Gman clearly not overall WOAT but in terms of potential to execution he is definitely in the conversation for WOAT.

was FB chatting with my sister about this season of Survivor. I had mentioned to her in the pre-season that I was excited because Garrett was on a forum I chat on. Her reply to me tonight was "Garrett may be part of your forum, but he's stupid"

So I rewatched the first episode, did J'tia not understand that in addition to turning the puzzle pieces around, you could also move the puzzle spaces on the board? She didnt seem to fiddle with those moving parts at all. Once the first piece is in, that puzzle is pretty straightforward and easy, but not if you don't move the board portions around at all.

Yeah this is what I meant. People who were clearly always drawing dead don't qualify imo. However, having given it some thought, no way he tops nephew of russell.

Lol Garrett

I've rewatched that section a few times now, and she ****ed it up so hard. First she went for a corner piece (bad), but then she *finally* fit a middle piece (okay). You have 7 other pieces. You should be trying to fit each piece into the shapes of the "locked" two edge holes on each of the three sides.

They had this type of puzzle before and it is harder than it appears (and without conspiracy theorizing, an easy challenge to rig if the rotating pieces are mostly in place for the other teams), but she was soooo effing clueless on how to solve it.

LOL Brains

My favorite part of that exchange is he actually had a decent save line when he said "okay I have a confession to make.....I'm not a cop." Which would have been good if he had developed any type of credibility or rapport with her beforehand. But Sarah even saw right through that crap immediately.

Tony is awful.

Atleast he is entertaining. I just cringe and face palm at garrett

Tony's cop lie was really dumb, no one gives a **** you're a cop bro and they wouldn't think you're anywhere near as smart as you think you are even if you told them. It's not like he's a nuclear engineer.

That said he's got the potential to be really entertaining, looking forward to spyshack.

Just listened to the latest D&C podcast. Was a great listen and they brought up a point that I don't think has been mentioned ITT yet.

If Brains go to tribal again Spencer can approach Kass with the possibility of forcing a tie to let him make fire as it reverts to a normal final 4 tiebreaker. If it's against J'Tia it's a lock that Spencer would win that.

I have a feeling at the next challenge the others are going to tell J'Tia to STFU and not let her anywhere near anything. Watch for Spencer to pretty much win it singlehandedly. Remember, they don't have to win - just not be last.

Not sure that anyone who finished 17th out of 18 (on a season with zero returning players) can be characterized as a "triple threat."

How many other people who got voted out in the first episode / very early in the history of survivor (ignoring full All-Star years) would merit this type of rationalization? At the reunion show likely the two initial booted players will just be asked "Why did you guys suck so much?"`by Probst before quickly moving on to players that mattered this season.

In theory Francesquaquaquaqua is a "double, triple threat."

From Garrett's Exit interview on Xfinity:

0_o

Why the f wouldn't they show that

I really misread J'Tia pre-show. I thought she was going to be all...I'm hungry and tired and this rain blows. I hate bugs. I wan't to go home. Instead, she's all...Fire and food is for candy @$$es, we don't need that $#!%.

I think he was a disappointment for sure, but I also think this is part unrealistic expectations and part the edit we got. Comparing Tasha's reaction to Garrett talking about having an open forum (getting angry and animated about it) versus J'Tia dumping the rice in the fire (ho hum, no big deal that she did that) was pretty telling imo, and I think there is a good chance that his days were numbered regardless of if he played well.

It seemed like the situation/conditions wore him down and caused him to shut down to some degree. If someone wants to say he was a big disappointment relative to their expectations, okay sure, but he's the kind of player I could absolutely see redeeming himself if he played again. Whereas I think there are have been a lot of terrible players that would be pretty hopeless if they came back.

I feel that Steve McQueen best sums up Garrett's performance:

I think the David vote-off first makes sense. Clearly whoever survives in the 5th spot is going to be the swing in the next vote. Leaving Kass in there, who has already voted J'Tia, and who Garrett claims to have made in-roads with prior to TC #1 seems like a very viable option.

Garrett's largest mistake, imo, was the open forum. That's the overt type of game play that will lead his contestants to believe he's trying to force them into his game plan and does not traditionally work well. It was made much worse when Tasha clearly indicated she was not interested in the open forum and Garrett still tried to stick with that plan.

The fumbles at TC were bad but, likely, irrelevant imo. I think the writing was on the wall before TC.

The much better plan would be to have approached Tasha and Kass one on one and simply state that J'Tia has to go after that IC performance. It would've been a much easier pill for them to swallow, I think.

Anybody who is saying that a player who finishes 17th out of 18 cannot be a threat - results oriented much? There's very little room to hide with only 5 players in his tribe. A decent player should survive a super high % of the time here but not 100%. There simply isn't a lot of maneuvering that can be done here. Now, whether you think Garrett is a good Survivor player or not is debatable, but seems silly to apply that blanket statement.

FWIW, I think Garrett showed some promise in Days 1-3. The way he calmly comforted J'Tia and Tasha and the idea he was trying to make in roads with Kass seems like a good start. Of course days 4-6 is where the blunders happen, and there may have been more mistakes in days 1-3 that we didn't see (how was the "decision" of HII vs rice approached towards his tribe mates?). This was also a pretty brutal table draw for Garrett (being clearly identified as brains in addition to his obvious brawn in a 6 player tribe that likely has the lowest EV in immunities). Keeping my fingers crossed that Probst's man crushed on Garrett results in a second chance, as I'd like to see him get a shot to redeem himself.

gman - can you tell us how you handled the decision with your tribemates? I heard them ask on the show what decision you had to make but we don't hear any type of response.

This about sums it up for me

He finished 17th out of 18 in a non All-Star season. He is not a good player. If he was not a poker player, but was some random farmer with a weird name, or an older woman who had a similar shutdown in the first week/weird tribal performance then nobody would be talking about their runbad or negative variance, they would just be dismissed as the chaff they were.

People who saw WOAT are wrong as well, since he did find an idol early, and he obviously had some idea of how the game actually worked, but in a show like this - anyone who is out the first episode like that aint a good player, but feel free to list all of the potentially great players that were voted off first or second in prior non All-Star years as a form of rebuttal.

All the best.

What is with the insane Spencer hype in this thread and on RHAP? All he did was take a back seat to Garrett socially, stay quiet, make a couple quips, and not get voted out (which presumably means the girls felt he was less of a threat than Garrett; you can say this means he's better than Garrett, but it can just as easily be argued that it means he's worse).

Agreed dankhank. He is the likely next boot and people are giving him huge props for no particular reason.

I didn't say it because I think he's awesome. I think he probably knows that his ass is on the line and the three girls on his tribe are pretty much useless. Therefore smart play would be to at least take over and try to do what it takes to not lose. If you screw up and lose, you're going home anyway. If you win, you look like a stud temporarily and have equity to possibly sway votes away from getting voted off.

Finally saw the episode, I'm just dumbfounded someone could dump all the food and stick around. Lol Brains.

Could completely understand why Garrett goes home with the Idol in his pocket though.