Survivor: 41st Season

Cafe Society
101

Nice observation. Ricard’s whole story there felt very forced, and I had forgotten that Jeff hinted that the person voted out might join the jury. I was thinking “why are you dumping on Shan when she’s got the power to vote you out?”. But I think you’re right and that was totally a pitch to Genie.

We very much need a tribe shuffle or merge to make the rest of the cast (team Blue in particular) have to start playing.

As another random observation - I found Naseer a little grating at first, but he’s really growing on me. I think he will likely overplay and end up getting the boot, but I’m glad his tribe is so strong that they haven’t had the chance to vote him out yet. His obvious joy at being on the show is fun to watch.

102

Erica’s “change the course of history” (really? overly dramatic much? And this relates to an hourglass…how, exactly?) option would be an enormous benefit if there was any way for her to let the others know that she had this power BEFORE she wielded it. As it is, half the people are going to say “yay! thanks!” and that’s all she gets.

I know I’ve whined about this in other threads but I’ll say it once again and shut up: it’s gotten boring. I’ve been watching for 20 years and I’m now watching only out of habit. We no longer see the players stealing shoes, throwing rice in the fire, arguing over whether or not to kill the chickens, getting hospitalized with constipation. Literally ALL the time spent between challenges is whispering about alliances and who has what advantage.

103

“You can use this hourglass to turn back time.”
“So I should turn it over if I want to go backwards?”
“No you smash it.”

104

The problem with survivor are the alliances from the viewer perspective and what the producers are trying is to come with ways to break them during gameplay and I applaud that.
It doesn’t mean its always successful.
with that said this advantage from Erica perspective is not much of an advantage because she really doesnt get anything out of it.
She doesnt get an immunity idol, she doesnt get an advantage, plus there was a merge so her tribe is now shuffled so she cant turn around and make her tribe as the loser team and have someone she wants out.

Actually thinkign about it, all the ‘advantages’ that are being found are not really bad advantages for the people that are finding them because they dont benefit from it.

105

She would go from having to compete in an immunity challenge to having compete immunity. That’s a big advantage.

106

That was a crock, and unfair. That team legitimately won the challenge. Having one player overrule that win, is unfair.

107

I have to agree. I’m kind of bored with it but feel like I can’t stop watching. Nothing really exciting has happened in quite a while. I too am tired of the constant alliance talk. Some of it goes right over my head. I don’t even understand what they’re talking about or maybe I just don’t care enough to pay attention. AND the whispering at tribal councils! I HATE IT. The challenges are the only things I look forward to and even those seem to be repeat challenges from prior seasons.

108

Tribal councils would be a hell of a lot of fun if there was a “no sidebar” rule. You can only talk to the person you’re sitting next to.

109

Well, never a good sign when there has only been one post almost a full week after the last episode…

Which I finally got around to watching last night.

I’m glad that the Evvie/Xander/Tiff group figured out to do what I was screaming at the TV for them to do - give all of the advantages to Tiffany. The fake idol was a nice touch but if I’m Liliana no way in hell am I asking that question to Xander knowing that he knows I have the steal advantage. Just way too obvious a bluff. I’m kind of shocked she went for it anyway - at the very least she should have assumed they gave it to Evvie, if not sussed out that it was likely with Tiff. Hell, if you aren’t sure just hold onto it.

Either way, I totally agree with @jsc1953 that these sidebar groupings during TC are just stupid. They confuse the viewer and make these big plays less effective.

It took me a bit to realize why Xander was so emphatic that Tiff not play the idol for Evvie, but I think he decided that from his perspective it’s better to be badly outnumbered with an idol (if you are wrong and Evvie goes home) than slightly less outnumbered without an idol (if you are right and the idol saves Evvie). At least in the first case you have an idol to get you through one more TC.

And finally, I’m not quite sure I understand why the 8-person group after the shakeup used the extra vote to put the majority of the votes on Sydney instead of Evvie. Or, honestly, why they even bothered to play the extra vote at all. Why not force a 4-4-4 tie, and if an idol is played vote out whichever of Evvie/Sydney didn’t have the idol played for them? By playing the extra vote you (a) use up your extra vote and (b) make it possible for the idol not to be played. And playing the extra vote for Sydney seems extra dumb - even if you don’t trust her she clearly isn’t as dangerous as Evvie is.

I can only assume the frantic scrambling confused things a bit and Deshawn just decided it was better to be as safe as possible and not have to worry about a re-vote. Maybe they weren’t 100% sure about Naseer or were scared of the 4-person group having an extra vote (which, come to think of, they did but didn’t use).

That’s probably it - they figured that Xander would play his extra vote to put 5 on Deshawn. So you have to put 5 votes on the person that you think won’t get the idol played on them. That way the only way Deshawn goes home is if Xander uses both advantages and correctly puts the idol on Sydney. But if Xander does that, isn’t it the same if you split 5-3? Either he plays the idol correctly after using his extra vote or he doesn’t - it doesn’t matter how many votes your secondary target gets. I guess splitting 5-4 also covers you if he doesn’t play the extra vote but does guess right with the idol - but at that point splitting 4-4 does the same thing…

OK, I’m confusing myself, but I think there is no scenario in which Deshawn playing the extra vote actually increases his likelihood of staying in the game compared to either splitting the vote 4-4 or just putting all of the votes on the person you think won’t get the idol, even taking into account the possible extra vote.

110

I think I followed all that, but, whew!
There are so many idols/advantages/disadvantages/extra votes floating around that I’ve given up keeping track of who has what. They went a little overboard this season.

Anyway, I won’t miss Sydney - didn’t like her from the start - but I’m not sure why she was targeted. She wasn’t a strong player and was no threat to anyone. I guess she was least likely to play an idol or have one played for her, so it was a safe-ish choice. As usual, though, nobody seems to go after the players who clearly have the most power. It always frustrates me.

111

I don’t know how some of you are keeping track of what’s going on! I have no idea, anymore, who has an advantage or even what the advantages mean. It’s all very confusing.

112

Yeah, it’s a bad sign when in addition to the tribe names they have to put little “Immunity Idol” and “Extra Vote” tags under the players names during their talking head interviews.

The idol and “steal an idol” was obviously a big part of the strategy this week, but I had totally forgotten that Xander also had an extra vote until I was trying to figure out why Deshawn voted the way he did (which I still think he did wrong, but whatever).

At least a few advantages were burned this week (steal an advantage and Deshawn’s extra vote). But we still have Naseer’s idol, Xander’s idol, Xander’s extra vote, Shan’s extra vote (?)… too much crap to be honest.

Well, in this case there weren’t a lot of choices. Only 6 players could even be voted for, and 5 of them were in the majority alliance (Danny, Deshawn, Naseer, Ricard, Sydney). I guess you could say that it would be a good time for the Ricard/Shan/Liana group to target Danny or Deshawn, but I don’t think so. It was obviously going to be Evvie or Sydney. Maybe punting Ricard would have been smart, but no way Shan goes for that, and she’s pulled herself pretty tightly into the Danny/Deshawn duo.

I think keeping a group of 6 (Danny/Deshawn/Liana/Shan as the core with Ricard/Naseer as future “swing votes” tied to each half of the “core 4”) is pretty smart. Everybody in that alliance should be able to see a path to Final 4 without feeling like they are bottom of the list. Then you have Tiffany and Heather (remember her?) as the goats, with Evvie, Erika, and Xander the obvious next targets.

I will say the fact that Erika so quickly jumped back into the group with the folks that sent her off by herself doesn’t bode well for her future in the game. She doesn’t have any advantages or friends or, apparently, awareness of her position.

113

Ricard had immunity.

So really it came down to Sydney vs Naseer. I think they see Naseer as a useful pawn and less of a schemer than Sydney.

114

Yes, of course. Sorry about that.

I actually watched this week’s episode, and once again I don’t understand what the majority is doing…

First Heather blows up everything for no reason other than pique at her name being the decoy. So she throws shade at Naseer, but it seems nobody bites because only Xander voted for Naseer (so maybe it was a decoy? But everybody sure seemed to believe it).

Her alliance then at least acted like they were thinking of throwing her under the bus, but even with the “I’m doing it” passive-agression from Deshawn they didn’t (unless “It” was stick with the original plan). Only Tiffany and Evvie voted for Heather.

So you have the solid majority voting together, seemingly, with an 8-3 advantage. They are worried about idols, since they know Xander has one. And they really want Xander to play his. So do they split the votes 4 and 4, forcing Xander to either play his idol or go home (or, perhaps, play the extra vote to get a 4-4-4 tie which they would win on the revote)? Nope. They split 6-2, with Danny and Naseer voting for Xander and the rest voting for Tiffany.

Either there is some multi-dimensional chess stuff going on that I just can’t follow (and which the show is doing a piss-poor job explaining) or these guys don’t really know what they are doing… All I can figure is that enough of them are so terrified of advantages and idols that they just want safe votes and a 4-4 split felt “risky” to them. It’s really pretty annoying.

115

I still watch, but it’s not even worth the effort to try to make sense of all the alliances, the tribal council whispering, the scenarios, and the double-secret advantages.

I think it’s time for Survivor to return to the basics, to keep it simple.

Oh for the days of Rudy and Gervase.

mmm

116

For several seasons, I’ve thought I should start the new season by building a spreadsheet to track alliances and advantages. Color coded by tribe (original tribe, reshuffled tribe…), with links to show who voted for who, who hates who…

Naaaah…too much work. But it would be essential for this season.

117

Unless they have already filmed another season*(are they doing that now?), I will predict that Jeff Probst is listening to viewer criticisms and we will see a reduced amount of twists, complications, and weird advantages in future seasons.

*It premieres March 9 and it looks like it either has filmed or is filming(not sure which).

118

I’m with you!

119

The way seasons are planned in advance, I think it’s hard to shift midstream if there’s a negative reaction. There was a big stink over Edge of Extinction but they still used it again two seasons later.

120

Regardless of this season’s flaws, it’s better than that one where survivors were rewarded by sailing off to the secret island to hang out with Boston Rob and What’s-her-name. Stupidest. Premise. Ever.