I voted for Kathy.
I fully intended on voting for Robb C., but the question was, “who most deserved to win Survivor: All Stars?” I couldn’t justify voting for anyone other than Boston Rob. He did everything he had to to win. Everyone else fell short in too many areas.
It’s time for Survivor to grow up if it wants to keep its audience.
Survivor, meet American Idol.
For Survivor X, make it a summer replacement series. The series will run for only 39 days beginning in July at the height of the summer television doldrums. Every three days CBS will broadcast a new episode, followed by a television audience participation to remove one Survivor member. The results are tabulated overnight so just as we awake from our comfy beds to hear the news, the Survivors are told the next morning someone is gone, right then and there. The camera records everything for two days, CBS has 24 hours to edit the show, we watch it, vote, and the process is repeated once again.
It is about as real-time as it can get, the audience decides everything, summer television isn’t so boring, and we can be spared the pain of 13 weeks of greed, lies and backstabbing.
Duckster, we only need one Big Brother on the air. And I was argue that one is one too many.
Aha, I forgot to check the first page.
Duckster-- No, no, no, no, no, no! That would be a spectacularly terrible idea. The whole point of this show is how one can betray another, but then tries to get those same people to give them money.
Here’s what kinda pissing me off about all of the people whining that Rob was “mean”. Rob wasn’t mean, Rob was exactly the same guy who played his game the last time. The only difference here was that these folks knew Rob outside of the game, and thus felt betrayed.
I can’t decide on whether this outside friendship of players is a good thing, or a bad thing. I think it would have been more interesting if they had told us this, because at least then some of the truly bizarro, head-scratching moves that were made, would have been put in context. After all, the only reason Jerri was voted out, was because Rob, Kathy, and Lex were buddies before they set foot on the island. If she had know that, perhaps she could have had a fighting chance. Moreover, if we could have known that, at least we could have gotten an “ooohhhh that was cold” out of it.
On the other hand, the pal angle made it a lot less predictable. What I think would be cool would be to get an entire sorority and entire fraternity out on an island to duke it out. But then again, I would love to see a real cat-fight on this game.
For all of this talk of honor, I think it’s just plain silly. No one signs up for this game thinking that they will never have to be a bad guy. The ones that do it best, are the ones that get the furthest. That’s why Rob C. did so poorly this time. When he felt he was in trouble, he went right into the jaws of the Lion, by asking Rob M. To protect him. He knew that Rob M. was making all of the decisions, he should have gone to a weaker tribe members, or gotten the girls to gang up on Rob M. Bu no, he threw it away because he trusted a snake, and for a former snake, that’s unforgivable.
I hated this season, and felt that it was entirely a waste of time, especially since the previous season was so much fun, with Sandra, and Jon.
This season sucked because it wasn’t so much the “All-Stars” as it was the “Most Memorable ‘Characters””. I have a hard time calling Ruper or Jerri, or Colby, or Sue or either of Jennas “All-Stars”. The real All-Stars were Richard, and the two Robs, Michael Skupin, Sandra, and others whose names I don’t recall. But to be an “All-Star” you should have had to do something more, than to be either really annoying, or a nice guy, or pretty-girl. They should have required that you were, oddly-enough, good at the game, and the concept of the game. And that is why this season sucked.
I think there are two aspects of Rob that irritated people. First, his backstabbing in the game. Second, his rude and disrespectful comments in the confessionals.
Personally, I applaud the backstabbing. He played the game, perhaps better than anyone else ever did. It is a game and he played it well.
However, I despise many of the comments he made to the camera during confessionals. He was mean like a third-grader, for no purpose. In my mind, this makes him a jerk.
Agreed on your selection of “real” All-Stars; but remember that the producers invited all previous winners, and were turned down by three. You know they were digging pretty deep when they came up with Shii-Ann, who didn’t even make it to the merge on her first go-round. So they might have started out looking for All-Stars, but settled for Memorable Characters.
I had given this scenario some thought, and I think Lex and Kathy would’ve still been dumped. Lex loves to trumpet how he has numbers because he could sway Big Tom, but I have doubts about this. None of the people on Rob’s tribe have the brains or the balls to stand up to Rob. Case in point, if Lex and Kathy boot off Amber then try to convince Tom to turn on Rob, I think Tom would’ve stayed loyal to Rob. Sure, Burnett would make a big production of “will Tom switch sides”? But the Pagonging would have still commenced.
On the other hand, Lex and Kathy know they can grab the moral high ground if they dump Jerri. Now they are enjoying the fruits of this choice by basking in their indignation.
I completely agree with this. His comments were bad - but luckily they weren’t to people’s faces. And his comments were never about people’s character - they were about how badly everyone else was playing.
I believe they asked Johnny Fairplay (who would have been brilliant at this, since no one would have seen him in Survivor: PI), but he was, wait for it, pursuing a career in pro wrestling! 
Michael Skupin was a notable missing All Star - I wonder what happened with him.
I’m surprised Kelly didn’t come back for a second go at Hatch.
Who else was conspicuously missing?
Well, the thread has moved way on, but I have deleted some offensive posts.
Chastain, this is NOT for the forum for gratuitous insults. Consider yourself slapped, hard, on the hand with a ruler.
You want to insult someone, you go to the BBQ Pit forum… and you can provide a link here.
On the question of time zones: look, folks, on the one hand, be considerate of people in other time zones, or who may have taped a show and want to watch it later. Spoilers are spoilers. Hey, we have movies that have been out for years, and we still often put climaxes in spoiler boxes, we can surely do it for a TV show that’s barely two hours old. This is about being mannerly and polite and considerate of others.
On the other hand, if you DON’T want to see spoilers about show X, then DON’T open a thread about Show X until after you’ve seen it. I don’t understand the rush to see what others are saying about it, while still wanting to be surprised. I mean, this aint rocket science, it’s about using some common sense.
Sheeeeesh.
I disagree with people who think Rob should have won. If it was as easy as who was best dictator, then I’d agree with you. However, advancing at all costs will only get you to the #2 spot. To win the mil in Survivor you have to convince at least 4 of the 7 people you voted off to vote for you. By back stabbing his friends and going back on his word with such cheerful and sarcastic aplomb, Rob sealed his own fate.
I disagree with this. Rob was only cheerful and sarcastic to the confessional camera - never to the face of those he voted off. Watching the tape of him and Lex, he made a very good argument on why he couldn’t keep him, and the fact is, it isn’t backstabbing if you do it to their face. He gave Lex ample time to scrounge for more votes. The only people that have room to complain are Rob C. and Alicia.
True. The problem this season is that the jury forgot what makes a good survivor. Rupert - who was backstabbed to an extent, and who directly saw the manipulations that Rob undertook (see: Rob plays Big Tom v. Rupert), STILL voted for him. I may not agree that Rupert was a good player, but he was an ideal jury member. So was Kathy.
I cringed a lot during the finale and reunion. I knew that it was going to get nasty because of all the back-stabbing, but I was surprised at the depth of emotions. I really wish people would quit making sour grape speeches like Survivor = life. No, it doesn’t. I will cheerfully bankrupt you and force you to give up your home if I play you in Monopoly. Does that mean I’d do the same in real life? No. If you come into a game that only has a few rules and place upon yourself all kinds of moral restrictions (e.g. against lying or breaking alliances), know that YOU are essentially handicapping yourself. I have no beef with anyone’s scruples except when they act like EVERYONE should play by the same set of subjective scruples you’ve established for yourself, and anyone who doesn’t is automatically an asshole.
About all the angst: There are three people who had a legitimate axe to grind last night. 1) Tom because his friend, Rob, made fun of his son on national t.v. Shame on Rob for hitting below the belt, and shame on the editors for putting that in the damn show. It was unnecessarily hurtful to Bo and Tom and should have never aired. Rob gave an apology and now it’s the producers turns. 2) Sue at Tom for doing the Snoopy Happy dance upon her grave. Thoughtless and calloused, Tom aka kettle. 3) Alicia - that reward challenge where they said she was the least deserving person to be there, among other things, was unnecessarily cruel and I’m sure it still hurts her when she thinks about it.
Personally, this whole season was crappy as far as I was concerned. Instead of being fun and unpredictable, it was nasty and boring. Having people know each other is a bad idea because it brings in the outside relationships.
I didn’t enjoy last night at all. The whole thing left a really bad taste in my mouth. I wasn’t happy for Amber, I wasn’t happy for Rob, I wasn’t happy for Jerri or Tom or even Sue with her new breasts. It was just really hostile. I hope they can bring back some of the fun because if I wanted to watch people beat the shit out of each other, I’d tune into the Ali fights on ESPN classic.
someone asked on page 1 what Rob said about Tom & his kid. I believe it was after the night they spent together, Rob said something along the lines that they were both simple, dumb, country hicks, or words to that effect. it was kind of mean, but no worse than Rob usually says.
I can’t believe how lame that tease was they were promo-ing all week long. I waited until 10:00 for that?? So someone else gets a million and we’re supposed to be all excited and surprised. Sorry.
Jerri: how much makeup did she have on her face, anyway? She didn’t look natural at all.
Not true. Vecepia and Brian weren’t even asked, as they “weren’t interesting enough” according to Mark Burnett. Jeff Probst confirms how they felt about Vecepia:
You’re right, they came up with Shii-Ann because she was memorable and controversial – but that was the idea all along. Remember, this is about entertainment, not “who’s the bestestest All-Star ever in the universe.” They just want to sell advertising.
Hear, hear! And it was the predictability that annoyed me the most. These stupid people allowed themselves to be deceived and manipulated in the most obvious way, then got all pissy about it when it came back to bite them in the ass. At least Shii-Ann had the guts to call it as it was without pulling any punches and was willing to do something about it. As much as I loathe Rob (he’s a misogynist pig) and Amber (fake, manipulative bitch), not a single one of those other players deserved to be sitting in the top 2 spots but them.
And for all the people saying Amber rode Rob’s coattails, that’s actually not the case at all. As she confirmed this morning on the Early Show (and we pretty much saw, but perhaps didn’t recognize as easily), she was every bit a part of all the scheming, manipulating and “playing” as Rob was. They were a team, purposefully playing “Good Cop/Bad Cop” – and doing so so successfully that Amber scored herself a million bucks for it. He would go off and stir some shit up with people (like Tom and Rupert) and she would go off and have a nicey-nice chat with someone (like with Jenna at the end). They were workin’ it, and workin’ it together!
Jenna & Shi-ann IMO really stepped up, so to speak, at the final TC. I appreciated it, and I was a fan of neither before that.
I too was surprised that Lex stuck to his guns, I had really liked him, assumed it was heat of the moment stuff — I think now maybe he is nucking futs.
I’m with **BigCheese ** : alot happened and that mitigated things, but ultimately, that we would vote another million was the **BIG ** surprise advertised was disappointing.
*Tom said that everyone called everyone else before All-Stars, that fact surprised me and the fact that more wasn’t made of it. I wonder if Lex’s PO’edness relates to pre-Show alliances and agreements.
I will vote for Rupert.
I don’t like Rob, but I’ll admit he understands the other players and knows what’s going on. So I have to wonder about his belief that Tom had some kind of pre-show agreement with Lex. He openly accused Tom of this and Tom was very cagey with his answer; he never actually denied Rob’s accusation. If this were true it would explain a lot of why Rob felt he had to eliminate Lex immediately instead of stringing him along for a few more episodes (there was no apparent reason otherwise why Rob couldn’t have voted off Shii Ann or Kathy before Lex).
Over the first few seasons of Survivor, there were a number of articles of the opinion that the show was successful because it was a reflection on how life and office politics worked, only transferred to some tropical outdoor location.
For instance, here’s an article that came out on the original show:
Disappointingly to me, a a lot of people here seem justify some of the more blatant actions on Survivor because it is just a “GAME”, with no tie-back into everyday reality. Lying, cheating and back-stabbing are OK here, again because Survivor is just a “GAME”. But I think the beauty of a show like Survivor, that puts a group of people together for 39 days in difficult and trying circumstances, is that you can’t separate this game from real life. The personalities of the players and how they act with others on Survivor are a window into who these people are and how they act in real life, outside of the game. And I’m of the opinion that this statement also applies to people’s reactions as posted here.
If someone makes a commitment or promise, most people expect them to back the commitment, regardless of the cost to them. Empty promises are worthless. I wonder if those posting their admiration for Rob’s “play” would feel the same way were they the one that got “played”? Since it is highly unlikely that anyone here will ever be on Survivor, let’s say this happened in the office where you work. Do you shake the hand that cost you the promotion or even your job and say “good game”? Do you go home to the SO and say - “I worked hard and played fair, but the other person lied and manipulated everyone else. I trusted him/her to stand by the word he gave me but I wound up feeling and looking like the fool. I lost but the better person won”. I doubt it.
When we say lying, breaking commitments, manipulating and back-stabbing others is OK on TV, then I fear that many are giving these things their stamp of approval for life in general. And perhaps that explains why we sit by and watch our society decay, why our president and administration doesn’t feel uncomfortable about lying (or would that be misdirection? :)) to the public, why so many corporate executives think it is OK to cheat the shareholders and owners, why some feel that shareholders should pay for $6,000 shower curtains, why big mutual fund traders think (illegal) late-trading doesn’t apply to them, etc., etc. It’s all just part of the GAME of life to them…
Thanks, Dex. One thing about spoiler boxes that might be especially pertinent in Cafe Society is that they are **not ** hidden from the tool-tips. So if you put a spoiler in the OP without sufficient introductory text, then some part or all of the spoiled text will appear in the tool-tip when people hover their mousepointers over the thread title.