Obviously YMMV, but I think that she set herself up perfectly to be seen by Russell as non-threatening. She flat out said “I’m against you” in front of everyone and he still kept her around. She did that the same way she got him to turn on Coach - by stroking his ego.
I would also comment that by your logic Parvati was pretty lucky to make the final three too. Russell was the only one that controlled his one fate in that vote.
I’ve been led to believe (by folks on this board and others) that tribal councils (both earlier and the final one) are much, much longer than we are shown. It’s likely that all of them were given plenty of time to respond to everyone and the footage was then cut down to make compelling TV. I know Probst has commented in the past, when folks ask how he is able to ask questions at regular tribal councils that are so on-point, that it is because he basically asks every damn question he can think of and eventually hits on ones that make sense with the footage they have for that week.
Of course there were. Coach and Tyson instantly rebonded as soon as the game started.
We also saw that on screen with Rupert and Sandra musing about teaming about up with the other because they were on Pearl Islands together. We saw the same thing with Parvati and Amanda, who were on Fans vs Favorites together.
The fact that these alliances fizzled before they even got off the ground shows that Stephenie is probably full of shit on how much of a disadvantage it was.
If you go back and watch Coach’s vote for the winner, right after he gives some comment about his noble duty being complete, there is a screeching eagle sound effect. I nearly fell out of my chair and had to replay it for my wife. Have the producers ever done something like that during a vote to mock the voter?
They’ve always given the jury member total control over their own segment - cutting people off and such. But it used to be that the finalists got to make a closing statement as well after all the jury members were done - I don’t know if that was removed when they went to a final three.
That was right after he quoted “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, right?
From what I gather, Stephanie’s statement is accurate in that many former Survivor contestants are friends and spend a lot of time with each other in real life, outside the game. So it’s not just that some of them were in the same seasons previously–it’s that some of them hang out with each other while they’re waiting around for the next All-Star season. I think that was evident in this game and I think it may have been a factor in sending Stephanie home. Stephanie had issues with James… The James/Amanda/Cirie alliance was solid. Cirie was sent home when Tom played a HII. James’ injury sealed his fate, and even then he was kept to hobble around for a week longer than he should have been while Tom was sent home. The Coach/Tyson bond didn’t really fizzle, either. Tyson and Coach were in the Robfather’s alliance until Tyson screwed up and screwed them all (except Sandra).
Russell is not a good player. He sucks at the social game. Perhaps if he had seen the results of his first season before going on the second, he might have changed strategies. I think he now realizes that his bad social game cost him, but he was too proud to admit on national TV that he screwed up, so he was being an ass.
However, I think he tried in his own way to “admit” his shortcoming in the social game by telling Jeff a couple of times “I didn’t play two seasons, I played one long season”, which it seems to me he is saying that he didn’t get a chance to see the first season’s end before playing the second.
Sandra was not a free agent. She was part of the Rob alliance, and that alliance did find itself in trouble and she was screwed. Well, screwed until she lucked out and the merge happened.
The one thing she did that I will grant her, was to manipulate Russel into getting rid of Coach. That was some good scheming on her part, and it enabled Courtney to stay one more week, which meant that Sandra stayed one more week, which meant that she survived until the merge.
I’m sorry, but my only reaction to the above is: :rolleyes:
She did not have a masterful strategy to “try to get rid of Russel”. She really wanted him gone, and hated his guts. She told the camera directly in confessionals many times. She just got lucky that the Heroes were dumbasses and so she stayed with Russel till the end, and so won the million. If the Heroes were not such dumbasses and they voted Russel out, she would have had a much lesser chance of winning the million, if she even made it to the final three.
Parvati was the deserving winner this season.
For those of you who say “whoever gets the jury votes is the deserving winner”, there’s basically nothing to discuss. In sports “the team with the highest score wins” but that doesn’t invalidate discussions by sports fans as to which team “deserved” to win a particular match. YMMV, of course.
For those who think Sandra did a brilliant job and deserved the win, what would you say if Russel and Parvati decided to take Jerri to the final three, and Jerri won?
Would Jerri have been less worthy than Sandra? Equally worthy?
Would Jerri’s moves have been, post-hoc, rationalized as brilliant strategy?
I can’t speak for everyone, but I would say that in that circumstance I would expect Parvati to win, picking up most of the Hero votes that Sandra got. I think it would go:
Parvati: Danielle, Sandra, JT, Amanda, Courtney, Colby, Candice (only the final two do I consider really in play for Jerri).
Jerri: Coach, Rupert
Russell: 0
If Jerri managed to win then I would probably consider her less worthy, but would expect that the editors would have shown us interactions attempting to explain how she won. Perhaps in that light I would see some strategizing. From what we were shown it seems that she was very literally just doing whatever Russell told her to, while Sandra very clearly set herself up as the “anti-Russell” vote.
Also, pretty obviously I think, in a Final Two scenario Parvati has a very very good shot at being the winner. I kinda hope they go back to this in the future.
That’s something about the show I’d LOVE to know - how much do the people editing the episodes together know at the time they do the edits? Up until that ep’s TC? The next TC? Up to the final TC? The winner?
Jeff’s answer to Russell’s statement that “the game is flawed because America doesn’t get a vote” was spot on. That’s not the premise of the game; indeed, if “America” had a say in determining the final winner,it would change the whole concept. IMO, it would virtually eliminate the “social game”–the fact that Russell has won the $100,000 prize two straight seasons bears that out.
Still think Parvati should have won, but I’m OK with Sandra winning. Parvati needed to more strongly make her case that she played Russell the whole time, and she failed to do that (at least in the part we saw.) Sandra made a better argument during the final TC, and that’s what swayed the jury.
And, as an aside: does anyone else think we haven’t seen the last of Russell Hantz? Jeff made a passing reference to Russell pitching an idea to Mark Burnett; I’m sure it was tongue-in-cheek, but don’t be surprised if a reality show about Russell and his oil business is already in discussion. You can’t ignore two straight “Player of the Game” prizes–say what you want about Russell, but he does make for good TV.
Also, his lack of a “social game” may have worked against him on Survivor, but his underhanded ways would be a positive boon on The Amazing Race! Personally, I’d love to see if he would dare talk to his wife the way he talks to his competitors!
I said this before and I’ll say it again: That Russell played two seasons back-to-back worked far more in his favor than against him. If JT had seen Russell’s first season, is there anyone who believes that he still would have given Russell the idol? If Tyson had seen Russell’s first season, is there anyone who believes that he still would have switched his vote to Parvarti? If the other players had seen Russell’s first season, there is very, very little chance that he would have even lasted to the point where dumbass Tyson fell for his trap.
I’m pretty sure they know everything when the show is produced. Filming for this season ended on Sep 16, 2009 and the first episode aired on Feb 11, 2010. That should be plenty of time for production, no?
So what you’re asking is, if everything about the endgame had turned out entirely differently than it did, would my opinion of it be different? Yes, yes, it probably would have been. The point is, the way it did turn out is a function, not entirely but very much in part, of the actions taken by the player who did win. That Sandra, and not Jerri, was taken to the F3 was a result of specific decisions Sandra made (and a bit of luck; see below).
See, the scenario you’re proposing never would have happened. First of all, there was never a chance, from the moment Russell won immunity, that Sandra would be eliminated at F4. She had set herself up as the least of all possible threats in Russell’s mind - he believed, and she encouraged him to believe, that she could not win against him and that she didn’t care much about winning anyway. The only way Sandra could have gone home at F4 is if Parvati had won immunity (which she almost did - and I’ll be the first to say that a measure of luck underlies every Survivor win).
But even if Sandra had not made F3 (ie, if F3 had been Jerri, Parvati, and Russell), Jerri would not have won; Parvati would have. Unlike Sandra, Jerri hadn’t worked to ingratiate herself with the fallen Heroes. Jerri hadn’t really ingratiated herself with anybody, except maybe Coach (and even Coach, I think, would have voted for Parvati anyway, because in his deranged mind she is a Warrior Deserving of Honor). Parvati knew this - she wanted Sandra gone at F4 because Parvati knew that against Russell and Jerri, she’d probably have gotten every vote (she’d have been the winner of the last three immunities, even!).
So I reject your hypothetical: given the circumstances as they occurred, Jerri could not have made the F4 and won. Had she made the F4 and won, her play and the play of the others would have had to be qualitiatively different, so I can’t say whether she’d have been “deserving” in such a case.
We have a perspective that the jury doesn’t have, and so while I say I would have voted for Parvati, that’s only because I saw how she played the game. The jury only saw part of that. Parvati simply didn’t make a strong enough case for herself to the jury. Had I only known what the jury knew, I might have voted for Sandra, too.
I don’t understand how anyone can say that it’s 1/3 physical; Sandra proved quite conclusively that one does not need to be physically strong, or even win a single challenge, in order to win the game. I also don’t understand how anyone can lump the strategic and the social together. Russell has clearly shown that those two are very separate. I think it’s more accurate to say that Survivor is 1/3 strategic, 1/3 social, and 1/3 luck.
Wow, I will never understand how any male human can consider her attractive. The way she artificially arches her eyebrows makes her look positively demonic.
Yeah, we can make endless analogies to the way Russell is good at only part of Survivor. I really don’t understand him, though. I totally despise him as a human being, but I have to be honest enough to say that he’s not stupid. After all the evidence he’s had as to the importance of the social game, I just don’t understand how he can sit there at the reunion – knowing that he has, in fact, lost two Survivors – and still rant “I don’t care” when people ask him about his lack of the social game. I guess the only explanation is that even intelligent people can be blind to reality if it conflicts with their ego.
I mean, migod, right down to the end, he sat there and said, “The way it should work is that America gets to vote.” And I loved Jeff’s response, “That’s a different game.” Russell still, after all that, doesn’t understand the simple reality that this game of Survivor has a strong social component; it’s the people on the jury that determine the winner, using whatever criteria they want. Your ideal of what constitutes “Outwit, Outlast, Outplay” is irrelevant!
This just seemed like a variation of the lame old “I got voted out because I’m such a big threat” excuse. If you were that big of a threat you, um, would have been able to avoid being voted out, wouldn’t you?
Ugh. there’s no way I would watch such a show. Russell made for a compelling anti-hero on a game/reality show, but I’d want nothing to do with seeing him live his real life. YMMV.
Yes, and it would make the show excruciatingly stupid and boring. First of all, everyone would spend the entire season preening for the cameras, which, yikes. Second, there would be a strong motivation for the players to eliminate anyone who would be good TV, as that player would be a favorite to win regardless of his/her quality of play. This would leave us with an endgame comprising players who were not good TV. Third, this would essentially allow the producers, through their editing choices, to manipulate the outcome directly and dramatically. It would open them up to a kind of criticism that does not exist right now. Sure, the editors can manipulate the audience as much as they want, and the producers (including Jeff) can exert very mild pressure on the outcome of a given Tribal Council, but make it audience-pick for the winner and suddenly issues like screen time, edit type, quote selection and editing, and so on become competitive issues. That’d be the death of the show, which has lasted 20 seasons precisely because audiences believe that the competition is more or less genuine.
I do have one idea, though, that I’d like to hear critiqued. I’d love to see a Season where at F3, they go through the Q&A with the jury, make their speeches, and so on. Everything just the same as it ever was.
Then, just after the last jury member has asked and answered his/her question, Probst smiles, waves, and bids the entire cast meet him in New York City in four months.
They air the show. The cast watches it. Then they gather in NYC, and the very first thing they do is vote, live and on the spot, for the winner. Jeff collects the votes, and determines the winner in real time.
I think it might be fun, and would certainly eliminate spoilers.
Sure, the timing works out, but I’m more wondering if the actual people who go through the many hours of footage to come up with the 44 minutes to put on screen know who the winner is, or even what happens in the next week. That’s a lot of editing, and a lot of opportunity for spoiler info to get out (as it did this season) if everyone involved is in the know.