LogFAQs > #973438411

Yup, I'm with Inviso 100%. I have no idea why foolmo thinks I didn't pay attention and hated the episode, when I was trying to tell him that he was undermining his point about the pre-merge. He's the one who didn't pay attention.

It's the pre-merge I absolutely hated, because production didn't let things just play out. By forcing someone to go on a journey and forcing that someone to risk their vote, it takes away the autonomy players have - the thing that makes Survivor special. It also eats up airtime that could instead be used to start threading the story so things have more of an impact later. This focus on "Big Movez" makes it all style, but there aren't any weighty relationships. Carson and Carolyn could've been shown bonding in the early days of the season, but we didn't get anything like that until these last two episodes. It honestly felt like this was early in the game when they were first developing an appreciation for each other.

The 26-day game is also harmful to this since it gives the cast less time to bond. I hope that, with the 90 minute episodes next season, they need to return to 39 days and allow the cast room to breathe, because that lets them get closer, especially when another tribe is going to Tribal. Tribes that don't go to Tribal for the 14 days before the swap, for instance, tend to develop some animosity that leads to them splintering (or the merge, if there is no swap).

foolm0r0n posted...

That's my point - you can't have a focus on players and let them breathe when there's 18 brand new characters.

So you agree with us that the pre-merge was garbage, then, since instead of focusing on 18 players, they focused on 18 advantages?

You're saying the setup wasn't good when it was one of the strongest setups possible.

I am saying that because the setup wasn't good. The bird cage was great, but having the summits and other attempts to pump garbage into the game on top of that was too much and detracted from what made the bird cage work so well. They can't focus on the players and their paranoia if they spend all the time setting up the advantages.