How All-Stars Affects this Blog

There will be a lot of changes in this blog over time and some of the past seasons can affect this blog more than others. If you know of why I like to blog about specific past seasons, then there isn’t too much to add about why this past season in particular stands out more than others.

 

Basically, with only the first season something that I’m able to watch again by my own rules, I will get a lot of future watches on the season to cover the players from Borneo who I haven’t already covered. Basically, that’s anyone who isn’t Sue (as she’s already been covered) with Rudy going next after the next regular look back and poor Kelly now with the lowest priority of all of them.

 

And that’s all that I really need to cover for this post. All you really need to know is that All-Stars will affect this blog in ways that other seasons won’t be affected yet. There will be a lot of seasons that will be covered in the future. Only future seasons will be covered in this blog as long as I keep doing this blog in the future. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

The Blood versus Water New Player Problem

I thought something that I still wonder a bit now. Ever since they did the 27^th season where they paired returning players versus their family members, I was wondering if any of the new players that we could have gotten that season would appear on their own in future seasons. Now that the 41^st season is set to start in the future, we still haven’t seen any of these potential new players on their own yet.

Was this a onetime exception? Will we never see any of these people as new players? I’m not even sure that I should be bothered by this in the end. There are a lot of new players in seasons that we don’t have to worry about specially going after those who have connections to existing people who have already played the game. If we only went after them, there would be issues when a lot of people play the game or want to play the game.

It is worth noting that, to date, only one person outside of the 27^th season has had a connection to one of the previous players in the game. That player is the infamous Brandon Hantz, the nephew of Russell Hantz. With a player originally from the 19^th season now having a connection to a new player from the 23^rd season, it is possible that this lead producers to the idea of having returning players effectively bring in a new player that is related to them not that many seasons later.

But why not have any of these new players related to previous players come in for a future season on their own? There have been plenty of future seasons and not one of these people that could have been on the 27^th season have yet to appear on their own. You’d think that they would be known in some way by producers and be able to work their way into a future season with a bit of an edge. But maybe none of them want to take away the limelight from their loved ones that they are related to. Maybe they are okay with Survivor just being someone else’s thing.

I doubt that anyone else is bothered by this or even cares. I might do more posts related to this at one point in the future as I want to cover more of this in the future. I still feel the need to write more and more of this blog and the others like it. I will see you back next week as usual, probably. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

We are Losing Reward Challenges

In recent seasons, it seems that the reward challenges that we were so used to for quite a long time have gone away. They just aren’t around anymore doing much of anything. What’s up with that? Why are there no more reward challenges?

Here’s the rub: there are reward challenges still. We just don’t see them as they are constantly being edited out. There was only one reward challenge edited out for a long time. It was sadly the very first one that ever happened. Another one was also taken out of the first season, but included in the special that comes with the DVD of the season or on VHS on its own.

But it happened in more recent seasons that rewards in both the tribal stage and possibly some in the individual stage are on the cutting room floor, not effecting the season at all apparently. Why do they even have them if they are just going to be taken out time and time again?

Honestly, the problem, at least in the last three seasons, was all of the tasks or whatever that was going on that took away too much time from other aspects of the game. This is why we don’t see the rewards. The game is focused on whatever other gimmicks they want to that I complained about in the post that I did here last week. We don’t need the gimmicks.

If we don’t need to see rewards, should they still happen at all? What’s the point of having something that is constantly never shown? It doesn’t make much sense to me. While I’d still like to see reward challenges, if they are going to have them but not show them, then I’d rather it just not be part of the game at all in the end. It makes more sense to do it that way. 

I won’t know for sure what the next season of Survivor will be like. I’m hoping for more of a back to the basics season. They can keep the hidden immunity idol (because they’d do that anyways) and ditch a lot of the new gimmicks like other advantages. But what we do need for sure is the good reward challenges that we are used to in the past. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Gimmicks

While there is still so much still unknown about Survivor 41 at this point in time, what we do know about the past few seasons of Survivor is that something about the show has become quite well known and a bit of a problem. They are constantly using gimmicks over and over again. 

What do I mean by that? Well, after the 40^th season has aired, you have to wonder what the most recent season was where it had 1- no returning players, 2- only two tribes that were randomly divided, and 3- no major new theme to the season such as Ghost Island or something like it. I believe that if we are all remembering correctly, that was the 19^th season, Samoa, when this happened last.

Why does Survivor need to have gimmicks? Are there really that many people who won’t go back to the show or people who won’t get into it for the first time if it didn’t have these gimmicks in the end? Does it always need something new in order to keep lasting?

After one twist island after another, Survivor could use a season again without gimmicks to it. Maybe they are filming one right now or already have one in the reserve. I hope that there can be something done in the future that can bring in a good group of players without relying too much on the next big twist or advantage or gimmick. It would be nice to see a more bare bones Survivor again, especially after we would have seen old seasons during our long break from new ones. Here’s hoping to a season in the next three years without gimmicks. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Is Survivor Skewing Towards Younger Casts?

This will not talk about the most recent season as I don’t know much about it. All that I know is that we have seen a lot of casts in recent seasons where the cast has a lot of younger players with not that many older players seen. Even then, the older people aren’t as old as they used to be.

The first season had the oldest contestant who broke his own record when he returned and then the record has not come close to being beaten as far as I know. Meanwhile, it seems that we haven’t stopped having a new youngest player as whoever played at the age of 18 automatically counted even though they were just tying the record over and over again.

Of course, this post may not make the most sense now as the most recent season, Winners at War, had much older players than what we are used to seeing with new player seasons as we had what I think was the oldest season in terms of age in it. And I don’t know offhand what season is second highest in terms of oldest general age. I just know that this was the oldest. I have no idea what the youngest one was offhand yet either.

That’s all that I can think of for this post as there isn’t much else to say that I care about saying in this post at hand. There will be an update about this blog and how it will relate to another blog in the future, but I will get to that in a different post such as maybe the one on Survivor 41’s premiere. I hope to see you then in the future with that. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

The Foa Foa Four versus the Aitu Four

I’ve thought of this post for a while and would like to do a fairly quick post so here it is. I have often thought of the similarities of these two alliances which both overcame insurmountable odds in order to get what they got and make it as far as they did. What one was better in the end? It is hard to tell for sure as each has their merits and setbacks. 

The Aitu Four was instantly formed after a mutiny and now had to deal with a tribe that now had twice the members that they did with their even tribe of six now having two members defecting to the other tribe. Despite this serious setback, the new tribe of four won every remaining tribal challenge and due to a controversial twist that no one who attacks it ever considers the other side of, was able to enter the merge just one member short. By getting a person to switch back to their tribe, this alliance was able to make it all the way to the final four in the end.

The Foa Foa Four was formed at the now early merge, something that has become much more common in Survivor nowadays, to also deal with a tribe that had double the members that they did. But due to a strategic move that left one of the Galu members gone from the game, the dominoes started to fall and it wasn’t long until some Galu members joined the formerly failing tribe and saw them dominate the game in the end. One Galu member named Brett was able to prevent this alliance from being in all of the final four, but the only finalists from that season were from this alliance.

There are different ways that these alliances worked and how they are similar. Both benefited in a way from a twist that hadn’t been done before as people wouldn’t have even known the twist in the bottle from Cook Islands would be a double elimination as there had never been one before and an early merge also never happened before. One did what it needed to before the merge happened and the other could only dominate after the merge in question.

Honestly, I’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the two alliances you felt was better. I did think that there were stronger players all around in the Aitu Four while there were some smarter ones on the Foa Foa Four. Each of them had a stronger pair that got jury votes and a weaker pair that wasn’t seen as much in the game. Aitu might have had more likable people on it when it came to the end. But I don’t really have a favorite between either one of them yet. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Top Ten Survivor Stereotypes: Players

I have a lot of planned top tens for the future, but put them off in favor of other blog posts instead. Now I need more to write about and I don’t have much else to say so I might as well get to the stereotypes that you often see in Survivor. This will go beyond just the usual racial ones and go into a lot of them, some that aren’t part of any set race at all. Anyways, here’s the top ten.

 

#10 The never camped before: This doesn’t come up that much, but it does come up enough to be annoying. It is a stereotype and weird that it happens so often. Why would someone play Survivor who has never camped before? Plus, you are likely to be worse off on Survivor then most regular camping since you wouldn’t get much luxury and couldn’t just quit any minute. But this does happen a lot, but I don’t think that they ever make it that far.

 

#9 The female challenge beast: While not as big a stereotype as one that I’ll get to later, you do see this sometimes where a woman dominates the challenges in a way. I do not even know how this happens or why it doesn’t always seem to be known until more towards the end of the game. I just want one of them to tie the record that Colby made that only other men have tied thus far.

 

#8 The bossy leader: So often, you see so many people of all types try to take charge of their tribe and piss off everyone else leading to them being voted out in the near future. It doesn’t happen as much as others, but it does seem to happen very often.

 

#7 The obnoxious white man: At least a bad stereotype exists with this group of people, if not as common as other stereotypes of other groups of people that are more minorities. We don’t tend to see this as much nowadays, but it is a common enough stereotype that we see from time to time. It can even be combined some with other stereotypes like the next one.

 

#6 The eccentric gay man: At least you are almost certain to always get notable screen time on this show if you are simply male and gay as most of them are so eccentric that there is always something of them that is worth seeing a lot on the show so they have to make airtime. Does that make sense? I hope that it does. The point is that you see a lot of gay men who are eccentric on Survivor.

 

#5 The woman of Asian descent who is mistreated: This is sad that this happens so much and it took 29 seasons until a woman of Asian descent could even win the game. Why is she always mistreated? I have no idea why this happens so much and I feel bad for them that they have to put up with such asses over and over again when they play.

 

#4 The seemingly lazy black man: Are they actually lazy? Maybe they are some of the time or at least once. But we see this too often where a black man is just laying around doing nothing and it is during the day with their eyes open that we see this. Isn’t this a problem to always show black men this way? What is the problem with the edit?

 

#3 The black woman with attitude: This might be an even worse stereotype than the last one. All we need is just one fight involving a black woman making it on the screen and they just come off as some sort of asshole while providing the fights that editors always want us to see. They always seem to have their attitude being shown with them not being seen in a good way.

 

#2 The super fan: I have no idea when this first happened. But it has happened a lot throughout all of the show that it is certain to happen more from time to time again and again. So many people know a whole lot about Survivor and are such huge fans of the show that they have to appear on it. But simply knowing a lot about Survivor or being a huge fan can mean little to nothing when it comes to actually surviving the show in the end.

 

#1 The male challenge beast: Hopefully this isn’t too bad of a pick for the number one spot as it just seems to happen so much that there isn’t much else to say about this outside of how often we see a player make it far, at least to the finale. What else can I say? Not much.

 

Well, that’s it for this blog post as I need to spend more time on this while not doing too much else that takes too much time either. I just don’t want to spend just one day writing a post, but I still want to do all of these blog posts in good time. I don’t know why, but June 3^rd is said to be an important date for the Survivor community as they mention that on fandom even though that’s a Thursday. Maybe that will be when Survivor 42: Life, the Universe, Everything, will start filming. We’ll see what happens with that in the future. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.