My wife and I are finding it pretty boring, too. They need to go back to the two challenges per episode to bring some action back into it. Watching a bunch of people mope around doesn’t make for good TV.
The problem is the people that are on “Survivor” are fans of the show. They know all the plays and traps. They either need to totally rework the structure or just call it a day. What they’ve been doing the past couple of seasons has been pathetic compared to the first seasons.
Maybe they could do what Blizzard did with World of Warcraft. The game had become absurd so they re-released the original game as World of Warcraft Classic (and it was fun to play). Perhaps Survivor could do the same. Otherwise with the fixed location and shorter season (it isn’t harder Probst, it’s just cheaper), the show will eventually be shot on a lot in Hollywood with a script.
And I don’t think I really like the editing of the tribe prior to TC. It needs less foreshadowing (or the opposite head fake), and more unedited footage of all tribe members conversations. If you weren’t spoon fed the narrative, TC would be an actual event that people would discuss the next day. As it is, we barely even mention this show. I suppose that I watch out of habit, not for enjoyment.
I think these problems go hand-in-hand. You can’t just “show the conversations” because there would be absolutely zero suspense. The conversations have created the result. There is no real room for drama (other than advantages) because the players are too good to let there be drama. I think most of the time the bootee actually knows it too, but they are told to act somewhat surprised.
Unfortunately, the advantages just create randomness not strategy, and often can be played around anyway by good players.
Maybe they need to start casting more for players that don’t know the game so well rather than so many super fans.
But absolutely they need to bring back more challenges, even if they are simple endurance ones. I assume fewer challenges is also part of the cost-cutting strategy, so I doubt they will return.
I see what you mean, but there wasn’t much last night anyway. The only question is if Linsey was a target all along, or became one because she was apprehensive to the point of paranoia? At this point, I don’t care. No one does, and that’s a problem for the show.
I will say one of the problems may be the small tribes at the start of the show. A TC with only six members isn’t that entertaining at the start of the season.
Small initial tribes are boring. You need big starter tribes to get the factions going which boosts back-stabbing and blind-siding. You know, the fun stuff.
I still think it all comes down to the personalities of the players. We haven’t seen many strong personalities standing out this season, aside from maybe Gabler and that goofy surfer dude - and even those seem like “lite” versions of people we’ve seen before.
There’s really nobody in this bunch to root for or root against, and that’s why we don’t care who gets voted off.
It’s officially the Survivor for Dummies season. And that’s the nicest thing I can say.
Okay I’m calling bullshit on Jeff going on about how identical those stick mazes were. Red team – which includes the woman missing a leg – is shown exiting their stick maze crawling on the ground in the bottom right. Both of the other two teams are shown exiting their stick mazes in the upper left, where they had to walk on top of the sticks as opposed to crawl on the ground.
I applaud offering a crawling option, but don’t go on and on about how it’s identical.
I suppose it’s possible that all three had two different solutions, one high and one low, but color me skeptical.
I don’t know what’s so unbelievable about that. They just had to maneuver through the sticks. Why couldn’t some have used a different path? 
He specifically said there were multiple ways through and that they were identical mazes; doesn’t mean each route was more or less difficult. And that contestant, to her credit, has performed very well in challenges with her prosthetic, and in swimming challenges without it.
Oh for sure, she’s been killing it. But the crawling option was also the fastest option, seeing as how red team was first one through. Weird how the other two teams chose the slower path.
Well given that Blue team leader was intentionally throwing the challenge, who knows?
OK, that was a fun episode.
I have a feeling Elie would have been targeted even if Gabler hadn’t “thrown her under the bus.” (Which was a strange thing for her to say given that she’d been gunning for him since day one. And she did go through his bag, didn’t she?)
She was playing all sides, saying different things to different people. Did she really think nobody else would talk to each other?
A+ Merge. The three small tribes don’t make for the best pre-merge, but I love what it does to merge dynamics.
Throwing out someone’s name as a fake target without talking to that person first is a terrible strategy.
I’m pretty sure it was Jeanine (her bestie) who went through Gabler’s bag.
I think it was Jeanine, but Allie was definitely complicit.
Owen was there too, and then proceeded to act completely shocked when he “found out”.
I’m disappointed though we never got the scene of Ellie trying to vote out Gabler, only for him to play his “dead” idol.
Speaking of which, his idol is dead now, right? I assume that even though he was immune anyway, this still counted as his second Tribal Council.
Correct, because he still could’ve played it for someone else. Dalton Ross confirmed with the producers.