Sunday, November 23, 2008
Survivor: Gabon - 1710
Highlight of this one had to be "Cookiegate". You know how I hate things with -gate tacked on the end but that is the title that naturally came out of it. There was such a big deal made of the issue with the cookies that we need to think why. Of course people get testy when they are out on Survivor with no food for so long. The real reason it had to be made into such a big deal is that it was all part of Randy's master plan to get everyone to vote for him. He was able to latch onto the cookies as a lightning rod to go after everyone and alienate them.
The thing is that Randy is actually probably right about the cookies. I thought that Jeff's instructions that for $20 he bought them for the tribe was very ambiguous. Why couldn't Randy have stomped them all in the dirt? And if he wasn't in charge of the cookies why was he the one deciding who got cookies anyway? It all centered on Sugar, what did she expect when he offers her a cookie twice and she turns it down only to accept Randy's personal cookie and just hand it over to Matty. He was trying to do something really nice (I guess) and she just sort of spit on him for that. And why didn't Randy just get that one back from Matty?
What all of this comes in the way of is Randy's plan from the beginning. To make sure I get this right, my interpretation is that he assumed that Bob had the idol even though Sugar had been at Exile six times and then Bob would give him the idol so they could get rid of someone else. So, if all of this plan came together then they would get rid of Susie who managed to overtake Crystal as Randy's least favorite person giving the ex-Kota members an overwhelming 3-4 disadvantage. Great plan. Can't see how that could go wrong.
Reward Challenge
I really like the Survivor auction. That is always one of my favorite parts of the series. It was not as great this season when there were no real stinkers among the items to be bid on. Kenny's bid to take Bob's money and then send him to Exile was a great play but he didn't really capitalize on that since he didn't proceed to use his leverage and superior buying power to take control of the auction. I don't know why he wouldn't bid more on several of the other options.
Randy won a whole mess of food and all of the booze that was offered. After surviving on so little with 3 beers and a glass of wine, he'll be feeling it really quickly. Do you think that it would be wrong to ask Jeff what kind of beer it was before bidding? Wouldn't you be mad if you'd bit $200 and ended up with 3 Michelob Ultras? If it were 3 Orvals then we could do some business. Or if they had Stone vertical epic beers then $200 would be a deal in real life!
Corinne spending all $500 on the clue was a great plan. That could really help her out and the pot odds on that play are amazing. It's more important for her than for Kenny because she could actually go home. For the dominant tribe they could just pick off one of the other Kota members instead.
Immunity Challenge
I thought that this immunity challenge would be the perfect timing for one of the pecking order type challenges. You'd have Kenny and Crystal take out Sugar or Matty early and then maybe they'd figure it out and flip to the other side. Or maybe they wouldn't, but at 8 people you could really throw a wrench into the works while there still was a chance. Since Matty is certainly 5th place on that totem as he's the only one who's still a physical threat.
Going into this immunity challenge it looked like a pretty lame one and I was not wrong about that. The challenge itself was interesting and seemed tough but just didn't make for good TV. It ended up as exciting as they could hope but still wasn't really riveting for the viewership. Corinne's auction strategy paid off since she was advanced to the finals but couldn't make it stick. I thought that Kenny's strategy of starting at the end was the best way, since that was where you'd have to walk through more of the wires and if you'd toppled your blocks earlier you'd have fewer to replace. In the end it didn't matter, spacing became important and Kenny won a relative yawner.
Strategy Analysis
I already got into Randy's poor strategy above so let's focus on Bob here a little bit. For a guy who seems like he knows a little bit about the game he made so many questionable decisions this week it was amazing.
First, why does he go up to Sugar and show her that he made a fake immunity idol? If you're only going to share that with one person, what makes you choose someone who's not in your alliance. Maybe he was thinking that she would let him know that she had actually found the idol, but that's not so likely.
Even worse than that was Bob's decision to give Randy the fake immunity idol and let him crash and burn at Tribal. Don't get me wrong, I thought that made for great TV but from Bob's perspective what do you gain? He has completely burned bridges with Corinne and Randy, two potential jury members who we know both will harbor grudges to the end of time. And does he really change his place as an outsider among the former Fang members? Even though he went with Sugar's plan she's not going to let him into the alliance at this point. The only thing I can think is that Bob was going with the plan that he's definitely safe tonight, but this seems pretty short-sighted and it was clear that they would vote Randy out anyway, with Operation:Strong-arm going on. Puzzling to say the least.
My prediction:
Randy. This was a gimme.
Season total: 2-6 (.250)
Spell Check:
Right: 7
Wrong: 1 (Suzie)
Other: 0
Season total: 40-10-5 (.727)
Quick hit thoughts
The thing is that Randy is actually probably right about the cookies. I thought that Jeff's instructions that for $20 he bought them for the tribe was very ambiguous. Why couldn't Randy have stomped them all in the dirt? And if he wasn't in charge of the cookies why was he the one deciding who got cookies anyway? It all centered on Sugar, what did she expect when he offers her a cookie twice and she turns it down only to accept Randy's personal cookie and just hand it over to Matty. He was trying to do something really nice (I guess) and she just sort of spit on him for that. And why didn't Randy just get that one back from Matty?
What all of this comes in the way of is Randy's plan from the beginning. To make sure I get this right, my interpretation is that he assumed that Bob had the idol even though Sugar had been at Exile six times and then Bob would give him the idol so they could get rid of someone else. So, if all of this plan came together then they would get rid of Susie who managed to overtake Crystal as Randy's least favorite person giving the ex-Kota members an overwhelming 3-4 disadvantage. Great plan. Can't see how that could go wrong.
Reward Challenge
I really like the Survivor auction. That is always one of my favorite parts of the series. It was not as great this season when there were no real stinkers among the items to be bid on. Kenny's bid to take Bob's money and then send him to Exile was a great play but he didn't really capitalize on that since he didn't proceed to use his leverage and superior buying power to take control of the auction. I don't know why he wouldn't bid more on several of the other options.
Randy won a whole mess of food and all of the booze that was offered. After surviving on so little with 3 beers and a glass of wine, he'll be feeling it really quickly. Do you think that it would be wrong to ask Jeff what kind of beer it was before bidding? Wouldn't you be mad if you'd bit $200 and ended up with 3 Michelob Ultras? If it were 3 Orvals then we could do some business. Or if they had Stone vertical epic beers then $200 would be a deal in real life!
Corinne spending all $500 on the clue was a great plan. That could really help her out and the pot odds on that play are amazing. It's more important for her than for Kenny because she could actually go home. For the dominant tribe they could just pick off one of the other Kota members instead.
Immunity Challenge
I thought that this immunity challenge would be the perfect timing for one of the pecking order type challenges. You'd have Kenny and Crystal take out Sugar or Matty early and then maybe they'd figure it out and flip to the other side. Or maybe they wouldn't, but at 8 people you could really throw a wrench into the works while there still was a chance. Since Matty is certainly 5th place on that totem as he's the only one who's still a physical threat.
Going into this immunity challenge it looked like a pretty lame one and I was not wrong about that. The challenge itself was interesting and seemed tough but just didn't make for good TV. It ended up as exciting as they could hope but still wasn't really riveting for the viewership. Corinne's auction strategy paid off since she was advanced to the finals but couldn't make it stick. I thought that Kenny's strategy of starting at the end was the best way, since that was where you'd have to walk through more of the wires and if you'd toppled your blocks earlier you'd have fewer to replace. In the end it didn't matter, spacing became important and Kenny won a relative yawner.
Strategy Analysis
I already got into Randy's poor strategy above so let's focus on Bob here a little bit. For a guy who seems like he knows a little bit about the game he made so many questionable decisions this week it was amazing.
First, why does he go up to Sugar and show her that he made a fake immunity idol? If you're only going to share that with one person, what makes you choose someone who's not in your alliance. Maybe he was thinking that she would let him know that she had actually found the idol, but that's not so likely.
Even worse than that was Bob's decision to give Randy the fake immunity idol and let him crash and burn at Tribal. Don't get me wrong, I thought that made for great TV but from Bob's perspective what do you gain? He has completely burned bridges with Corinne and Randy, two potential jury members who we know both will harbor grudges to the end of time. And does he really change his place as an outsider among the former Fang members? Even though he went with Sugar's plan she's not going to let him into the alliance at this point. The only thing I can think is that Bob was going with the plan that he's definitely safe tonight, but this seems pretty short-sighted and it was clear that they would vote Randy out anyway, with Operation:Strong-arm going on. Puzzling to say the least.
My prediction:
Randy. This was a gimme.
Season total: 2-6 (.250)
Spell Check:
Right: 7
Wrong: 1 (Suzie)
Other: 0
Season total: 40-10-5 (.727)
Quick hit thoughts
- A problem with Exile Island not actually being an island is that when Bob is there he can go wherever he wants. He could walk to Cameroon if he felt like it.
- Nobag is a terrible tribe name.
- Jeff should not have thrown that fake immunity idol into the fire. That one would have brought in some money for charity if it had been auctioned off.
- When they say that Bob is the second greatest physical threat it makes me wonder if this is the least physical merged tribe ever.
Labels: Survivor
# posted by Andy Hejl @ 8:00 AM 
Comments:
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All right. I don't know why I can never post on this thing, but I'm going to take another shot at it. Here's my thoughts:
Randy is an idiot and an asshole. I'm glad he's gone. While I like how he pushed the boundaries of the rules during the challenges (i.e. yelling during the ball down the hill challenge), he's such a dick after the challenges are over.
Some classic moments you didn't mention that I thought were worth mentioning. When Crystal goes off on Randy so loud that the whole council can hear her was brilliant and awesome TV albeit childish and not a good move from an endgame perspective, but I really don't think Crystal has a chance at the end if she does get there.
Next, is that I think that bringing back the chocolate and peanut butter was brilliant, but I would have liked Survivor to start the tradition of flashing back to the hot chicks (their names escape me know) getting naked for BP&C! For the fans Survivor! Do it for the fans!
I enjoy reading every week Andy. Keep it up!
Randy is an idiot and an asshole. I'm glad he's gone. While I like how he pushed the boundaries of the rules during the challenges (i.e. yelling during the ball down the hill challenge), he's such a dick after the challenges are over.
Some classic moments you didn't mention that I thought were worth mentioning. When Crystal goes off on Randy so loud that the whole council can hear her was brilliant and awesome TV albeit childish and not a good move from an endgame perspective, but I really don't think Crystal has a chance at the end if she does get there.
Next, is that I think that bringing back the chocolate and peanut butter was brilliant, but I would have liked Survivor to start the tradition of flashing back to the hot chicks (their names escape me know) getting naked for BP&C! For the fans Survivor! Do it for the fans!
I enjoy reading every week Andy. Keep it up!
# posted by 
: Sat Nov 29, 01:40:00 PM
: Sat Nov 29, 01:40:00 PM
Jeff?! Is that you? I had no idea anyone else was reading this thing!
Anyway, I disagree with Andy on the excitement of the Immunity Challenge. With the caveat that no one knows how it went down in real life, on TV it appeared that all three people launched their dominoes at the same time, and I thought it was riveting. Kenny's strategy to start at the finish was obviously the best, and I was glad to see it paid off.
Regarding Bob, I too am puzzled. If he was blindsiding Randy, why did he vote for Suzie at Tribal? When you stab someone in the back, you gotta move forward and not look back.
In any case, I'm still not sure why he let Sugar bring him along for this joke (whatever the motivation, it was great TV). If you have a fake idol, your power play should be to wait until people are ready to vote you out, then reveal the "idol" and hopefully intimidate them into *not* voting for you. Bob wasn't threatened here, so he really only did this to curry favor with Sugar, as if she somehow controls the game. Bizarre - why go to the trouble to construct an awesome fake idol and then not even attempt to leverage it?
And I'm with Jeff on the PB&C - how awesome would it have been if Probst had told Sugar after she bought it that nudity was a precondition to eating it?
Anyway, I disagree with Andy on the excitement of the Immunity Challenge. With the caveat that no one knows how it went down in real life, on TV it appeared that all three people launched their dominoes at the same time, and I thought it was riveting. Kenny's strategy to start at the finish was obviously the best, and I was glad to see it paid off.
Regarding Bob, I too am puzzled. If he was blindsiding Randy, why did he vote for Suzie at Tribal? When you stab someone in the back, you gotta move forward and not look back.
In any case, I'm still not sure why he let Sugar bring him along for this joke (whatever the motivation, it was great TV). If you have a fake idol, your power play should be to wait until people are ready to vote you out, then reveal the "idol" and hopefully intimidate them into *not* voting for you. Bob wasn't threatened here, so he really only did this to curry favor with Sugar, as if she somehow controls the game. Bizarre - why go to the trouble to construct an awesome fake idol and then not even attempt to leverage it?
And I'm with Jeff on the PB&C - how awesome would it have been if Probst had told Sugar after she bought it that nudity was a precondition to eating it?
PB&C is awesome. But he couldn't have sprung that on Sugar there. The beauty of the first one with Heidi and Jenna was that they just offered straight up to get naked for PB&C.
And Jeff is right on. I can't believe that I didn't mention Crystal's screaming her parting shots to Randy. That was priceless. I love it when a plan comes together as Randy's so clearly did.
And Jeff is right on. I can't believe that I didn't mention Crystal's screaming her parting shots to Randy. That was priceless. I love it when a plan comes together as Randy's so clearly did.
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