As Dalton Ross pointed out - both times they’ve done it the winner wound up being the player who would have been voted out under the old rules, but won the fire making challenge to stay in.
I wonder if Dom had gone to fire against Wendell and won, would it have been a clean sweep with the jury? If successful it would have to be one of the greatest moves in Survivor history.
The most likely non-Dom vote in that scenario is Sea Bass, because he was so personally insulted by the way Dom hammed up the fake idol when SB was voted out.
For sure but there is probably more risk/reward to that than is generally advertised. I am pretty sure there’s money differences if you don’t make the final 3.
I thought it was crazy when he floated it, but in retrospect it was the right play.
Hopefully someone does in the future, when it becomes a “there’s no way I can win if this guy makes it to the final 3” situation. It looks like 4th place gets $70K, so it’s a thirty thousand dollar gamble for a million bucks.
Of course, part of the problem is that most of the players in the game can’t view themselves for the perspective of the jury and honestly think they have a chance to win.
Point of order:
Dom won immunity and the right to choose another person to go to the final. Had he given away the immunity necklace, would he have retained the choice of the second finalist, or would that also be passed along to the person to whom he gave the necklace?
We’ll never know how it would have gone down. But potentially - if the right to choose was transferred along with the necklace - Laurel could have chosen Wendell to go with her, if she’s realistic about her own chances and likes him better. That would have been an interesting blindside.
Good points, both of you. I suspect if Dom said “Jeff, I will take Angela’s place in the firemaking challenge, but only if I retain the power to keep Wendell as my opponent”, Jeff would have huddled with the producers and they would have found a way to make it happen unless the lawyers told them they absolutely could not, because of some ironclad aspect of the rules (which I doubt). It’s too good of a TV spectacle to resist, having the two alphas of the season duelling against each other like that.
One thing’s for sure: any serious superfan who is trying to get on the show, and anyone who could potentially return, needs to practice the hell out of that challenge, using the closest to the exact materials (including tinder) as possible. You might find yourself in Dom’s position and want to make the move he couldn’t pull the trigger on; you might be in Wendell’s, getting targeted as a threat; or you could be in Angela’s, just trying to hang on. Absent some future rule change(s), the path to actually win this game without winning that fire challenge is very narrow indeed. Dom almost walked it, but not quite.
If we’re to believe this producer, Angela almost gave it to Dom in the first round:
I enjoyed this interview with a Survivor producer about the classic challenges we haven’t seen in a while, and whether we might see some of them return:
The two things I want to see:
- More individual reward challenges earlier on after the merge where the winner gets to pick someone to go with them.
- The challenge where they get to slowly knock each other out until only one is left.
Both are great post-merge because they expose secret alliances (or break them up when they don’t like how it all played out).
Agreed.
I was surprised Dalton wants to bring back the underwater cage deal. That one is just really twisted IMO. I don’t think you should be trying to see how desperate people are to that level.
I agree with the second one (those are fun!), but there are already too many of the first type.
“Choose a tribemate to join you on the reward.”
“Now choose one more person.”
“Finally, choose ONE more person to join you.”
Suddenly half the tribe is on the reward, and the other half is butthurt over not getting picked. It gets old.
I also thought it interesting that we haven’t seen some challenges in many years because of the topography of Fiji. And they’ve filmed like eight seasons in a row in Fiji.
Yes, but the producers *want *someone to be butthurt. It is a great way of shaking out a weak alliance.
Yeah, at a certain point I wanted Dalton to say “Sounds like Fiji kinda sucks. No one is forcing you to film there, y’know.”
I think the point enalzi was trying to make is that they should have those early after the merge, when the alliances might not be as strong or publicly known. Doing it when there’s only 8 or less people in the game isn’t as interesting because by then the bonds are tight.
I know I’ve said I’d like more ‘knock people out until one’s left’ social challenge, but somewhere else it was mentioned that they gave up doing that after one season where everyone basically agreed ‘X should win’ and knocked themselves out to give that person a free reward (or maybe I’m confusing it with the one the Dalton interview mentioned, touchy subjects?)
? It’s not like they’re trapped in the cage. All they have to do is move 2 feet to get out of it. Holding your breath as long as possible is just another endurance challenge like standing on a platform, or holding a weight.
I liked the “3 strikes for other players” challenges for reward, but they ran it a few times for immunity, which totally ruined the game IMO. There was no way for someone who actually needed immunity to get it, no matter how many questions they got right - everyone else got to wipe out their immunity hopes.
Obviously they are not literally trapped. :rolleyes: But you mentioned holding weight: the producer expressed discomfort with that type of challenge, especially for immunity, for the same basic reason I don’t like the cage one.
You can’t really think that “they can stop any time” automatically makes it okay. What if they were standing on a grate over a fire (like a big barbecue grill) but two inches away they could jump into a pool of cold water? And then they put more and more fuel on the fire. Pretty sure at least two players would come out of the challenge needing to see Dr. Mike for second degree burns at least, maybe smoke inhalation too.
In the actual challenge we’re talking about, what I’m saying is related to why waterboarding is widely regarded as torture, even though there’s no actual danger of drowning. (I think the danger of a stubborn pair of diehard Survivor players coming close to drowning and needing to be rescued is actually higher.)
Sure I can. It’s voluntary, it’s impossible to hold your breath long enough to injure yourself, they have medical staff and safety divers standing by off camera, and as far as I’m concerned these people are willingly putting themselves through this for my amusement. I’m OK with it.
The burning case you’re talking about is very different - the heat could increase fast enough that a person could be injured before they could stop it. That can’t happen with holding your breath.
Really, if that particular challenge bothers you, what do you think about all the other physical challenges? There have been plenty of minor to moderate injuries in challenges, and close call that could easily have been a life changing or even fatal injury.