Ferrous, I’ll agree with that to a point. Hatch definitely understood the gamesmanship involved better than anyone at the time, but his luck, skill, and hairy naked ass only got him into the final four.
From that point on it was a lot of luck (good on his part, bad on Kelly’s) that got him the money. If Kelly hadn’t of pissed off Sue, and crazy Greg didn’t start the pick-a-number fad, it could’ve gone the other way.
I’ll give him credit though, I’ve seen about 95% of the Survivor episodes and Rich still has been the most fun to watch.
Your points are taken, Why A Duck. Certainly a good deal of luck was involved. But still, IMO Richard played the game as well as it could be played.
Regarding, the Sue/Kelly split…it’s been a long time, but I’m fairly certain I remember that Rich seemed to encourage the feud in small, subtle ways. He was always two steps ahead of every one else.
How many Maraamus does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Let’s see…Gina is too busy watching her back; Sean is complaining that he’s not taking orders from ANYONE; Sarah is resting her breasts for the next challenge; Vi is thanking her Lord Jesus Christ for giving her the lightbulb and Rob is trying to figgah out what Marlon Brando would do in this pahticulah situation;
In other words: None, they’re too busy screwing themselves.
I think what Rich got right was that he was able to separate leadership of the alliance, which he nurtured carefully and relentlessly, from leadership of the tribe. Rich left menial operations-type leadership to others and seemed pretty much to blend in with the tribe in that regard. He never barked orders at anyone, and always did his part. He was the hunter-gatherer, for example. But when the time came to hold private conversations, he was masterful at “leadership”, which really amounted to manipulation.
Hunter, on the other hand, stood out as a target by trying to lead the tribe but not forming an alliance, other than his too-little-too-late whisperings with Gina. By the time he got to Rob, Rob was already tight with Sean. Plus, both Rob and Sean resented Hunter’s leadership skills.
If Hunter tried to start an alliance, his tribe might’ve fragmented and he would have been stuck with a Silas-type split and his tribe would still lose.
I think highly of Hunter, because he tried to play the game straight and fair. He tried to keep his tribe fed and hydrated for the challenges. He tried to buddy up to the others. And he even made overtures to get Sean to pitch in. Unfortunately, he had a couple obstacles he could not overcome:
Several tribemates were extremely lazy by nature. If Hunter went with the flow, he wouldn’t stick out and maybe become friends with Sean and Sarah, but his tribe would starve and lose challenges.
Scheming tribemates who mistakenly believe they’ve got the game figured out. Sean hates Hunter because he isn’t black. Rob wants to ally with Sarah and weak-minded people he can control (not Hunter). Hence, any early alliance by Hunter would just fragment the tribe.
I like to second-guess (with hindsight) as much as the next, but I don’t think hindsight helps Hunter. Sure, now it seems like maybe Hunter should’ve worked Vicepia from the start, but his tribemates would’ve still lost the challenges because if it’s not the weak, infirm geezers, it’s the lazy young slackers.
Not in Season One either. That’s where we get the phrase of being “Pagonged” from… the final four, Sue, Rich, Kelly, and Rudy were all Tagi, and IIRC, the 5th was Sean, also Tagi.
Would there be any entertainment in trying to figure out how the teams could have been divided better?
Hunter and Gina were pretty much left on their own - doomed from the start. Their best teammates were the yoga guy “am I chilling?” and Patricia - a competitior who deserved better but who was subject to the older woman early boot.
Think how different it would have been with only a few changes. What if, say, Sarsh or V were switched with Neleh?
Or Sean was switched for either Mark? (the nurse) or Gabe? (the blonde guy)?
Heck, maybe even just swapping Boston for Queens might have been enough.
Dinsdale, I would love to be privy to those final meetings when they’re picking exactly who the contestants will be amd dividing up the teams.
Can you imagine?
“Let’s put this guy who seems real lazy with the Navy flyer; that’ll be good. And the airhead-boobjob together with the Marlon Brando-wannabe, how about that?”
Remember the Australian one when they had the vegetarian and the self-proclaimed hunter on the same team? And that was the team that was “lucky” enough to find and kill a pig?
You know it isn’t completely random. They put certain people together hoping for clashes.
As I recall, at this point in last year’s series, everyone watching the show (including me) was commenting on how hopeless the Borun tribe was. It was only later that the Samburus self-destructed with their generation gap split and the surviving Boruns staged their come-back.
Assuming that the Maraamus don’t have an upset victory how will next week’s voting go? Gina is the obvious outsider now, but with Hunter gone, Rob and Sean will end up seeing each other as their biggest threat; these two are apparently too macho to consider that a mere woman might end up leading them. If Gina is smart she will exploit this to her benefit; she can sidle up to Rob or Sean and imply that with Hunter gone she’s looking for a new man to guide her, plus promising her voting support in the 3-2 council. Both of these guys are morons; they’d fall for it.
So, um, anybody got a good guess as to how “their lives will be turned upside-down in the first 10 minutes” next time? I dearly hope it won’t be a switch, or a medevac situation, but it’s hard to come up with anything else plausible.
Burnett has openly admitted to casting and picking teams with an eye towards potential conflict. But the potential Rich/Rudy clash was not the only one to fall through. In the second season, Kel was put on the show because of his admitted explosive temper. Burnett expected him to dramatically snap at some point in the series. But Kel had realized his temper would be a liability and had decided he would maintain control regardless of the provocation. Considering how large that provocation turned out to be, Kel is to be commended for staying calm.
Maybe the three team reshuffle that was rumored about last year. There are currently thirteen contestants though, so it would be hard to manage it at the start of the next episode. But when one more is kicked off, they could resort everyone into three teams of four. Maybe they will combine the reward and immunity challanges; winning team gets the reward, middle team gets nothing, losing team votes off a member.
