I don’t think I’ve ever seen a challenge conducted in such heavy rain. For some reason all the downpours in prior seasons seem to happen while they’re just hanging around camp.
So Natalie approaches a group for and says she wants to talk to everyone except Jeremy, and then she’s outraged that he somehow thinks he’s being singled out. Yeeesh.
Yeah, Natalie is indeed clueless as to how others view her. Jeremy said what he had to say to her about it (which I actually admired) but she refused to hear him. At that point he should have just kept his mouth shut and she would have been gone.
The irony of Jeremy preaching to Natalie about self-awareness when he had none himself was almost too good to be unscripted.
I really liked Jeremy’s insight into Natalie, something like:
“She’s been married for 24 years, so she has someone who loves her just the way she is. She’s not changing for strangers.”
That was indeed a keen insight. And of course it’s absurd to argue that what Natalie wanted to say to the others had nothing to do with Jeremy, when she asked him and him alone to leave! She would drive me absolutely nuts. I have a hard time understanding how she has managed to be diplomatic enough to be promoted to a high position at her workplace.
I think she OWNS her business, so it’s not like she actually has to please any higher-up.
Excellent time to get Jeremy out of the game. They’ve done the first mixup after the third vote for the past three or four seasons at least, so anybody thinking strategically sees it coming. Given that he was on the outs with his tribe, a group of Davids would have snapped him up so they’d have a big, strong guy to help in the challenges. Natalie? Not so much. It’s not like she’s going to learn how to be diplomatic just because she’s wearing a different-colored buff.
Natalie survived but she will never be a threat to win this game.
Yeah, but what fun would that be!?
Filming 2 season a year means somebody is getting wet.
Excellent points, but a nitpick: Of the past four seasons before the current one, only one did a mixup after the third vote. In two of the past three seasons they did the mixup even earlier–at the beginning of the second episode, although they did have two votes in the first episode. And in the season right before those three, they didn’t do a mixup until after the fourth vote.
If they always mix up the tribes after 2 votes, why do they even bother coming up with tribe themes?
It’s not “always”, but it’s an excellent question given that from the audience’s perspective, the mixup happened twice in the past three years near the beginning of the second episode! I think the answer is that they don’t like when people have hardened into original-tribe loyalty by the time they mix things up, making it a crapshoot as to whether someone lands on a reshuffled tribe in the majority or minority. But it kind of seemed like the effort didn’t really work.
I suppose it’s also a tacit admission that those themes are kind of goofy and really only exist for promotional purposes. They don’t move to new locations any more, so if there’s no All-Star element to a season, they’d be stuck simply calling it “Survivor 35” or whatever, and the promo department at CBS would hate that.
Yeah, Fiji must be giving Burnett a hell of a sweetheart deal on taxes and production assistance.
Probably, but it’s also way cheaper to have a set infrastructure (including Probst’s estate) than to have to scout and build in a new place twice a year.
Remember when they used to have to keep the location double-super-secret so no one wold spy on them? Times change!
I can’t believe I’m saying this because I would never have believed it watching the first episode, but my favorite to win is the WWF guy. He’s got a huge target on his back, but he’s playing an excellent game.
EPISODE 4, AIRED 10/17/2018
Shame about Bi leaving, but I understand. As a pro athlete, her health is her livelihood, and she probably needed to start rehabbing that MCL as soon as possible whereas a normal schmuck could hobble around the island for a few weeks more.
Awfully amazing how the tribe split ended up 3-2 in all three tribes. “Gerrymandered” indeed.
I loved the ending to that TC. Haven’t laughed that hard in awhile. Alec’s little smirk was priceless. Not sure it’ll help his long-term gameplay but as a viewer I appreciated it.
I loved the result of the IC, as it protected both Christian and Mike, two of my favorite players ever.
What do we think about the “hidden idol negater” (is that what it was called?). Not very powerful as advantages go, but it could be an interesting wrinkle and I like that they keep inventing new stuff.
“I wish I had a horse” - and with that, Natalia’s game comes crashing down in ruins.
They called it an “Idol Nullifier.”
Considering that the players generally do a poor job of guessing when an HII will be played, even when they know who has it, I suspect it will have no effect on the game - he’ll use it, the target won’t play an idol, and it’ll be gone.
I thought Davey played a pretty good game. He navigated some tricky waters and ended up with a tribe that is now 3 Davids and 2 Goliaths and he seemed to do it without being overtly shady. The guy who got voted out last week was all over the place, but Davey (at least in the edit) seems to have been low key with his scheming. That’s often the difference between success and failure. And I love the instant payback of “if I go out tonight with guns blazing, I’ll be happy.” As soon as she said that, I was please, please, please, be voted out.
My first impression was that the Idol Nullifier isn’t that great an advantage and would be difficult to use, but thinking about it more, I think it might be more powerful than first seems. One aspect is that it doesn’t make you a threat with everyone the same way a HII does, so you’re more likely to share it (and be able to threaten the HII into being played/not played as you see fit). Also, part of the problem on Survivors past is that whoever had the HII basically got a free ride because no one had the guts to force a vote on them and take the risk of being the one eliminated by the minority vote. Even just the threat of the nullifier helps curb that.
Good points!