Survivor: Vanuat-jews (not a slam on the jews)
Last night I went to the Texas Tech/Ohio State basketball game at the AAC in Dallas. It was fun, but that's not what I want to talk about today. Today is the day I give my analysis of Survivor: Vanuatu: Island of Fire: 18 more fame seekers. You may remember it (if you even do -- this installment was particularly unmemorable, IMO) ending last Sunday in a flourish that awarded lying construction hick scum Chris his one million dollar prize over lying construction hick Twila. Seriously, there hasn't been a more loathsome last Survivor pair since the first one of Richard the Corporate Trainer (ugh) vs. Kelly the Bland Liar. Let's examine how it got to that point, shall we?
(I realize you may not watch Survivor, or even view it as acceptable entertainment, but it is a fascinating show for me because of the strategy and sociology involved...the producers trick the game up in new and exciting ways every year to break the monotony of it, and it's fun to see how this messes the contestants up and how they react....plus, somebody always ends up making a terrible decision that ends up getting them voted off. It never fails.)
The big change on this Survivor (heretofore referred to as S9, as in the 9th installment of Survivior) was the number of potential future toothpaste spokepeople involved (you know, the contestants): 18. This was technically the same number as S8, but in that one they divided them into three groups of 6 to start. In s9, it was the traditional 2 groups, but each group had 9 people. They also divided them up by gender, so it was guys vs. girls for basically the whole show (although at the end the surprise twist ending happened, which saved us from a total gynoblasting).
Having 9 people in a tribe to start gave the scum who started playing the game from the get-go an advantage right away, since all they had to do is get 5 dudes or dudettes together and they had the numbers to theoretically get to the merge.
(If you don't know what all this means, then you have my permission to skip this post right now, because I'm not going to explain it to you. One of the things about Survivor that I like is its constants, a few things that happen every year and everyone knows they're going to happen but they just don't know when -- like the merge, and (since season 3) the tribe-shuffling, and the people failing to make fire without flint, and the product placement, and the non-athletic challenge, and the reward challenge where you get to go on trip to some exotic locale and take just one other contestant with you. These thing always happen, and to read this properly you have to understand what these things mean. Otherwise, you're just a postmodernist on a classical blog. Sorry.)
So anyway, the 5 oldest and weakest men unfortunately began voting off the strongest 4. This was entirely predictable, and brings up the question of whether or not this is a good idea, this voting off of the strongest from day one because you're terrified that after the merge they will win all the challenges and make the final two that way rather than the "legitimate"way, i.e., Machiavellian deception. People are deathly afraid of this, despite the fact that it's very unlikely to happen due to the massive variety of challenges they present, and the massively different skill sets involved. In S2, Colby just happened to be stronger, more fit, and smarter than his opponents. That probably won't ever happen again. But people from day one are now convinced they need to vote off anyone who's young and able. This is a big reason why two "older" construction workers and an old woman with a bad knee comprised the final three. So maybe they were smart after all. We'll never get the chance to find out.
The 5 old guys embarked on this disastrous strategy even though it resulted in their team losing challenge after challenge due to incompetence. I knew they were in trouble the very first episode when Chris single-handedly cost his team a challenge and they kept his butt on the island and voted off the non-disabled and totally lacking in game-playing skills Brooke (yes, it was a guy. His parents got confused and added the "e"). That meant there were 5 lumps of coal and 3 workhorses, and if I were a workhorse at that point I would conserve my energy for the challenges, do no work around camp, and hope for the lineup-shuffling to happen before i was voted off. Such is S9, however -- the weak constantly beating the strong. And this is why they say it's a microcosm for life itself. It's also why they're wrong about that -- the strong usually crush the weak in life (I mean, as far as we can discern -- certainly the wise will see that its the other way around, but that's another topic entirely).
On the girls side, the 5 "younger" girls (the 4 young ones and the one with the scary fake boobs -- it looked like she was smuggling billiard balls) had the advantage over the older ones, but the story of the game was largely written by Dolly, the beautiful young shepherdess, who couldn't make up her mind on whether to stay with the young or vote with the old, and was herself voted off by that snake Eliza switching her vote to the more-than-happy-to-vote-for-a-young'un older girls' side. She then went back to the younger girls' side, and got mad when the bug-eyed and mouthy Mia, who was also a "young", was voted off the second tribal council because Cuballs switched to the "old" side. So the young girls had a 5-4 advantage turn into a 3-4 disadvantage (2-5 if you count Cueballs as an "old", which she was kinda). Eliza and her hot pal Julie were under the gun, but the Old Woman Cabal (Svengali-like Ami(about whom there is much more to be said, believe you me -- she was this season's only real "star"), Manly Twila, Literally Disabled Hippy Scout (they found out later that her artificial knee was the wrong size), Nice-seeming Wisconsinite LeAnn, and sometimes Cueballs),were not able to vote them off because the guys' team was seemingly intent on losing every immunity challenge. Thus, the biggest beneficiaries of the Old Man Cabal's early machinations were Eliza and Julie, who were saved from treachery and their own stupidity.
The guys ended up voting off 3 of the younger guys before the Mandatory Shuffling, which meant that there was one more female than male at that point, and that's going to be important to remember later on.
The shuffling produced a team that was 5-2 in favor of girls and one that was 4-2 in favor of guys. So, they should be throwing challenges and voting off the members of the opposite sex, right? It's so simple, but yet so hard to think of when you're stupid. Both groups made horrible mistakes in this critical section of the game, starting with the outnumbered Bubba trying to contact the 4-2 male tribe's Chris in order to present to him the throwing challenges plan I mentioned earlier. Chris acted like he didn't hear, and the guys won and Bubba's fate was sealed. Girls now up, 7-5. Game, set, match, right? Get ready for 10 weeks of Girl Power, right?
Well, it didn't quite work out that way. It's time for my lunch break, but stayed tuned for Part 2: Chris' Revenge, where he overcomes the greatest obstacle of all: His own stupidity.
(I realize you may not watch Survivor, or even view it as acceptable entertainment, but it is a fascinating show for me because of the strategy and sociology involved...the producers trick the game up in new and exciting ways every year to break the monotony of it, and it's fun to see how this messes the contestants up and how they react....plus, somebody always ends up making a terrible decision that ends up getting them voted off. It never fails.)
The big change on this Survivor (heretofore referred to as S9, as in the 9th installment of Survivior) was the number of potential future toothpaste spokepeople involved (you know, the contestants): 18. This was technically the same number as S8, but in that one they divided them into three groups of 6 to start. In s9, it was the traditional 2 groups, but each group had 9 people. They also divided them up by gender, so it was guys vs. girls for basically the whole show (although at the end the surprise twist ending happened, which saved us from a total gynoblasting).
Having 9 people in a tribe to start gave the scum who started playing the game from the get-go an advantage right away, since all they had to do is get 5 dudes or dudettes together and they had the numbers to theoretically get to the merge.
(If you don't know what all this means, then you have my permission to skip this post right now, because I'm not going to explain it to you. One of the things about Survivor that I like is its constants, a few things that happen every year and everyone knows they're going to happen but they just don't know when -- like the merge, and (since season 3) the tribe-shuffling, and the people failing to make fire without flint, and the product placement, and the non-athletic challenge, and the reward challenge where you get to go on trip to some exotic locale and take just one other contestant with you. These thing always happen, and to read this properly you have to understand what these things mean. Otherwise, you're just a postmodernist on a classical blog. Sorry.)
So anyway, the 5 oldest and weakest men unfortunately began voting off the strongest 4. This was entirely predictable, and brings up the question of whether or not this is a good idea, this voting off of the strongest from day one because you're terrified that after the merge they will win all the challenges and make the final two that way rather than the "legitimate"way, i.e., Machiavellian deception. People are deathly afraid of this, despite the fact that it's very unlikely to happen due to the massive variety of challenges they present, and the massively different skill sets involved. In S2, Colby just happened to be stronger, more fit, and smarter than his opponents. That probably won't ever happen again. But people from day one are now convinced they need to vote off anyone who's young and able. This is a big reason why two "older" construction workers and an old woman with a bad knee comprised the final three. So maybe they were smart after all. We'll never get the chance to find out.
The 5 old guys embarked on this disastrous strategy even though it resulted in their team losing challenge after challenge due to incompetence. I knew they were in trouble the very first episode when Chris single-handedly cost his team a challenge and they kept his butt on the island and voted off the non-disabled and totally lacking in game-playing skills Brooke (yes, it was a guy. His parents got confused and added the "e"). That meant there were 5 lumps of coal and 3 workhorses, and if I were a workhorse at that point I would conserve my energy for the challenges, do no work around camp, and hope for the lineup-shuffling to happen before i was voted off. Such is S9, however -- the weak constantly beating the strong. And this is why they say it's a microcosm for life itself. It's also why they're wrong about that -- the strong usually crush the weak in life (I mean, as far as we can discern -- certainly the wise will see that its the other way around, but that's another topic entirely).
On the girls side, the 5 "younger" girls (the 4 young ones and the one with the scary fake boobs -- it looked like she was smuggling billiard balls) had the advantage over the older ones, but the story of the game was largely written by Dolly, the beautiful young shepherdess, who couldn't make up her mind on whether to stay with the young or vote with the old, and was herself voted off by that snake Eliza switching her vote to the more-than-happy-to-vote-for-a-young'un older girls' side. She then went back to the younger girls' side, and got mad when the bug-eyed and mouthy Mia, who was also a "young", was voted off the second tribal council because Cuballs switched to the "old" side. So the young girls had a 5-4 advantage turn into a 3-4 disadvantage (2-5 if you count Cueballs as an "old", which she was kinda). Eliza and her hot pal Julie were under the gun, but the Old Woman Cabal (Svengali-like Ami(about whom there is much more to be said, believe you me -- she was this season's only real "star"), Manly Twila, Literally Disabled Hippy Scout (they found out later that her artificial knee was the wrong size), Nice-seeming Wisconsinite LeAnn, and sometimes Cueballs),were not able to vote them off because the guys' team was seemingly intent on losing every immunity challenge. Thus, the biggest beneficiaries of the Old Man Cabal's early machinations were Eliza and Julie, who were saved from treachery and their own stupidity.
The guys ended up voting off 3 of the younger guys before the Mandatory Shuffling, which meant that there was one more female than male at that point, and that's going to be important to remember later on.
The shuffling produced a team that was 5-2 in favor of girls and one that was 4-2 in favor of guys. So, they should be throwing challenges and voting off the members of the opposite sex, right? It's so simple, but yet so hard to think of when you're stupid. Both groups made horrible mistakes in this critical section of the game, starting with the outnumbered Bubba trying to contact the 4-2 male tribe's Chris in order to present to him the throwing challenges plan I mentioned earlier. Chris acted like he didn't hear, and the guys won and Bubba's fate was sealed. Girls now up, 7-5. Game, set, match, right? Get ready for 10 weeks of Girl Power, right?
Well, it didn't quite work out that way. It's time for my lunch break, but stayed tuned for Part 2: Chris' Revenge, where he overcomes the greatest obstacle of all: His own stupidity.
posted by Mike Pape @ 8:11 AM
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