What are the rules of Survivor? How do you know they aren’t following the rules? They definitely seem to do a lot of things on the fly, without violating any rules.
Many seasons ago, they sent a note to each tribe saying “Pick two members and send them this location”. No other information, though both tribes correctly guessed what would occur - when they got there, each pair found they were being sent to the other tribe. Why would that not have been a rules violation, but randomly selecting 3 people from each tribe to move to the other tribe would?
Why is separating fans and favorites at the beginning not a rules violation?
Heroes vs. villains, same question?
Old women, old men, young women, young men, same question?
whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, same question?
They can’t do things to specifically fix the game, like change the votes, but they can damn sure play around with how the game is played while it’s going on.
I don’t think they created the strength imbalance - that was just luck. But I can totally see each tribe picking from a bowl that had an even split (that is, the Fans chose from 8 eggs that had 4/4 and the Favorites chose from 6 that were 3/3). That ensures that the tribes are actually split (and avoids an equally bad situation where only one or two people end up together completely outnumbered).
In the end it was possibly the fairest way to shuffle the tribes at this point - I just disagree with these types of random shuffles at this stage of the game. Especially in a season where the stated premise is that one tribe is way more experienced at playing the game than the other.
That said, Matt deserved to go home based on his performance this week. He didn’t make the play he needed to, and painted a target on his back with his idol claims.
I think it was designed to 4 favorite vs 3 fans on the tribe.
I also think if the fans had out-numbered the favorites by 8-6 (instead of vice-versa) that Fans would have outnumbered the favorites by 4-3 on the switch up.
Where the fans screwed up is by losing 3 of the first 5 immunities (and a medical evacuation).
The best way IMO, is completely random. I think they have done that before. Marquesas maybe.
And two seasons ago, in “One World” the tribe switch was similar (although not as quite as extreme).
Worst move ever. The lame tribe (Bikal?) is going to lose every challenge and be decimated before the merge. Matt was their best physical competitor and they just got rid of him. Stupid stupid stupid.
If they walk away, argue, or give any other sign they are not fully onboard with their ‘superior officer’, they will be targeted. Any one of them will vote out the non-‘team player’ to save his or her own neck. They’re too afraid (and have been in previous seasons) to vote out the puppet master until it’s too late.
Philip is a great lightning rod for the other tribe members, there’s no way he’s going to win and as long as he’s focusing his crazy on someone else you can fly under the radar.
No problem with the mix-up (splitting each tribe into 4 Favorites 3 Fans) because otherwise you’d be effectively punishing the favorites that went from a winning team to possibly a minority on their own tribe. Still, sucks that the tribes clearly were broken into the strong and weaker groups. They really need to have a puzzle challenge for the next one.
My first thoughts on the mix-up was that Sandra Bullock and Phillip were hurt the most - her because she’s obviously the last man on the totem pole in her new tribe, and Phillip because he lost his alliance (he’s now with 3 favorites who don’t really like him). Kinda disappointed that Corrine/Dawn/Cochran didn’t take the chance to turn on him, but I suppose they could do so next week. And voting out Matt was the smartest thing to do if you have to choose between the 3 fans to sacrifice - I don’t think keeping Matt over Julia is going to help that much in challenges, the inequity between tribes is just too large.
And geez, Corrine really does sound offensive when she keeps saying “my gay” or “the gay.” Would she ever say “my Jew” or “the black?” I know she thinks she’s being accepting and pro-gay and whatever, but using those pronouns seems to really accentuate the “other” and make Michael sound like a pet instead of a person.
The thing that really kicked me in the head about that is that they never even showed her and Michael interacting! The offensiveness would be mitigated a bit if they’d shown them bonding or something, but it was like the second the three Fans got dropped into the new tribe she latched onto “her gay” without even really TALKING to him. It may have been a villain edit, but it really made it sound like she thinks all gay people belong to her and this one just happened to fall into her immediate sphere of experience.
Philip wouldn’t be able to give his little speeches and hold the tribe entranced if he was in the minority alliance. Since he’s in the majority alliance, they don’t want to rock the boat.
I don’t believe this. Big Brother is officially not a game show and not subject to game show rules and regulations. I have no reason to believe that Survivor is any different.
I do believe that the producers may go out of their way to say that their show isn’t rigged. What I’m skeptical of is that they aren’t allowed to rig their show because of game show laws.
I was expecting that, after they did the mixup, they’d have a reward challenge (they were at a challenge area anyway…), with the reward being the cool camp with all the stuff. It’s interesting to see that the weaker of the two tribes has the cool camp, so they should be stronger and better-fed than the other team.