Alex came to him and said if the alliance of four had their way and were there at the end he'd vote Rob out at four. Rob had to cut him, it was hardly bitter or the worst time considering it was the only opportunity to do so.

Point is it "felt" brutal to those in the alliance and he was going to be unlikely to get their votes later because of the nature of how he went about it. At that exact moment in time yea maybe you have to do it, but this ignores the decisions and lack of anticipation previously.

Wasn't Alex the one under the gun on the prior vote, where Rob voted out Deena instead whom he'd spent time making a secret alliance with? (Looked it up...) Yea so that vote was 6-2, but Rob can get Matt as usual and then would just need Butch.

It comes down to having gotten stuck on the bottom of a foursome in the first place, and then not handling the fallout well even after the flip.

I don't think you can anticipate someone telling you 'I'm voting you out at four', it changes his end game significantly straight away. Should he have anticipated this scenario happening without being told? Probably, I guess. The vote at 7 was between Alex and Matt, so if Matt goes and Rob decides to flip at 6 it's 3-3.

The fallout was played pretty badly on his part, he should tell Jenna/Heidi 'Alex said he was voting me out at four, I had to do it' (maybe he did and it wasn't shown)

Finished season 7. Pretty notable season in terms of characters.

Rupert obviously - he's kind of a dumb galoot but I can appreciate him for what he is and why people interested in the show rather than the game like him.

Johnny Fairplay - boy, Probst just doesn't even hide his contempt for him throughout the season. A few times Probst comes very close to the line IMO. I have to admit that I don't ever really see Fairplay's endgame in terms of trying to win the million. I did notice that he was the first one to ever use the term "blindside".

Sandra - I came in expecting to dislike her game, but it wasn't so bad. She was on the bottom a number of times, and flipped things to put herself in a better position. Her dragging of Tijuana out of the shelter in the middle of the night to spy on Burton/Johnny was (blasphemously) Tony esque.

I kind of liked the outcast format tbh. Players coming back into the game with lots of runway left, their fellow voteouts not being on the jury, and no guarantee that anyone comes back at all (they had to beat the existing teams to even get a chance to get back in).

I'm a little torn on a certain kind of challenge they used to run in these early years. Essentially, it would be a question is asked, and if you get it right, you get to chop a rope or whatever of someone else. If a person has all their ropes chopped, they're out. On the one hand, it's good for really exposing a pecking order; however, on the bad side, one of the core principles of survivor should be that in theory you always have a chance to save yourself when you're in trouble. In a case where (say) 5 people are aligned against 1 person, that 1 person has no chance to win immunity even if they do everything perfectly in the challenge.

I would say that in recent seasons they've done a much better job weeding out the potential quitters. Osten on this season was the first official quit.

Lill's choice to take Sandra over Fairplay is a wildly underrated "worst decision in survivor history" move. She knows Fairplay has Burton and everyone else is either on her side or at least up for grabs. Sandra has guaranteed votes from Rupert and Christa, and quite a few other shading in her direction. Lill losing 6-1 is an upset only in that it wasn't 7-0.

David Samson has a podcast and reunited the Cagayan Brains tribe

Samson is still a huge tool

I think you are really underestimating how disliked Lil was by the Pearl Islands cast.

I cant think of any other season where I am this confident somebody in the final tribal council would lose a jury vote in any possible final 2/3 combination.

Only other two that come close off the top of my head is Stephanie in Guatemala Russell in Heroes vs Villians. But even then could feasibly see him winning a random Russell Randy Sugar final three and Stephanie sneaking a narrow win vs say a Jamie

It's clear how disliked she was. But the alternative was to take Johnny Fairplay, who was at least equally as despised. They jury hypothetical vote in the reunion show (for what that's worth) indicated that Lill would have beaten him 4-3.

Plus Probst might have claimed he'd lost the voting urn rather than give Johnny the money.

Did Probst really hate Fairplay then? I thought the real hate started when he quit.

I think the standard understanding of S7 is that Lil knew she was getting second either way having already been voted out and she would rather reward Sandra than Johnny with the win.

Samson is definitely a tool and a massive spin doctor, but his pod is usually worth listening to, and he's always great on the Lebatard Local hour if you're a baseball fan.

Fairplay got drunk and yelled at Probst's brother at the Vanuatu reunion, apparently he was also drunk and touchy at a few other Survivor events pre-FvF

Season 8 rewatch completed.

I was looking forward to this one, considering I'd never seen it and it was the first all returnees season. Kind of surprising to me that given that I'd literally just watched the seasons, how a few people I didn't remember at all.

Obviously, the season is Probst's celebration of Amber and Rob's love - for everything I said about his disdain for Fairplay, it's amazing how really demonstrably happy he was everytime anything good happened to Rob.

There is just some atrocious gameplay in this year. It doesn't seem to ever cross a single person's mind to try to break up Rob and Amber, and it's not like every single person on the island didn't know they were deeply committed to each other very early.

For as much as some people dislike Rupert here, I'd take a hundred Ruperts before I have to see bumbling hillbilly Tom again. Lex is also one of the biggest clowns I've ever seen with his "Sorry Ethan I know we're friends but I'm voting you off in a business decision, we still good though right" vs "Rob you betrayed our friendship".

The Sue-Richard incident would obviously never fly today. Was pretty shocking when she went off and even Jeff was at a loss for words.

The reunion show was like nothing I'd seen in recent seasons. Multiple cast members being booed into silence by the crowd (including Jerri leaving mid-reunion because she didn't feel "safe"). Probst saying that there's talk that some people are only there for contractual obligations, and they can leave if they don't want to be there. Multiple cast members saying there are still hard feelings and they'll never get over it. Their celebration of "best survivor fights" showing Ted and Ghandia again.

I kind of liked it tbh.

Wow that's amazing, didn't remember any of that.

didn't rob and lex have a pregame alliance?

They were friends pregame. At some point, Rob claimed that Lex and Tom had a pregame alliance, and that's why he had to vote Lex out immediately - before Lex could turn Tom to his side.

Season 9 rewatch completed.

This was only the second season where I didn't remember who'd won. I think Chris is a highly underrated winner - from F7 where he was basically against 6 allied women, to by F5 was pretty much a lock to make F3 and probably F2 was pretty shocking. He certainly made some mistakes (why lie to Eliza at F4 and tell her he was keeping her when there's no way that was true?), but some moves were great. I particularly was impressed with at F2 when he sat on the beach and reminded Twila that neither of them should take any abuse from the jury, all the while fully planning to take that abuse and apologize, while she stood defiantly and told them to pound sand. At F5, he had a clear path to victory, and he followed it perfectly, which sounds simple but rarely works out so well.

For all the recent handwringing about "survivor is somehow structured in such a way that women can't win", this season is a pretty big counterpoint to that. Nothing in the game prevented the women from winning this - they just turned on each other in a scenario where it should have been impossible for a male to win.

I'd say this season also featured some of the worst challenge performances and performers ever. Scout was never even remotely in contention in any single challenge. Multiple challenges were lost just because one person couldn't do something relatively normally expected in Survivor. Probably one of the consequences of the men's team deciding to just instantly vote off all the strongest guys first.

Also one of the best blindsides of survivor history IMO when Leann gets voted out and the women's alliance cracks.

Ami one of my least favorite contestants ever. I have a particular sore spot for people who are happiness and light and seem like wonderful people when things are going well, and then turn completely black when anything bad happens, as if it's undeserved to someone of their stature. I also laughed pretty hard when she described her Twila FTC vote as "not a man-woman thing".

I sort of enjoyed seeing the older woman cast member for once not be the beloved grandma to the tribe, and instead kind of be a liar and not nice person. Scout had some nice elements to her, but there was definitely another side.

I still laugh at the post FTC "Jeff Probst adventure time" when they show him travelling back to the USA - this time, he hacked his way out of the jungle with a machete, got in a plane, then skydived out, then rode a motorcycle (in the middle of the night with sunglasses on) to the studio.

I read afterwards that this is considered one of the worst seasons. I guess I kind of liked it and don't see why it was so disliked.

Agree with most of your takes. Good season, and good winner.

i remember really liking that season and that winner

Yeah I thought Chris was a good winner, and was arguably the first to kind of really 'own' final tribal. I think some of the negativity came from another man vs woman season that was (at least in my opinion) worse than the one that only aired 18 months earlier - had some good gameplay but worse characters who at many points came off a bit mean spirited.

Looking forward to the S10 recap! Love reading these Punker

I see rob’ gang are pushing for more lgbtq on survivor.
Do we think the show takes them seriously?
I think we’re due for an (openly) trans person on the show. But beyond that. Is this 20 year old show really going to change?

Zeke was pretty openly trans wasnt he? Like, I know he was outed to the tribe but in his every day life I think he was pretty open about it.

No.

CBS will do the minimum possible, only to the extent that they don't want to lose advertising dollars.

There was a time when Survivor had the opportunity to be a (small) force for social good, but that ship sailed a while ago. (But it's good to hear that the podcast community is having these discussions).

I think BB17 (Vanessa's season) had an openly trans person?

What time was that?

I randomly watched the episode from 2013 where Dawn says in a confessional "Shame on you. Shouldn’t have shown me your idol. Shame on you, Malcolm. You shouldn’t have brought me in." because for some reason that line always stuck with me.*

Went into a slight rabbit hole on that season and found Erik talking about how the reunion show barely gave most of them any time that season; scroll down to the comments for something that made me lol: https://ew.com/article/2013/05/13/su...-erik-reunion/

*On a date in 2017 that had suddenly turned sour, I wound up recapping that scene for some tangential and uninteresting reason. She was, of course, not intrigued and we mutually ghosted for a year and a half.

(Don't feel bad tho; in 2019 I put on a masterclass in rekindling old flames.)