Sadly, the moments you are referring to can no longer be referred to as "lolian" moments as they are so far and away less lol than the LOLIAN moment. They are now just "ian" moments.



+1 to the thread name change though. It'll keeo the current season's thread relatively clean (well, cleaner?) and encourages more discussion over here.

I think that Earl cuts decent confessionals too... I like Yau-Man of course, but I think the best player on this season is Alex. Ed is in the top 4 too... Might have Earl and Yau above him. I like Mookie, but not voting for Alex is terrible.

Stacey had a great idea of voting for Ed in case Dreamz was ****ing with them. I usually think when splitting votes or doing a move like this the smart move is voting for Ed here. Gonna finish the season tomorrow... I also need to watch Pearl Islands, Vanuatu, Guatemala and one or two others.

So long as one of the "one or two others" isn't Palau, I'd go ahead and knock out Guatemala. It's a pretty laid back season overall - not very aggressive at all in fact - but it has some memorable characters, some solid lol moments, some "omg wtf are you doing" moments, some complete tooling out by a couple people at one another, and really completes a couple character arcs well. I think it's a pretty underrate season since most people write it off due to the passive play, but does a lot of things well.


If you have not watched Palau yet, I'd do so before any of the others.

I think Alex is a generally underrated player who got stuck in a crappy situation, but Yau-Man is a ****ing boss. I've got him solidly in my all-time top six (in the same tier as four other players, and one tier below GOAT Cesternino).

Earl is very underrated; his only real mistake was not playing his idol at F6 (I know you attack him for not trying to get Dreamz to break his deal, but he beats Yau-Man if Dreamz doesn't break the deal anyway). The guy's a badass: he finds out he's going to be on the show only a few days before his plane leaves, and then he goes and crushes the season as hard as JT crushed Tocantins (Earl's win is even more impressive because he never had to rely on winning challenges in the lategame).

Palau is a pretty good season, but it takes a while to get going. The post-merge is great though.

Not quite, JT won fan favorite too Also JT beats anyone he battles in F2, and I think you are way off about Earl beating Yau. I think Yau crushes him if he makes F3.

Yau-Man probably sweeps if he's in F3. I still just don't get the love for Earl. He didn't make any moves that weren't directly controlled by Yau-Man, and when he finally had the chance to cut Yau-Man loose (guilt-free, basically) at F4, he actually tried to talk Dreamz into keeping his word and giving up the necklace. He piggy-backed Yau-Man the entire way, then didn't even really attempt to win when it would have taken about 1% effort. Dreamz's greed/stupidity is the only thing separating Earl from Amanda.

Yeah. The thing about Earl is that he was completely incapable of any thought of his own and was completely controlled by Yau-Man, one of the finest strategists ever to play the great sport of Survivor.

Earl's likable persona earned him a sweep of the jury in a F3, but that doesn't matter. Much like JT didn't deserve his win because Stephen was a mastermind! strategist.

Earl and JT. Likable bumpkins? Yes. Capable of figuring out how many votes a majority will require and deciding which of their fellow contestants to vote out? NO!

strategyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

The difference is that JT was actually playing to win, though. When faced with a pretty easy decision (convince Dreamz to give up immunity ---> guaranteed $1 million), Earl actively tried to convince him to do the opposite...and seemed genuinely upset when Dreamz kept it. Earl never actually showed any drive to win the game imo.

I think you make good points. I give earl a little more credit than this as he never saw the show and left 4 days after being cast. I think he played pretty great considering this. I think if he came back he would impress you much more.

I guess, but I certainly don't think that's a point in his favor. He has a good mix of brains/likability/strength/other to be a successful player, I just think he's a bit of a luckbox who gets credit for being better than he actually was simply because he fits into that stereotypical "good player mold."

i dont remember exactly but to me it didnt seem clear who was the real strategist between earl and yau. the editing obviously was extremely favorable to yau. which is interesting cause earl won so maybe they didnt have the footage to make earl look as great. maybe they just decided the other story was better with dreamz and the car. it seemed like yau was going to sweep the jury though.

cause rob c is going to have fincher on i googled him and found a interesting interview.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...g-blunder.html

Because of his good mix of all those things, I think he still has a pretty good chance to win if Yau-Man ends up in F3. It didn't really seem like anyone really disliked Earl and considering the bitterness of the jury, they may have taken it out on Yau-man, the person who seemed to be a more responsible for their fate, and also someone that they didn't bond with as much as Earl. I still think Earl wins vs. Yau-man.

By the way, there is a player who is probably in my top 10 all time favorites, even though I don't think he's even ever been brought up in these forums. Brandon from Guatemala. We didn't really get to see a strategic side of him, but I found myself rooting for him so damn hard. He seemed like a very humble, likable kid who absolutely killed the challenges and since all of this was realized by the other tribe, at the merge, he was first to go before Bobby Jon or Danni.

He's kind of like Ozzy, but without the douchey cockiness. (I know, blasphemy).

Should I have put the part about his fate in spoilers?

I'm pretty pumped for Fincher. Big fan.

I definitely don't think Earl beats Yau-Man. Boo was basically like, "The man who truly deserves to win is on the jury" as he pointed to Yau-Man, and everyone seemed to agree. I also think Yau-Man is much more charismatic than people give him credit for, and he's arguably the most brilliant person they've had on the show. I don't think he'd have had much trouble winning over the jury, and I think he's a legitimate threat to get 8+ votes.

Brandon is tough to judge. I agree with you that he had potential, we just never got to see it. It's hard to tell if he was actually a player because they just didn't give him much air time. I agree with you that I think he has/had some promise, though.

Ken: I'm not sure if you're basing that on the poll that Probst took at the reunion (where everyone except Edgardo, Michelle, and Dreamz said they would have voted for Yau), but that can't be used as evidence of Yau's status as a jury threat. I think you can easily argue that Yau was only the biggest jury threat precisely because Yau was betrayed by Dreamz, and it's impossible for Yau to make the F3 if Dreamz betrays him anyway. Also, one of the few criticisms that the jury levelled at Earl was that he betrayed Yau, which he obviously doesn't have to do if Dreamz gives up immunity. Even after Yau became the martyr of Fiji, Edgardo and Michelle would've voted for Earl for sure and Dreamz would've voted for either Earl or Cassandra. I doubt that Rocky/Mookie/Alex/Lisi are locked votes for Yau in any situation in which Yau makes the F3. In a Earl/Yau/Cassandra F3, I think Yau gets Stacy/Boo and Earl gets Horsemen + Michelle, and then Earl only needs to pick up one of Rocky/Lisi/Dreamz (if Dreamz is the sole vote for Cassandra, his tiebreaker vote would go to Earl anyway).

Kos: What moves did Yau-Man make? The early boots on Ravu were standard, and NuMoto never went to TC after the tribe swap. The Michelle boot was out of their control thanks to the twist, the Edgardo boot was Stacy's idea, and the Mookie and Alex boots were predictably formulaic. After that Yau used his idol at F6 (for which he obviously deserves credit), Boo left at F5 as the only remaining player outside Earl/Yau's alliance, and then Yau got screwed by Dreamz.

Think about who was in Earl/Yau's alliance at any point in the game. Michelle was closer to Earl than to Yau. Cassandra said in an interview (http://tv.ign.com/articles/789/789452p2.html) that she never even considered voting Earl out, and Dreamz was obviously closer to Earl than to Yau. The only people who was closer to Yau was Stacy, whom Yau targetted at F6, and Boo, whom he voted out directly afterwards. Earl was unlucky that Michelle, one of his closest allies, was taken out by a twist, and yet he was still in by far the best position in the game after that anyway. You could've happily taken Earl vs. the field at any point after the merge.

I don't see how people being closer to Earl than to Yau-Man is particularly relevant. Yau-Man was only in position to get voted off once, and he wisely saved himself. He's sort of like JT or Tom in that I don't think anyone would ever actually choose to take him to the end, so I don't think he needs specific FTC deals with people since they're never going to materialize. And frankly, weren't Yau-Man and Earl closer than any pair out there? Yau-Man was happy to take Earl to the end because he was confident he would win vs. him.

Yau gets way too much love because Dreamz reneged on his deal. If he wasn't so likable most people would laugh at Yau for making a deal with one of the craziest people out there. If he felt like the car was a bargaining chip he should've offered it to Dreamz in exchange for Dreamz never writing his name down to vote him out. I'm almost positive Dreamz is more likely to honor that deal because it doesn't force him in a corner at final 4 and gives Earl and Yau Man an incentive for keeping him around.

It's relevant because players often act based on emotion, and smart players recognize and exploit that. Cassandra's answers in that interview are a perfect example of this: she would've taken Earl to the F3, knowing that she would lose to him unanimously, rather than take someone who was potentially beatable like Boo; by contrast, she happily agreed to vote out Yau.

You'd think that no-one would choose to take Earl to the end either (since I think we can agree that he was, at worst, the second biggest jury threat), but his allies would've done! Michelle, Cassandra, and Yau would've taken him out of loyalty, and Dreamz probably would've done as well. That's a far more significant accomplishment in my eyes than any moves that Yau supposedly made (I'd still like to hear what you think these are).

+1 to being pumped for the Fincher podcast though.

I'm not sure on specific moves; I haven't watched Fiji in so long that it's mostly a blur aside from the memorable stuff (Horsemen blindside, Yau's idol, F4 fiasco, etc.). I don't really think Cassandra "taking Earl to the end" is relevant, though, since she was basically a floater who needed people to carry her to the end. I'll have to go back and re-watch Fiji at some point, though, simply because I don't remember much of it in-depth.

I have just finished watching the episode where Alex gets voted off at F7... I like him fighting until the end. Yau is starting to get more involved with strategy, but the pre merge episodes i fast forward through at least 50% of the stuff so i dont see everything there...

I am also happy too hear what Fincher will have to say about tonights episode.... I would like to see him and Erik on a future season... also Alex from Fiji and maybe even Ed... A 2nd chance Survivor of people who were in bad spots/blindsided... Brendan from Tocantins is another I would like to see, Brenda and Marty from 21 too.

IDK if your talking Yau's moves but if you are, he had nothing to do with the horseman blindside. It was 100% Dreamz and Stacey. Dreamz for telling them they switched the idol... and Stacey for the idea of voting Ed instead of Mookie incase Dreamz was lying to them. Yau and Earl had some say, but this move was created by Dreamz and the voting idea by Stacey.

Posted on RI thread, but some great news. Survivor renewed with Probst as host for seasons 23 and 24!

YESSSSSSSSSSS

Oh man watching Judd freak out at TC is pretty fun. Still pre-merge now, hope he sticks around so I get to watch more TC hijinks.