Not sure how I felt about the move from 2 to 3 tribes. The re-shuffling is random enough, but making 1/3rd of the contestants have to re-shuffle AND rebuild seems way too unfair a disadvantage.
The final vote was not a complete surprise to the viewers, but it sure looked like Peih-Gee was surprised.
I am enjoying the way they are placing the hidden immunity idols in a public space, although retrieving them has yet to create a problem.
If you haven’t been following Dalton Ross’ recaps all these years, this week’s is great. A snip:
I like the split (I still think they should do a Survivor season where the tribes get swapped or rearranged after every TC), but I agree that making one team have to start from nothing was lame, especially since they already got what I think is the weakest challenge tribe. They didn’t even spare them a bag of rice!
I think the problem is that so far no one else is even aware that the Idols can be found during the challenges. If everyone knew it, they could keep an eye out. I thought today’s would be somewhat obvious, but Jeremy did a great job of moving into position and grabbing it before anyone else was in sight and could say “hey why do we have a weird little package on the front of our box?”
That is a great way to describe Woo, too. Guy complains about always being the last to find out… well, Woo, that’s because you’re not playing the game. If I were Savaga/Tasha I would look to bring him in though, as he’d be much more reliable as an ally than Varner or Abi.
Hiding the idols at the challenges is a neat gimmick, but they’ll only be able to get away with it this season. Next season everyone will spend the whole challenge looking for the idols.
BTW, in Dalton’s recap last week, he said they’ll only actual put an idol on the course if someone found a clue for it, and presumably only for that particular person’s props in the challenge.
No, that would have ruined it IMHO. There’s only so many places to hide one on a challenge course - having everyone look for one instead of running the course would ruin the challenges.
I agree. I think the twist is a great one and a good way to stop people from just flat-out finding the immunity idols. Force them to take a risk in front of everyone to get them.
They must have had countless meetings trying to come up with a solution to them always finding the idol.
Okay, can we please vote off Abi Normal now? It was cute at first, but now I’m growing weary of seeing closeups of her puffy face and others giving her a free pass for her contradictory words and actions.
There are so many interesting contestants this season, to have half the screen time of each episode (or so it seems) devoted to one of the five most detested players in Survivor history is ruining it for me.
I agree with this. I too would like to see the numbers/ratio but I doubt HIIs save people that often. Also I never understand the glee tribemates express over someone finding the idol. Finders always say they are going to use it for the tribe but that happens even less than it saving the finder.
Unfortunately, until the merge most (all?) of the screen time after the immunity challenge is devoted to the losing tribe, and Abi is the most interesting person on the tribe that keeps losing.
I agree there’s a bunch of interesting people, but they aren’t on tribes that lose immunity challenges.
You can’t just go by “times they’ve been used” because the threat of the HII can be just as important. Obviously, early on in the game, it’s better to keep quiet about it to avoid the target on your back it creates, but late game it can be better as a deterrent. I believe in Cagayan that everyone said they knew Tony had one, but no one wanted to try and go after him.
It does seem to me that they’re used less than half the time, and then they’re used effectively less than half the time as well. That said, last season, not only were 2 idols used to avoid getting voted off, the people who had them didn’t tell anybody about them so it came as more of a surprise.
I loved how the woman who found the first idol threw Savage under the bus by telling the others on the new tribe that he spent all his time looking for one…