Of course Burnett is rigging the show, but he’s doing it after the fact. He had thousands of hours of film to work with, so it’s easy for him to edit the footage to make it look like one team is dominant or weak, to highlight or hide alliances, to play up controversies and crisises, or generally make the show dramatic. None of which means he was biasing the events that happened.
Keep in mind that Burnett didn’t know what was going to happen on the island until it was over. He had no way of knowing who was going to be the most interesting characters and what would be the dramatic scenes until after the series was in the can. Then he went back and edited out 99% of his footage and created an interesting plotline out of the remaining 1%.
Put me on record as a Shii Ann fan who was hoping she’d win. Of course, I’m the only person who liked Jerri Manthey so my opinion may be suspect. With Shii Ann gone, I guess I have to go with Brian as my new favorite to win. He’s entertaining and he’s working towards a win. But unlike Shii Ann, I don’t find myself rewinding Brian’s swimsuit scenes.
Shii Ann would like you to believe it was the things going into her mouth that got her voted out. Nope. It was the things coming out of her mouth that caused the problems. Plus she was not nearly as clever as she thought she was. And was caught backstabbing. And she “double dipped the chip” when eating. While no Robb or Ghandia, she was annoying, and weak at the challenges (how many did she sit out?).
The challenges are not rigged. However, the order in which they are played does seem to be reordered to keep competitive balance. At one time team geezer had lost a ton of challenges and were clearly outmatched on any physical challenges. Unsurprisingly, all the physical challeges disappeared, and we had Survivor puzzle-fest for the next 4 weeks straight. Any physical challenges were only for rewards, but even those were rare. This seem to have happen the last couple of years. One team is getting pounded early, then the challenges get much easier. I think the outcomes of the contests themselves are up to the Survivor’s though.
Did they finally kill off the “eat the gross stuff” challenge?
I think they (TPTB) probably have lots of challenges on hand, and decide which one to do at the last minute, depending on how the teams are doing, as evidenced by this year’s groups. Chewing Gum was getting killed in the physical challenges, so yes, they switched to challenges that were easier for them to win. Not exactly “rigging,” but darn near close, IMHO.
I don’t know what happened to the “eat the gross stuff” challenge. That usually happened pretty early on, right? It was one of my favorites.
I do remember reading that this year’s Survivor was going to be all-new, meaning challenges and rules. We’ve already seen that, in the way they pick teams, no switching tribes and no merge at 10 players.
I do hope they keep the final trivia challenge, where they ask the final 3 (I think it’s 3) players questions about their fellow castmates (Who does this shirt belong to? Who’s last name is Snicklefritz? Who lives in Texas? Who has six kids? etc.) It really shows who got to know the others, and who didn’t give a shit.
Yeah, somebody said at the start of the season that all of the challenges would be brand new. Nothing we’d seen before. Which explains why they had to resort to FISH SORTING!!! I still can’t believe how stupid that was.
I liked fish sorting, and they still had to put gross stuff in their mouths.
And for clarification, I did not mean to imply that the producers were rigging the challenges themselves, merely that there had been questions (I suspect incorrect, but you never know) that the choice of challenges was made depending on who the producers wanted to see win that week.
I’m picturing Jeff Probst meeting them at this week’s challenge field with a bowl full of boiled chicken livers and telling Sook Jai, “Now who’s sorry?”
Personally, I’m guessing the ugly food challenge may be history. In the last few series, we’ve seen that the players have been looking at it more a source of extra protein than a test of willpower.
I think Fear Factor has cornered the market on eating gross stuff, which is fine by me. If I never see another pig rectum again . . .
I lamented the loss of Robb; now that the two tribes share the beach I believe we’ll miss a lot of shit-stirring and unintelligible insults from Tommy Lee Lite. But with Magilla stealing the bananas this week, maybe Robb’s not so far from our hearts after all.
Well, actually, back in (IIRC) the week 1 thread, I predicted she was the “token queer”. Hey, it’s not like her being gay means I actually have less of a chance with her now.
The token queer? ISTR that openly gay players have been featured quite prominently in this game. Rich won it all. Brandon played stupidly in the end, but was great comic relief. John’s rise and fall in Marquesas was an all-time highlight. I’d actually commend Burnet for his willingness to cast and prominently feature gay contestants, not snipe at him for tokenism.
Er…perhaps that came out differently than I intended? All I meant, minty, was that each series has had one gay person, and that person was not “out” in the beginning (except maybe Brandon, I don’t remember). So when the show started, some of us were speculating which one it would be this time. For some reason, Shii Ann struck me as a likely candidate.
Rich was not openly gay at first, and only declared it when he felt comfortable with his tribe (and, IIRC, some had begun to speculate). John seemed quite peeved when someone “outed” him.
I don’t have a problem with gay people at all. Heck, the whole cast could be gay and I’d still watch the show. (I still say Rich was the best player in the whole run, and he didn’t even have the benefit of seeing previous series. Only natural instinctive sneakiness.)
So where was I going with this…Well, anyway, sorry if the term “token” offended you. I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way.
I have yet to see any evidence that this is the case. Some of the challenges take quite a bit of time to set up, and I have seen smuggled-out daily production plans that lay out, ahead of time, what challenge will take place when.
As I’ve already said, it is a pretty good bet that SOME team will end up stronger, even if TPTB don’t know ahead of time which team that will be. So it makes sense to stagger in some mental challenges to help make up for that.
Best player Rich? He came so close to getting voted out- and only one due to some really lucky break he had little to do with. Flip a coin?
Best to me is someone who didn’t deserve to win, winning-- i.e. Tina or Velocipia, or someone who was clearly the best running the table and winning, i.e. Ethan.
To me its #2, and Ethan as the best player ever. In any other year he probably would have won or come close. Rich, Tina or Velo would not. Heck I doubt if smug Rich would make it to the jury now. Just ask our pastor from this year’s show. . .
Yep, that’s pretty much what I’ve always thought. This season’s biggest challenge of brute strength was the race around the island with the dummies. It occurred, IIRC, when Chewing Gum was already down two members, and were clearly the physically weaker tribe. If there had been any desire to choose a challenge that would even things up, that was not the one to choose.
There’s always an element of luck involved, no matter who wins. And to me, just being nice and “flying under the radar”, while often successful, is a passive strategy that relies too much on others. Rich took his fate into his own hands and played the alliance game masterfully. His great strength was getting others to do what he wanted, yet making them think it was all their idea in the first place. He won it all despite being annoying.
Nah, if Rich & Co. were on Ethan’s team, they’d have had the good sense to boot him early. I liked Ethan, and there’s no doubt he deserved to win, but if his teammates had had any sense, they’d have canned his too-likeable and strong ass early.
I definitely agree that Rich has been the best player to date. Also, he wrote the rulebook in many ways – the others had something to rely on. He had NOTHING.
