The new season of Survivor starts tomorrow night. From the TV Guide website:
Damn – there’s brutal, and then there’s the brutality of a high school cafeteria. Heck of a way to start a season.
Hope it’s a good season – last season was, I think, my favorite ever, and will be hard to beat.
I’ve glimpsed at the new contestants, but not much more than that. I’m just happy that two of my favorite shows are starting new seasons this week!
Edited: I just wanted to note that when I heard James Whitmore died this past week, I immediately thought of Matty from last season, who is Whitmore’s grandson.
Cool, I didn’t know that.
With Survivor starting tomorrow and TAR starting on Sunday, and AI heading into its voting/elimination rounds, I am going to have my brain turned into a gelatinous goo by reality television! 
Thank god Big Brother is a summer show.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
twicks, who was glad she got home in time to catch the special Tuesday edition of True Beauty last night
Ehhhh, I used to really dig Survivor, but stopped watching a few seasons back. It’s always the same sort of rainforest/tropical island location. I’d start watching again if it was maybe set in someplace with a whole new set of environmental challenges.
Think Survivor: Antarctica or Survivor: The Sahara
While the Sahara might be fine, I’ll bet money there will never be an Antarctica because there would be no bikini/nudity shots.
Okay, so the people who don’t watch don’t care – what about the people who do?
How would you pick who to vote out, if you’re looking at seven other people about whom you know nothing but the most superficial elements of their appearance? Do you want to get rid of, or keep, someone who looks strong? who looks smart? who looks sexy?
Note that all it says is “to eliminate one player from their tribe who will not go on with them to their camp.” I parse this to say just what it says, not “eliminated from the game.” Do we actually know that they bounce 2 without a chance? It would be much more evil to “bounce” 2, then have them return from exile with some serious attitude.
Heh. Good point.
The question remains, though – what criteria would you use to cast this particular vote?
Depends on exactly how long I’ve had to get a first impression. Seconds? Minutes? I’d go for dumping whoever was the most gregarious and outgoing first.
No one is allowed to say a word.
And why “gregarious”?
Means they’ve got skills at making alliances. No words? Dump the biggest guy there.
Weird. I just called up Matty’s bio at CBS and it says he inherited a bunch of money from his grandparents at 18, and partied it all away. Guess it must have been different grandparents. Wonder what he’ll do with this grandparent’s money?
Well, I’d vote out the approaching-middle aged spunky woman who is probably going to fly under the radar all the way to the end. In reality, on this show, vote off the best looking alpha male. Who cares if he can hunt and fish and build shelters. It’s only a show, and you can starve and freeze for a month.
I would vote off the weakest guy or ugliest/oldest woman, leaning toward whichever was the most extreme example.
I’d hate to keep a weak guy around that ended up being on my team and costing us multiple challenges before the merge. It’s far more palatable to get beaten by a strong opponent than it is to lose because you suck.
And if I’m stuck with a bunch of people in close quarters, the hotness of the women cannot be overrated.
Let me put it another way: In all the seasons of survivor, how many of the best strategists have been the alpha male or hot chick? Yeah, all none of them. Well, maybe Parvati, but come on; the vast majority of the best strategic players – read as: biggest threats – haven’t been the studly guys and hot chicks.
So I’m voting out the biggest longterm threats and keeping the weakest manipulators, while all of you are voting out…your highschool demons? Why on earth would you oust the jocks and popular people? Those are the lunkheads who couldn’t strategize their way out of a paper bag.
No; you’d do far better to oust last season’s Kenny on the first day before a player like that gets a chance to dig in like the tick that you know they are. If they aren’t hot or gregarious, they’ve probably spent a lifetime cultivating guile as a survival mechanism.
I set this up on TIVO a while back, and it picked up a preview of the show from some random channel. So this is not a spoiler, but I’ll box it anyway:
The two who get “voted out” are taken to camp by helicopter and get to skip the long march through the rainforest. They also find out that the hidden immunity idol is somewhere in camp, and they have the choice of looking for it without anyone else around, or getting a start on building shelter etc. to build goodwill with their teammates.
I believe that was a trust fund that they set up for him. They don’t have to die for him to get trust fund money.
I’m kind of happy for a season with the minimum 16 contestants… a little easier to keep track of everyone.
Oh, and I’m usually more of a girl-next-door fancier than a pin-up kind of guy, but based on the available stills I am so hoping for Carolina to stick around awhile.
I don’t even bother to try to learn names for the first four or five episodes.
And reason #2: it takes less skill to survive in a hot environment than a cold one. The producers have enough liability issues without adding hypothermia into the mix. Plus, there’s no indigenous foodstuffs to be had outside of penguins.
