Board 8 > Reality TV Discussion Topic: Survivor, Amazing Race, Big Brother, etc.

(+) Yeah! (+)

foolm0r0n posted...

It doesn't pay off though. There's always lots of stinkers in the cast, especially now that everyone is a gamebot superfan. You can't just hope that personalities and drama will magically come out. You don't get genuine psychos like Coach or Carolyn every season.

With the advantages you guarantee that there's SOME drama to latch onto at least. Can you really say the birdcage was worse for getting to know people than sitting around the fire eating coconuts?

And again, you're talking about premerge with 18 people. Do you really need to to intimately love all 18 people in a season, instead of just the 10 post merge ones? It's greedy and unrealistic. 3-4 strong storylines a season is pretty good.

We don't get to love the 10 post-merge players either though, because by the time the post-merge rolls around, you have 12-13 people all crammed into a single episode, making and breaking alliances for reasons we never get shown because the game moves too fast.

Inviso posted...

EVERY TRIBAL COUNCIL NEEDS TO END WITH A BLINDSIDE!

The players do blindsides, not Jeff. Any player who does a modicum of research will learn that blindsides are the optimal way to play the game, and especially to win the million.

It doesn't make sense to long for the era when players were voting on emotion and not game theory. It's long gone.

Inviso posted...

We don't get to love the 10 post-merge players either though, because by the time the post-merge rolls around, you have 12-13 people all crammed into a single episode, making and breaking alliances for reasons we never get shown because the game moves too fast.

Yeah it does seem fast. Are merges at 12 now? Maybe they should merge at 10 or 8 and do a couple double elims beforehand

foolm0r0n posted...

With the advantages you guarantee that there's SOME drama to latch onto at least. Can you really say the birdcage was worse for getting to know people than sitting around the fire eating coconuts?

The birdcage was great, but this was on top of other things. They didn't need to do anything beyond the birdcage - just leave it at that.

And I can't tell you who my favorite is after four episodes. I literally love none of these people at this point. This last episode was bad because there was zero character development and sacrificed what should be good about the show entirely for synthetic "drama" that only served to be boring and predictable. Pre-merge is lame now because I don't feel like it's fun to watch due to me being emotionally detached from the entire cast, and I think the lack of diversity is the biggest reason. There are way too few personality clashes and that may stem from them getting the exact drama they wanted from putting Feely Dan and Kellee on the same tribe. They are afraid to have the thing that made Survivor great in the first place because of one instance of something unacceptable happening.

foolm0r0n posted...

The players do blindsides, not Jeff. Any player who does a modicum of research will learn that blindsides are the optimal way to play the game, and especially to win the million.

It doesn't make sense to long for the era when players were voting on emotion and not game theory. It's long gone.

I'm not saying blindsides as a strategy are bad. I'm saying production wants the AUDIENCE to be blindsided and surprised far too often (and every tribal council needs to end with some shocking vote that becomes a water cooler moment), and the end result is a bunch of disjointed final results that often carry little emotional weight. I'm just particularly worried, because it feels like their response to an unsatisfying ending to 43 is "let's throw in countless advantages so players are FORCED to make big moves each and every episode, and we won't get a final 3 like that group of duds again!"

foolm0r0n posted...

It doesn't make sense to long for the era when players were voting on emotion and not game theory. It's long gone.

Doesn't make it better

Here's a good example of why it's bad for the show - I'm not even as invested in who wins anymore, and while I'm still interested to see who comes out of the shuffle on top, it's more arbitrary to me because it's SO incredibly luck-based now. And there was always a degree of luck involved, right down to who is on your starting tribe (Richard or Brian would have had a much more difficult path to victory on the opposite tribe in their seasons). But every advantage that gets thrown in adds another layer of luck, especially when it's not even something you get to go looking for, but something another tribe picks you for and you have no say in it... there are still plenty of good players that get taken out early and we are potentially robbed of seeing them play well post merge and while a good early ousting of a great player can be fun and entertaining, I'd rather it be organic (either they overplayed and got caught, or they accidentally pissed off some psycho who then went on a bonkers crusade against them, something really entertaining) than the result of an advantage that the producers threw in for the hell of it.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

And I can't tell you who my favorite is after four episodes. I literally love none of these people at this point.

What are some seasons where this is different for you? I'm genuinely curious since I've never seen this as an expectation of the show, but I haven't watched that many. Outside of 41/42/43 I've only watched the Netflix ones, which are supposed to be the absolute best ones of the last 40 seasons. And I certainly don't remember the first 4 episodes being memorable at all. Except maybe J'tia throwing rice on the fire.

But even if you can name 10 seasons that had killer starts, which seems doubtful, that's still only 25% of all seasons. Even if there were 20, that's only 50%. So why would you expect every new season to be like those top ones?

Inviso posted...

I'm not saying blindsides as a strategy are bad. I'm saying production wants the AUDIENCE to be blindsided and surprised far too often (and every tribal council needs to end with some shocking vote that becomes a water cooler moment), and the end result is a bunch of disjointed final results that often carry little emotional weight. I'm just particularly worried, because it feels like their response to an unsatisfying ending to 43 is "let's throw in countless advantages so players are FORCED to make big moves each and every episode, and we won't get a final 3 like that group of duds again!"

I agree with your first line here - the editing way too often emphasizes some non-existent twist and tries to make it seem like a blindside even though it was a pretty straightforward vote. That can be annoying.

But you're still thinking that players make big moves because of advantages. That's not the case at all. The players WILL make big moves every episodes, regardless of anything else. That's how you play and win the game. The only reason they wouldn't is if they don't care about the million $, or they're flat out stupid.

Obviously I love those older seasons where people WERE flat out stupid and literally gave away the million multiple times. That's entertaining af. But it's hard to find people that stupid anymore. Even psychos like Carolyn are clearly focused on the money. Matt and Frannie are not going to throw away the money for their showmance, like Ozzy and such did. Maybe the economic downturn has something to do with it too, I dunno.

I usually start to have favorites after four episodes. Sometimes I even have one after the premiere.

Let me go over everybody who still stands...

RATU
Brandon - he played the idol on day 3 and used to play in the NFL, but I can't tell you anything else about him or his gameplay
Carson - he's not bad for a superfan gamebot type who Inviso always hates, but there's nothing unique or interesting about him at all
Lauren - seriously, who?
Matthew - one of the most interesting people here, but that's because he's a smarmy, sleazy type of player who thinks he's much smarter than he actually is
Wasn't the other guy's name Kane? I forget, and that never happens after four episodes!

TIKA (that's purple, right?)
Carolyn - best character this season, because she's unique with how genuinely unstable she is making for delightful TV. She's my favorite right now for that reason but she's the only.
Josh - another slimy player who thinks he's smarter than he really is, because he's a surgeon and everybody knows he's lying about his career now
Yam-Yam - a fun character who actually seems clever, but we need more of him just being himself for me to actually care

WHAT WAS GREEN CALLED AGAIN? SOKA?
Danny - I liked his idol stunt a lot, because it took the target off of him and was fun to watch, but that's all I got
Frannie - seems awesome, but we're hardly getting anything from her
Heidi - is there, and only stands out when she's wearing the hat (seeing as nobody else has one)
Jaime - is being set up to be embarrassed later and that couldn't be any more obvious
Matt - has a fake idol and a thing for Frannie, but is otherwise very generic

Because so much time has been spent on twists and advantages, I can't articulate much about anyone. That's bad.

I mean, I definitely agree that the game has evolved to a point where players are more willing to make big moves of their own volition, because that's what the show has emphasized for many years now. I don't like the producers throwing in countless idols and extra votes and idol nullifiers and KiPs and whatnot, because it seems the intent is to make it "This person has a thing! Better target them for a big move!" And then either someone gets blindsided with an idol, and someone plays an idol and someone else gets blindsided. And the problem with this is that it has started to reduce personality and make everyone feel interchangeable. It's no longer "We need to vote out this PERSON because they are a threat" and more "We need to flush this IDOL because it is a threat."

Just to be clear, I don't fault the players for playing to win, but it really sucks to see people that probably would have been great characters in seasons 9-19ish be gamebots now.

I used to rag on Micronesia a LOT back in the day but lately I've been pining for the days of "Jason is such an easy vote, why don't the five of us just write Ozzy instead?" as being a "big move."

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I usually start to have favorites after four episodes. Sometimes I even have one after the premiere.

What are some examples though? It just seems like rose colored glasses.

I watched the Netflix seasons in parallel with these new ones and the cast was seriously not much better, except for some standouts like Coach, and All-Stars casts were obv better. The biggest difference is the locations and challenges and rewards and production in general was way better, which helps a lot in the first few episodes.

I mean in this season, we obviously have Carolyn who is very unique. Matt & Frannie are the first showmance in a really long time, which is significant. And right off the bat, Carson seemed pretty unique as a standard nerd archetype except he actually got super buff in a few months. It's the exact kind of spergness that should appeal perfectly to b8. He's even proven to actually be kinda dumb, and got tricked by Carolyn, which fits well with b8 too.

43's cast sucked for sure, but Gabler and Noelle were pretty fun to watch.

42 and 41 casts were solid too, but game design definitely got in the way for them.

foolm0r0n posted...

The biggest difference is the locations and challenges and rewards and production in general was way better, which helps a lot in the first few episodes.

Further on this, it's really evident that the new season's budgets are half or even a third of the old seasons. If that's the only way the show can continue to be made, then I guess that's what we have to deal with. But I wonder if they would convince Netflix or something to do a big budget season once a year instead of two cheap seasons. Netflix isn't ad-driven so it could work.

There are a lot of seasons that do a good job establishing the cast and characters early on. Pearl Islands, China, Philippines, Exile Island, David vs. Goliath, Gabon, Amazon, Cagayan, these are just the ones that come to mind immediately because they are all among my top 10 seasons and are mostly driven by their character development that began from episode 1, with people just playing the game naturally with the occasional curveball thrown in by the producers just to keep things interesting and make the season unique (because these twists often WERE one-time things). Heck, as bad a rap as it gets, even Nicaragua establishes who we're supposed to love, hate, and love to hate in the first few episodes. There are also other ways to keep seasons interesting. I remember back when seasons tended to have "themes" and I don't mean "Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty," but some running theme that set pieces, challenges, rewards, and the occasional one-episode twist all related back to. Pearl Islands had a pirate theme, Palau had a WWII theme, Guatemala had a Mayan theme, etc. Obviously this is more difficult to do differently each year with everything shot in one location for nearly a decade now but probably still doable. If anything, all these advantages make a season LESS memorable because they just tend to blur together. Case in point - I already forgot about an advantage that existed THIS SEASON. Bottom line is, you can keep the show interesting without a million twists and advantages by casting personalities worth watching, focusing on developing those personalities, and once or twice a season throwing in something to spice it up.

And one last thing, I highly recommend you remove the term "sperg" from your vocabulary.

The thing that bugs me about all of this is...42 was actually a really solid season. The show got a lot of memorable characters out of it (I'd argue that 6/7 of the final 7 are legitimate All-Star contenders, plus Tori and Rocksroy are solid casting choices as well), and yet two seasons later, they've reverted to not trusting their cast again, and instead forcing dozens of advantages into the game at any given time.

I think 41 and 42 are both upper-half seasons, with 42 being pretty close to top 10.

Did anyone finish AU HvV?

That was a fucking rollercoaster of a season and brought back some classic survivor joy I havent had in while.

Underleveled posted...

Pearl Islands, China, Philippines, Exile Island, David vs. Goliath, Gabon, Amazon, Cagayan, these are just the ones that come to mind immediately because they are all among my top 10 seasons and are mostly driven by their character development that began from episode 1

Yeah, this, though not all of these are in my personal top 10. They all establish quickly who you're supposed to root for and root against, and that's just newbie seasons. I'd add Borneo, SJDS, and even Worlds Apart to that pile. You have people to like and people to dislike after four episodes, sometimes even sooner. I don't know what you're watching, foolmo. But those seasons had much better

Inviso posted...

The thing that bugs me about all of this is...42 was actually a really solid season. The show got a lot of memorable characters out of it (I'd argue that 6/7 of the final 7 are legitimate All-Star contenders, plus Tori and Rocksroy are solid casting choices as well), and yet two seasons later, they've reverted to not trusting their cast again, and instead forcing dozens of advantages into the game at any given time.

And this is why production has gotten worse. They no longer trust their casts and instead bloat the game with filler advantage crap that devolves it all into sensationalist trash that focuses more on "having a moment" than actually being authentic, which in turn undermines this very philosophy. The reason S44 has been bad is that they don't trust this great cast to deliver on their own. There haven't been any memorable moments. And production fails to recognize that if all Movez are big, then none of them are.

It's like Darkx said above: A move like the Ozzy lynch in Micronesia was epic because it happened naturally and wasn't amid a flurry of nigh identical blindsides. It also wasn't a surprise to the viewer since they decided to showcase how that move came together, which made it epic. Survivor needs to do that in some episodes to balance out the "Big Movez" so those moves truly feel big, sometimes even showing how a Big Move happens. Micronesia showed how the blindsides happened because it made for more compelling TV; it was downright hilarious at times, and the Erik heist in particular wouldn't have been the same if they'd wanted to "blindside the viewer" every single time back then.

Micronesia was great - and still is great - for this reason. It's a fun season, but sadly that + The Hantz forever changed Survivor into the mess that it is today.

Chaeix posted...

Did anyone finish AU HvV?

That was a fucking rollercoaster of a season and brought back some classic survivor joy I havent had in while.

Not yet, because vacation. I have seven episodes left. I'll comment later.

Out of those I think I've only watched Cagayan and David v Goliath and I don't think the first few episodes were too special. After merge they were super good.

Cagayan in particular seems the same as this one, where you have the nerd kid who you root for right off the bat, and some crazy lady. Carolyn is way better than J'tia though since the latter just did 1 memorable thing and that's it.

I really don't remember anything from the beginning of DvG except again the nerdy guy being a standout. I watched that like 3 months ago too.

Cagayan had a cast that was allowed to shine on their own. This season SHOULD be like Cagayan in that regard, but it isn't, because the focus is on idols, advantages, and other things.

Spencer, even though he's certified insane IRL, was very rootable early on in Cagayan, alongside his eventual F2 Tasha. Tony was a huge character who you didn't know what to make of. Chaos Kass was a delightful villainous presence. J'Tia was nuts. And the entire Beauty tribe was there looking pretty.

Who from this season is a big character? The answer to that question is "Carolyn." The fact that there's only one after four episodes is a problem, don't you think? Cagayan had Spencer, Tony, Chaos Kass, and J'Tia.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

The fact that there's only one after four episodes is a problem, don't you think?

Not really, because it implies that every season needs to be as good as a top 5 one. That would be a terrible expectation to put on a show pushing 50 seasons.

But even ignoring that, Tony was the only one that stood out like Carolyn.

Kass, Spencer, Tasha are fun, but they are only remembered because they got close to winning. It's their post merge that solidified them. They were all boring af pre merge, except Spencer a bit because the nerd type is always fun.

J'tia did ONE memorable thing. It was great but that's it. Like I said, it hard to find people so willing to throw away the million.

It honestly doesn't seem that different than this season cast-wise. Production wise, totally different obviously. And that theme is great. If you're saying we need more beauty tribes as eye candy for the first few episodes I don't disagree.

foolm0r0n posted...

Not really, because it implies that every season needs to be as good as a top 5 one.

I'm not expecting every season to be that high quality. I am expecting every season to have more than one compelling character, and early on is when you establish a baseline.

That said, in Cagayan, what made Spencer, Tasha, and Chaos Kass compelling early on is that they were the sane people on Lose On, which was an absolutely beautiful trainwreck of a tribe. David and Garrett were both disastrous players who had already burned out and gotten the boot, but they could absolutely count too despite their lack of longevity.

The Tony/Carolyn comparison is spot on but they're both Chaotic players. Of course they stand out above all else. But there's more to it than that.

S44 has not had that. We've had:
The tragic hero Bruce, who never really got a chance to play because of unfortunate circumstance.
Maddy, who had no reason to be the first boot until she got Bigmoveitis, and was booted out of her own stupidity.
Helen, who was just kinda there.
Claire, whose one claim to fame was starting the chain reaction that destroyed Ratu by telling Matthew that Lauren was lying to him (nothing else came of that).
Sarah, who was pretty and good at describing her thoughts, but was otherwise pretty much a Spradlin wannabe.

And, as for things the players not named Carolyn have done this season, what's stood out? Danny planting the fake idol is about all I can come up with. The Matt/Frannie "showmance" is overstated and clearly not as big as the show is making it out to be. The cast isn't shining because production isn't letting them. This is what I'm trying to say, and I'm not the only one here. Cagayan was great because production allowed them to and hardly got in the way, really just with the Tyler Perry Idol being so lazily hidden, and that let the cast stand out from early on.

I'm expecting each season of Survivor to have multiple standout players and for me to start noticing people through four episodes. I've hardly noticed anyone so far due to the focus on advantages and twists, which is starting to get monotonous seeing as that's every season in this "New Era."

I totally get what you all are saying and I do agree with the conclusion (bad production), I just don't agree with the premise that the classic seasons were so much better cast-wise across the board.

As someone who only first watched this show under 2 years ago and thus have read a lot of about what the best seasons are, people really only mention the same favorite 10-15 seasons (which is a super good batting rate for a reality show, to be clear). People also mention several "dark ages" that stretched 4-6 seasons. There's no way to reconcile that with the idea that the seasons were fundamentally better pre-40. Especially since 42 was great and 41 was pretty good too. Seems like 41-44 are batting the same average, despite the worse production and game design.

I think the most succinct way I can describe the main difference, and what people have been alluding to, is that the game was driven by people before but now the game is driving people.

Chaeix posted...

I think the most succinct way I can describe the main difference, and what people have been alluding to, is that the game was driven by people before but now the game is driving people.

Bingo. I've described it in the past as, the winner used to beat 15-19 other people. Now they beat the game.

Honestly, I think a lot of this is kinda "you had to be there." You haven't been watching for a long time and have only seen a handful of seasons, and are missing out on some of the best ones. For those of us that have been around since the beginning (at this point I say if you were watching by, say, Palau you were there "at the beginning") the feeling is really different.

Well, if you compare to the most recent season of AU, they still manage to let people drive the game so its a fair bit more than just nostalgia - its a truly tangible difference

I can clearly see the difference in the classic seasons, but people think it's all the advantages and ignore what has really changed culturally

GOD I don't need to see a repeat of Matthew's injury! >_<

I'm thinking orange is going to tribal council, the guys try to vote out Lauren and she plays her Idol to get rid of Matthew or Kane

Underleveled posted...

I'm thinking orange is going to tribal council, the guys try to vote out Lauren and she plays her Idol to get rid of Matthew or Kane

she has the double vote, not the idol

but i think the target ends up on kane because of that anyways

See? Too many advantages.

Anyway, alternatively green goes to tribal and the boot is Jaime or Matt

I don't think Soka goes to tribal again before merge tbh.

Which one is Soka?

green

This episode has had some decent personalization and character development (prior to the unnecessary advantage island twist that's coming after the commercial), but so help me if Carolyn winds up getting voted out for five in a row.

Carolyn has her idol so I doubt she gets voted out here.

I think she idols out Josh tbh. If she's immune - why not try to flush his idol with her vote?

I hope we get a second medevac SO bad.

Yeah this episode is way better than last week's, solely because we got focus on character development on each tribe. Last week, we had two challenges and the Journey Island where there was a swap, and then the response to that twist... yeah, that was bad. This week, the first third was mostly great, because we got relationship stuff.

We'll see what happens... merge has to be soon, especially if Matthew is MedEvac'd here.

I think Matthew is out and Jeff reveals it to Tika (and the audience) at TC

I'm sure there's an idol in a napkin or some shit

Underleveled posted...

I think Matthew is out and Jeff reveals it to Tika (and the audience) at TC

We might found out when Brandon gets back to his tribe.

...how are these two being SO open about this shit in front of Carolyn?

Underleveled posted...

I'm sure there's an idol in a napkin or some shit

this made me realize my stream is like 2 minutes behind lol

god damn i love carolyn

Carolyn is literally carrying this season on her back!

Carolyn realized that those two bozos just decided the merge alliances. Carolyn can pick up Carson, Kane, Jaime, Matt, and Frannie, plus whoever's still left at Tika, boom.

Underleveled posted...

I think Matthew is out and Jeff reveals it to Tika (and the audience) at TC

Would another tribe's MedEvac cause him to cancel the vote? This isn't Australian Survivor.

Guessing we're getting a Matthew MedEvac, then a "to be continued" with the Tribal and merge next week. Merge Tribal would be in the following episode.

Or something.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Guessing we're getting a Matthew MedEvac, then a "to be continued" with the Tribal and merge next week. Merge Tribal would be in the following episode.

Or something.

yeah we don't really have much time left for tribal :(

Oh my fucking GOD. YES!