To me, the only dark periods so far were CI & Fiji, and RI & SP. The first was just bad casting and way too many twists. The second entirely stems from RI hogging too much airtime coupled with returning players, meaning we really don’t get to know very many people at all.
South Pacific was actually a pretty good season for me and aside from Rick the editing was actually not too bad at all as we were allowed to get some good characters out of it. And game moves too.
Redemption Island though was just blah. From Rob being shown almost to MORE than Russell levels, nobody doing anything against Rob that would let people like Andrea make a move, the GOOD move of voting out Russell being painted as a bad one, and as a result the actual good/likable majority alliance on Zapatera being ignored to try and make them seem negative while we were supposed to agree with STEPHANIE AND KRISTA who were just disgusting and vile to where I was glad they got voted off, to Probst borderline openly cheering for Rob during the Immunity Challenges just left a bad taste in my mouth. And to think, it all would’ve been avoided and fixed if Mike made that last ball shot in the last pre-merge IC. Or well, if Matt flipped/Zap played the HII on him.
SP was a marginal improvement on RI, but the redemption island twist still made it blegh in my eyes.
Also, to be fair, RI wouldn’t have been so terrible if not for a few things, like:
-If Fran hadn’t been excluded from the conversation when the initial alliance formed.
-Phil hadn’t been cast.
-Russell hadn’t been retarded enough to play the same losing game a third time and create a rift on Zapatera.
-Steph/Krista weren’t stupid enough to follow Russell.
-The editors not hating Zapatera for killing their golden child.
-Zapatera not realizing that the merge was approaching and eliminating Sarita over David.
-Matt hadn’t been given that stupid bandage to give him a leg-up over Sarita in the duel.
-Matt hadn’t been retarded and gone right back to Ometepe AND deciding to tell Rob that he was wavering.
-Someone in Ometepe deciding to switch up the game at any point.
-Natalie not being absolutely retarded and the most worthless player ever.
It had some good cast members (Ashley, Grant, Julie, Starita, Fran), but a combination of editing and people being starstruck by Rob screwed the season over. It just didn’t work at all. But really, had anything I listed not happened, the season probably would have been saved.
SP really just suffered from lopsided editing, the over-the-top religiousness, and a lot of the interesting players being booted early (Christine, Stacey, Dawn, Jim). Thankfully, it had better editing and a great winner, so that’s something.
I wouldn’t really say Dawn/Jim were booted early since they made merge and all that. I forgot about that bandage thing in the duel, but you have to admit if they didn’t give him that, then people would be saying they just let his foot get all terrible and that he never could’ve won it. Also, the reason Zapatera voted out Sarita over David is because they thought the merge was happening a round later than the one it did and that they could make it 5-5 with Matt in the middle.
I know why they did it, but it was ultimately a bad move because Sarita was definitely more loyal overall. Granted, they probably did think that the premerge was going to last longer than it did, but I feel like they should have known that the merge was coming. They also would have had the added benefit of having someone more likely to knock Matt out/return to their side had they gotten rid of David. Sarita would have returned to them, but they had to have known that she was doomed at the duel. David would have had a better shot. Although the bandage thing really did help Matt so he would have beaten David, too, most likely…I don’t know. And I know people would have said that it was unfair had Matt not gotten the bandage, but frankly, it was still pretty ridiculous that he had such a huge advantage. Sarita even said later on that the cut on his foot was barely noticeable, and that it was pretty silly that he got such a large bandage for it.
By the way, for anyone curious about locations.
Spoiler
It’s been confirmed that S25, and presumably S26, will be filmed in the Philippines.
Spoiler
Yeah, that it was going to be in Philippines was posted on some site called Survivor Skills a bit back. Of course, I only know since someone mentioned it on Sucks because I got banned from Skills for refusing to refer to Jim Early/Missyae as anything other than “Fat Fuck” or “Enlarged Screw”, lol. Oh, and for calling him a desperate troll who doesn’t give a shit about Survivor with his ‘pay per spoilers’ thing he was going to do.
At least that’s a good reason for getting banned. Missyae kind of sucked.
Since the time of filming has got to be coming up soon for it (it’s supposed to start in February right?), do you have any other news about S25?
I think filming starts in March. No other news as far as I’ve heard from the rumor mill (AKA Sucks and GFAQs).
Wait…GFAQs? You’re kidding me, lol.
Nope, there’s a Survivor ODT on the TV board on GFAQs. A lot of people there are pretty cool, although admittedly there are a lot of casuals there too who just visit to post “LOL RUSSELL BEST PLAYER EVER” or whatever.
…Are they as bad as the Big Brother casuals who are stupid enough to not figure out Jeff/Jordan/Rachel/Brendon(and f’ing Shelley at the end of the day) were the VILLAINS last season with Dani/Kalia/Porsche being the underdogs?
The Survivor ODT is vastly better than the BB ODT. I know that firsthand because I pretty much openly argued with the entire BB ODT last season because I supported Dani/Kalia/Porsche and no one else there didn’t. Also, they never accepted that all of BB this year was rigged for the vets (sans Dani since she abandoned that alliance) with the stupid “Hey vote someone back into the house who will obviously be Brendon because he’s already got a fanbase unlike the under-edited newbs” twist. I hated the BB ODT this year, but the Survivor ODTs are way way better.
You’re MUCH better off NOT getting into this “BB is rigged” crap. Naturally they’d do “Golden Keys” in the same way that Survivor did RI, but there were plenty of times where the things that happened didn’t have to go badly. Had Kalia not put Lawon up (and put up Jordan instead), then even if Brendon got voted back again there’d be ONLY Rachel in the house, not Rachel AND Brendon and they wouldn’t have to waste another HOH getting rid of him again. The duos coming back could have been avoided if Porsche never opened Pandora’s Box (or hell, even if Adam immediately jumped and made Jordan his partner when it was announced instantly), and so on. The ONLY truly fishy thing that seemed like it couldn’t have been avoided was Rachel picking the order of who went in the 2nd HOH, that was it. If it was rigged, they would have say, placed a DPOV or power or something like that somewhere in the house and told only Rachel or Jordan where it was, but they didn’t. And not even in a Coup D’Etat normal sense, since the audience can vote for whoever they want (which is a throwback to how the ACTUAL Big Brother works and the first season).
And the DR stuff is a total stretch because having seen the feeds the past few years there’s very little to nothing to support that they do anything other than to ask people to clean up catchy soundbits that they say so that they’re able to show them on TV. For instance, a DR with 30 "um"s and "aahh"s, isn’t that great, and neither is one with 45 different ethnic slurs that can’t be aired. Besides, if they felt they were being led to vote one way or nominate someone, then they have the ability to say “screw you, I’m putting X up”. Though I DO kind of get why some people make up/over-exaggerate/cling to that silly claim. It’s much easier for some people to believe something like that than to believe their favourite just either did a bad move or played badly.
But like I said, I’m NOT getting into that whole thing because I’m not a conspiracy theorist (though yes, it’s incredibly ironic hearing someone who goes around saying “Kurt Cobain was murdered” say that, I know), so please dots, hopefully you and everybody else will just understand where I’m coming from on that and leave the BB part at that. This is about Survivor, anyway.
I’m glad to know the Survivor fanbase there is pretty good though. I don’t know if I could stand a bunch of people trying to convince me that somebody who got voted out 3 times last season played the best game.
My biggest problem with BB is that a lot of the twists and the DR sessions seem way too conveniently placed to just be a coincidence. Like, the “vote someone back in” twist seems like a failsafe to keep the vets. I mean, who is going to get voted in: Mary-Sue who no one knows about or a popular returning player? Things like that just make me wonder what’s going on there. And it’s made worse when the entire BB fanbase on GFAQs bitches about the twists when they hurt a player they like and praises the twists when they benefit someone they like. Personally, I think the game should be without huge game-changing twists and people who talk to them in the DR. Maybe I’m just paranoid but it always bothers me and that’s a lot of the reason why I prefer Survivor.
The thing is, I hope that no one thought Ozzy played the best game. I liked Ozzy as a CHARACTER in SP (despite CI and Micro Ozzy sucking) but he’s not a good gameplayer, and he definitely didn’t play a great game in SP. Although in his favor, him being voted out the first time wouldn’t have happened without RI; it was a risky strategy rather than him being legitimately outplayed.
PS, I hate to whore myself out but I finished my ranking of the Vanuatu players over on Sucks. Check it out if you’re bored enough. 
That’s great and all but…Twila out before MIA? Chris out before Mia AND JOHN KENNEY and only at 7? That…that’s just silly because Chris is awesome and in my top 3 for favourite winners ever. Hell, Mia being top 2 is just…WTF (granted a LOT of the stuff I said when I ranked Nicaragua back in the day got me a ton of flak there)
I mean sure Eliza being 3’s fine, but well, she had that whole thing about how she hates it when jurors vote “emotionally” and went on about how Russell should’ve won and the jurors shouldn’t have voted based on who they liked better…when that was her exact reasoning for voting for both Chris AND Parvati.
Like I said in my write-up, I’ll honestly probably never understand why Mia gets so much hate. =\ She was so ridiculous and trashy that it made her a great character rather than being annoying like NaOnka kind of became at times. And John K, I just loved him as a background character. Honestly, Ami/John K./Mia was my top 3 initially, but I really couldn’t justify John K. being above some others in a write-up, so I kind of had to lower him by default. I really loved everyone in my top 8, honestly, and they’re all pretty close together.
I hadn’t heard that about Eliza, and that’s lame, although I still loved her as a character and loved her journey in general.
Yeah, she went on a bit of a semi-rant about it on Samoa and kinda got into it with some members saying she would’ve voted for Russell if she was there and somebody posted a video of her FTC voting as a response.
But yeah, Mia is in no way shape or form as bad as Naonka. Never before have I spent an entire season just begging for someone to quit prior to that (and this is way before I knew that she did). Well, that and a couple other things about Nicaragua pissed me off. Like them trying to make us think Jane wasn’t absolutely a terrible person who deserved 100 times more hate, how slimy Sash was, and how much of a giant pussy Chase was, lol.