It seems obvious that the providing a plethora of food and comfort for only one tribe is having a major impact on the game. Is it really fair that only one challenge should have this much impact?
Well considering what happened in last Thursday’s episode…
The “rich” tribe decided to give up immunity to continue living at the fancy camp. This had made the game 7-7. We’ll ignore the whole Lisi-Liliana “I want to be pretty too!” pettiness for now.
…I’d say the stupidity of the contestants has a way of making an unfair situation more fair.
No, it’s not fair. There’s a lot of luck involved. There always is. I don’t understand why some viewers have so much trouble accepting this.
Richard Hatch caught several really lucky breaks and had just enough to pull ahead of Kelly Wigglesworth. (It could’ve very easily been Rudy Bosch; in retrospect, I’m a little surprised it wasn’t.) Tina Wesson was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time (if that annoying guy hadn’t fallen in the fire, who knows what would’ve happened…) and cut a once-in-a-lifetime deal with sweet Colby Donaldson. Ethan Zohn…man, I still can’t explain that one, largely because I don’t remember him having much of a strategy at all. And remember, this was before the producers decided they had to put in a tweak every week or so to keep things honest and turned the whole thing into a crapshoot. Yes, there are tactics contestants can use to improve their chances, but anyone going into this thinking that luck doesn’t matter is delusional.
I can’t even begin to count all the bizarre ways contestants have gotten eliminated, like Kim or whoever getting hornswoggled by the two-tribes-in-the-same-place non-merge ruse (which I don’t recall ever happening again), or Paschal something, who had not had a single vote against him, being eliminated…by picking the wrong colored rock.
It’s reality TV. It’s never fair. It’s never meant to be.
(On an unrelated note, I’m quite frankly stunned that years after I completely stopped watching the show, I still remember that many names.)
Lots of luck or a run of luck is not the same as giving 1/2 the contestants a huge advantage after the first challenge and bizarre circumstances occur ONCE to ONE person - not 3 weeks to an entire tribe.
Every season they have some gimmick. I like to think of this season as “the Jared Diamond experiment”. I kind of like it-- at least it’s educational for those willing to watch it as such.