It's all about knowing your audience.

Also, I actually think that Chris was a pretty genuine guy. I think he naturally is pretty friendly, and never really pulled any shady moves. He essentially just tried to read the situation of who the lowest on the totem pole of the women's tribe was, and did a great job of convincing the women to get rid of her before him until next thing you know, he's in the finals.

The only time he sort of stabbed someone in the back as an inevitable result of him making alliances with too many people was taking out Julie, since the alternative was screwing over Twila and Scout.

Yeah, I guess so. It just seemed so clear to me that Chris was FOS... I mean obviously I had the advantage of having seen all his confessionals and stuff, so I knew he was FOS, but he just seemed so disingenuous, and I was so relieved when Scout stepped up and was like "Seriously dude, you're just spewing ********," because I thought everyone would kinda be like "Yeah, definitely" and vote for old Twila, who was clearly just speaking her mind and I think making a valid argument for her play along a consistent theme.

Maybe I need to watch it again, because I didn't really see him as two faced the way you do. It seemed like he was always on the chopping block, and so did a good job of convincing the others to get rid of someone else before him. This was really a case of him being a great player in how he was able to influence other people because of his likability/speaking/not appearing to be a threat.

I think the next All-Stars shouldn't consist of any players from HvV or any favorites from FvF.
There are plenty of interesting characters who would make a great ASS 2.

We will never ever see Fairplay again. Probst hates him and he will never be on Survivor again, I assume.
Same with Haidik. Since the Puppy-Incident he's off the radar. It even seems like CBS tries to hide the fact that he ever played the game.

Several players I'd like to see again:
Brenda, Alina, Benry, Marty (Nicaragua)
Ace, Matt, Corinne, Charlie (Gabon)
Stephen, Erinn (Tocantins)
Todd, Peih-Gee, Frosti (China)
Erik, Natalie (FvF)
Yul, Adam (Cook Islands)
Jaison, Erik, Danger Dave, Russell Swan (Samoa)
Darrah, Christa (Pearl Islands)
Earl, Edgardo (Fiji)
Shane Powers, Aras, Courtney, Sally, Bob Dawg, Terry (Panama)
Rafe, Danni, Judd (Guatemala)
James, Coby, Ian, Kim(Palau)
Heidi, Deena, Alex (The Amazon)
Paschal (Marqueses)
Colleen, Gervase (Borneo)
I haven't seen Thailand and Africa, yet.

In general, it's much harder to find any interesting women that haven't already played twice.

Yeah, I'd rewatch. It's a great season and Chris is the 2nd shadiest winner after Heidik. There's a chance he was just incapable of telling the truth. He ran tons of unnecessary lies out there.

Nah I mean, from F7 down he was basically never on the chopping block (once Twila came up to him and basically told him how to play the game, that he needed to gather in Scout and Twila and Eliza (who was going to get voted out that night) to form a majority). After that point his name was never brought up. And as far as I can tell, the only reason he stuck around over the other guys after the merge was that they were viewed at the time as larger physical threats. But with Natalie and Julie, he just did that thing where he kept telling them they were good, that he'd never betray them, etc., until he sent them home. Which is a valid enough strategy, it keeps them from scurrying and trying to form a block against you, it keeps your name outta the mix, etc. And while Kos is right that maybe shady isn't the right word -- I don't really care about that sort of thing, it's a game, play how you think is best -- I do think that the jury is often going to roast you for that, and so you've gotta have a good FTC performance to win. So when I thought Chris blew it at FTC, I thought Twila would sneak in with the win.

Before Survivor, Heidik worked as a soft-core porn star.[1] When he starred in his wife's pornographic videos, he went under the name David Roth,[2] possibly a tribute to Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth.

On July 5, 2006, Heidik was arrested for allegedly shooting a 12 to 16-week-old shepherd-hound mix puppy with an arrow. Heidik claims he thought the animal who had wandered into his yard was a fox or a coyote even though he was just a foot away from the animal when shooting. He was charged with domestic battery and cruelty to animals

i dont think ive seen his season. if i did, i dont remember anything about it. worth it to watch now knowing the winner?

There are 2 seasons of Survivor not worth watching. 1 and 5.

You tried to type "21 and 5", right ? or maybe 14 and 5 ?

1 was both rigged and incredibly boring.

Rigged? I'd love to hear how.

I'll give you boring, compared to the new era. But definitely worth a watch to see how it all started.

The producers talked to them daily. Burnett was there every day. He convinced Sean and Dirk to vote out Stacey over Rudy. He also convinced Rudy to align with Hatch.

There was a lawsuit, and the show won on a technicality. They won b/c it was deemed that Survivor is not a game show, but some other type of show and therefor the rules that applied to game shows did not apply to Survivor.

See, I also remember the FTC differently. I remember him doing a great job in it, coming across as genuinely happy and grateful for the whole experience and truly feeling bad for any ill will that he may have incurred due to being dishonest, but still owning up to it, feeling like it was his best move in the game at the time and that it wasn't personal. I guess if he didn't really mean that then he duped me too.

Twila just came across as a bit unlikable, and it seemed like the strength of the relationships that Chris had built during the game led to him getting those votes over Twila.

Twila pwned that season pretty hard. Chris played well but without Twila he's toast 99% of the time. The dynamics worked out perfectly for him to sneak in and take the win. Still got to give him props for making a very tight alliance on day 1 or 2 which essentially saved him when he f'ed up the 1st challenge.

Yeah when I watched it the first time, I just insta said after challenge one "ok the useless guy who cant even keep balance is gone". Then dude just ships the thing.


<----- expert Survivor analyst obv

Pretty sure it was settled out of court and Sean never said Burnett influenced.

Yeah, but Sean has WAY more incentive to keep quiet than Dirk does to lie.

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/s...nbeendp525.pdf

That's a link to the PDF of Dirk's deposition. It seems long, but it reads pretty fast. Around pages 30-40 is where he gets to talking about Burnett's influence. I don't think it's really debatable after reading that. It seems pretty clear what went on.

Frankly Dirk's story doesn't seem nearly as bad as things they COULD be doing, but it still shows that a major aspect of the game was heavily influenced by the producers.

think it's pretty naive to think that season 1 was the only season that had producer participation type of stuff going on.

Yeah I think there are probably small things going on now, but I don't think anything as blatant as season 1. It would be much harder for them to influence the game the way they did season 1, plus this suit had so much exposure it became a much bigger risk.

That being said, Sandra definitely implied some shady stuff still goes on in her Rob C interview when talking about their potentially suing Russell and why they aren't going to.

She's not the only one. Laura has a few times questioned the authenticity of Russell's keen idol finding skills. I am certain i have heard other complaints about the subject that skirt around the issue just enough to not get themselves in trouble though none are immediately popping to mind.

It's like Probst says, it's a TV show first and foremost. They want us to be entertained and we are, but that definitely comes at a price at least to some degree, when it comes to the purity of the actual game.

I think the idols may have been intentionally hidden easy to find, but the places Russell found them were not very tricky. No real reason to question he found them legit, imo.

as long as the idols aren't buried in the ground every idiot that's searching long enough will find them, especially when they're directly in the camp or next to tree mail.

i'm pretty sure there's a lot of manipulating still going on. as long as they can still put any challenge whenever they want they can at least push it in the right direction.

i don't know whether they had to put it somewhere into the game rule book when the contestant from RI is returning, if not they can easily use it to favor R&R.

giving them a tool box is not a huge deal but it clearly is not bad for Boston Rob.

what questions are asked during TC or otherwise can influence the game, too, and since Probst is aware of what's going on most of the time he'll try to stir things up as much as he can.

the game is rigged, we all know it, but we still love it.

I wouldn't call it full-blown rigged, but I would have to agree that there is a certain amount of intervention made by the producers at key junctures of the game.

Everything Kartinken mentioned about season 1 is spot on. CBS was unwilling to let the 3 oldest contestants in the game go 1-2-3 like that, causing the producers to step in. However, I am not entirely sure to what extent the outside intervention truly disrupted key aspects of that season or continue to do so to this day.

Like slanche said though, survivor continues to be the same game we still continue to enjoy as it provides great television and entertainment to its viewers.

Doesn't seem too different than what Probst does every week at tribal. Maybe Burnett crossed the line but it still appears that Dirk and Sean had free will and weighed out the options of voting out Rudy and Stacey.

With tribal swaps and all kinds of other twists the producers can basically f over anyone they want. When you play survivor you just have to accept that. I could probably reel off 10 other survivors that got jobbed a lot harder than Stacey did.