Over the past few seasons it’s become apparent that the key to holding a group together is promising NONE of them preferential treatment. The opposite way was for everyone to promise everyone Final 2. Either way, no one thinks they’re on the bottom and therefore switching is not a serious option. The way the show used to combat this is to use the totem-pole challenge. (you have to target each other to win) Which forced the tightest to work together and seed doubt in the others’. But that challenge hasn’t been as successful anymore because the tightest know to work with the less tight and keep winking to the tightest. (not literally) And then they tried reward challenges where you get to take someone with you, and again contestants responded by taking their enemy to keep an eye on them.
I’m still convinced; Survivor has an end coming. Unless they come up with more ways to change up the game, the contestants are getting better at winning the game, which ends up being boring for the viewers. As evidence I can only suggest that I feel like ‘shake ups’ are fewer recently. Maybe one/season.
I was in a discussion about this not too long ago with a few people who declare themselves uber-fans. Every one of them, at some point, either skipped watching a few episodes or changed the channel during an episode because “things are getting too predictable”. It’s the same thing for The Amazing Race, or Top Chef, or any other reality competition show: There’s only so much that can be done to shake things up because, essentially, it’s the same game.
A lot of people didn’t like Redemption Island. I liked the idea of it because it did shake up things, but when you have the same person hanging out there for most of the season, it gets a bit monotonous to watch.
I think The Contravert and FlightlessBird are have it down. It’s the 1+ strategy in that its not a group of equals where all are alphas or even 1 alpha and 1 beta in the group but 1 alpha and the rest equally omega. Look at Sherri. She honestly thinks she is on equal footing with Dawn and Cochrane in the alliance and so she would be follish to trade in a possible 2nd place for guarantied 4th place behind the amigos.
I think there are still some things the show could do to freshen up the strategy:
No fixed tribes. There are a number of ways to do this, from having everyone at the same beach all game to having only individual (or maybe a handful of individual) immunity. Or just re-drawing tribes at every reward challenge. This is a pretty fundamental shift and might not really address the 1+ strategy. But it would at least be new and different.
Merge later. Odds are that if you wait until there are fewer left at a merge the alliances will be both smaller and more equal. One way to help even up the tribes would be to require everybody to participate in challenges - no more sitting out your three weakest players every reward challenge.
I thought the “mutiny” concept worked reasonably well to shake the game up in the seasons it was used. Let the obvious outsiders jump to what was perceived as a better place. This year it would have let someone like Corrine and Malcolm get away from Phillip (if they truly wanted to) early on and rebuild a different alliance.
Less reward for “getting far”. I think right now there is a really strong monetary incentive for someone like Sherri to stick with her likely 3rd-6th place rather than trying to win but maybe going out 9th. If every non-winner got the same payday you might see riskier moves.
More painful ties. One of the big advantages to the large loose alliance now is the ability to split votes against idols. That could easily be remedied by changing the tiebreaker rules. If there is a tie vote don’t have a re-vote but instead have a duel (making fire, or endurance, or memory - whatever, change it up). Now folks would be way less likely to split the vote to force out an idol. And if they do, who doesn’t like a good duel?
I agree completely. They need far more reward and idol challenges earlier that make the constestants pick their friends and enemies (i.e. rope/coconut chopping). The first one won’t be for another two episodes, but we have known for two episodes already who those 7 people will be- just not the order. The only question in my mind is whether Dawn and Cochrane (Andrea isn’t) are smart enough to chop themselves and each other as opposed to the lower totem members like Eric and Sherri?
The first award at merge should be a chopping challenge- tell the other tribe the dominant tribe’s pecking order. And send the winner and 2 companions off to a spa- those two things would really increase the drama and the game play (as well as the paranoia!). The Goat Herding Strategy (StealthRUs) wouldn’t last to the 2nd merge vote.
The merge happened too soon this season. But probably because it was always the same tribe that was losing so they were reduced to nothing.
Theres really nothing that can be done to fix this. The only option that I can see is to have either two winners per immunity challenge until theres only 5 or 6 people left and then revert to only one or have a random number of immunity idols hidden between TC.
Lets face it Malcom would been gone long time ago if it wasnt for the idols.
I might just be forgetting, but it seems like they haven’t been doing the totem pole challenge or multiple-person reward challenges (except from pre-determined teams) as often recently. Those were good ways to help create fissures in the majority alliance.
I’ve long been an advocate of the “mix the tribes before every immunity challenge” idea; I also like Jas09’s idea of having ties at TC result in a challenge or the like instead of a revote (where the majority can now easily vote out the person of their choice).
I thought it was oddly pathetic for Cochrane to be calling himself a “challenge monster,” having won three immunities… one of them being the gross food challenge, which he won by being able to stuff his face and keep it down, and another by having a huge advantage over the others.
If I thought he was actually serious, yeah. But Cochrane is very rarely serious when talking about himself. I’m pretty sure there was some self-deprecating irony in that confessional.
Yeah, Cochrane was clearly poking fun at himself. But he also honestly feels good at proving that he’s not as worthless as Coach et al thought in his first season. And rightly so.
He seemed genuinely like “What about me?” when it was pointed out that the three amigos were challenge monsters, as if he really believed he were competitive.
There are 8 players left and the season finale is usually Mothers Day. If that is true that means there is only two regular episodes left (not including the Sunday finale)
Still plenty of time for Dawn to snap like a twig and remove herself from the game and for Brenda to get medevac’d for peanut-butter-induced intestinal blockage.
I would make a rule that once a member of your tribe sits out a challenge, they cannot sit out again until everyone else has.
I think Survivor misses a great opportunity when it comes time to reshuffle the tribes. They compete in a challenge and the winner from each team does schoolyard pick for their new tribe with the overall winner gets first pick.
They tried that at least once; the two tribes turned out to be startlingly well-balanced. They should definitely give it another try. Lately it seems to end up with one tribe pummeling the other unmercifully, and after the first couple seasons, that’s not too much fun to watch.