Survivor Impressions

Cafe Society
#1

I usually don’t watch TV, but I watched Survivor.

It made me a little angry. It seemed like they purposefully picked outdoorsy capable, physical guys, but for the most part picked wimpy girls. Splitting the temas along the sexes is fine as far as I’m concerned, but it shouldn’t be loaded to make the women fail.

Then of course there is the deaf girl. She has the most open face. She seems like the only genuine truly nice and capable person on the whole show. If there was ever a person who made a stronger impression of being sweet, kind, open and good, I can’t remember it.

The rest of the woman treated her horribly. It was like she didn’t exist. I can’t beleive they were that cold and mean. Did you hear the excuse? “She has a communication problem.”

Excuse me! The woman’s deaf. She still speaks clear english, and she can read lips. It’s not a problem if you can show the barest minimum of consideration and look at her when you speak. It’s not a big deal to do that.

You would think that in the Amazon it might be worth that tiny modicum of effort in order to reap the benefits of communicating with her seeing as she is an adventure guide.

I have other news as well. I’m not the world’s greatest judge of character, but I don’t have to be in order to tell you that she would be a loyal and trustworthy person to have as an ally. The ability to read lips just might come in handy when people walk off by themselves to have sotto-voiced conversations. It just might be an advantage to be able to tell what other people are saying when they are talking to low to hear.

Cocky guys and mean stupid worthless women. I hope one of them gets a clue.

#2

The same thoughts occurred to me when I was watching the show. The way some of the women talked about Christy got on my nerves, especially since I’m deaf myself.

Sad to say, but I recognized a lot of the women’s behavior on that show as being very similar to how many of my peers reacted to me when I was in school.

I hope Christy wins.

#3

Me too. She was just so nice, and they were so mean and stupid.

#4

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Atreyu *
The way some of the women talked about Christy got on my nerves, especially since I’m deaf myself.

[QUOTE]
“Some of the women”? You mean the toothpick “swimsuit model” and the 80-lb blonde with the 20-lb implants? Fuck them. Christy will outlast them both.

#5

[dammit]

#6

In the dude’s camp, at the end, some dude gave a nice speech on why it is wrong to lie about fishing. “Whatever,” I snorted.

If I wanted a morality lesson, I’d have watched something moral. I watched Survivor for some hardcore Machiavellian action.

#7

I’m sure I’ll get blasted for this, but wouldn’t the makeup of the teams pretty much match a representative cross section of the general populace?

#8

I agree that Christy seemed very cool and sweet. I don’t think most of the girls were being especially mean to her, though. Jenna was, at least in her interviews, but she seems like an idiot anyway. Maybe Barbie too…I mean Heidi. But I think a lot of it was unintentional. And of course, the “after-dark factor” was a problem, but I doubt any of them realized it. They’ve all just met each other for the first time, and in a new and stressful situation. Nobody was at their best. I’m willing to cut them a little slack for now. They’d better shape up though, 'cause I really like Christy.

And Shawna. She’s my favorite so far. Pretty, smart(ish), and seems nice.

Jenna, as I said, is an idiot. “Being clean is a priority.” You’re in the frickin’ jungle, moron! Can you believe they didn’t even have their shelter built and they were doing laundry? On the second day?

I have to agree that the women’s tribe looks to be in trouble. I was really hoping they’d be more together, particularly after the guys’ cockiness, but they don’t seem to be doing so well so far, survival-wise. Hopefully that will change.

Sure was nice to see them kick the guys’ asses in the IC, though. And didn’t Jeff give them shit for it? Heh.

One thing that struck me during that challenge. The girls do have one particular advantage: Guys in general don’t like to touch each other. Girls don’t mind so much. I think that helped the girls big-time in the balance beam race, and also the cargo net, because they supported each other. And they held up the weaker members (Janet—“I’ve hit rock bottom” on day two.) on the cargo net.

General impressions of the guys: Butch is a jackass, and so is Roger, and Rob. Alex is funny. I think I like Rocket-Scientist Dave, except that he seems to be in love with Butch, and his little speech after the challenge was pretty stupid. We’ll see. Pretty neutral on the rest of them so far.

One thing I think I noticed…at the very beginning, when they were told to shove off from the big boat, the guys untied the mooring rope from their boat, and cast off right away. Shawna untied the rope from the large boat, keeping the mooring line on their boat. She was mad at herself afterwards that it took so long, but hey, now the girls have an extra piece of rope. Could come in handy.

Also, the guys seem a little too infatuated with their machetes. Somebody is going to lose a limb!

#9

Jeez, the guys were just absolute pigs. Thier attitudes, and especially drooling sexual banter, towards the women was fucking unbelievable.

“Woah, dood, she’s HOT!”

I’m embarassed for my gender.

#10

And the women did seem quite cold toward Christy, but sometimes that’s a matter of the editing being intentionally or unintentionally misleading.

#11

It isn’t their responsibility to change their whole communication structure just for Christy. This is a different environment than “real life”; it is a game based a lot on communication. Survivor isn’t exactly a situation where you would expect people to put in extra effort to communicate. She didn’t even tell them she was deaf until they got to camp (?!). The advantage from lip-reading might be big but the disadvantage of a communication barrier is a lot greater.

She knew what sort of game she was getting in to. She could tell them to look at her. She could have followed them into the woods. She has to put forth the effort too.

And the “adventure guide” couldn’t start the fire.

#12

Good point, which I actually meant to make myself. (Really. :o ) The producers obviously played up Christy’s problems to us. How bad it really was remains to be seen. I don’t mean to trivialize it, but we all know that in Survivor, “reality” is a slippery concept.

#13

– She didn’t even tell them she was deaf until they got to camp (?!). –

Hmm, it seemed like everyone really started exchanging information when they all got into the small boats as a team. I can’t see how Christy could’ve had the conversation about her deafness in the boat where she can’t see everyone’s face.

It was obvious (to me) that it was making her nuts that people didn’t know she was deaf, and she wanted to get that out of the way as soon as possible. As soon as she could speak face to face with everyone she did so immediately and told them up front about her situation.

#14

Ugh. I hadn’t seen Survivor before (except the last ep of the first season) I found it boring and annoying. Especially the boys vs. girls aspect. I turned it off after a half hour. Was anyone voted off? How does it work, anyway?

The swimsuit model just seems like a horrible person.

#15

Agreed.

I’m trying to think of an example from the last Survivor, but there’s been numerous times where the editing would make you think, for example, that everyone was really pissed at a particular person, and in a later episode you’d see those same people dispelling the impression you’d picked up about what was happening with the relationships at that point. Some of that is dissembling or dishonesty when those players discuss it, some of it is the earlier editing being misleading and giving a false impression.

The opposite example has obviously happened before: some players just hate hate HATE someone, and we’re not given that information until, out of left field, every dumps on that player: “I’ve never like that person, what a shit”. Woah, we say: where’d that come from? since we weren’t privy to the unedited footage.

It’s hard to say until some time has passed what’s really happening between the players, and often not even then.

#16

And don’t recall the player’s name, but the guy who basically promised both sides he’d vote for thier guy.

He said up-front that he appreciated Dave’s honesty, but personally he was going to lie and decieve whichever way he could to win.

On Survivor, this almost comes across as a breath of fresh air, a bravura of honest dishonesty.

#17

Hope you don’t mind me chiming in with an example, but that not only happened but was discussed briefly during Survivor: Africa.

Lex openly discussed his schemes and attitudes in front of the camera and, in my house at least, was generally seen to be a rather slippery character - and more than a little paranoid. And he acted on that paranoia, organizing vendettas against people in retribution for imaginary offenses. In the final “reunion” half of the final show, however, there was some brief discussion of the fact that the survivors themselves actually liked Lex and considered him absolutely deserving of winning or “almost” winning, as turned out to be the case - and it was quite a surprise to discover that he was almost universally hated by the audience.

#18

HeatMiser: would you say the disconnect between the audience’s impression of Lex and ours was because:

  • We were given more information than the other players (especially Lex’s personal comments) ?

  • We were misled by some of the editing into thinking Lex was more evil than he was ?

That’s the crux of the biscuit, wouldn’t you say?

#19

My thoughts (sorry if these have been mentioned, it’s late :D)

  1. Please keep the show at 60 minutes (at the most!) This actually would have been a fine 30 minute episode in my opinion.

  2. I can handle the whole boys vs. girls thing, but please can the fireside chat about who’s hottest.

  3. Jenna is a swimsuit model? What for? The Greensheet circular? She doesn’t look like a model at all (except for the lack of weight).

  4. The guys were hilariously bad. Talk about a humiliation during the challenge. Not only did they blow the biggest lead I’ve ever seen, but they had to hump the damn log to get across. Was it really that hard? And a blindfolded Ghandia could have put that puzzle together faster.

  5. Is there a rule somewhere stating that every “Rob” on this show has to be a complete jackass?

#20

squeegee, my impression at the time was that the editing was misleading, and Lex was no more and no less evil or paranoid than any other contestant. I cannot really support that claim with any evidence or logical argument though.

I used the other contestants’ reactions to make an assessment, seeing more amusement than anger when the subject came up - but that’s not much of a gauge, even if it wasn’t happening on national TV.