Not even close. When Boston Rob and his girlfriend episode was down to the final 4 it set a level that can not be breached. Four left. Clear that Rob and girl are a couple. The goon that was with thgeir group should have sided with the other guy and voted Rob and then girlfriend off. he would have guaranteed him last 2 and maybe a mill. he went along with Rob and took third.
That was when Rob sealed his rep as one of the greatest TV game players ever. He may have even engineered his speech so Amber could win. He had his eye on more than one prize.
Yes, but the problem was that at F4 in All-Stars, Rupert (who I assume you are calling “the goon”) did not have immunity – Amber did. Rupert tried to get rid of Rob, but Jenna L. (the “other guy”) didn’t want to (a) piss off the others, in case she needed their vote later, or (b) risk a tie, in case she ended up picking the Purple Rock of Doom. Jenna knew she wouldn’t beat Rupert at F2, so she hedged her bets and voted with Rob and Amber. Which means Rupert came in 4th – Jenna came in 3rd. (And Rupert ended up with a million at the end of All-Stars, anyway, although it is inarguable that he did not actually win that money.)
However, I will reconsider my earlier position and argue that getting rid of Erika was not actually dumber than getting rid of Amber instead of Jerri. Had Amber been voted out instead on that fateful evening, the world may have been spared waaaay more than 15 minutes’ worth of the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is “Romber” and its myriad of offspring reality TV appearances.
I’m not wild about that myself. At first, I was wondering if they were going to switch off on the luxury suite each week, based upon who won the challenges.
If they’re not, I’d at least like for them to allow the tribe sent to the low-rent district to come in and steal an item of their choice from the luxury tribe when they win a challenge. Having the blatantly different circumstances for the two tribes based upon one early challenge just doesn’t make sense to me.
Out of curiosity, why don’t you believe him? Not that I have a whole lot of experience to speak of, but I imagine that someone who overcame homelessness to become “a doctor or lawyer or such” would go on and do something, I don’t know, worthwhile, instead of settling for a 1-in-19 chance at a million dollars on a game show. I mean, it’s possible – but when people don’t want others to know they’re lawyers, they pretend to be mailmen or something, not cheerleading coaches. And just from what we’ve seen, it looks like Dreamz lacks some of the social awareness that one expects from a doctor or lawyer, doesn’t he?
Does anyone know if they plan on making every week a combined challenge like they have the past 2 weeks? I thought last night was spectacularly boring. While the interpersonal stuff around camp can be interesting sometimes, it’s the challenges that are the most exciting part of the show. So far I’m not impressed with this season at all.
I hope not, if for no other reason than that the last two seasons have had some kick-ass killer challenges, and I want to see more of them too. All the smart money is on “No,” anyway. IIRC, they usually do combo challenges for a week or two, and then they start doing two-fers after that. Because, let’s face it: it’s fun to screw with a lagging team, by “letting” them win a reward challenge, only to watch them lose an immunity challenge two days later. 
Oh, BTW: who said anything about snakes being misunderstood? I have this terrible feeling that I missed major chunks of this week’s episode, and I don’t know why. Did we ever actually see Earl on Exile Island this week?
First I ain’t buying he was ever homeless.
The doctor or lawyer or such was just a joke,he may very well be a cheerleading coach.In fact,he probably is,but I bet he has another job as well.When Gary Hogeboom played(rather than doing something worthwhile) he said he was a landscaper or something along those lines,yet the show identified him as an ex- NFL QB.
As to why I don’t believe him,I think he is playing the game(poorly) and came up with the homeless plight to try to gain sympathy,if I can’t win the MIL lets give it to the poor misfortunate.It’s too early to tell, but he doesn’t seem to be liked by the group,nor does Sylvia,which of course can benefit the unliked in advancing to the later rounds.
It would be a good ruse if you can pull it off,but he isn’t doing that good of a job at it.
Yup, they showed him sitting near the hut on Exile Island and apparently one of the snakes kept coming too close, so he killed it with a machete. Then he said that he didn’t like killing the snake and that snakes are misunderstood.
I must have missed something. I know Dreamz was kinda annoying in the first episode, but what did the kid do in the latest one? Are ya’ll talking about when Boo kept hurting himself and Dreamz ribbed him a little.? I thought Dreamz was just being funny (and I laughed).
:shrug:
I also don’t think the kid is lying about being homeless. There’s no indication that he’s lying or that he’s a jerk enough to lie about something like that, and it is totally within the realm of possibility. Also, I would think it would be a lie easily revealed by exposure on national television. If Dreamz was really living in a home during all those years he claimed homelessness, don’t you think he’d worry about someone blowing his cover?
I just hope we’re not in for a whole season’s worth of “I’m used to struggling! I was homeless!” confessions. Long-running sob stories tend to make me lose sympathy after awhile (although I usually blame the editing).
I don’t think he’s lying about it. But he sure is milking it for all its worth.
Same here.
The have v. the have not experiment is already a flop, IMO. The have nots should have at least been supplied with fire and water. The other team having blankets and beds and rice is enough to cause jealousy. Withholding the essentials just tips the scales too much. There is nothing more snoozeworthy on Survivor than having one team dominate.
But it doesn’t really matter what we think, and it doesn’t look like he’s been pushing the issue around the others. Then again: Editing. We just can’t tell at this point what’s going on. Maybe now that he’s gotten his smackdown from Rocky, he’ll behave himself. He didn’t seem too bad yesterday. High-strung and high-energy, definitely, but not so much of a jerk. We’ll have to see how much he milks it if he makes it closer to the end.
And MadTheSwine: Gary didn’t say that he was a landscaper entirely because he wanted people to think he needed the money any more than anyone else. His strategy was to make himself look like less of a physical threat. You look at Gary and your first thought is not “former professional athlete” – he’s tall and skinny and wiry and he looks his age. Add “ex-NFL quarterback” to the description, though, and it changes your whole impression of the guy.
Plus, the producers knew exactly who Gary is. In all the promos of the show, including the TV Guide preview special, they mentioned the football angle. I believe that they do background checks on these people. I doubt very strongly that they’d hype Dreamz as a formerly homeless street performer if he wasn’t. But, I’m also a trusting soul, sometimes.
I think he is doing it simply as part of the game and will confess his ploy at the end of the series,same as Johnny Fairplay did before him.Every one that knew Fairplay IRL knew his gramma wasn’t dead,same as everyone that knows Dreamz knows he isn’t or wasn’t homeless.
I thought Gary lied about that so the other contestants wouldn’t vote him off first chance they got becuase he already had his time to shine.(Sorta the same reason the previous winners had no shot at winning All-Stars).I am not sure, but I think he even said something along those lines in one of the episodes.
But that’s not a good comparison. The audience at home and the show’s producers knew Johnny was lying. It was only his teammates that were clueless.
I’m with rockle. I don’t think the producers would accept Dreamz’s sob story without double-checking first. And I’m kind of puzzled why you think he’s lying. Are there specific clues that indicate such deception, or is it more of a “too sad to be true” kind of reason?
We didn’t know right away. We found out when Johnny and pal were walking along the beach afterwards.Tell me you didn’t feel bad for Johnny before that,I did,they did a good job selling it.I seem to remember an interview with Probst saying how the producers all freaked out at the moment the death was announced and called someone in Johnny’s family to offer condolences only to have the dead woman answer the phone.I think Dreamz is just taking the deception to a higher level.
So what? Are you guys gonna vote me out of the thread? ::desperately searches for hidden immunity idol:: ahh… found it, here it is > :eek:
I’m sure the producers know what his background is and may have even been aware he was going to use this strategy(like Gary),or they might have been surprised when he started the ruse(like Johnny).Either way the producers don’t step in if you lie and ask you to play honestly,lying is part of the game.
The only thing I can offer to this is… I got the feeling he was lying the first time he mentioned his past and that stuck with me.
I have no clues at all except my “feeling”.So I may be completely wrong,lord knows it won’t be the first time on such matters,but I got a whole bag of “I told ya so’s” waiting just in case I am right. 
It’s gonna be fun to see how it plays out.
I’ll chime in with my opinion about Dreamz (one that doesn’t involve my gaydar going off): I believe he was homeless, but that was A LONG TIME AGO. He has a major muscular bod and doesn’t look like he’s missed any meals lately. I think if he was playing the homeless thing for a sympathy angle he would be more savvy in general than to be a blabbering idiot at most every opportunity. He doesn’t strike me as very bright, but I have no doubt he can be a survivor in the world of hard knocks. But to be a Survivor here, you need something of a different set of survival skills: social skills. And he lacks them. I think the first chance a tribe has to give him the boot (i.e., no longer need his muscle for challenges) it will be a swift and decisive kick.
I really don’t care for Sylvia, consider her cluelessly bossy and an intellectual snob with a superiority complex. Remember how in Week 1 when somebody didn’t know the word “askew” so she substituted “orthogonal”? Did she think for one second that somebody who didn’t know askew would know orthoganal? Of course not. She used it to come off as superior, make the others feel dumber than she, a personality flaw that has made her Dead Man Walking. I think at some point in her life she covered up an insecurity issue by flaunting intellect and it worked, so she has used it as a mechanism to keep an upper hand ever since. I have no doubt she’s booksmart and works well with edumacated white collar folks. But I bet they don’t even like her.
My apologies for a rant focusing on the previous week’s episode, but she only seemed to further give off an aura of snobbery right up to her last words. (“My ideas, some of which weren’t expressed, were that we should pick a leader.”) Still pushing her agenda and doesn’t even realize it.
I love, love, LOVE the two black guys, Anthony and Earl, for Ravu, but I would put my money on Alex, the Harvard lawyer for Moto, to win it all. I like Yau Man also, but his jungle smarts won’t be enough to offset his age and lack of athletic ability. He’ll be the next one to go after Sylvia. Honestly, I can hardly tell one cute Asian girl from another. I’m sure their personalities will emerge as the season continues.
She actually chairs the board, as majority owner, of a major west coast architecture firm. I think she’s also the chief executive office and president. She is currently building her “dream home”.
She’s used to deference, and I believe she views this whole thing as an exercise in slumming — a social experiment which, no matter how it turns out, will leave her with something she can use to torture her subordinates in California. If she fails to win, they will bear the brunt of her new demands for harder work. “You don’t have it so bad… you should try living in the jungle for a few weeks.” If she wins, they will have to endure a whole new layer of snootery. “Surely you are not challenging the winner of Survivor. Now, go do as I say.”
Moonchild, I’m not feeling Sylvia either. Although I do think that her absence from her tribe during its embryonic moments didn’t help her at all.
If only Erika hadn’t flown off the handle! And the girl had discovered all the pineapples!
Just goes to show you that you can’t afford any slips of sanity when you’re on the show.