re: Beginner Survivor seasons question (No spoilers)

My favorite one was Amanda playing the idol and blindsiding Alexis. Eric's was painful lol.

Nowadays every vote out is a blindside.

As someone who started from the beginning and binged every season in a short time span, it's very interesting to see how the voting dynamics have evolved.

First few seasons were very simple. Find a majority alliance, and vote everyone else out of the game before turning on each other.

THen people realized, if you are on the bottom of that majority alliance it's better to flip to a different alliance to better your position. So say two of you are number 5 and 6 in the majority against 3. It's better to flip and make it a 5 to 4 alliance because you've guaranteed at least one of you making it to to the final 4 instead of neither of you.

Then came the blindside era, where people wanted to be in an alliance, but would ultimately realize threats that needed to be taken out of their alliance as they got the numbers (i.e Ozzy). So doesn't matter how close you are to someone you would take them out. Especially once you got past the merge.

Now there are basically what they call voting blocks where every tribal council could have a different group of people voting together based on what's best for them at that time. Alliances still exist but they are much looser with blurred lines.

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I wish Survivor would release complete footage from some of the tribal councils. I’ve mentioned it in other threads, but my cousin is good friends with a guy that played one season. Got to talk to him once and he said tribal councils usually lasted well over an hour, and so much gets edited out.

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I've read they routinely last at least a couple hours now and Jeff is not nearly as polished as the edit makes it appear. Basically they will go until everyone consents to vote (as we saw in Game Changers when Hali said "uhh I didn't consent" lol). As Jeff always says "It's your tribal council".

Fun fact: Tina in All Stars tried to filibusterer a tribal because she thought she was going home. She apparently spoke for so long production had to step in.

Kinda hate that Parv gets so much credit for that move when that is 100% Cirie's beautiful mind orchestrating that plan. All 4 ladies played their parts to perfection though.

It's weird bc it's obviously a dumb move but I can also definitely see the logic and upside to it. Coming into the season everyone knew Parv's MO which is why they were trying to get her out from the jump. So you can see why when the first 4 people voted out are men that the Heroes would think it was Parv running the show. If JT is right, it goes down as one of the best moves in survivor history and he's likely a two time winner. Instead he goes down in flames though.

You have to remember, Heroes vs Villains started filming 3 weeks after Russell's first season, Samoa, finished filming, not airing. So they all have no idea who Russell is or how he plays the game.


The inspector gadget letter was hilariously bad though lol.

Samoa aired September thru December 2009. Heroes vs villains was filmed August through September 2009. I believe all they were told about him is he one of the top villains in the shows history. Russell didn’t even know the outcome of Samoa before filming HvV.

Playing back to back seasons has only happened 4 times that I can think of. Rupert in Pear Islands/All Stars. James and Amanda in China/Micronesia. Russell in Samoa/HvV and a guy named Joe in worlds apart/Cambodia. It’s very hard on the contestants especially when they go far. That’s why Amanda is breaking down crying so much in Micronesia and Russell’s body composition is radically different than at the start of Samoa. They’ve both essentially played survivor for 2 and a half months straight.

ETA: actuallly there are a few more people but not really worth mentioning.

He just had the one from the heroes side and parv had the villains one.

Yeah I think I read where 4 episodes of China had aired when Micronesia started filming. That’s why the people give Amanda a golf clap when she comes out bc they don’t recognize her. James stands out in China from the jump.

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Playing back to back seasons has only happened 4 times that I can think of.

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Stephenie and Bobby Jo did Palau and Guatemala back to back as well.

Malcolm did Phillipines and Caramoan (Fans vs. Favorites 2) back to back, with not much time between, so the fans had no idea who he was.

Michaela (lol) and Zeke did Millenials vs. Gen X and Game Changers back to back. Those were also filmed close together so none of the other contestants had seen their season.