

5. Colby Donaldson (Australia) - And Colby was the other half. Survivor's first challenge monster, another massive fan favorite.

The main two other players I considered for my five were Jonny Fairplay and Cirie Fields. The former has the Micronesia debacle going against him and doesn't need the ego validation, the latter isn't really iconic enough and doesn't have the major feather in her cap (no final jury appearances, no wins). Both should get in next year for being Survivor's best love-to-hate villain and one of the greatest characters/strategists the game's ever seen.

[RPS]

Episode seven of Nicaragua. Holy shit.

Also, open question; who would your five for the next list of inclusions for the Survivor Hall of Fame be? First class was Hatch, Boston Rob, Sandra, Parvati, and, ugh, Russell.

EDIT: Sentences I never expected Fabio Birza to say; "Yes, I'm actually a little bit familiar with Freudian psychology."

Interesting question, actually.

Mine is similar, actually. Except, I probably wouldn't include Parvati or Boston Rob or Russell. Parvati and Rob are great players. But let's not beat around the bush here - they both only won in their second try. Great players, absolutely. However, to put them in before players who actually won and outperformed them in their initial seasons is insane. For that reason, I'd only include winners. As well, I would not weigh All Stars, FvF, H&V seasons as heavily as original seasons, simply because they aren't really indicative of the Survivor experience.

1. Sandra. Above and beyond how people think of her, she has won twice. So she SHOULD be the first person in.

2. Richard H. He's the first winner, the guy who helped set the blue print. Everybody has spent their entire existence trying to repeat him.

3. Tina W. First female winner and laid the groundwork for all female winners - you don't have to be strong to win, you just have to be nice and social.

4. Earl. First Survivor to ever win with an unanimous vote.

5. Chris D. First Survivor to win the show when severely down in numbers. As in his entire alliance and original tribe had been wiped out.

If it was purely based on my personal opinion, I'd swap Earl out for Todd. Todd and Chris played really similar games. They managed to find themselves in final 4 situations where they were surrounded by goats who they were going to beat no matter what and who were too stupid to cut them out. Chris was going to beat Eliza, Scout or Twila just like how Todd was going to beat Denise, Courtney or Amanda no matter the combination. Players like Vecepia, Brian, Jenna, Amber, Tom, Danni, Aras, Earl, Parvati, Bob, Natalie and whoever wins Nic all cut it close and managed to luck out in getting to the finals with people they could beat. Yul could probably be in the same boat, but Yul loses points because he positioned himself against Ozzy which was a dumb move and J.T. would probably be in there except for Heroes and Villians happened.

Edited August 2, 2011 by RockPaperScissors

[GoGo Yubari]

Oh, I meant not including the first class. Mine I edited in to the above post. It's interesting how you gravitated more to winning and I gravitated more to character/fame, and I'm glad we both agree on Tina because she has to be a lock for this next batch.

EDIT: Also, man, I love the second Funny 115. Especially the entries on the Casaya Alliance (next update is going to be one dedicated to solely that entire group dynamic), Coach, and Erik in Micronesia.

[RPS]

Hmm, I'd agree with your list if we were doing Hall of Fame based upon their significance to the show, but I'd probably swap out Rupert and Amanda. I think Rupert was popular, but I think his appearance in Heroes vs. Villians has sort of hurt his image, as he didn't come across very good. Amanda as well. Both came across as significantly weaker portrayals of themselves. I'd probably swap in Coach (depending on how well he does) and somebody like Chris D, who I think was entertaining and did something very noteworthy on the show. If it was me inducting, I'd do Tina W, Chris D, Todd, Earl and hmm... probably Vecepia.

EDIT: And the Funny 115 Version 2 is hilarious. Just great write ups for everything. Dude has some serious time on his hands.

Edited August 3, 2011 by RockPaperScissors

[GoGo Yubari]

I think I can't include Coach for the same reason I hate that Russell was inducted already; he's too recent. It's like if The White Stripes were inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Rupert and Amanda have sort of diminished their star power a bit via HvV (more Rupert than Amanda, though, because he got the continuation of the "oh hey, maybe he's sort of a pompous control freak" edit from All-Stars), but they've had like seven and four years respectively of sustaining it to Coach's two. Though if Coach somehow won or placed highly in South Pacific, that'd probably change things.

Vee definitely deserves to be in but I bet she'll have to wait until next year or probably even the year after because it feels like most people either don't remember her or don't like her. Which is a pity, because even beyond being the first black winner she was also the first winner to successfully pull off the under-the-radar game.

[bill_da_bill]

Apparently like every episode of Survivor has been taken off of You Tube

Anyone got somewhere else that they watch it?

[GoGo Yubari]

God, yeah, I noticed that. I managed to find another, not-as-good version of Nicaragua, though. What season are you looking for?

[bill_da_bill]

Still going through Palau. The guy whos videos I watched on You Tube said he'll repost them, but it'll probably take a while.

[GoGo Yubari]

Search for "$10 e1 p1," except substitute "e1" for "e(number you were on.)"

[bill_da_bill]

Found one user posting the seasons doing it that way. He's had some of his seasons pulled down, hopefully these last.

[Pizza]

That's how I found most of them, I've been using that guys since Amazon, the ones he has are solid. If it's not popping up with the $11e1 search, try to remember usernames from seasons you watched before, especially if you see someone who has seasons in 480p. I had trouble finding Guatemala and ended up using my history to find the user I watched Season 2 on. He has 1,2,8,11,12,15.

[GoGo Yubari]

Yeah, the further you go along the more haphazard it gets. Micronesia was especially hilarious because for the first episode I basically had to choose between Spanish subtitles and what appeared to be Hebrew subtitles.

[bill_da_bill]

I have found a couple people who have compiled playlists for all of the seasons. I just save their profiles in my favorites and than I don't have to search for episodes.

[The Quasi Juice]

Nicaragua is a hilarious yet frustrating season. I hated the tribal switch, although I guess it was needed because 2 alliances were just running the show.

[GoGo Yubari]

Tribal switch was worth it to kill the medallion of power off. Plus given the season's initial format it was an inevitability anyway.

[bill_da_bill]

Just finished up Palau and watched the first episode of Guatemala. Overall I think Palau was a very strong season with some good characters, just kind of lame twists to the game. Final thoughts on the game post-merge…

-Tom earned the win there. The strongest player in challenges and an all aroundgood guy.

- Final Jury wasn't great for either finalist. Katie was awful and Tom wasn't great,just happened to be better than Katie.

- Ian made the fatal mistake of making a Plan B before it was required to be done.Taking out Tom made sense from a game perspective, but he never should'vebrought it up unless he had won immunity over Tom. How did he not know that Jenwould go to Tom with that to save her own skin?!

- Still in love with Stephanie, glad she's back for Guatemala.

- Very glad Katie didn't win the game.

- An interesting dynamic to see someone as dominant in challenges as Tom win, onlythe second time it's happened in the first 10 seasons, along withEthan.

Excited to see what Guatemala has in store. Not a clue who wins which is part of what made Palau so interesting for me.

Edited August 8, 2011 by bill_da_bill

[GoGo Yubari]

In regards to one thing you said;

Funny thing about Ethan; you'd think he was a really dominant challenge player since he was a pro athlete and very clearly the most athletic person in Africa, but if you go back and watch it was actually Lex who was waaaay better than him in challenges. Then again, by season 10 he is still probably the second or third-best challenge player to have won (Brian had more success than him, though his field of competition wasn't exactly the strongest).

And I'll be really interested to hear your thoughts on Steph down the line. She gets a different edit for Guatemala, which I find pretty interesting.

[bill_da_bill]

Fair point there, I haven't seen Africa since it was on the air live, so my memory might serve me wrong. Ethan was definetly a percieved threat though who over came that to win. I'll keep you updated on my Stephanie thoughts. I'll have to try and not be swayed towards a bias because of her looks, haha.