Survivor 38: Edge of Extinction premieres Wednesday

Yeah. The whole EoE concept probably started as a way to cut costs at Ponderosa.

It’s another challenge right? Aubry got an advantage to practice it.

I have to imagine keeping a crew out on Extinction is more expensive then Ponderosa.

My thoughts exactly. Also, the expense of keeping a few jurors at Ponderosa has to be such a tiny portion of the overall production budget that eliminating it doesn’t even remotely justify altering the whole show format.

I guess I forgot to load up my budget-cutting theory with winkies and smilies.

I’ve noticed that as well. Probst has talked about the importance of ritual in the game, explaining why he always says the same things in the same way at challenges and Tribal Councils. You have to figure there’s some significance to this change.

At this point, you can only accurately describe these people as *potential *jurors. Any of them could decide to hoist sail and leave the show; conversely, they could - one presumes - win a challenge and be back in the game.

But that doesn’t explain why they’re not being named, though.

I wonder if the next Extinction Island challenge will actually kick some people out as well as letting someone back in. The herd must be culled and the producers must know most of those people will never hoist the surrender flag.

Or maybe I’m off and they actually want to try a big jury.

They have trimmed things for time though, like the open credits. MAybe they figured it would take too long for Jeff to read every single name.

Now that they’ve moved to the group chat format, jury size doesn’t really matter.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the next (and final) challenge to see who wins their way back into the game will happen on finale night, I assume in the first hour.

Googling around, the finale will be May 15th, so three more weeks.

What? Why is that pretty clear?

That may be true, but my main gripe is that people who were voted out before the merge could potentially be voting among people they’ve never even met. That’s ridiculous to me. Just observing TC’s is not enough to cast an informed vote.

I don’t know, it just seems self-evident to me.

The first return from Extinction Island was OK, but the second one is way too late in the game and is everything I hate about these kick-off island concepts.

Jeff is the show-runner now and I thought he knew better than doing this.

This is exactly what I was going to say.

Maybe they should let all jurors watch extensive footage of what each finalist did throughout the game–even stuff that didn’t make air.

I would be interested in reading Probst on this. I have noticed he says the exact same thing to start every challenge, but was never clear on exactly why this was so.

He’s said it somewhere. Basically it’s to build a tradition in a deliberate way. Sort of jumpstarting the feel of longevity by being slavish to “tradition” from day 1.

Well, they could have the return next week to soften that problem. If it was up to me, next EI challenge happens very soon and it’s combined with a slashing of numbers. Winner of the challenge goes back in the game, next four go to Ponderosa and the rest are gone.

The gist is this:

When the show was new, they recorded his explanations of tasks and so forth in ADR. Over time, they realized that Jeff gets it right on set and they started calling him “One Take Probst” because he almost always nails it live.

Now, they only use ADR on stuff when he messes up, which is rare.

Jeff uses a lot of the same phrases so they get it right on set. “Wanna know what you’re playin’ for?” “Sorry, got nothin’ for ya’.” And so forth.

A couple of my friends think a season of just the first bootees of every season is a great idea. I think that’s a horrible idea - first boots are booted for a clear reason. I recently looked through Dalton Ross’s list of first boots for every season, and I’d never want to see these people again!

That’s really not true. You can be voted out first for some pretty inconsequential things. All these people you never want to see again probably averaged 6 minutes of screen time to decide on them.

True, but in fairness, I never wanted to see Reem again well short of the 6 minute mark.