Survivor: The Latest One

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I finally caught up on both of those episodes...

Regarding the 4/30 one: Yeah, I'm not sure why they didn't want to keep Sierra around, she seemed like a sure vote against Coach and Debbie and then they could get rid of her if they wanted.

About 5/7: Agree that they should have voted Coach out and then Debbie, since her vote was a sure thing too. She did win an immunity challenge though so maybe they figured they should get her out now, but Coach has won one also so that shouldn't have affected their decision too much. I think JT and Stephen are in control and it is weird, like they said, that no one has seemed to want to go after them after all this time, but hey...

I just gotta say it's amazing how old Timbera imploded. They had the numbers when they went into the merge by like what, 3? Then they just kept voting out their own guys until they couldn't form an alliance of old members even if they wanted to. Jalepow got SO lucky this game...
 
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EricBess

Guest
So, Coach was actually a lot more gracious than I was expecting him to be. I was very impressed right from the beginning with JT and Stephen avoiding any backlash by informing Coach that it was Debbie that wrote his name down. How nobel of them for protecting him. Warrior alliance is very strong and Coach controls everything. Well...right up until the moment they vote him off, anyway.

It seems like Erin has accepted that she will only make #4 and was only concerned with lasting longer than Coach. She did shoot her mouth off, but it seems that it bothers her more than the others that Coach is playing on emotions.

I also love how Coach, who claims only honor and integrity, made a comment to JT about how the strategy, competative side of him wanted to send one of the girls to Exile Island. Very nobel. Of course, JT ends up turning that on him and manages to send Coach to exile in a manner that actually earned him points with Coach.

I'm not sure what was going on with the actual vote. It seems like for all of the alliance, they "agreed" to vote out Erin, but in the end, Stephen decided to vote for Coach instead without discussing it with JT. I think we are down to the wire enough that it probably won't matter, but it makes me wonder at the level of trust between the two, who seem like very strong allies. It will be interesting to see if there is any fallout on that one.

Did you happen to notice that there was a huge beetle crawling up JT's shoulder at tribal counsel?
 

Melkor

Well-known member
I did notice the bug, that was great. I wouldn't be at all surprised if J.T. and Stephen had discussed it, it just wasn't shown because it would take the suspense out of the vote. Obviously it makes more sense strategically to get rid of Coach because he has a better shot at immunity unless somebody was thinking that they wanted to bring Coach to the final 2 because he doesn't have a lot of support on the jury. I don't think that the people in this particular game are thinking like that though.
 
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EricBess

Guest
Well, Stephen was, apparently. I can't believe how close these guys came to losing it all. Erin was incredibly manipulative. I think they made a mistake voting off Taj, but for some reason, they convinced themselves that Taj would have an easier time with the final challange than Erin.

Personally, the only reason to keep Erin over Taj is if you were planning on stabbing the other in the back by not taken them to the finals. And Stephen may have done just that. Ironically, I was pretty confident that JT would come pretty close to being a unanimous winner against Stephen. I'm certain he wouldn't have been against Erin and, quite frankly, I'm not sure he would have even won against Erin. Usually, Jeff asks that question, but he didn't this time. However, the reason everyone liked JT is because they all felt that he was trustworthy. Had he betrayed that trust with Stephen and taken Erin to the finals instead, then who knows.

Interestingly enough, I think the vote would have been different had Stephen won the final challange and brought JT. I think JT still would have won, just not so decisively. Stephen was just too much of a weasel. There were several times when he dug himself a hole by trying to interject on what JT was saying. I don't think I've ever seen a final tribal counsel before where the two people keep on talking after all of the questions have been asked.

I thought the final challange was very interesting, though. I had a feeling that Erin was in trouble when she added the third ball and almost missed the next one. But instead of waiting to drop that one back in, she just dropped it back in immediately, which meant that they were going to be that close again the next time. They were, and she missed it the second time. And Stephen must have been tired or something, because he kept fumbling the balls. He managed to save 3 or 4 of them before finally missing. I'm actually surprized he went out the way he did. I was expecting him to take so much time fumbling that he didn't have time for the next ball.

In the end, I think the best man won. I was kind of hoping that Taj would have gotten the $100,000, though. It didn't surprize me that Sierra was in the top 3, but I'm guessing Taj was 2nd. I kind of wish that they would have a rule that if you win the million, you are ineligible for the $100K. That way, at least 2 people would walk away with something. Does anyone know if they still prorate what the other people receive based on what place they ended up in?
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think the best man did win and I think he could have won against Erinn or if Stephen had brought him (which apparently wasn't a sure thing). If Stephen had brought Erinn though, it may have been close with people more voting for Erinn to "spite" Stephen.

In any case, it appears JT and Stephen are good and close friends, with JT admitting that he was acting at the final tribal council when Stephen said he would have brought Erinn (under pressure from Debbie), so who knows. If it was up to Stephen, he may have still brought JT since he would have had to put much more thought into it. And though Debbie said she valued honesty for the answer to help her decide, apparently she voted for JT anyway so it ws probably more to get Stephen to admit that he would bring Erinn than JT more than anything.

Yeah, I noticed the fumble with Erinn and Stephen's unsure hands - not sure if his positioning had to do anything with it since he was down low and JT was still standing. But after Stephen kept fumbling his balls, I thought it was just a matter of time before JT won unless JT made some huge mistake.

I was surpised Sierra was in the top 3 for most popular; I would have thought Coach or even Tyson. I think they still prorate based on players placements, but not positive.
 
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EricBess

Guest
Yeah, I noticed that too about Stephen being down on the challenge. I'm pretty sure that was a problem for him, just thinking how I would be.

I actually thought that both players answered Debbie's questions very well. And she probably felt that both answers were honest, but that JT's was more deserving. But yeah, anytime someone says they "value honesty", they are probably digging for a specific answer, which Stephen claims is why he answered the way he did during the reunion show.

But he did give a pretty good answer. He first made a mistake by saying he would have brought Erin. He should have thought for a second longer because the rest of his response was "I would like to think that I would have brought JT, but I fear that I would have brought Erin." If he had insisted on his original "I don't know" and then added that, it might have served him better.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I thought JT answered her question well, but Stephen's answer, unfortunately, looked bad. I mean, she specifically wanted a person as an answer and when he first answered "I don't know", that was bad to begin with. Then when he hemmed and hawed and finally came up with Erinn, given his previous talking during the night, it just looked wishy-washy. He really didn't have a good choice - either he said JT and looked like he was trying to save face, or Erinn where he looked like the bad guy. He should have just said a person to begin with.
 
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EricBess

Guest
I agree that he took too long getting to his answer, but I still think he would have looked better if he had just said, "Let me finish. I don't know. I planned on taking JT, but it would be a lie to say that I didn't consider Erin. I fear I would have selected Erin, but I'm glad I never had to decide."
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Well, yeah, that would have been good to say. But I think his nervousness and the pressure of the final council was getting to him :)
 

Melkor

Well-known member
I thought Stephen's performance at the final tribal was really really poor but I also don't think there was any real way for him to win. When Stephen said that he and J.T. made all the decisions together that basically left Stephen with no avenue to victory. People generally vote on three factors, loyalty (or betrayal), skill (both physical and mental) or personality. J.T. kills him on personality, and since they worked hand in glove for the whole game, noone was loyal to the one without being loyal to the other. That left skill and the fact of the matter is that Stephen admitted that J.T. was just as much of a strategic player as he was and J.T. was also the better physical player. The problem was that Stephen didn't seem to think all this through before hand and tried to argue conventionally and got himself tripped up.

Overall, it was a good season. I thought there were a lot of good players but unfortunately that led to a pretty predictable last several weeks. Still, a lot of good personalities. I'd love to have Coach and Tyson back for another go. Definitely agree that the overall winner shouldn't be eligible to win the fan vote
 
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EricBess

Guest
I agree with your assessment also Melkor, but I wanted to comment about betrayal.

To be fair, JT had everyone approach him about alliances, but I don't recall him ever activing recruiting or trying to set something up with anyone other than Stephen (execpt perhaps Taj). Stephen, on the other hand, came across as actively working the alliances and looking for opportunities.

There was a comment in the finale show about how many alliances there were this season. Stephen was in the middle of pretty much all of them and JT was approached on pretty much all of them. The exile alliance didn't really include JT, for example.

But it wasn't the alliances themselves, but how they each reacted to the alliances. Stephen was the "wizard" for a reason. He was viewed as manipulating things and deciding which alliance was going to get him further in the game. I don't think that anyone really trusted him because of it. But we know that JT was voted as the person they would all trust with their lives.

So while that goes to your personality criteria, I think it also played into your betrayal criteria. If anyone did feel betrayed (and no one really said they did, so who knows), my guess is that they were more likely to have felt betrayed by Stephen than by JT.

Taj was the one exception to that. I think Taj would have felt more betrayed by JT just because he had been extended more trust. But I think it was also clear that she felt JT was more deserving regardless.

So, I think that feeling specifically betrayed may have played more of a role that you give it credit this season, but it was so closely tied to personality that it was largely irrelevant.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
But you also have to keep in mind that we see only what the show wants us to see.

For instance, I never knew JT and Stephen had an alliance from about Day 3 (in their words). Stephen said they had like minds and were strategizing all the time, from when they got back from challenges to it seemed like every waking moment, but we never really saw any of that. So who really knows what role JT had in the alliances? Was he content with his Stephen and Taj alliance or did he also seek alliances with Joe and other members of Jalapao? He comes across as the person people wanted to get on their alliance, but it's only what we see on the show.
 

Melkor

Well-known member
I agree that, if it was either of them, Stephen did more betraying on the show, although really they were very similar in that aspect and because everyone likes J.T. he just didn't catch the flack for it. Both Brendan and Coach should have felt much more betrayed by J.T. than they ended up acting.
 
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EricBess

Guest
Yeah, I don't remember when JT and Stephen were first shown talking about alliance. It might have been when they were talking about who was actually in possession of the idol. They made a point of the "Exile alliance", and the "Warrior alliance". It seemed like this season, there were a lot more 2-person alliances and very few solid alliances of 3 or more people. The only real 3-person alliances I can remember were JT, Stephen, and Taj (we see where that got Taj) and Coach, Tyson, and Debbie.

I think Brendan would have felt more betrayed by Stephen because of the Exile alliance. Stephen sort of used them for his own purposes (the definition of the game, I suppose) and JT was probably more periperal.

As for Coach, I think he cared more about the fact that JT didn't take the "auto-win" (oh, the irony) and actually brought Stephen to the final, who was viewed as a tougher opponent. I actually have to respect Coach for how he reacted when he was about to be elliminated. I was expecting him to be more upset, but he fell on his sword like he told Sierra to. I think Tyson was sort of the same because he and Coach had talked so much about that.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
But those 3 person alliances didn't really solidify until after the merge. For instance, while Jalapao was still on its own, JT and Stephen were shown considering to vote off Taj because she gave Stephen the immunity idol. Was it serious or were they just kicking around ideas and exploring all options? I think because it was shown that Taj brought Stephen (I think) into the Exile alliance, it just played better because of possible betrayal, but who knows.

I'm not sure Brendan would have felt too betrayed. I mean, yeah, it was the Exile alliance, but it looked like he bonded more with Taj because he spent so much more time out there with her compared to only one time (2-3 days) with Stephen. And then at the merge, when Brendan was trying to keep on the down-low, he didn't really talk to Tak and Stephen which as we know, caused them to question whether the Exile alliance was still on. So aside from what we didn't see, I don't know if Brendan really formed a rapport with Stephen.

I think Coach just realized how it was going to be, despite the Warrior alliance, when for a couple of previous tribal councils, it was clear that JT and Stephen were doing what they wanted and not what the Warrior alliance had decided. So I don't think he was too upset, like a true blindside. Tyson just strikes me as a laid back surfer dude (though he's a cycler) so he just took it as it came - I mean, I'm sure he was a little upset since his was more a true blindside, but it didn't seem he held a grudge to the final tribal council.
 
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EricBess

Guest
Good point Spidey. Voting off Taj may have been something just mentioned in passing, but because it gets brought up again in the final tribal and/or because it increases the drama, they made it look like a serious consideration to the viewers.
 

Melkor

Well-known member
I state that Brendan might feel more betrayed by J.T. because he went on that reward challenge with him and tried specifically to bring J.T. along and then was voted out by J.T. after putting his neck out for him.
 
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