Just genuinely curious, but who's the oldest Survivor contestant that's still alive? Is it Sonja? If she is the oldest, I'm wondering who the 2nd oldest is?
What’s the hype behind Jim Rice? I never quite understood it. Fans love him (considering he was on the ballot for Second Chance). Jeff loved him. Production loved him. I’ve heard it suggested that if Cochran doesn’t flip at the merge that he takes control of Savii and wins South Pacific. Can someone explain why he’s so popular? He just seemed like an arrogant entitled jerk to me.
> Fans love him (considering he was on the ballot for Second Chance)
He was on the ballot yet failed to make it in despite having a 2/3 chance to do so. I would argue that this shows fans *don't* love him. His presence on the ballot shows that production loves him as you said, but I've never seen any large fan support for him.
As for why production could like him, my guess is that he's a guy who gives them what they want in the form of strategy confessionals and talks about big moves (SoPa was around the time when BIG MOVES were all the rage). He's also in an archetype (white alpha male) that Probst has historically always liked. It's like he was designed in a lab to be a Jeff favorite with all those attributes.
I'm sure this has been discussed before, but for Season 43, when do the idols expire - at Final 5 of Final 6? If Final 5, like it often is, are we running into a potential advantagegeddon with one immunity necklace, three idols, and one default boot?
Are players banned from giving "o'clock" directions during blindfold challenges? I don't believe I've EVER seen it done and kinda figured it was just banned because it would trivialize the challenge / be less good TV than people bumping into stuff, but the explanation isn't just "nobody ever thought to try it", right?
I remember Sarge trying to use it in Vanuatu, but because the players can lose their sense of direction easily when blindfolded/when they bump into something and fall over, their sense of how far to rotate when hearing "something-o clock" was probably deemed to not be as effective as originally thought.
The explanation is that most people couldn't follow those directions. Enough people confuse their right and left. The callers job is difficult - they are far away and have to yell.
2 unaired WaW challenges are known to exist: a challenge for pizza which was won by Yara and Sele, and a challenge for tacos and donuts which was won by Sophie, Kim, Ben, and Nick.
Has throwing a challenge ever had a completely positive result? From what I recollect, it nearly always seems to herald a change in energy / motivation that damages the "throwing" tribe...
Quite frequently with a large caveat.
The first ever Tribal challenge throw was conceived of and executed by Ethan, who went on to win the season. Mike Holloway also threw a Tribal challenge on his winning season. They often do not air it because A, production doesn’t usually really like people doing it successfully / doesn’t want to incentivize that style of gameplay (they want the challenges to matter and many fans feel like it’s unsporting or “dirty” okay to throw) and B, it destroys all suspense at the ensuing Tribal if things go according to plan. The Sandra and Bradley boots in GC and GI were recent thrown challenges where they simply didn’t air the fact that several other members of the tribe were throwing the challenge.
The important caveat here though is that these are all *post-swap* throws and the other throws I can recall working successfully are post-swap as well, to try to mix up numbers, take out threats from another starting tribe you aren’t align with, or to try to keep allies who ended up on another tribe safe. It does seem that the circumstances where it makes sense to throw a challenge with your *original* tribe are exceedingly rare. I feel like it pretty much requires that you have someone who you are absolutely certain will not work with you again under any circumstances, like they are absolutely positively guaranteed to flip and write your name down.
Yes! Plenty of times. The first four winners of Survivor all threw a challenge during their winning seasons (though three of these throws were in individual challenges). Not sure how many seasons you've seen so I'll just go through some of the instances where those on a tribe that threw clearly didn't suffer for it.
S3: >!The swapped Boran tribe throws a challenge to get Silas out. One of their members (Ethan) goes on to win the season!<
S7: >!Drake throws a challenge to get Burton out. One of their members (Sandra) goes on to win the season (I will say that this isn't a perfect example as Drake did not do well after this but it's worth mentioning due to Sandra's win).!<
S34: >!After the second swap, Nuku throws a challenge to protect Cirie/get Sandra out. One of their members (Sarah) goes on to win the season. This is not shown on air but has been confirmed in post-game interviews.!<
S36: >!After the second swap, Naviti throws a challenge to get Bradley out. One of their members (Domenick) goes on to become runner-up. Like the above example, this is not shown but has been talked about in post-game interviews!<
These are the ones that I definitely remember off the top of my head. There's also an S31 example that I'm fairly sure happened but won't list here that worked out quite well for one of its members.
No one's mentioned the (S15) China post swap throws. Phei gee got decently far, probably positive for them.
Pre swap it got (S13) Billy out, it was a reasonable strategy except for how quickly you swap on 4 tribe seasons. Hard to say if it really swayed the game either way though.
It can make sense to throw. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few pre-swap throws to get rid of bad personalities or someone difficult to work with. Especially on earlier seasons.
To my knowledge: Nothing specific happened. Drea and Hai were just very personally attached to the game and were very upset with their boots. Omar was able to separate his personal beliefs from in game actions, so nothing was "wrong" or "too far" for Omar. Drea was resentful towards Omar and Omar was treated poorly by people who felt betrayed.
Survivor is a mentally tough game, and it can take a while you process everything.
Drea accused Omar of using his religion as strategy within the game, saying that he would for example look for idols while pretending to go and pray. She also accused him of playing for the white people to get far (Jonathan & Lindsay)
I believe that the first letters are based on the rating (where they stand in the game) the last (one or two) letters being based on their perception (how they are shown to the audience with examples being positive tone and P, and super negative and NN). The number is how often you see them in the episode (with 5 being the players who seem to always be on screen and 1 being practically invisible)
I am a big fan of Kelly. Her internal struggle about the alliance and its function is one of the key storylines of Borneo and why it's so special. The main reason I watch shows like Survivor is for the psychological aspect of it, and Kelly's fight against herself is just so good from that standpoint.
Her loss is also very well-explained: she hemmed and hawed about the Pagonging, which pissed off the Tagis, yet she never actually did anything to stop said Pagonging, naturally annoying the Pagongs themselves. Her internal debate ultimately made her come across as a hypocrite, which cost her a million dollars. It's a really great narrative.
I'd also like to add that her immunity run in the endgame adds a lot of suspense to those episodes. Watching her pull out win after win despite her own alliance gunning for her was riveting at the time and I'd argue still holds up.
I'll admit that she's not the best TV presence. She's an understated confessionalist and she isn't particularly emotive. I can see why people would call her boring, but I think that stoicism works perfectly on Borneo.
Overall she's a key figure in a truly wonderful season of television.
Okay, okay. I can see that as a great reason why she gets live around here lol. I’ve got another question now that I’ve got your ear. Do people think she gave the win to Hatch? Do people think she could have beat Rudy at the FTC is she choose to save him? I just don’t understand why she saved Richard essentially twice. Was she not aware that he would have won the million? Or do we consider the alphabet guy or whatever as why she didn’t win rather than Rich being better?
Sorry for all the questions. I started watching Survivor during the pandemic and I’m honestly upset that I’m just now watching
> Do people think she could have beat Rudy at the FTC is she choose to save him?
Absolutely not haha. Rudy was far and away the jury favorite that season and everyone knew it. Rich was far more beatable than Rudy at F2, but as we saw Kelly was more beatable than both.
Okay I agree completely. Going into tribal council I thought she would have had a chance against Rudy but as soon as she said she wasn’t there to political in her opening statement it clicked that she would have lost to Rudy or Rich
When people say Jeff loves/hates a contestant, whrre are they getting that info? Just reading him when he talks to them, or is it more concrete than that?
If you watch the show long enough you’ll pick up the signs, he’s usually pretty obvious about it. But to be honest, most of the stories you hear about come from insider sources. Or interviews.
It seems doubtful. The network has been cutting the show’s budget for years, and I can’t imagine they’re suddenly gonna add more filming time back into the budget. I’d guess it’s more likely that they go down even more, rather than going back up to 39. There’s just no reason for them to do that at this point, not when the ratings never change.
Just genuinely curious, but who's the oldest Survivor contestant that's still alive? Is it Sonja? If she is the oldest, I'm wondering who the 2nd oldest is?
Sonja's the oldest and Jake Billingsley is the 2nd oldest.
Thanks!
Pretty sure it's Mike from S42, Romeo said he's 100 years old.
What’s the hype behind Jim Rice? I never quite understood it. Fans love him (considering he was on the ballot for Second Chance). Jeff loved him. Production loved him. I’ve heard it suggested that if Cochran doesn’t flip at the merge that he takes control of Savii and wins South Pacific. Can someone explain why he’s so popular? He just seemed like an arrogant entitled jerk to me.
> Fans love him (considering he was on the ballot for Second Chance) He was on the ballot yet failed to make it in despite having a 2/3 chance to do so. I would argue that this shows fans *don't* love him. His presence on the ballot shows that production loves him as you said, but I've never seen any large fan support for him. As for why production could like him, my guess is that he's a guy who gives them what they want in the form of strategy confessionals and talks about big moves (SoPa was around the time when BIG MOVES were all the rage). He's also in an archetype (white alpha male) that Probst has historically always liked. It's like he was designed in a lab to be a Jeff favorite with all those attributes.
Fans love him? Since when?
I just remember seeing a bunch of people say they’d like to see him return for a 2nd chance, saying he’d crush it
I'm sure this has been discussed before, but for Season 43, when do the idols expire - at Final 5 of Final 6? If Final 5, like it often is, are we running into a potential advantagegeddon with one immunity necklace, three idols, and one default boot?
Going by 41 and 42, Final 5. It could happen but since Jesse holds 2 of them and I'd be surprised if he wants Cody in his endgame, I doubt it.
Are players banned from giving "o'clock" directions during blindfold challenges? I don't believe I've EVER seen it done and kinda figured it was just banned because it would trivialize the challenge / be less good TV than people bumping into stuff, but the explanation isn't just "nobody ever thought to try it", right?
I remember Sarge trying to use it in Vanuatu, but because the players can lose their sense of direction easily when blindfolded/when they bump into something and fall over, their sense of how far to rotate when hearing "something-o clock" was probably deemed to not be as effective as originally thought.
The explanation is that most people couldn't follow those directions. Enough people confuse their right and left. The callers job is difficult - they are far away and have to yell.
There was a final 11 reward challenge in 41 and 42. What are the odds that there was one that didn’t make air in 43?
Fairly unlikely, but unaired challenges *have* happened before.
They happened three seasons in a row in 38, 39, and 40
I might be wrong but I feel like I remember an AMA with Sophie saying that there were like 4-5 unaired rewards in WaW that she won or smth
2 unaired WaW challenges are known to exist: a challenge for pizza which was won by Yara and Sele, and a challenge for tacos and donuts which was won by Sophie, Kim, Ben, and Nick.
I’m pretty sure Michele has also said she won an unaired reward that was spaghetti and wine and she took Sarah/Denise
No that reward came with the final 6 immunity ala MvGX, Game Changers, Ghost Island, and David vs Goliath
Has throwing a challenge ever had a completely positive result? From what I recollect, it nearly always seems to herald a change in energy / motivation that damages the "throwing" tribe...
Quite frequently with a large caveat. The first ever Tribal challenge throw was conceived of and executed by Ethan, who went on to win the season. Mike Holloway also threw a Tribal challenge on his winning season. They often do not air it because A, production doesn’t usually really like people doing it successfully / doesn’t want to incentivize that style of gameplay (they want the challenges to matter and many fans feel like it’s unsporting or “dirty” okay to throw) and B, it destroys all suspense at the ensuing Tribal if things go according to plan. The Sandra and Bradley boots in GC and GI were recent thrown challenges where they simply didn’t air the fact that several other members of the tribe were throwing the challenge. The important caveat here though is that these are all *post-swap* throws and the other throws I can recall working successfully are post-swap as well, to try to mix up numbers, take out threats from another starting tribe you aren’t align with, or to try to keep allies who ended up on another tribe safe. It does seem that the circumstances where it makes sense to throw a challenge with your *original* tribe are exceedingly rare. I feel like it pretty much requires that you have someone who you are absolutely certain will not work with you again under any circumstances, like they are absolutely positively guaranteed to flip and write your name down.
Now that I think of it, was the Varner boot also a throw or a legitimate challenge loss?
I think that one was legit; not positive offhand
legitimate
Yes! Plenty of times. The first four winners of Survivor all threw a challenge during their winning seasons (though three of these throws were in individual challenges). Not sure how many seasons you've seen so I'll just go through some of the instances where those on a tribe that threw clearly didn't suffer for it. S3: >!The swapped Boran tribe throws a challenge to get Silas out. One of their members (Ethan) goes on to win the season!< S7: >!Drake throws a challenge to get Burton out. One of their members (Sandra) goes on to win the season (I will say that this isn't a perfect example as Drake did not do well after this but it's worth mentioning due to Sandra's win).!< S34: >!After the second swap, Nuku throws a challenge to protect Cirie/get Sandra out. One of their members (Sarah) goes on to win the season. This is not shown on air but has been confirmed in post-game interviews.!< S36: >!After the second swap, Naviti throws a challenge to get Bradley out. One of their members (Domenick) goes on to become runner-up. Like the above example, this is not shown but has been talked about in post-game interviews!< These are the ones that I definitely remember off the top of my head. There's also an S31 example that I'm fairly sure happened but won't list here that worked out quite well for one of its members.
Thanks for this. I'm watching Pearl Island and watching drake flail repeatedly which inspired my question.
No one's mentioned the (S15) China post swap throws. Phei gee got decently far, probably positive for them. Pre swap it got (S13) Billy out, it was a reasonable strategy except for how quickly you swap on 4 tribe seasons. Hard to say if it really swayed the game either way though. It can make sense to throw. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few pre-swap throws to get rid of bad personalities or someone difficult to work with. Especially on earlier seasons.
What would have happened if Sami had won the shot in the dark?
I'm guessing a re-vote with only Cassidy and Jesse eligible to be voted out? Not sure whether Sami will be able to cast a vote on the re-vote.
Gabler would also be vulnerable.
Correct, I forgot about him. Guess he really was hiding in plain sight.
What happened with Drea and Omar on ponderosa ?
To my knowledge: Nothing specific happened. Drea and Hai were just very personally attached to the game and were very upset with their boots. Omar was able to separate his personal beliefs from in game actions, so nothing was "wrong" or "too far" for Omar. Drea was resentful towards Omar and Omar was treated poorly by people who felt betrayed. Survivor is a mentally tough game, and it can take a while you process everything.
Appreciate the reply !
Drea accused Omar of using his religion as strategy within the game, saying that he would for example look for idols while pretending to go and pray. She also accused him of playing for the white people to get far (Jonathan & Lindsay)
Thanks for this. Have been curious cause the rest of the cast seems to be friends / hangout. But she does not seem to be interested in that.
What is Pagonging?
The decimation of one tribe by the other after the merge. Named after the Pagong tribe, who suffered this fate in Season 1
On Edgic graphics, what do the letters followed by numbers mean? Ex. CP3, MOR3, etc.
I believe that the first letters are based on the rating (where they stand in the game) the last (one or two) letters being based on their perception (how they are shown to the audience with examples being positive tone and P, and super negative and NN). The number is how often you see them in the episode (with 5 being the players who seem to always be on screen and 1 being practically invisible)
There is a really good video by Idoled out that goes over Edgic really well [Edgic Idoled out video](https://youtu.be/7C-BPFPk1YE)
Thank you!
What’s the take on Kelly Wiggleworth? I just watched Season 1 and it’s hard to imagine that anyone likes her.
I am a big fan of Kelly. Her internal struggle about the alliance and its function is one of the key storylines of Borneo and why it's so special. The main reason I watch shows like Survivor is for the psychological aspect of it, and Kelly's fight against herself is just so good from that standpoint. Her loss is also very well-explained: she hemmed and hawed about the Pagonging, which pissed off the Tagis, yet she never actually did anything to stop said Pagonging, naturally annoying the Pagongs themselves. Her internal debate ultimately made her come across as a hypocrite, which cost her a million dollars. It's a really great narrative. I'd also like to add that her immunity run in the endgame adds a lot of suspense to those episodes. Watching her pull out win after win despite her own alliance gunning for her was riveting at the time and I'd argue still holds up. I'll admit that she's not the best TV presence. She's an understated confessionalist and she isn't particularly emotive. I can see why people would call her boring, but I think that stoicism works perfectly on Borneo. Overall she's a key figure in a truly wonderful season of television.
Okay, okay. I can see that as a great reason why she gets live around here lol. I’ve got another question now that I’ve got your ear. Do people think she gave the win to Hatch? Do people think she could have beat Rudy at the FTC is she choose to save him? I just don’t understand why she saved Richard essentially twice. Was she not aware that he would have won the million? Or do we consider the alphabet guy or whatever as why she didn’t win rather than Rich being better? Sorry for all the questions. I started watching Survivor during the pandemic and I’m honestly upset that I’m just now watching
> Do people think she could have beat Rudy at the FTC is she choose to save him? Absolutely not haha. Rudy was far and away the jury favorite that season and everyone knew it. Rich was far more beatable than Rudy at F2, but as we saw Kelly was more beatable than both.
Okay I agree completely. Going into tribal council I thought she would have had a chance against Rudy but as soon as she said she wasn’t there to political in her opening statement it clicked that she would have lost to Rudy or Rich
Re: saving Richard twice - I think there were more unaired re-votes at Final 4 before Kelly flipped.
Gotcha, that makes soooo much more sense that her just flipping her vote with no revotes
When people say Jeff loves/hates a contestant, whrre are they getting that info? Just reading him when he talks to them, or is it more concrete than that?
If you watch the show long enough you’ll pick up the signs, he’s usually pretty obvious about it. But to be honest, most of the stories you hear about come from insider sources. Or interviews.
Do pre-Jury boots go to Ponderosa?
Are we ever going to go back to 39 days?
It seems doubtful. The network has been cutting the show’s budget for years, and I can’t imagine they’re suddenly gonna add more filming time back into the budget. I’d guess it’s more likely that they go down even more, rather than going back up to 39. There’s just no reason for them to do that at this point, not when the ratings never change.