I was hoping so as well. But I guess I’m not sure how the question would be phrased. It would almost have to be asked of the producers. Amanda probably wouldn’t know, and there’s no way that Jeff is going to let the participants take over the interview by asking *him * questions.
How does that make it different from any other game? What objective measure of being “good at poker” is there other than winning at poker? Can you call someone, objectively, a “good tennis player” if they don’t win tennis games?
Well, you don’t win at tennis by having the ability to assassinate the strongest tennis players. which is essentially what Survivor is - a game of assassination.
Or its different than tennis in that you could lose every serve, miss every return, and have the tennis audience award you the game anyway.
No, but I was hoping it would be mentioned perhaps in a joking manner. Amanda could have said something like, “Hey, Jeff, what was up with all the blurring of my rear?” We’d probably never get a real answer to the question (at least not on the reunion show), but it would have at least been mentioned.
The tennis players, you mean.
The difference is that in Survivor, it’s the only measure. In poker, you’ve got monetary winnings to measure. In tennis, there are points. In either case, there’s a stated goal to the game.
If you lose every game of tennis you play, but always in a close match, score-wise, I’d say you’re a good tennis player with a run of bad luck, or who chokes a bit under pressure. But if you slide your way into a Survivor final TC and don’t give anyone a reason to vote for you (Courtney) or scheme your way to the end but don’t sell yourself well enough to get votes (Amanda), IMHO you’ve got a fundamental flaw in your Survivor gameplay that prevents you from being a good Survivor player.
In Survivor, there’s no guideline for how the jury should vote, so every jury member votes their own way, with their own concept of who’s deserving. The trick to winning at the end, as Todd said, is packing the Jury with people who will vote for you, and the trick to doing that is knowing who’s going to vote based on “it’s only a game” and who’s going to vote based on “You’re my buddy” and who’s going to vote based on “you screwed me so I won’t vote for you” and who’s going to vote based on “you need the money”. You can freely screw over people like James who won’t be a “bitter betty” (?) and people like John-Robert as long as you fluff their ego a bit. But you have to handle someone like Denise with kid gloves or else forget about their vote.
I am not so sure about that. I think this was a bit of a JFP move. A pregnancy of two months? c’mon. I do think they were exploiting it. Of course, we do not (and will not) know the end of it, but that is my guess.
Anyone else notice Jeff winked at James? And James totally cracked up!
That’s an odd expectation.
I’m expecting morbidly obese basement-dwelling shut-ins with no social skills whatsoever.
Just as fun, I guess. 
You mean most reality TV show viewers?
There wasn’t an auction this season, was there?
Hey, Capn. I’m pretty sure there was no auction this time. They just had that cheeseburger “eat or compete” IC, that’s as close as they came.
I don’t think it was random. Looking at it from the point of view of the jury, it makes sense. Yeah, Amanda pretty much ran the game, but what does it matter that she ran the game if NO ONE KNOWS? The only people who really knew were her, Todd, Courtney, and Denise. Courtney and Todd were sitting next to her and, as stated eloquently in this thread, Denise was too far into the “My question is YOU SUCK!” mindset. She was pissed off at Amanda, so she certainly wasn’t going to help her out with the rest of the jury. Todd was able to snowball the jury at the end by taking credit for each of their eliminations - Amanda didn’t. When it all comes down to it, the only strategy that’s important is the one that’s communicated to the jury. Amanda failed at communicating this, Todd succeeded. So Todd won.
Oh, I know there’s no practical way it could have happened. I can still want…
Amanda shot herself in the foot. From the way I see it, you can either be nice and strategic or scheming and strategic, but you can’t have wishy-washy and strategic. She did what she had to do, but then her conscience tried to get her to backpedal too much. I could see the wheels falling off her wagon as it was happening. People on the jury have been known to vote for people they hated simply because they acknowledged that they person they voted for played a good game because the person owned up to the scheming, like Todd did. You have to know this going into the final tribal. Todd could only own up to his scheming and let the cards fall where they may. People on the jury historically, don’t like the wishy-washy backpedalling. And Amanda was called on it.
Buckling indeed. Our system sucked today. We are not equipped to handle the load we’ve gotten today.
As for press release vs statements on survivor, there are many of us who are quite curious to see if there will be anything else coming. Please note, this is in no way supposed to imply that there are any inaccuracies in the press release. I have a hunch there is slightly more to the story. At this point, I have only rumor and conjecture to add, so I won’t.
However, I can certainly vouch for the legitimacy of the press release. That said, I am going to flag a local mod to see if I can get the link disabled. We really don’t want another day with the net connection as flaky as it was today. I doubt this one link will make any difference, but it might.
I’ve gone ahead and removed the link to the school’s web site. I’ve no doubt most (if not all) of you can find it on your own, but I figure we’d try to help the district out by curtailing any traffic generated from this site. At least until it levels off and their servers and pipes are better able to handle the load.
Yes, it looked to my wife and me that James is the one who will be in next season. When Jeff said one contestant from China will return, they cut to James laughing and nodding.
But who else? I thought they were going to limit themselves to contestants since the last All Stars.
Yao-man forever!