Finale Twists and Gimmicks

There isn’t much to add starting out. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a post of this blog on Sunday like there was at one point supposed to be. Well, I was just swapped with so much and didn’t really need it done at all so I didn’t write a post by then, much less have it published. I’m going to go back to posting just the random posts on Wednesdays and any old season posts whenever I have them ready in the future. Now let’s get to this post.

 

I’d have to check for sure when this was first used, but I’m not sure of when there were first twists in the finale. There are different types of ways that they have been done. I might as well touch upon all of them in this blog post.

 

The original one that I hated was finale reward challenges. It appeared in some seasons for a bit, but was not really seen as much until the season of Philippines when it started appearing a whole lot more after that. It seemed to always offer an advantage in the final reward challenge or seemed like a waste of time with not much happening regarding it. I never liked them and while they stopped doing them, one of the replacements for it was even worse.

 

Before I get to that, let’s get to some of the permanent changes that happened in finales. The first of them was how the final tribal council was done. Instead of each jury member getting to speak once and that was about it, we got more of an open forum instead. There are some improvements this way, but some setbacks as well. And then we have the new final four for some odd reason. It changed the whole format of how the final four was done. Practically everyone hates it, but it is here to stay.

 

The worst of all of these twists remains, in my mind, when a person was able to vote out a jury member. While this thankfully only happened once, it left me with more mixed feelings for a finale than I had ever had before or since. I liked the winner of the season, Kaoh Rong. But I hated the twist that appeared in it, even if I don’t think that it affected the game.

 

Now for the promised annoying replacement: For at least three seasons, hidden immunity idols were brought into the finale. It was an extra idol that could almost guarantee someone would make it to the final four or bring an ally there if they were otherwise safe. It was very unfair.

 

It seems that the current gimmick that we’ll probably have to put up with indefinitely is an advantage that someone gets before the finale five immunity challenge. They would all get a clue in the new place that they live at and one person gets it. It goes back more to the unfairness from earlier while at least not having the finale idols anymore. I don’t like it as much, but it seems to occupy far less time than a reward challenge while still leaving the actual final immunity relatively untouched. And it isn’t an idol. It also isn’t ever a certainty that an advantage in a challenge will win that person said challenge.

 

There isn’t much else to say as I end this post here. I have a lot to catch up on in terms of movies, shows on tape, and shows on my laptop. I may have to ignore getting caught up on shows on DVD including all of the old Survivor seasons for a while. But we’ll see. There’s a lot for me to do and I hope that I can get it all done. There’s still a good chunk of summer left so we’ll see how long it takes for me to get caught up on things or if I have to put it aside again. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

No One Else Deserved to Win

I am getting annoyed with a constant fan refrain that I hear from time to time. Some people are quite convinced sometimes that someone other than the winner of whatever season should have won it. But I am here to tell you that such a line of thinking is wrong.

 

I may not like every winner of the show. I don’t like the fact that some people made it further than they should have while others didn’t make it far at all that probably should have gotten further in the game. But it is still doing a disservice to these people to say that someone didn’t deserve to get there. Even if you are a goat, you would have done a good enough job as a goat in order to become a finalist or otherwise make it as far as you did. You aren’t a great player and may not have tried to do it, but it is what happened to you in the end.

 

This leads to the main title of this post. It is me mentioning that no one else deserved to win the season other than the person who did. I don’t understand this line of thinking. Rob deserved to lose All-Stars when he betrayed Lex after Lex had just helped him. Russell deserved to lose Samoa because he was such a terrible player who didn’t realize how the game should work. These are some of the examples of this that I have heard of myself. There’s even a group on facebook called Parvati should have won Heroes versus Villains. What would a group like that even be about? It just sounds like a bunch of people who are whining about one thing, but what else could even happen in that group?

 

I’m not whiny when people I don’t like win the game. And when that does happen, it is hard to think of who else would have even made a good alternative. And as much as I like Ozzy during Cook Islands, it would still be mean to Yul to say that he didn’t deserve his win.

 

So that’s my thoughts on this topic. I don’t believe in this fallacy of people who don’t win should have been the winners of whatever seasons. This prospect of thinking is both dumb and rude. It is doing a disservice to winners while ignoring the flaws of the runner-ups or whoever else you think should have won the game in the long run. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Greed Doesn’t Pay

When it comes to the game of Survivor, there is a simple rule that some people don’t realize: greed does not pay. People don’t realize this, but often keep falling for this problem. They need to realize that if they aren’t selfish, they might do better at the game.

 

The ultimate failed experiment in this twist was in Guatemala. Given the idea that people would not want the car since no one got the car and won the game, it would seem like an easy decision for Cindy, the winner of that reward, to make the decision to give up her own car and give everyone else in the game a car instead. But she picked greed and was the very next person voted out of the game.

 

An example of a person not being greedy was Matthew in Amazon. After winning the family visit reward, he was given the option of giving everyone else the reward instead of himself. He went with that choice and since it was better to give than receive, he still got the reward in the game after all.

 

The summit in recent seasons should be the best example of how greed doesn’t pay. If people all chose to go after the raw power, they would lose their vote in the next tribal council. And some people still took that risk anyways. It didn’t always work out unless they knew what was coming.

 

This leads to an idea that I have for a twist. There have been beware idols. We could have something like that in the future. Only this idol, once found, would have to be given to someone else before sundown. It if isn’t, you’d get a negative consequence unleashed to your tribe. If you aren’t greedy, then there would be a positive consequence for your tribe instead.

 

There could be more to this post, but I wrote about all that I care for this time around. I’m hoping that I can get caught up well enough on recorded shows on tapes and might talk about this some in my posts on Borneo. Once I’ve reached a certain point, I can get back to watching old seasons. It just better not take the whole summer long. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Mingling

It seems like in more recent seasons of Survivor, there have been twists where people interact with contestants from other tribes in ways that they never have before. We have the summit. But the part of Survivor where tribes have mingled in some way before the merge have been introduced as part of the show early on with different versions of this happening for quite a while.

 

The earliest way that people on different tribes have been interacted was the tribe swap. While this is different than some of what we would see later and have now, it did allow the members of each tribe to mingle differently than before by changing up the tribes themselves.

 

Then we had kidnappings. Early on, this wasn’t used as much and allowed people to miss tribal council at times while learning about the other tribe. It wasn’t until China in which it became a season long twist that had one person always interacting with the other tribe for a while. Samoa then flipped that twist on its head by having an observer, which was like a privilege given to whoever observed.

 

There were some other seasons when there weren’t tribes starting out until they were divided at one point later into the early game. Another season had both tribes on the same beach throughout most of the premerge game until a tribe switch banished one tribe to a new beach.

 

Another way that mingling happened was when two people, one from each tribe, were sent to Exile Island where they could talk to each other and potentially learn about the other tribe a whole lot. It was not always used during these seasons, but were used a whole lot when it was used.

 

With the summit already covered in this blog, then I might as well end this post here since there is not too much else worth saying. I do like the summit as it gives more of a chance and a twist to interact with more of a purpose to this sort of thing than you’d get from something like Exile Island. We’ll see what other ways they will have to mingle the contestants before the merge throughout the future of this show. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

The Ten Worst Rules of Game Play

It has been a very long time since I’ve done a top ten, or in this case, a bottom ten. Today, I’m doing what I consider to be the ten worst rules of game play. This is different in some ways than twists. But I had this planned for a while now so I might as well finally get it done.

 

#10 Changes in endurance challenges- I’m not entirely sure what I meant by this which is why it made this part of the list, but what I think I mean from it is that the rules are not always consistent from time to time with how they do certain endurance challenges, which can be an issue.

 

#9 Time limits on challenges- What’s up with this? Am I right? Why would certain challenges have a time limit on them? Either it must be completed in a certain time with whoever having the lead winning or the rules change with there potentially being a tie-breaker or something like that. It doesn’t make sense to me so it doesn’t work as well to me.

 

#8 Finale reward challenges- While I do hate these a lot, there are things that are worse than this that make a higher place on the list more deserved. Still, it is hard to like something where they have to slow down the finale which often gives an advantage that isn’t always deserved or should be given that late in the game. And while finale advantages are quite the thing now, something else does top this place on the list which I’ll get to later.

 

#7 Tribe must win challenge to get fire- I’ve hated this since it was first introduced in All-Stars. If it was done in just that season, it wouldn’t be that big of an issue. And while I’m not going to mention the version of this that has appeared since Survivor returned in the post pandemic era, it always seemed to put unfortunate tribes at a disadvantage to be without fire and potentially without an ability to be able to win anything at all. Indeed, when Ravu was at such a disadvantage in Fiji, Jeff just gave them flint when they made fire on their own, claiming that they were the first tribe to do this while forgetting that Pagong had fire on their own in the very first episode of the show.

 

#6 Idol played after votes are read- Maybe I should give this some slack as it hasn’t really been used as much outside of the few times that it was used. But it doesn’t make as much sense as it always gives the person with this power no reason to ever use this idol unless they would have otherwise been voted out of the game or potentially save allies this way at the cost of the idol. It never worked which is why they changed the rules only to bring this back in other variants briefly.

 

#5 New final four format- Does anyone who isn’t Jeff or people with the power to change this actually like this or want it included in future seasons? We’ve wanted it gone since the moment it had first appeared and yet we are stuck with it. The format makes no sense and breaks what Survivor should be that late into the game. I don’t like it or want it.

 

#4 Sit out can’t win reward- Can you imagine getting to the individual part of the game and then for one reason or another, learn that you can’t win the reward because you have to sit out of the challenge? I do like that they are trying to rectify this nowadays by giving this person the opportunity for an advantage in the game if they only pay attention and grab it.

 

#3 Idol introduced in finale- Ugh. I can’t even write about how terrible this is. Do finales really need a gimmick like this or anything else for that matter? (Maybe that should be a future blog post.) But there should not be such a huge thing entering the game this late. It doesn’t make great things. It is only quite annoying and very unfair.

 

#2 Rock tie-breaker- Some people stopped watching Survivor when this was first introduced. A lot of the contestants have made crazy decisions in order to avoid this. Now it wouldn’t be an issue if it were the tied contestants drawing the rocks. But to have it reverberate against the others isn’t fair.

 

#1 Designated puzzle solvers- This may seem an odd thing to be the highest on the list. But this is what ultimately inspired this long delayed list. Why can’t all of the people on a tribe solve a puzzle? Why can’t they switch out the people solving the puzzles at least? Do they just need fall guys for tribal council? I just can’t understand why only one or a few people can solve the puzzle at the end and not everyone. It is just so dumb that this is part of the game.

 

That’s all that I can think of for this blog post. I hope that I have enough time for blogging in addition to the more important things in life while various other things go on and have to be done. I will leave you with this post as I hope to come up with more random posts this month.

Survivor 42 End of the Season Awards

When I last published this blog two weeks ago, you might have wondered something that I did not have the time to research about. But I’m first going to post about why this blog wasn’t posted last week. It was not that I watched a Survivor episode as I’m going to take a bit of a break (that hopefully won’t last too long) from watching things that aren’t shows on tape so I can finally get caught up on them. But there were family visits going on for me last week which gave me no time to write a post or even have one scheduled for that time frame. How long has it been since I missed any post of any blog? I feel like it has been years ago since that happened.

 

Of course, when I wrote the post on the season finale, I said that I was going to finish out the post on the season by blogging about all of Ponderosa. What I found out the next day was that there was no Ponderosa this season and it is possible that we might never see it again. I still want to include it in blog posts on seasons that do have it. What’s weird is that we don’t know why there wasn’t one. Some rando on twitter said that it related to season 41 drama, whatever that means, but I’m not likely to believe some unofficial source like that.

 

Anyways, with me still feeling that I have to finish the previous season’s blog posts out, I’m going to do this one that should have and would have otherwise been in the last season’s posts if I were only up to date and on time with things. If I knew about the lack of Ponderosa beforehand, it would have been with the season finale as it should have been and not its own post. Thus, this should be the only time you see it unless someone else was writing this blog while I was filming a Survivor season and a post like this is my way of returning to actually writing the blog again.

 

Let’s start with the three dumbest moves of the season. The bronze will go to Mike and his overall dumb game play. The silver will go to Jonathan for some of his questionable choices in the game. And the gold will have to go to Zach for his poor choices in the game.

 

As for the breakout character of the season, in my mind, it could only be Omar. Hopefully his virgin choices outside of the game will end better than on the show of The United States of Al, although at that point in the show, I was back to no longer being into it. But there was a lot of entertainment and great game play by Omar that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

 

As for the most memorable moment of the season, it might be a bit hard to narrow down something for sure that would stand out as better than all the rest. I think that just Omar’s great game is what stands out to me as the most memorable part of the season to me, since I can’t think of anything else that would fit this theme at all.

 

As for ranking this season among all 42 of them, I think that it will rank as 15^th best of out the 42 of them since it was pretty good but also not among the outstanding, very wonderful seasons that I have ranked above them. Of course, only I know the complete ranking right now.

 

That will close out the season. There have been times in the past where I do random posts of this blog on both Sundays and Wednesdays after having missed a post of this blog. I’ve only done that so far during the winter hiatus of this show. I had sort of done that for a bit after the 40^th season in order to make up ones that I deleted. Well, I’m going to do this for this month. Basically, once Sunday comes next month, it will have to yield to another blog. And I plan to schedule posts for this and other blogs for all of this month since I know that other family gatherings will happen. So enjoy double posting of this blog for this month. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.