I haven’t watched the end yet, so I’m looking forward to that part. I just watched up to the final TC, and figured Mike would win.
Carol was a very good runner up. She had a good story in terms of how she played, and then the whole fire thing, but Mike just played a better game all 'round. His religious stuff is only part of the reason I didn’t like him, but I have to give him credit for playing the best game. I hope he gives his mom some of the winnings! 
I think that Probst didn’t want to humiliate Dan as much as defend his show from (acc to Probst) very unflattering comments that Diaper Dan made about the integrity of his show. I take from Probst’s comments that he tried to blame the show for editing his comments to make him look like an asshole. In reality, he gave them all the material necessary because he IS an asshole. He’s sexist, he’s misogynistic, and I suspect he’s racist. Mike’s apology gave him the out he needed to vote for another white dude. What a douche.
(I do wonder if the editors actually went back to the tape after Dan jerked off his mouth, and re-edited it to make him look even worse. During the last two tribals, they focused on him SEETHING when he became aware that Mike won another immunity. Since when is winning a character flaw?)
Speaking of lack of self-awareness, Rodney aka Mr. “I’m running the game” STILL had no clue that he was NEVER running the game. Talk about the emperor not having any clothes. Rodney was most noteworthy for not winning a single challenge. And the only reason he even made it to the Final 3 is because he didn’t win a single challenge.
I think that any votes that might have gone to Mama C disintegrated after she took an hour to build a fire. I don’t know about everyone else, but I became to dislike her in the middle of the game, but came around to liking her again at the end. I’m surprised she didn’t bring up her most brilliant move on Day 1, when she realized that the 2 people who arrived first had gotten a clue to the HII, and used that knowledge to find it before they did. And then she held onto it, to save her ass later in the game. THAT was brilliant strategy, but not enough to overcome Mike’s challenge superiority.
I wonder how the game would have changed had Joe not been booted off. Certainly Mike wouldn’t have dominated the challenges. Bad move on the others’ part in hindsight.
I was surprised that the producers gave the winner of the 2nd to last challenge an advantage in the last challenge. That seems to be unfairly stacking the competition.
I didn’t like how Jeff continue to coach the players during the challenges. (“There are two ways of making fire…”) etc. because it inserts him into the game.
I was beginning to get why people hated Shirin. She had an opportunity to accept apologies gracefully and refused to.
I was amused to see two women with tattooed makeup on. Carolyn’s blue eyeliner and Sierra’s distracting painted on eyebrows. (Hint: If you’re a blonde, you shouldn’t use dark ink on your eyebrows.)
Hated how they stole a huge chunk of time from the reunion with the “Prove Dan wrong” show and next season’s cast. I actually find the reunion show to be very interesting and have opined since Day 1 that they should shorten the finale and lengthen the reunion. At least they didn’t interview strangers in the audience or do the “Visit our dead comrades” bit.
If everyone knows that you build fire in the event of a tie, the producers should do something else. Anything else.
The whole “dysfunctional family” bit at the end confused me. Mike said that there were days when nobody on the other tribe even spoke to him. That seems awfully personal to me, and he really must be a forgiving guy if they did that. And the way that they ganged up on him at the end made me want him to win even more. (And I think it cost Carolyn a return, to be honest.) That kind of treatment would break weaker players.
To me, Mama C was more of “not as bad as the rest of the clowns”. She played a very good game, but “very good” wasn’t good enough.
I’m sure Rodney thinks all the chicks will be falling all over him when he’s bar hoppin’ with the bros. He’s going to be putting on a wicked Big Game. Ladies, please resist yourselves!
Many good points in your post, but I particularly liked both of these.
EDIT: And to follow up on Mama C, that might have been good to bring up with Tyson at the final tribal council. “You were the only one who knew I had an idol, so you kind of had to go.”
I do wonder if he set some sort of Survivor record for most post-merge challenges not won. Couldn’t even win any of the 50/50 ones where they divide up into teams for rewards, and made it all the way to the last challenge, so might well be a record.
To me, she seemed to be agonzing over whether to just accept the apology (since they’re on national TV, in front of a huge audience, during a celebratory moment) but in the end decided to stick to her guns and decline it. I can’t blame her for that, especially since neither Dan nor Will’s apology felt genuine to me.
Eh, I think there’s something to be said for knowing what the rules are (and a fire building challenge is definitely better than drawing rocks). But I suppose they could just leave it at “a tie-breaking challenge” without saying what it is.
All I know is that, if I were to go on Survivor, I would know how to make a fire. Hell, I’d just look at something and it would burst into flame. I’d be so good I could make fire in the middle of a lake in the pouring rain. I do not understand how people can go on this show and not have firemaking down pat.
And Rodney stays a moron until the end, voting for Will. Do we know that Mama C only got 1 vote. That surprised me.
How on earth did Shirin get a 2nd chance? Are there people out there who are so cruel that they want to see humiliate herself again?
We werent surprised that Mike won, but were surprised that C only got one vote. Weird. Mike sure made the right choice.
Yeah, Shirin is a professional victim and a bitch. No one mentioned how much of a bitch she was to Will after he made that really nice gesture and shared his personal reward. Will was a nice guy, basically, he just lost it once- I would have been pissed also. I am glad he placed, but he certainly didnt deserve to win.
I agree that Will got the bad end of the stick on that deal. He had a right to be angry. However, the second Shirin got emotional, the politically correct response was to back off. There’s no other way to deal with that situation, publicly, especially when you’re a big dude, without risking looking like an asshole. You just have to back off and call her a bitch after the cameras stop rolling.
What you REALLY don’t do is make it worse by saying, “I know how you feel because I was adopted.” But I suppose that was the editors making Dan look like a jerk again.
BTW, I think that when Jeff indicated that the show was #1, they have us to thank. After all, we’ve said all along that:
a) You don’t need returning players. Note: seasons where they are all returning is okay with me, but to start a season with 2 returning players is stupid.
b) You don’t need celebrities
c) We hate Redemption Island
Now, if they’d just listen to me and shake up more of their formualaic things, such as “Build a fire in case of a tie” and “The HII is hidden in the food at the reward challenge” I’d be tickled. They have to do different things to freshen up the show. For instance, I really liked how they gave the first person to bid on a food item the boot (plus an advantage). No one was expecting that.
Oh, fuck that. I think Will was a total ass and a huge bully to her. I cheered when she denied him his letters. I cheered when she denied him his forgiveness. Go to hell, Will. And take Dan and Rodney with you.
So glad this season is finally over…
I totally get where both of you are coming from, but I suggest you buy one of the magnesium/flint firestarters they use they use and try it yourself. Don’t forget to use a rusty machete as your striker too. It’s really, really difficult, and very time consuming. And I don’t think you get better at it - getting that spark to land on something that will actually ignite is at least 75% luck.
Will was definitely the jerk of the season after his tirade. A genuine apology from the heart would at least help me understand, but I don’t feel that was what he gave.
Dan? A big, goofy, foot-in-his-mouth boob. I don’t think he’s some kind of monster or evil dude. Just a kind of dumb guy. I have two adopted children and I hope neither of them are dumb enough to mention their adoption in any connection with a rough upbringing.
My understanding is that Dan really helps out other adoption families and actually speaks positively about he and his siblings adoption experience.
Rodney? Just an idiot. Dime a dozen and only memorable because he went deep in the game. I wish his Dad had been the one in the game. He seemed cooler.
Yeah, Will is a piece of shit and Dan is like a less socially aware Cliff Claven (let that sink in).
It is a shame, because I remember when their gas station karaoke thing came out that I thought they were kind of cool, and his wife may actually be. But Will isn’t, outside that 3-minute slice of video.
Wow, I’m always surprised to see anybody defend Will. I mean, I get it…Shirin is obviously extremely annoying. I’d probably want to strangle her sometimes, living with her under those conditions. But…professional victim? How so? Both Dan and Will claimed they had no idea about her background, so obviously she wasn’t going on about it all the time. And she’s highly educated and highly successful, has a boyfriend and a close circle of friends…sounds to me like she overcame her hardships and thrived instead. Hardly the behavior of a “professional victim.” Just because she’s annoying and talks too much, it doesn’t make her a bad person.
Accusing others of hoarding/hiding food is a part of the game and totally legit. We saw it in the first episode of this season, with the whole bag of beans incident—Sierra, for one, questioned Dan and Mike’s honesty about that. So that was good game play on the part of Mike, Jenn, and Shirin…they were trying anything to cause discord in the opposing alliance.
And yes, Will had a right to be angry about it. After all, he had done a nice thing and wasn’t believed. (Although…it’s not like his integrity was intact within the bounds of the game at that point…he had flipped and lied about it to the No-Collars, he had lied to Vince. Which is all fine, fair game, but he needn’t act like he’s some angel.) But he had a perfect right to confront his accusers and set the record straight.
Where he lost me and descended into disgusting personhood is when he made it so personal. To start with, he attacked only Shirin, not Mike or Jenn, who, from what we saw, were far more active in their accusations than Shirin. In fact, we know from Jenn’s interviews that Will took her aside after and told her that they were cool, that he still loved her. So why did he only confront Shirin? Could it possibly be because he knew she was a safe target, unliked by the fellow members of his alliance? Because she was vulnerable? Doesn’t that make him a bully of the worst sort?
And I’d like to throw it out there that I believe his words were not just hateful, they were bigoted. Because Shirin is Iranian and from a Islamic background and he said she had no soul and he’s a “man of God” and can you see where I’m going with this?
It’s one thing to lose your temper and go off on someone…that’s normal, human frailty. What Will did goes beyond that–he made it personal, he made it mean, he took it to the level of abuse.
So yeah, I’m not a Will fan.
No it isn’t. There are generations of Boy Scouts that have used those things to start campfires all over the planet, under any imaginable condition. Buy one, practice over a weekend and you’re set. Yes, there is a bit of a trick to it, but nothing a moderately bright and coordinated 10 year old couldn’t figure out.
I’ll have to find a boy scout to teach me then (that sounded wrong). I did spend several hours (off and on) trying one, and never got anything to ignite. Gave me a new appreciation for John Walker.
That’s what drives me nuts about Survivor contestants. They know what is coming, but they do nothing to prepare for it. There is a bit of a trick to using a fire starter, but they are $5 at Walmart. Buy one and practice, people! Once you get the hang of it they are very reliable sources of ignition.
Be prepared!
silenus, in your opinion, does using a machete as the striker make it more difficult? The videos I’ve found online all use a knife or the striker that comes with it. Not that a knife worked for me either, but I’m pretty clumsy.