One can hope 
. I agree though, I doubt it will ever happen.
I agree to an extent, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to see the original rules back. If you remember all the way back to season one, they had two tribes with no switches until the merge. Post-merge, every vote went along strict tribal lines, and there was very little drama until Pagong had been fully eliminated. In season two, the majority tribe did vote out a couple of their own, but still mostly just picked off the other tribe one by one.
The best thing they ever did was introduce the tribe switch in season three. It eliminated a lot of the predictability. As players become more educated by past seasons and strategy gets more sophisticated, hidden immunity idols and other twists serve that same purpose. The show wouldn’t still be on the air if it hadn’t evolved.
That said, yes, I think the “twists” can get a little ridiculous sometimes, and I really hate the new fire-making for the final three thing. I’m not at all convinced that it was planned in advance and not concieved on the fly as a way to keep Ben in the game, whom the producers obviously love.
But the original method, when there were only two people left at the end was that whoever won the final challenge got to pick the one person who went with them to the final 2 for the jury vote. I’m not seeing a whole lot of difference here. I thought it was kind of interesting because the winner of the challenge had to make some decisions about whom to pick for what and whom to tell. What would have been so exciting about watching Chrissy, Ryan and Devon vote off Ben?
The exciting part was watching Ben try to win immunity with everything on the line (or so he, and we, thought).
Yeah, I usually resist “rigged” allegations, but this stank to high heaven. I bet if Ben had won, he would have been given an advantage that was actually an advantage for HIM.
Really? It’s almost the opposite. Not only could Chrissy not decide by herself who to send home, the unanimous choice of her, Devon, and whatsisname was blocked by the “advantage”.
Completely agree. Speaking for the tribe, they had a chance to get Ben out early during his King Aurther days and they didn’t. They knew his service/PTSD story would be dangerous. IMHO, typical survivor mistake. No one made a big move early enough. I was rooting for Devin but Ben deserved to win given how everything went down.
Maybe I’m naive but I don’t think the producers will sway the game towards a particular player. Besides being highly illegal, they don’t have that much control. Remember, we saw Devin starting a fire in camp pretty easily a couple of times. He should have won the fire challenge. He choked. The producers didn’t control that.
Clearly the producers gave Devon a bum flint (or magnesium or whatever he was using). 
Probst made a comment during the finale about how it was the new way going forward, and wasn’t just for this season. He was likely trying to head off those complaints.
I didn’t mind it. The game has to evolve, as someone upthread said, because the players have evolved.
Probably the worst performance by Males in Individual Immunity Challenges in Survivor History
Men won one immunity out of 42 total chances
Women won 9 immunities out of 15 total chances.
I did not count the Final 4 Fire Starting challenge, Men were 2 out 43 chances.
Devon, Lauren, and Ben sat out of an early Immunity Challenges, to eat Peanut Butter and Chocolate, I did not count that has a “chance”. It was the challenge where they stood on what looked like a doghouse out in the ocean.
Can you clarify your terms? Are you saying that 9 of 10 IIs were won by women?
It’s not *nearly *as bad if people know it’s coming. They can plan for it, adapt strategy to fit, etc. And there could be interesting counter-strategies. For instance, if you have other aspects of your personality or backstory that would traditionally make you a “threat” to get a lot of jury votes, you might want to play possum all game and act like you suck at making fire.
He’s doing his math on a per-person basis, once the individual immunity started.
So the first challenge had 12 contestants, 7 men 5 women, and a woman won. So the score is now 0 for 7 for men, 1 for 5 for women. The second challenge had 11 contestants, 7 men, 4 women, and a man won, so it’s now 1 for 14 for men, 1 for 9 for women. Third challenge was 10 contestants, 7 men, 3 women, and a woman won, so now it’s 1 for 21 for men, 2 for 8 for women. etc.
It might be interesting if a tribe goes all the way to the merge without fire because no one wants to demonstrate their fire making skills.
True, maybe they should just do immunity challenges until only 2 or 3 remain.