I know I complained last week about how lame this season is, and the fact that it’s 10:30am on Thursday and there’s no thread started yet seems to support my assertion. 
So, instead of asking the typical “What do you think will happen this week?” question, let me ask this instead:
What would it take for this season to be redeemed?
What needs to happen for you to be grabbed back into the drama?
To bring it back from the dead, we need a backstabbing, or a Big Event of some sort. Or nudity. Or a twist of some sort. I believe it was Mullinator who suggested a wonderful list of possibilities that would mix things up in a thread last week (or the week before), and all of them were great. Push the tribes onto the same beach, but keep them as tribes. Something, anything.
Well, jeez, it’s still 7:30am for us West-Coasters.
I actually started one but it narrowly missed yours, because I was researching someone’s last name.
Nudity? We had that last week, when Julie decided to “tan her ass.”
I was actually thinking of starting a thread about ways that Survivor could be revamped and refreshed.
To answer the OPs question about how this season could be redeemed: I don’t think any tribal shake-up or anything will make much of a difference. That might change the strategizing, but the problem with this season is that the strategizing is the only thing going on, so more/different strategizing won’t change the fundamental problem.
The only way that I see this season being redeemed is if some actual interesting interpersonal conflicts cropped up, or if someone at least grew a personality. The episode where Mia was ousted was probably the most interesting one, because of that kind of thing.
I’m sort of feeling the same way. Mullinator and I discussed some future season possible revamps that would make things more interesting in last week’s thread, but I’m flat out of ideas on how to salvage the current season. These people just seem so boring, unless there’s some sort of physical altercation (which is against the rules and would result in someone being disqualified), or Mark Burnett truly has some serious twist coming up, I just can’t see it.
Speaking of “interpersonal conflicts,” ha ha…Chastain, please don’t take this as a personal attack, but I was actually very glad to see that a weekly Survivor thread had been started by someone other than you. While many people enjoy spoilers, I’d venture to guess that most of us don’t. Having a giant spoiler as the centerpiece of every week’s thread OP puts too much focus on the spoiler. I prefer to be surprised each week, and I enjoy each week’s non-spoiled speculation. If you want to discuss, or even just share the spoiler, I’d much rather you start a separate “Survivor Spoiler” thread, where you can post each week’s spoilers as they come in. Then the rest of us can discuss the episode as it naturally reveals itself.
That’s exactly why I was thinking of making a whole thread devoted to the subject. I though you and Mully had some excellent ideas, and they deserved a little more attention than they would get buried in some weekly episode thread. I also thought that others would have good ideas, and that we might have an interesting discussion.
I’ll just go ahead and start the thread…
I dunno. I think mashing them together right now could create a good deal of conflict - especially if you put them on a new, third beach.
One thing that may have killed the interest and potential is voting off the attractive men - now the attractive women have fewer people to flirt with and break up the same-sex alliances.
And I also agree with you regarding the spoiler threads. Sorry, Chastain, no offense!
I wasn’t aware that the spoiler box was forcing you to swipe it.
If that’s the way you feel, and others feel similarly, I will cease. But this is the first I’ve heard from anyone on the topic, so I’m understandably confused.
How to redeem this **Survivor ** season? Well, Jadis, I think it’s about time to make a sacrifice to the volcano gods…
[probst] Survivors, Ready! [/probst]
Anderson Cooper.
OK, now that is something I would totally watch.
I think that what GreenBean was trying to say is that even if you don’t read the spoiler, once it’s out there, each week’s discussion thread sort of gets derailed towards the spoiler and not much other discussion takes place. Clearly, you’ve been responsible in boxing the spoilers, she’s just trying to say that separate discussions of spoilers and speculation might be more fun.
I think it also might be referring to the thread preview that pops up when your cursor goes over the thread title - Spoilers show up all naked and unboxed, regardless of how carefully boxed it is.
The only solution to that would be to start a bogus thread and put the spoiler in a box in a second post directly after the first, so no preview can review it. I think it might be easier to just avoid the thread…
And I’m only watching out of habit, I think, All-Stars crashed this show, and it doesn’t seem to be able to get back on track since.
Finally, a reason to start watching Survivor again.
I thought that this past episode was actually pretty interesting. Things are starting to…well, I was going to say “heat up,” but I guess it’s more accurate to say that things are becoming noticeably lukewarm. It’s been noted over and over that the show usually gets more interesting around mid-season, and I think Vanuatu is hitting that point. Teflon Rory is turning out to be quite an interesting character.
That said, I think Burnett made a big mistake starting with 18 instead of 16. The whole problem with the early episodes is that there are too many people to keep track of. Having the extra 2 makes it that much worse.
i still think Rory is history if they lose, especially the closer they get to a merge.
Yes, i think it’ll get more interesting after the merge too, it *can’t * get any more boring!