I don’t know how those left behind resisted the impulse to flip off the helicopter with both hands.
I’m not so sure they didn’t.
mmm
I mostly enjoyed this season, but I found the finale hugely unsatisfying. I wanted Jake to win, but of course I knew he wasn’t going to. Couldn’t have cared less whether it was Dee or Austin. Funny, I liked them both before they became a couple, then all I wanted was to see at least one of them gone. Katurah messed everything up.
Just a meh finish all around.
What was the literary genre that Drew compared Survivor to?
Would’ve liked to have seen Jake get a vote or 2.
Don’t know why they even bother hyping the next season…at this point it looks exactly like the current one.
I liked the lead-up, but dammit Jake, forgetting the keys and forgetting the puzzle piece is just unforgiveable. You had a chance until you did that.
I didn’t mind that Dee won. I would have preferred Austin, but at least both of them had an active role in the game, and both actually did things to progress their win.
It was a good season.
I concur. I got to really despise Dee, and poor Austin was being led around by his dick. I do not understand katurahs votes at all.
And Jake not getting even one vote was wrong. Yeah,. i know he wasnt gonna win, but geez. Austin lost as he was clearly outsmarted by Dee, who was leading him on.
There is perhaps no worse look to a jury than being exposed as not knowing a critical piece of information, and Dee was about to stomp on Austin’s hopes and dreams worse like my main man Jake stomping on a final immunity challenge contraption. Because when Dee then informed Austin for the first time right in front of the jury that she had, in fact, told Julie and flipped that vote herself, it was game over. There was no recovering from that. Dee knew, Austin didn’t. It was as if she asked Probst to put final Tribal Council on hold so she could go rent out a helicopter and do a reward flyover right above Austin’s head. Just absolutely savage.
It may not have been the flashiest final Tribal Council move, but it was certainly one of the most effective. I’m guessing Dee already had the game won when that jury walked into FTC, but if Austin had any chance whatsoever of turning the tide and talking his way into a win, that chance evaporated at that moment.…
Dee Valladares never should have won Survivor . Never should have won that final immunity challenge. Never should have stunned Austin at final Tribal Council. Never should have received a single jury vote. Because Dee should have been on the jury…But had Katurah not gotten spooked and changed her vote at the last second, Dee never would have gotten there. Instead, she would have been voted out in fifth place.
And then Katurah voted for Dee- which was the vote Dee needed.
Since Jake had a HII it didn’t really matter if he won the penultimate immunity challenge. If he had, he could perhaps have made a deal and given away his HII … which is what he did anyway. Fat lot of good it did him.
Can someone refresh my memory as to why the Powers That Be went with fire-making for the Final 4, instead of a normal vote?
I did think it was funny and so very fitting that Bruce was a complete non-entity during the Final Tribal. Everyone else asked questions except him, and the one time he was even mentioned was from Dee getting in a dig at him not playing his Idol. 
To get at least 2 “worthy” players in the final-3. For a few seasons it became one player and 2 goats. There has also been some suspicion that the show runners (or maybe just Jeff) like giving the “strong” (read: Male) players a greater chance to make it at the end.
My prediction that Dee ruined her game by voting out Drew should have come to pass, but Katurah screwed it up. I underestimated just how hopeless Jake’s strategizing was. Not that his plans were bad, but that he could just need convince anybody to go along with them. Which, I suppose, is a pretty glaring weakness in a game like this.
I think that if Katurah votes the way she “should” have, she is very likely in a final-3 with Jake and either Julie or Austin. I don’t think she can win that, but surely that’s better than what ended up happening for her. And who knows - maybe her story would have played well with the jury.
I’m still just shocked that this cast (many of whom claim to be “students of the game” or “mega-fans”) willingly let a romantically attached couple stay in the game all the way to the end. That’s Survivor 101 stuff there.
Speaking of mega-fans: I was gobsmacked that Jake found it easier to remember who won Survivor 18 than to remember the number “18”. Or he was just showing off.
I’ve never been a fan of the “instant reunion.” I get why they started doing it this way because of the pandemic, but I wish they’d go back to the live studio reunions for several reasons.
After having had some time to reflect, as well as having watched the episodes themselves, the players have a better perspective and thus more insightful things to say.
Players voted off pre-jury should get a chance to have their say too, and could have interesting things to add.
And it was always fun to see everybody all cleaned up and back in the real world.
Didn’t it start with the season that there were two girls (from the final three) trying to make fire and it took almost two hours? It was so pathetic. They started out with flints ferchrissakes, and at 90 minutes Jeff (with utter contempt dripping from his voice) gave them matches. One of the girls ran out of matches and never did succeed in making a fire.
I think it’s been a requirement ever since?
Just coming in to say I agree about the live reunion shows. I’d like to see how everyone is doing now, not just right after recording. Like, are Dee and Austin still an item?
That seems unlikely as firemaking is not a matter of body strength.
Katurah screwed up. And so did Austin, allowing Dee to lead him around by his dick. In the last few vote offs, other than Mama J, the group was just looking for a cheap vote instead of voting off a contender. This cast was pretty hapless. Poor players, especially Katurah.
It was costing too much. pay the technical crew, and pay all the cast each an extra $5K for showing up.
Survivor has a small budget,
That was way back on the 13th season of Survivor - a very memorable F4! The rule for a long time was that a tie at F4 would go to fire-making instead of going to a rock draw. In season 35, they changed the F4 vote out to the way it is now, where the immunity winner picks someone to go go to the end with, and the other two make fire.
I’m happy Dee won, and that she and Austin played so hard against each other in spite of the showmance. It would have been interesting to see Katurah at the end, but I don’t think Dee actually had anything to worry about from her.
I didn’t mean that male players are more likely to be good at fire (although I do think that if we looked at the male v. female ones in the past they guys have one more than half), but that the strong challenge players (often, but not always men) would almost always be the vote at Final 4.
If this season were done the way it was in the past, and discounting Dee’s showmance, Austin would have been the obvious vote at Final 4 and the Final 3 would have been a complete non-event with Dee probably getting every vote.
I’m not upset she won, but for me her win lost most of its luster when she shouldn’t have been there other than a colossal mistake by another player. Also her biggest play was lying to the one person she promised not to lie too…
I get that’s it a game, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of players (typically women) that use their “feminine wiles” to get the guys to do what they want (Parvati being a past example, among others). Maybe because I know I would probably fall for it too.
Some of that is probably gender bias on my part. If instead I think of her as a challenge monster that took her biggest competitor the end and then beat them, my feelings are quite a bit different.
I found this to be a really forgettable season. It just didn’t come together to have very many interesting characters.
Speaking of interesting characters, I loved the point in the reunion where Probst pointed out that “all the lawyers lied!”. 
If you look at the challenges, body strength can be very important pre-merge. But as the show gets later, endurance, balance and puzzle solving takes over more and more.
Yep. Not to mention laughing at others misfortunes. That is the mark of a sociopath. And a lack of of sportsmanship.