Okay, after Jon got the reward, Peachy hands Burton a machette and some matches and tells them they’re going to a different beach for 24 hours. We see the boat drop them off. After a qucik shot of Burton hacking at an apparently unedible coconut, we see them all sitting on a log looking pathetic. Commercial.
After the commercial, they’re back! Jon’s friend is leaving! WTF happened? We just skipped ahead 24 hours? Now, I don’t really care what Jon and his “friend” did, nor do I want to, but what happened to the other survivors? I expected to see them build a fire, perhaps a temporary shelter, search for some fruit trees, something. Did they really just sit there on that log for 24 hours?
I’m thinking that the producers thought that it might make an interesting segment, but the survivors blew it by not wanting to exert themselves at all. If it had happened earlier, pre-merge, they might have been inclined to do some work. But at this point of the game nobody wants to paint a target on themselves by “taking charge” and nobody wants to tire themselves out when there’s no obvious reward at stake.
So what’s the opinion in doperland? Did they do anything or not? Did they even try to start a fire? Is doing nothing good strategy? Better to just wait it out and starve than put forth some effort to be a little more comfortable?
Don’t forget the editing. I suspect some bedding was collected, along with some firewood. We know they also collected coconuts.
I didn’t forget about the editing. That’s why I’m asking!
We don’t know that they did anything. The coconut Burton was hacking at could have been lying on the bech.
I too suspect that they did something, at least start a fire, but at this point we don’t know.
It obviously wasn’t as interesting as the conversation between Jon and his friend about their great acting skills.
In the other thread about whether or not Jon cheated, I wondered about why the others were sent away. Usually with this “Loved One” reward, the Loved One gets to mingle with the rest of the Survivors. I think during the course of the RC (the walking-the-plank game), some hurried phone calls were made by the producers, and it was probably determined that Jon’s granny was alive and well, and that’s why they sent the others to another island - to get Jon and his friend talking alone, so it would come out that it was all a set-up.
Although, as the friend said, he might not have been able to keep the charade up all day. It would have been very interesting if they’d all been together (do they have any booze left?) and it came out that it was all a scam, that Granny wasn’t really dead. Jon would have been voted out right away. Maybe the producers are interested in seeing how far he gets with his little lie?
That’s a good theory. If Jon & Friend pull off the lie, then we the viewers would never discover what the producers had learned.
Keeping Jon’s lie a secret from everyone is not good television. So they sequester J&F and start rolling film.
My theory is alot like BiblioCat’s, with one exception.
The whole spilling the beans between Jon and his buddy would have come out regardless-- in every reward with an outsider as a prize, they always do something special for them. In one, way back, a contestant won the evening with his mom (It was all kind of cool, in a weird way) where they had a huge meal and talked and got caught up and at the end of it all, gave the contestant some lame SUV.
I think last weeks reward was supposed to be alot like the one from before. Some big get-away feast with booze and food and serious relaxing and at the end of it all, give the contestant a brand new GMC something-or-other. And all the chatter that was going on behind the scenes was less a ‘let’s be sure we get this all on tape’, and more a, ‘Sweet Jesus! Chevy Motors doesn’t want to be associated with some guy lying about his granny. Do something!’.
What amazes me is that the best they could come up with was what they did.
Yeah, I’ve thought that the sequestering might have been the result of Jon’s lie. My two problems with that theory is that the producers decided to do it rather quickly, and why would they want to protect Jon? Let the lie come out and let him get booted. It’s good TV either way. Even if they managed to pull of the lie, Jon would have revealed it in confessional.
My own theory is that they are trying different “twists” in anticipation of the All-Star season. However, the survivors did either nothing or very little, so it didn’t work. But I can see it working. Send survivors out alone or in pairs, and at the end they get a special reward. It’d be a taste of “real” survival; no bags of rice to eat or a tarp to sleep under.