I think Terry gets a lot of undeserved hate for his post-merge play just because he was pretty douchey and wasn't great at strategy. Giving away the idol at F10 would've been major FPS. For one thing, he can't know for certain who they're going to target, and relying on Bruce seems like a poor plan. If you assume the probability of each La Mina member being targeted is the same (which is realistic imo, as a player of Cirie's caliber could easily try and level Terry by targetting Sally), he only has a 1/3 chance of getting it right. If he makes the wrong choice, it's gg Terry unless he can get sent to EI and/or go on an IC run. Even if he chooses correctly, he still has to rely on flipping Bruce (whose loyalty was tied to Danielle, whom Cirie was keeping in check), and Sally wanted to turn on him anyway.

Keeping the idol, on the other hand, accomplishes a lot. In addition to being ridiculously overpowered by its very nature, it's even more powerful than it might seem. As the numbers dwindle, it becomes more and more difficult to engineer the vote such that Terry is forced to use the idol and the desired target still goes home; Cirie was the only player on that season good enough to organise such a maneuver. The idol is also a valuable tool for intimidating players or setting up moves later in the game; for instance, Terry could have thrown the F6 IC to Courtney if he wanted to, keeping both of them safe, or given it away at F4 if he had won immunity so that he could preserve his ideal F3 configuration

Cirie definitely crushed that season though, and it was her best performance imo (don't want to spoil FvF if you haven't watched it yet, but suffice to say you'll want to watch it).

Terry was douchey? I never got that vibe. It's hard to tell exactly what he would have done strategically. I mean, he was never really in a position to play strategically, as he was in a minority and playing against one of the GOATs (Cirie) that had all the potential flippers wrapped around her finger. F6-to-endgame spoilers:

This doesn't really stand to reason. Assuming the 6 stay strong (obviously a strong assumption, but for the sake of argument), seems like by the time they are down to 6-2, the idol goes.

True, but if the six stay strong then Bruce certainly doesn't flip at F9 and there's not much Terry can do anyway.

Kos: I remembered Terry as being a bit too arrogant, but I haven't watched EI in a while so idk.

I rewatched EI somewhat recently. Will likely be watching it again in 2-3 weeks. Terry was pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as I remembered. By far his worst moments were when he lost challenges. His number 1 worst moment is when he tried to tell Aras that Aras's loved one wasn't as important as his own.

I used to have Terry as a 9 on the scale of annoying arrogance, but on rewatch he was only around a 5 or 6.

Well I think... I mean it's a lot easier to convince one person to flip when they are flipping into the majority than when they are flipping into a tie. That said, I think it would probably be dumb for anyone to flip anyway, because the La Mina tribe were all strong physical challenge threats, and were a tight group, whereas Casaya were much less so in both those respects. But I thought there was a chance Bruce just wanted to flip because he didn't like/got no love from his current tribe, so he'd make a bad move just for emotional reasons or w/e.

I'm bored, and since this thread has become about past seasons/etc, I figured it'd be ok to do this here.


Here's a Survivor trivia question. I have no idea how easy or difficult it will be:

Paschal English (Marquesas) and Jessica "Sugar" Kiper (Gabon) are the only two castaways in Survivor history to "accomplish" what feat?

They both never had their name written down on voting parchment, in any context?

EDIT: Referring to Sugar in Gabon ldo

EDIT: It can't be that though, since the same is true of Kelly Shinn. Hmm...

You're close enough.

Only two people to play out their game in its entirety and never have their name written down in any context.


There are a few others who quit/medically evacuated that didn't either (including Kelly), but those two played their games out.


Edit: Sugar had zero votes to eliminate her throughout her game, and then zero votes to win at the Final Tribal Counsel.

Paschal had zero votes to eliminate him throughout his game, but drew the dreaded purple rock to be eliminated.

I think it's a stretch to say Paschal played the entire game. If so, what's the cutoff point? F5?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that every single person to ever make the FTC has had at least one vote (good or bad) against them in their careers.

You're misunderstanding the phrasing, Kos

Sugar had no votes for or against her in Gabon.

Kos,

Every single person other than Sugar that made it to FTC had a vote either to eliminate them up to that point, or a vote at the FTC for them to win. Sugar had neither.

Paschal might not have played "the" game in its entirety, but he played his game from start to finish without being voted out, quitting, or evacuated and never had his name written down either.

Anyways, I just stumbled across that and thought it was pretty cool. Anyone else got any?

She got nine of them in HvsV, though, which was my point.

Yeah, I gotcha.

Think we'll ever see another perfect game? I feel like that alone puts JT in the GOAT conversation.

over under how many people left before Rob gets blindsided... im thinking 6.5

I think it depends on how you define GOAT. If you're weighing results heavily, then yeah, he's way up there. I tend to do it based on how I think each player would do if they played 100 times (entering as an unknown each time), and I think JT wouldn't do quite as well with other casts. Maybe it's wrong of me to do that, as it doesn't give him enough credit for crushing in Tocantins, but that's just the way I feel players should be evaluated.

Well I don't think Tocantins is hard evidence of anything, simply that it puts him into the conversation. Winning the season AND fan favorite doesn't seem like something easily accomplished.

I wish he had pieced together Russell's charade in HvV. It's so hard for me to talk about him in GOAT terms after that. That being said, had his moved worked, I think we all would have called him GOAT and he had a legit shot at winning the season.

JT's idol play just seems strictly inferior to keeping the idol. If he keeps it, he can use it to gain the advantage at the merge anyway: he's almost certain to be the first target, and the probability of his read on Russell being wrong is higher than the probability of the Villains trying to level the Heroes by targeting someone like Candice.

Also, if you're basing the GOAT label on who played a 'perfect' game you have to include Earl, and I know you don't want to do that :P. I also think that talk about perfect games is pretty misleading; Jason in BB3 was one HoH competition (or, more accurately, one specific person not winning HoH) away from playing a perfect game, but few people would put him as one of the top BB players.

Yul played pretty perfectly from what I recall also. FFS he had that absurd idol (which makes it easier to play perfectly) and on Adam's way out he tried to get people to vote for Yul just so the idol would be gone (and Adam would still be booted) and leave everyone on an even playing field, and they wouldn't do it. If that isn't a sign of just crushing the social game idk what is.

I don't have much of a problem with Earl, I think he played a good game. Not perfect though. He didn't win fan favorite.

I didn't mean perfect in terms of strategy, I meant like pitching a perfect game in baseball. You can pitch a perfect game and make mistakes. My term was results oriented, but the concept is process oriented if that makes sense. It may not as I am quite drunk.

Oh my bad, I misunderstood.


Yeah, it's going to be very very difficult for someone to win the game, win with a shutout, and win Americas Vote also. JT was one of a kind. I mean, while I rewatched that season it was amazing just how many members of the opposing tribe wanted him to win. It almost seemed like Stephen was the only other person that entire season that wanted to win.

Erinn wanted to win. Unsurprisingly they were the F3. Best or 2nd best F3 of all time.