S10 rewatch completed.

Unlike past season, I remembered immediately who won in the opening credits of the first episode. However, this season is a little weird because the winner is so (frankly) uninteresting from a gameplay perspective, and the rest of the season kind of follows suit.

First, the open of ep 1 with a schoolyard pick and two people not picked being eliminated instantly is utter BS. If I'd gone through the entire casting process and finally got my shot, and didn't get to compete in even one challenge or even receive a buff, I'd be irate.

The only really entertaining part of the first half of the season is watching to see if one tribe can actually lose every single immunity challenge. It's too bad that Steph gets basically no chance this season as she seems to think the game, play it hard, and is great at challenges. I know she comes back later, and I'm more interested to rewatch it now. I do think she still suffers from a fatal flaw of "I deserve it" - even in the tribal where she's likely going home, her defence is "you're keeping someone around who doesn't want to be here over me who would kill to win this". Every word she says is actually screaming "vote me out", not "keep me".

The flip side of one side losing every challenge is the post merge cast is weaker; in an ordinary season, both tribes lose their least interesting or worst people, and in this case, a number of uninteresting and weak people survive to the merge simply because they never faced a tribal council; someone like Janu would have been among the first people voted out but made it past day 20. She was detestable.

Based on current meme culture, the Caryn character was almost a parody of her own name and I was happy to see her go.

The F3 decision by Ian to eliminate himself is horrific. Even if we disregard his personal interest, Katie must have known she had no chance to beat Tom. She should have been screaming at Ian to stay on the buoy forever - Ian had been raked over the coals in front of the jury repeatedly and Katie maybe would have had a chance against him. Ironically they talked about Ian gaining some maturity and perspective or whatever and that stepping down was the climax of that - to me, it showed nothing but immaturity. Being mature means living your life and accepting the consequences; not throwing away a chance to set your life because someone else feels bad about it when (as he said) he was just playing the game. Tom and Katie's manipulation of him was painful to watch.

My biggest problem with this however isn't Ian's decision. It's Probst deciding to have impromptu tribal council right there. They have been on that buoy for nearly 12 hours. Tired. Hungry. Not thinking straight. Would Ian have changed his mind and decided he wanted to go to FTC after a night of sleep and some food? Maybe, maybe not. But it was a gross violation of the game in my view to ask him to give his final confirmation right then and there.

I'd also nominate Ian for one of the worst survivors in history at answering questions under pressure. Every time he was in a conversation, there was a faux pas, and quite often major ones.

FTC only interesting to watch in the sense of watching the jury castigate one of the F2 to the point that she refused to answer one of the jury questions because it wasn't going to matter anyways.

Overall, not a great season IMO.

Eliza from Vanauatu and Micronesia is running for Manhattan DA this year

https://elizaorlins.com

it's a ****ing stick

If that was her slogan, she would have my vote 100%... if I lived in NY

Season 11 rewatch.

Obviously one where I knew the winner as soon as the players appeared, given that she was on the most recent season as well.

I was kind of happy to see Stephenie and Bobby Jon get another kick at the can, given that in their previous season, they were basically sunk by their initial tribe being unable to win a single immunity challenge. Unfortunately, Bobby Jon turned out to have no additional depth to him and was kind of a waste of space.

Stephenie was more interesting and I can't tell if I liked her game play or not. She did lead the majority most of the way, but she also made a lot of very emotional decisions not based on "who can I beat at the end" but "who deserves it" or more usually "who doesn't annoy me today". She also has a bit of that "I deserve everything good that's happening to me" vibe that I don't care for.

Initial challenge was really something. Dropped off and told your camp is 11 miles away, directly through the jungle.

First ever hidden immunity idol! Had to be played before the votes so not quite what we're used to, and they didn't show him finding it, so it was a surprise to the viewers at tribal too. Unfortunately, the mechanic of playing it before votes is just not as good because you can't really change the game that much - the majority just moves on to target #2 in the minority, and that's what happened here.

The car challenge was unbelievable. They get to F5, and Cindy wins the car. She's then given the choice: keep your car, or give up your car and the other four all get a car instead. That is a no win situation of all no win situations - if you say no, everyone's bitter towards you, if you say yes, you're now a big threat because everyone loves you. As always with most of the individual reward challenges, I think you should probably be throwing so you're not the one being forced to pick people and expose pecking orders.

I thought Gary was an excellent player; he came to the merge down numbers and considered a threat, but between idol and exposing a crack, he survived probably a couple votes longer than could be expected. Of course, he's never going to win as a former NFL player, so any return would be kind of pointless.

Judd is one of those who push my buttons. He continually lied and said (even in confessionals) "I haven't lied". He got falling down drunk every opportunity he had. He'd talk about voting someone else out and say "no hard feelings" but when he got voted out, there were (to put it mildly) hard feelings. Just one of those guys who probably things "I'm a great guy, everyone loves me and I'm hilarious" but most people probably think "this guy is intolerable".

The individual part of the game was (at least in my eyes) kind of boring. As I said above, there was a bit too much of "we have the majority, so we're going to vote off this annoying person" instead of "this annoying person is hated by everyone. I need to keep them to by my F2." As a result, the F3 was all pretty solid and I was surprised to see such a decisive margin of victory. Second season in a row when someone with a shout at winning offered to take themselves out at F3 and was taken out (last season Ian, this season Rafe).

Danni was an ok winner; kind of like Chris from a few seasons back. Got into a situation where she was one against many, and then let the many self combust without really doing a ton to instigate it. Definitely got a break when she picked up the "you win immunity" advantage at the auction on a day when she was probably targeted for elimination.

I was a little surprised they were allowed to eat the chicken from the religious ceremony. I don't claim to be religious in the least but it did seem disrespectful and I'd like to think I wouldn't have done it.

Random question, do people view the Russell debate as over now?

I actually don't see many people argue his case in a while. I think the consensus seems to be now that people were reactionary in listing him as the best to ever play back then.

Its clear that no matter how strong Russel may be during the course of a season, he has no coherent end game strategy. Essentially, he should be st the top of everyone's "has no chance to ever win" list. He thinks the game involves making it to the end, and he doesnt have any interest in jury management.

He was one of the most entertaining players I watched. I don't think he'd be very entertaining now though, his act is pretty stale and I don't think he's smart enough to adapt a new strategy.

The argument people in OOTV would have given 6+ years ago is that they don't really care how bad he is at managing real people because they find him entertaining and would vote for him if they were on the jury, and therefore he is GOAT tier.

Russell also says/does a lot of moronic **** like "if I can cause chaos, I can control their minds", and 14-25 year old boys are inclined to believe anything like that if spoken confidently in a confessional.

I don't think Rob C. in S6 was all that much better tbh.

The David Samson podcast with Cagayan Brains reunion linked above is excellent btw, finally listened to it; there's also a video version. He gets into a lot of the behind the scenes on casting, pregame quarantine, mistakes made by staff, and they spill stuff about lies the doctors tell them about water etc.

I think if he came in unknown now he'd have a much better chance. Juries today seem more willing to overlook betrayals and such and recognize great moves. He came in at a time when that was less the case, and I think a jury now would never give Natalie a win because they'd be roasted on social media for being bitter whiny babies (ironically, due to the reaction that his jury received when they awarded Natalie the win). I think even with personal feelings as they are, juries nowadays feel a responsibility to select a "worthy" winner for their season and wouldn't give it to a goat.

The link just takes me to the main page. Found the podcast on July 1 though.

Does anyone know if a new season has been filmed yet? I assume it hasn't?

Correct, nothing filmed. According to Probst/CBS the S41 cast has already been selected (and was ready to fly out to Fiji in April).

So anything re “get your 16 year olds to apply” that he said at the s40 finale would be for S42+.

This is wrong. At the time, the “Russell GOAT strategist” apologists (usually) made sure to distinguish entertainment vs strategy. Basically their arguments were “if he was as forward thinking to be able to find idols without clues, and convince Tyson to blah blah blah, then we can reasonably assume he could get himself out of a lot of tricky situations...”

Obviously, history has shown that those apologists were wrong about extrapolating Russell’s skills.

https://insidesurvivor.com/update-on...til-2021-46510

I agree with the obvious weaknesses in his game that everyone routinely points out. By far his biggest weakness is that his style, while effective when he is an unknown playing with unknowns, is terrible for repeat appearances. So, the perception of Russell will understandably decline with time.

One thing he will keep credit for is that he changed game with respect to idols. He was the first guy to think, "Hey, why wait for idol clues, I'll just start searching for the idol without them. There are a limited number of places they would hide them, and I've got time".

His idol finding advantage has been nullified by how the game has changed now. That was by far his biggest advantage, imo.

So, with a general strategy that only really works once and his main advantage eliminated, if you put Russell on a show now, he is drawing dead. Hence, he is not going to make it into a lot of GOAT conversations any longer.

Show should just go out on top at this point (not that S40 was the top, it was obviously awesome, but there’s no way a better season comes along unless they can luckbox a cast like S28).

made a general thread to talk survivor
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...hread-1780543/

Speaking of season 28, it was just added to Netflix(along with Heroes vs Villains).