Then he is the top_pimp_daddy of survivor in my book. Its too bad they couldn’t get him on board for All Stars.
Mariano (and by proxy Ambuh) would still have had a good chance because Rob’s been clearly the best physical challenge player in survivor history. But on the purely political aspect of the game, Brian is the master.
Brian Heidik was the true master of the game and I agree that he is everything Boston Rob thinks he is. Every time a “mastermind” gets voted out, it’s because his ego was too big to hide his power (like John the nurse in Marquesas). Brian was always calling the shots and was content to leave it at that. He never felt the need to throw it in everyone’s face that he was in charge. When he finally did (telling Jan to side with him and Clay so she can finish third place!), he already had the prize in the bag and he confided in someone too dumb and unambitious to revolt against him.
Richard Hatch was brilliant, but he had it easy in a sense because he played with people too stupid to do anything. I was laughing hard when Jenna, Colleen, etc were saying how outraged they would if they found out that people were being voted out systematically. Hatch actually played his best in Survivor All Stars and I hated Colby for rousing everyone to vote him off because I would’ve loved a chance to see Hatch do his thing with a group of people that already know what he’s doing.
Richard had one trick - form an alliance with other players and vote as a group. It was good enough at the time but it was hardly a work of genius.
I agree with you, but I would say Rich had it easy because he was first. He was brilliant because he figured out how to play the game right away, and no one else ever really did. They were all still thinking it was a 39-day vacation, right up till the moment they were voted off.
I’d say Rudy was in this class, though. And I don’t think he was an All-Time great.
I have to hand it to Chris from last season. I mean, for God’s sake, he was the ONLY GUY LEFT and on the outside of a strong female alliance…and he won. It still boggles my mind.
I give Chris a lot of credit for winning against really long odds. But I think he was helped by factors beyond his control - mainly that people in the alliance against him made some very stupid moves. Ami, in particular, tore her own alliance apart and created openings for Chris to exploit. Chris himself on several occasions said that he didn’t have to do anything except sit back and let the other players knock each other out. And Rory had done pretty much the same thing earlier, which shows it wasn’t just one player who saw this.
Chris made some nice moves to push that along, though.
Also, Twila helped him out because she saw her OWN opportunity!
Anyone remember BB from the first season? He built a great shelter and started a fire with his glasses but he was a cranky older guy and got voted off early. But in retrospect I give him a lot of respect. Because even though it was the first series and he obviously had never seen the show, he had made plans. He anticipated that shelter building would be a factor so he learned how to do it. And the thing with the glasses didn’t just happen (as other tribes have learned when they tried the same trick). BB had a special pair of glasses made with a magnifying lens. He wore this pair to the island, the producers never realized it wasn’t his real prescription, and used the magnifying lens to start a fire. I’m sure that BB had more surprises that he would have revealed if he had lasted longer. But the thing he hadn’t anticipated was the importance of the socializing (which he admitts was a mistake). I would have liked to have seen him come back on the all-stars series.
Whaddaya mean “at the time”? 
That’s still the way it’s done. And it’s so pervasive that it has bled over into other shows, even shows like Amazing Race and The Apprentice, where it’s practically useless. Richard moved “alliance” from its status as an historical military term to a buzz-word in pop culture. Not giving Richard due credit would be like not giving Elvis due credit.
Because “at the time” having that one trick was enough to win. As you point out, most players have done it since so building an alliance is no longer enough to win. And as Rich demonstrated on All-Stars he didn’t have any other ideas nor was he able to compete against other players in alliance building.
Maybe so, but Elvis couldn’t outplay Hendrix either, and that doesn’t make Elvis any less great. Without Elvis, there might well have been no Hendrix. Without Rich, Survivor might have taken on a whole 'nother dynamic, and possibly not made it past season two. It seems to me that one very important factor in greatness is influence. Even Survivor’s greatest moment — Sue’s rat and snake speech — was all about Richard, just as all the alliances on all the shows are all about what he pioneered.
If Rich wasn’t there someone else would have figured out alliance building.
Whether is was Sue, Rudy, Gervaise, Colleen, Gregg… somebody would have got it.
Lib, there’s people who deserve credit for doing something first and people who deserve credit for doing something best. Richard Hatch is in the former group. But we’re talking about the latter group.
Well, I’m part of the “we”, and what I’m talking about is that influence is a big part of greatness — how much one person influences all others. That is not necessarily the same as being first. It is possible to be first, and then forgotten. Number two might get all the credit, like Edison did. But Rich was both first and extremely influential. That makes him great.
He is also the first player to be banned from all Survivor functions. Has to take a special person to get that honor.
I do agree Brian was a great player, but he did have a couple of good breaks, Survivor: Thailand, as one commentater I remember put it was “12 dumb rednecks, 3 whiney minorities and Brian”. If there was anybody else of interlectual note on Survivor: Thailand it might of been quiet a fight, but he luckily had people either to dumb to notice or people who had way to big of an ego to deal with.
Of course the way he played them was fantastic and I am not dissing it at all. But he was lucky he wasn’t playing with another group of people with actual high brain power.
Huh? I haven’t heard anything about that. Could you elaborate?
Jeff can’t stand JF, and categorically refuses to invite him to anything Survivor related. There’s an article here, but you have to register: