IIRC, he was a 3-pack a day smoker who was also using the opportunity to cold-turkey quit. It was a genuine nicotine-withdrawal fit.
There was also Matthew, the runner-up from the Amazon, who started acting like he was going to murder everyone in their sleep. I remember there being a great scene of everyone just watching him sharpen his machete for five minutes.
Sandra might have been a little bit of a snooze on Heroes vs. Villains, but on her first season? She was awesome, a total firecracker. IIRC, she was one of the first people who yelled, “What? I can get loud too!” (at Johnny Fairplay, I think, but I could be wrong). She secretly hid stuff, dumped fish, and wreaked general havoc when she thought she was in danger. Compared to some of these loonballs she seems like a bore, but she had the sense to remember that at the end of the game, you want these people to vote to give you a million dollars, so being all-out crazypants is not generally the best strategy. The characters are memorable, but they don’t usually win. (See: Russell.)
Naonka is fun at the beginning, for some people, but I certainly don’t want to listen to her for 13 weeks. I don’t really want to listen to her for 13 minutes.
Gah, Russell really irritated me: in Survivor: Samoa I felt bad for him, because it felt like he made a very easy mistake- he forgot that after the halfway point he needed to be courting jury votes and striving to eliminate people in ways that could either be pinned on someone else or explained away. Jeff commented on his blog that he felt Russell fell victim to an angry jury and would’ve gotten the win from an all-stars jury, because he could appeal that he excelled strategically.
Then he went on Heroes vs. Villains. “Oh boy,” I thought to myself, “I’m interested to see how he’ll apply the lessons he learned from Samoa to this game”.
And then he went and did the exact. same. thing. >_< I just feel like there’s no excuse for his utter lack of a social game- it kind of like he wasn’t playing to win, he was playing to place. And I think it’s significantly easier to make 2nd place than 1st.
I do wonder about Parvati though: my own feelings in that season were that Parvati’s gameplay throughout the season was significantly better than Sandra’s, but Sandra did a much, much better job at reading the jury’s mood and understanding that her ability to win at the final council was based primarily on distancing herself from russell as much as possible while painting Parvati in his camp. So I wonder how the votes would have turned out if Parvati had spent more of her speaking time clearly asserting how she used Russell, because I think it was the perceived association between the two of them that swung the jury in Sandra’s favor.
Then again, I think that Parvati or Amanda should win everything they compete on. ^^
The thing about that is that, while he was playing HvV, he had no idea that he hadn’t won Samoa. They finished HvV before the final ep/reunion show for Samoa happened. You could tell during that final ep, as far as Russell was concerned, he thought he’d won Samoa all the way up to the vote count.
So he played HvV with NO REAL INPUT as to how the strategy had worked in Samoa. He honestly thought that his straightforward villainy was going to win him $2 million.
Oh yea, that’s right. I still don’t think it makes that much sense though: he seems like a pretty smart guy, and he must have watched a bunch of survivor before he left for Samoa, so it kind of baffles me how he could have come to the conclusion that playing a social game without engaging with the social component in a meaningful way was a good idea.
There are always players (and fans) who overestimate the impact of gamesmanship in Survivor. There IS a component of the game that basically rewards up-front, ruthless play styles, but some people don’t understand that this style, by itself, doesn’t win the game.
Remember at the HvV finale, when Russell said the game was broken, because the viewers should pick the winner? Jeff firmly pointed out that that would be a different game (that Russell would probably still lose), not a fault with the current game.
That’s what I like about survivor: it hands you a game that basically forces you to lie to people and break promises you’ve made to get to the end, but then makes you turn around and ask the same people you just betrayed to give you the victory.
I think that’s revisionist history, jayjay. Remember this:
Even Jeff thought Russell was going to win both seasons during teh All-Stars season. How could Russell be expected to know “better”?
Well, in the alternative, you could play the game like Ethan and Fireman Tom and Yul and Earl did (at least as I remember they did), where you do the best you can and try to be as honest as possible and hope for the best, but this show has been going on for so long that I almost think that strategy wouldn’t work any more. When you tell people the truth, they think you’re up to something. And you still need strong allies who’ll have your back and sometimes do your bidding, otherwise forget it.
I often wonder what this game would look like if there was more randomness. Set up two identical camps on two parts of the island, with all the same gear and rations, and every time there is a challenge, switch up the teams by pulling names out of a hat, basically, until we finally get to the merge. Other people have said the same thing in threads about earlier seasons. No Pagonging or Ulonging, just “North Camp” and “South Camp” and people having to learn to work together on the fly to ensure they stick around to see another challenge. If they did that, they might have to cast more for “survivorship” than for personality.
Of course, that might be godawful boring, too. So I don’t know.
Jeff is an excellent host, but he’s showed time and again that he doesn’t really understand why people vote for and against other people.
I’ve always wished they’d do that too, it would make for some seriously interesting tribal dynamics. And the chanllenges would be a hoot.
They should really call the younger tribe the “Jr High Tribe”. I’ve seen more mature 12 year-olds than most of them. But it was hilarity of the highest order. Shannon’s attempt to out Whats-his-name was so out there it was almost unreal. Yeah, that’s a great strategy to win friends and influence people!
NaOnka sounds like some Lakota Indian name, so I’m just going to start thinking of her as Witko-win (crazy woman).
But she is really Witlessko-loser. 
[crazy voice]I’m talking to people NOT on the island[/cv]
I think that those playing the honest, earnest route can still win, but they also have to be really dominant in immunity challenges late in the game. We’ve seen time and time again that being unlikeable is a clear advantage once the jury starts forming. There’s the realization among everybody, even his own alliance members, that an Ethan or (the blonde southern guy who gave his idol to Russell, and whose name escapes me) has the game wrapped up if they’re allowed to advance to the finals because they are so likeable.
In the very first episode, that one older woman (Jane?) who built the fire from a coconut husk and someone’s glasses, said she’d been practicing building fires for 2 months. And she did so because she’d read on Jeff Probst’s blogs that he was surprised that anyone would sign up for Survivor without learning how to build a fire.
Hmm, what do you gentlemen think: I have, in my possession, DVDs of the complete first through tenth seasons, and a friend has offered to loan me her HD with 11-17. I have seen and loved: Cook Islands, the one with Yul in it, the one with Shane in it, Fans vs. Favorites, and everything after (and including) Gabon. I am going to finish Borneo today, but what should I watch next? I am particularly interested in seasons that have particularly intricate play or hilariously unbalanced contestants, although I’m not holding out hope that there’s anything to top Yul/Heroes vs. Villains or Shane.
Oh, and FTR:
“Fabio stayed with Shannon and voted for Brenda, but Benry and Kelly Bruno had heard enough and switched sides, thankfully sending the smack-talker home.”
My preferences: Of the ones you haven’t watched, Season 2 (Australia) is my favorite. Cook Islands is my #1 favorite.
Season 4 has one of the best moments Survivor ever, when some of the castaways have an epiphany.
I don’t remember seasons 9-12 very well.