The basic premise of the television show, Survivor, was that two ‘tribes’ of 8 contestants each through competitions of various types would be whittled down to the point where the two tribes would merge into one.
When it just so happened that the competitions resulted in each tribe having exactly 4 members each… my reaction was, “How convenient.” Odd that one team didn’t have 5 members and the other 3 or any other combo. Having an even split ensures more tension among the two tribes and makes for better tv.
Of course, time will tell, and if Survivor II results in another 4/4 split I’ll know the fix is in.
How could the competitions be fixed? There were a lot of dragging of chests, boxes, etc in the competitions. Who’s to say that one box wasn’t made a bit heavier than the other team’s in order to give one team the edge. I doubt the tribe members are going to be in a position to compare the two weights. In another challenge, each team had to dig up a chest. You simply bury one chest a foot or two deeper than the other. Who’s gonna compare?
I think the producers rig the competitions to ensure that each tribe will have exacty 4 members when the time comes to merge.
If you’ve seen the line up for SII, you know what’s up. They have the list of people and the tribe they’ll be in. Right, it’s all hype. A gag to get people to watch.
Dunno if the rest of it is fixed, but I’d assume there is some preference as to whom leaves first. I vaguely recall one of the entertainment rags printing a quote from one of the people who left suvivor first, and she seemed a little bitter and suspicious.
Considering I don’t have a quote, better class that as a theory and rumor.
Rene Descartes was sitting in a local pub downing a beer. The glass was empty and the barkeep asked if another brew was desired. “I think not” he said…
…and disappered.
I fixed the subject line. I’m going to leave the thread here because there is actually some serious debate about whether or not there was any producer interference on Survivor.
First, it wasn’t 4 and 4, it was 5 and 5. (Remember, there was the Tagi alliance of 4 plus Sean.)
Second, how could they have set up the challenges to guarantee such a result? Maybe they could have played to certain strengths of each group? Perhaps, but in the challenge dealing with rowing, one would have expected Tagi’s Kelly to do well since she was a whitewater rafter. She certainly expected herself to do well. She blew it. Meanwhile, in the final group challenge, the obstacle course, Tagi won it by mere seconds. How could the producers have planned that?
Now, there are some serious accusations about the producers meddling in other ways. For example, in his unauthorized book, The Stingray, award-winning journalist Peter Lance provides information that the producers may have “suggested” to a couple of players who they should vote for. On a recent Rivera Live, Lance talked about some of his accusations and Sean Kenniff acknowledged that he and Jenna had not been the original ambassadors chosen by the tribes to discuss the merger – but that the producers interfered there as well (this mattered because Sean got drunk and revealed details of the alliance to Jenna, though she was obviously too stupid to act on that information).
For more information on this sort of thing, I suggest you check out The Stingray homepage and SurvivorNews.net. In fact, Lance just released an e-book version of his book yesterday.
Lance also claims that Stacey was voted off after the producer (Mark Burnett) convinced Sean and Dirk to swap their votes from Rudy to Stacey. This was apparently to make it look as thought the older folk on the show weren’t being targeted. (First 2 to go were Sonja and BB, had Rudy gone third, it wouldn’t have looked good.)
Notice that on the new show, the oldest contestant is a mere 53 compared to the original series having a 72 year old…
