50% BIPOC 2 Seasons in

As you can tell by now, I didn’t get any post done by Sunday. This is now the fourth post that I’ve missed in this blog during the summer hiatus. I normally don’t miss any. This is bad. Half of them I wouldn’t have missed if I wasn’t double posting on Sundays. I’m once again going back to just posting this blog on Wednesdays during the meantime until I finally have an old season’s episode of this show to post again or I mess up again.

 

Anyways, let’s get to the post! I thought that it would make sense to do an analysis briefly on the fact that half of the cast of each new season has to be BIPOC. Or, put another way, they have to not be white people. I think that I like it so far, although it will be hard to tell just how it will work going forward, especially if they keep doing it for the rest of Survivor’s run.

 

There’s not much else to compare it to compared to Cook Islands and Fiji when they didn’t really do that much right in terms of sorting the casts the first time around just to switch them around three episodes in when it happened in Cook Islands and the cast was the weakest it ever was in Fiji. What can we even compare all of the other seasons before 41 then? Seasons with returning players would change a lot of the potential of who could be cast.

 

For better or worse, they do talk about it and it is part of the show beyond simply who is on it. This has affected the alliances and the game play of the show. It also has affected who won the show as there are more potential for non-whites to win if there are more non-whites playing the game. I can’t think of anything wrong with it at the moment. I’m unsure if people even complain about the simple political correctness or wokeness of it if you will.

 

There’s not much else to talk about in this blog post. I look forward to seeing this be part of Survivor and hope that it doesn’t lead to anything to absurd happening. Besides, we are more likely to get absurd things from twists, the producers, and Jeff more than anything else from this casting change. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Jeff and His Jeffness

With not much time for me to write a post as usual, I was thinking about a modern problem with Jeff on the show of Survivor. Some would rather not have anyone else host Survivor. Some can’t stand him as much anymore. I have mixed feelings. I don’t want him gone as a host, but I also see ways that he can improve himself. Ever since he became a producer, I feel that him and his own personality have gotten in some of the way of the show.

 

This is where we get to the title of this post: Jeff and His Jeffness. By Jeffness, I mean his way of being himself in a way that can seem excessive. There are too many contestants on the show that can be full of themselves. Jeff isn’t a contestant, but he seems like having this issue at times as well. He tends to overhype every twist no matter how crazy or strange it is.

 

I think that the past two seasons seem to point to just how strange Jeff has become. He’s starting to do confessionals. And while narrating scenes was something he did in the first season, his way of doing it now seems too full of himself and he can get in his own way and the way of how the show might work in many different ways. While he may not be responsible for any of the strange twists like the do or die, sort of merge, and hourglass, he seems like it is good thing because it has to be and why he must present this as exciting television. The thing is: it is the contestants who bring the entertainment on the show of Survivor. He’s just the person who can’t do much of anything in terms of idol plays or blindsides. He is simply demanding more screen time despite his certainty of having it already.

 

I’m not sure that there is much else to say about this. I’m not even sure if this post makes sense. I do hope that people understand how Jeff seems to be influencing the game more than he should be. We need him as a host, not a wanna be player. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Tribalism

First things first: I missed yet another blog post of this blog on Wednesday if you didn’t notice by now as no post was done. You might wonder what this means. Well, there was a lot going on that I had to do. I got a bit of heat exhaustion at work and might have had no choice but to accept the fate of one not getting done then. Ultimately, it was a power outage of less than 10 seconds that made me decide not to do a post on Wednesday. This means once again that I will be trying to double post in this blog by doing a post of this on Sundays and Wednesdays for the rest of this month starting today.

 

Now let’s get to what this post is about. It can be difficult to keep track of tribes in the newer world of Survivor. At least before its return after its pandemic hiatus, the tribes would switch too often for some of us to keep track of which tribes were which and who was on each tribe. But it seems like even today, tribal lines are still important throughout the life and history of Survivor. You will never seem to see any season go by without people sticking to tribe lines.

 

This was seen a lot throughout the classic seasons early on. People stuck by their tribe lines as often as possible. This was seen during seasons with tribe swaps. This was seen even when there were three tribes in All-Stars. And tribal lines became how alliances would go throughout most every season despite all of the craziness that would go on with twists and turns throughout the seasons.

 

It isn’t that hard to think of why this would be. After all, tribes are how things start each season even when you get weird opening twists where everyone is together until there are tribes later. But they still want to stick by their tribe mates season after season. This is also why you should treat members of your tribe good or they will turn on you when given the chance like John in South Pacific.

 

Tribe lines are always a good way of determining how the rest of the game will go. Throwing in different twists can affect it in some ways, but it doesn’t always change the way it works. Even when three tribes become a regular thing, it doesn’t always affect the game’s tribalism in the end as birds of a feather tend to always stick together. There isn’t much else to say. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Fans Should Get a Twist

While it is hard to know for sure if Jeff Probst is the one behind all of these newer derided twists or just the one who overly hypes everything all of the time for I don’t even know how long, there is something that I feel should be changed about Survivor once every season.

 

Let’s say that fans of Survivor throughout the whole world or at least in this country should get a place where they can submit twist ideas for Survivor seasons. Production would then have to accept one of them and include it in the season at hand that they make. If they are going to do shit like do or die, then they should let the fans have a twist.

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.