The Survivor Thread

[RPS]

I agree with you completely. I would say the stark difference in how the show was prepared. The earlier days (and certain seasons in later seasons) are focused entirely on characters. Who is Richard? What makes him tick? Why is an alliance with Rudy bizarre? Why does it make sense? The early seasons are deep dives on the individual characters and the narrative of the show because the strategy was slow. Note - I would not say the strategy lacks depth, I would just say the pacing is slow. Burnett envisioned the show more like a documentary and that is what the first season was. 

Along the way, the show has become, for the most part, less about the characters and way more about the strategy. This is true of any season wherein the strategy and going ons are too complex. In an episode of Survivor, you have 42 minutes to explain the characters, the challenges, the strategy and tribal council. The challenges have played remain the same for the most part. What has happened is that strategy and tribal council have become more complex. If you can't show less of the challenges and you need to explain the complex strategy and tribal councils, the thing that will take a hit as your characters. 

Now, none of this is mutually exclusive. You can, for example, have great scenes wherein you build great characters who also are deploying strategy or during a challenge. However, characters will take a hit nonetheless when you have to focus on strategy excessively and what happens at tribal council. We knew Richard and Rudy were in an alliance because, even though Richard was gay, their values and work ethic lined up. We don't get those scenes anymore. 

In my opinion, Micronesia is basically when the show became less about characters and more about strategy. There are some great narrative and character seasons after, but less so than before. 

[Alex.]

I actually preferred the character base direction of the show. This past season I hated because it was just about strategy and there were other reasons why I hated it which I won't get into. 

[GoGo Yubari]

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The challenges have played remain the same for the most part.

tbh, one of my biggest pet peeves is they've basically given up on the challenges so 80% of them require the exact same skillset every time. I miss when random-ass stuff like knowing local trivia, building an SOS display, learning how to effectively walk on stilts could win you immunity, as opposed to now where basically all you need to be concerned with is knowing how to swim, knowing how to not move for a long time, and knowing how to solve puzzles.

[Alex.]

I'm guessing the lack of variety in challenges is due to the budget cuts in the show? It is literally the same thing every time now. It gives you the feeling the show is on auto pilot and I hate that. I know budget cuts are one of the reasons why they keep filming in Fiji. Hell they keep using the same beaches for tribes now over and over. 

Maybe I am just outgrowing the show.

[Azazel]

Just speaking of Borneo challenges, I don't think its a budget thing because a lot of these challenges are super basic, like finding items in a house, or just carrying someone on a stretcher they made before hand. 

I don't dislike the newer seasons, but I think my list of favorite seasons/player and most hated seasons/players is going to change drastically on an actual rewatch. Even looking back to what I wrote like 6 months ago.

On 2017-01-20 at 11:14, Azazel said:

It's easy to say knowing more about how the game works now, so it's understandable not everyone would be playing smart the first season, but some of them are pretty awful at it.  Sean doesn't want to vote for everyone, and even though they all suspect an alliance between Rich, Rudy and Sue, nobody every tries to do anything about it.

Dr. Sean isn't really an idiot, he is trying to enjoy himself and his strategy is simple, try not to be responsible for voting anybody out so at the finals you will probably win.  If its not that, its just hilarious to watch how dumb he is.  I would even say my favorite on the re-watch are Hatch and Dr. Sean.

[RPS]

The first season is fun because of how naive and formative it was. A lot of reality shows around the time had much more genuine reactions and I liked Sean because he was a genuine character. It's wild to think on season 34 that someone played the game with the most arbitrary strategy of just voting someone based on the first letter of their name. But there was Sean. 

[Azazel]

Based just off the pre merge, this is basically what is happening.  Hatch was day 1 wanting to talk about how they were going to vote.  Joel wanted to pick off all of Tagi post merge.  Sean and Gervase had similar strategies, they wanted to be well liked so they could win at the end.  Gretchen was a hard worker and probably the most deserving but didn't want to be in an alliance.  A lot of different people had different strategies to win, it just turns out the voting alliance was the strategy that got people to the finals.

There is more planning than you would expect, its just not the focus of the show.  The Alphabet strategy is less stupid than it seems.

[Alex.]

I'd rather see the alphabet strategy any day over gamebots like zeke. 

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

I liked Zeke. I thought his story was interesting, especially over the course of two seasons. He loves Survivor. It helped him through a tough period. So he doesn't want to waste this chance and makes a move too early. He's brought back and does the exact same thing again! He would rather have tried and gone down swinging than regret not getting a chance to play the game. 

His scene in MvGX with Brett is one of my favourite moments in Survivor, though that has more to do with Brett than Zeke. 

I want both things, I guess. I want "bombs" (i.e. players that are more character than game players) that people who are actually strategists need to diffuse.

[GoGo Yubari]

God, I loved that Zeke/Brett scene too. That was maybe the one scene where the Millennials vs. Generation X theme really, truly offered an interesting "Survivor is a social experiment" scene. I also thought Zeke's relationship with Chris was really interesting.

Admittedly I don't love Zeke as a whole (I thought he was trying too hard in his pre-season interview for MvGX, and that was vindicated by the fact that he's not nearly as quippy in actual conversations/confessionals) but I think the backlash against him was pretty unfair, particularly on /r/Survivor which has turned into Passive Aggressive Survivor Sucks whenever a season actually starts. He's not at fault for his edit, nor Probst hyping him up.

[Azazel]

I absolutely love how pre merge every member of Pagong said they would not vote for each other until all of Tagi was gone, with Joel being the center of it.  Then they merge and Jenna and Greg vote against Pagong immediately.  J is for Jenna might be the vote that clutches the season, but I think the Joel vote is what doomed Pagong.

I also love how hard they are trying for an island romance.  Weird angles to make it look like Colleen and Greg are fooling around and leaving Sean and Jenna on the Sand Spit with begs and wine.  They wanted someone to hook up so bad.

The opening of the episode after Gretchen gets voted off is hilarious.  Dr. Sean can't think of a reason to vote off Gretchen outside of strategy, Gervase says if it happens again then he'll know there is an alliance and he will crush them (despite not having the numbers to do so at that point).  The whole alliance thing is just an amazing story, especially how bad Pagong is at it.  There are so many hilarious things happening, mostly Colleen thinking then can come together as 4 and vote someone off despite being down in numbers... then they band together against Jenna?!?!?

Sue is a much better player than I remember, she straight up lied to Stacey/Kelly pre merge and Jenna/Colleen post merge to make them think the girls were sticking together.  Sue could have easily taken Hatch's place if it wasn't for the Rudy friendship.  Although Rudy dropped a great one during the Greg video, saying they had to put him with him for another 2 weeks, not even a hint that they are preparing to take him out.

I'm not sure what storyline I like better, Pagong can't figure out an alliance, or Dr. Sean is a buffoon.

[Azazel]

Slowly getting through this due to watching other thing as well.  There are a lot of great storylines in this season, Dr. Sean is my favorite, the Pagong vs the Alliance is hilarious because they keep voting for Sean because nobody respects him.

However, Sue and Kelly is hilariously evil and terrible.  They aligned Day 6 to vote out Rudy except Sue was cockily lying the entire time.  They pulled Kelly into the alliance and she kind of wavered on it.  Sue had this weird confessional about not having friends and refusing to burn Kelly... but then she turns and hates Kelly by the end for turning on her.  It's just a hilarious relationship where Sue turned on Kelly then got pissed when Kelly turned on her later. So overall, Borneo was a lot of fun to rewatch and there was more to it than I remembered

Favorite Characters:
1. Richard Hatch - He was on the ball from the start and played a super smart game of getting to know people, even Sonja.  Once the alliance took power he became arrogant Hatch.  Sitting on the beach with Rudy and Sue and laughing at Colleen and Kelly struggle to survive.  Then turning and bringing Kelly to the Final 3 instead of Sue, putting himself in a situation where he couldn't lose.  Hatch was just fun to watch and the star of the season.
2. Dr. Sean Kenniff - Just a complete putz with a strategy that was only good on paper.  Made a lot of dumb decisions and was completely unaware of his surroundings.  Dr. Sean looked like an idiot and it was marvelous to watch everyone hate him for it.
3. Colleen Haskell - I have no idea why she was the sweetheart, she just insulted people constantly.  Of course, that kind of thing is fun to watch.  She hated the alliance thing but was terrible with dealing with it, constantly wanting to vote off Sean or Jenna instead.  She also liked to give the producers what they wanted to hear even if she was bullshitting.

I can't really say I HATED anybody on the rewatch.  Crust old BB was actually more entertaining watching Gretchen try to deal with him and Joel just hate him for it.  If there was anybody I would want to see return from Borneo that hasn't already or has turned them down like Colleen and Greg.  I would LOVE to see Joel Klug back.  He was the young alpha male on Season 1 who lost because nobody wanted to play Survivor.  17-18 years later he returns to finally get to play the game the way he wanted.

[GoGo Yubari]

I loved that Colleen was America's Sweetheart but she was also a total shit-talker. She was great.

also Greg actually did want to come back around Second Chances time, but his work commitments made it impossible. I'm super-curious what he'd be like in the game now that he's older.

[Azazel]

Watching the last two episodes now.  I understand why Rich won now.  Kelly didn't vote with Tagi on the most important vote (the one where Pagong actually voted Rich).  If Sean was the least bit smart the alliance would have crumbled then and there.  That is where Sue completely turned on Kelly and ended up being the reason Sue got voted out at the final 4 and thus the snakes and rats speech was born.  He had Rudy and Sean's vote no matter what, Sue was never going to vote for Kelly after this.  He just needed a Pagong vote and Greg was smart enough to realize he deserved to win.

So for a "boring" season with no strategy, it's a crazy ride to the finish realizing all the hurdles Rich had to overcome.  Sure, he had the numbers in the alliance but it could have turned around on him half a dozen times before he won.

Also, knowing the beer reward was changed due to a protest is now hilarious, with Rich saying "okay, that works for me" after they edited it.

[RPS]

The best piece of strategy in the whole season was Richard stepping down from the final immunity challenge. In my opinion, it was the single most important piece of strategy ever deployed on the show. People who exceed and excel at games are the people who are told the exact same instructions and think "okay... how do I exploit this to my advantage?" How do you take what is an obvious rule and figure out the way around it.

I compare it to playing board games. When you first learn the board game Catan, there is the mechanism of the robber. The robber basically stops player(s) from getting resources and allows you take one resource from that player. When you play with new players, they take the robber, they look at all of the players who are playing and they go after the first person with the most cards. I see it happen all of the time. The very intelligent players figure out how to use the mechanism of the robber - for example, if you roll 7 first, putting the robber on the space of the first person who just went. The idea being - that person has to wait several turns to return the favor. If you put it on the space of someone directly before you, they'll just fuck you over right away. 

On the face of a rule, it seems as though it is always in your best interest to want to win immunity. Being safe is more optimal than not being safe. But when you deep dive into Richard's strategy - it is in his best interest to not win immunity. In fact, winning immunity can actually lose him the game. There are moments in the show where people figure out wisely how to exploit the mechanisms of the game - Richard and the final immunity challenge, Vee/Sean/Kathy flipping Paschal and Neleh on the Rotu 4, Sandra's "Anybody but me" strategy, Fairplay exploiting the loved one's challenge, Cirie's 3-2-1 vote, Cao Boi and splitting votes... there are a number of times during the game you watch these really intelligent players figure out how to take the expectation of the rule and flip it on the inverse to actually use it to their advantage. 

[Azazel]

Slowly working through Outback and I have no idea how anybody can say this is a boring season or lacking strategy.  The first run thought I had this as my favorite season all the way up until probably Panama and I still think its great.  The character development is great and there are a ton of things I either missed or forgot about the first time.

I get the Jerri thing a lot more this time.  I think the producers were concerned that a "villian" won the first season so they wanted to make sure they edited someone as a villain that was going to get beaten to make the fans happy since the fan favorite was going to lose in the finals.  Her first "villain" moment was Kel and the Beef Jerky.  I didn't know I how I felt about this thing but after seeing it again and remember the reunion it's pretty obvious the Beef Jerky had zero to do with Kel getting voted out.  Maralyn was the only person on his side and looks like the only person that he actually had any sort of relationship with and I found it weird how she pronounced his name... until she voted for him and wrote down "CAL" and I realized that the only person who Kel had any sort of connection to didn't even know his name.

Another thing I realized a few episodes later is that everybody hated Kimmi.  Episode 1 Varner says he wants to grab her by the neck and just shake her, Alicia says almost the same thing during the chicken stuff.  Skupin complains that she is dirty and smelly and won't bathe, everyone is constantly complaining about her.  Then it clicked, the opening credits has a glamour shot of everyone looking at or passed the camera... except Kimmi.  They used a clip of her mid challenge where she looks haggard.

Knowing the boot order also makes one thing super enjoyable, and its how inept Jerri and Amber are.  They think Tina and Keith are the minority and a risk to flip on the tribe and are terrified of them talking to the Kucha members instead of realizing they are the minority and should be the ones trying to align with Kucha.  However that probably isn't possible since Kucha doesn't even like them.  All because they think Colby is on their side after he turned on them to vote Mitchell out.

Sometimes a complete lack of strategy is fascinating to watch.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

I love that you are re-watching this after powering through it not long ago. 

[Azazel]

52 minutes ago, Ms. Canadian Destroyer said:

I love that you are re-watching this after powering through it not long ago. 

I wanted to see the difference between the new and old seasons in retrospect, and the only other thing I have interest in watching right now is Game of Thrones

[RPS]

It has been a long time since I rewatched the seasons. I tried to rewatch it with my better half, but he was not into it. 

If I did rewatch, I'd probably stop at HvV and pick and choose which seasons to rewatch. I don't think I could slog through Caramoan and RI and One World again. 

[Azazel]

Something became very clear to me rewatching Outback.  Jerri Manthey is an absolutely horrible Survivor player.  Her social game sucks since everyone but Amber and Mitchell hate her.  Post merge there are a bunch of scenes where she is worried that Tina and Keith are going to flip on the Ogakor alliance, completely unaware that she is the one in the minority because she is so sure Colby is with her.

Also, something that stood out a lot, Jerri is probably the first major #blindside but they don't even cut to her when she gets the fourth vote, its just a shot of Probst.  They read the last vote and... nothing happens.  You would think this would have had some kind of moment on the show, but nothing.