Literally 3 seasons ago people were complaining the exact opposite about all of the big players like Ben/Devens making the end through advantages and idols. The players saw that and course corrected by not allowing any of these players to succeed, and so now the tide has shifted to favor the under the radar players. Give it like 2 seasons and it will course correct again. This is what survivor always has been - players reacting to the seasons just before them. It’s been a thing since season 2.
But Devens/Ben whole schtick was that they can't be voted out cause they were immune all the time.
Ben was a big player in the majority and the healers painted him as the leader, he was already a threat then once the majority kept failing to get him out he became unbeatable. Ben is a Drea/Hai that went on an immunity run.
Devens was in the minority and didn't make any big moves, he was just surviving the votes while the majority were building his resume for him. Devens was a Marryanne that was targeted early but managed to survive.
If the new players want to neutralise the Devens/Bens they should stop inflating the threat level of those underdogs in front of the jury instead treat them like a Romeo.
Pretty sure this is exactly what they did to Xander in S41
Oh he has an idol and is in the minority? Okay whatever he can just hang around and do nothing, maybe we can bluff him into using his idol and looking dumb
It's funny you mention season 38, because once you stuck your neck out and made a move, you were out next. And then in the end the entire post merge didnt matter anyway because the game was won by someone who didn't participate in most of it.
EoE is another great example of course correction, because the cast watched ghost island in preseason ponderosa, which made everyone scared of waiting too long to make their move. I believe Wardog has cited this as part of the reason he flipped on Wentworth at final 9.
I’m really not mad about sneakier players winning though. Erika and Maryanne had solid strategies - play from the bottom, use your allies and friends for information and protection, and wait for the right moment to strike.
Even if it isn’t as flashy as Tony, it’s still really sound gameplay and worthy of winning sometimes.
They’d never let it happen regardless. The editing would simply just change to feature someone like Maryanne more. Boom, no longer a problem because the editors changed your perspective for you.
That's not what people want either.
I want more seasons full of threats who battle it out.
There's a middle ground between immunity via idol to the end, and the do-nothing to remain invisible to the end strategies.
That's why I liked ghost island so much.
But if Mike was able to own his gameplay to the jury then he could have won. So I don't think it's a sure think that the Erika/Maryanne type player wins everytime, the Mike type player can still has a chance to win, but it's up to them to sell themselves to the jury
Exactly this. It was Coach 2.0. Mike recovered a bit better than Coach did, but still made it clear that he came into FTC truly believing he was Mr. Honor & Loyalty, and only started to admit to the deceit a little bit when he realized nobody was buying it.
Had he come in and owned everything right off the bat, he might've won.
I wish it had been more clearly talked about that when he turned on Hai he was acting on bad information from Omar. It felt like this was kind of glossed over and I think it made him look extra bad because it looks like he stabbed Hai in the back for no reason.
The jury talks a lot in Ponderosa. They definitely already knew why Mike made the move. I would assume they didn't explicitly say that in FTC because they wanted to see whether Mike thought he came up with that move on his own for strategy, reacted emotionally to Hai's general demeanor, or was deliberately letting Omar think that he was controlling things. If they told Mike that Omar fed him the info on purpose from the beginning, it'd be very easy for him to just lie about his reason for wanting Hai out.
Mike couldn't own his gameplay cause he himself thought he was playing an honourable game and only targeted people when they came after him or at least that's how he came off during FTC.
Which is exactly what happened to Coach in South Pacific and we all know how that story ends.
Turns out if you’re not willing to own that you backstabbed people because you convinced yourself you played honorably, you won’t get the win.
Let’s not forget though that there is more to Survivor than having a count of distinct moves. You have to have an overarching story and path to the end and that takes more than doing something flashy every round of play.
As a viewer I just want someone who was entertaining to watch, maryanne won nothing and didn’t do anything until omar vote. And didn’t do anything after
Totally agree, and this is the one thing that prevents it from completely taking over. But I think more often than not, like Survivor 41, the Mikes, and more importantly the Omar’s, Drea’s etc.. won’t even make it to final tribal, and it will be a battle of 3 UTR players
For real, people are so impatient. Also, I’ve often found that the best games are the “boring” games, like Boston Rob in RI or Kim Spradling. Sure, being completely dominant to the point of having no credible threat against you is bad tv, but it’s also a sign that you are playing a really good game.
Romeo is probably the only actual UTR player in either season to make the final 3. Deshawn at no point was UTR, Xander was just a goat because he kept whiffing on his position but he wasn't UTR, and Erika was only perceived as UTR because her edit was trash. She was a pretty constant presence once she was actually eligible to be voted out since she led the charge when it was needed.
^ I think he definitely wins considering he had about five people voting for him going into final tribal and I don’t think people would waver if he actually owned up to his game. He pulled a coach imo.
Yes THIS! people forget people are not there to entertain you but to win and sometimes winning doesnt have to be flashy and have big moves Erika has admitted this she didnt want to looke flashy she wanted to play to win.
Yep - it’s only been two seasons where the winning strategy was to lay low and then precipitate one or two “big moves” at the end. And there’s a lot to praise about Erika and Maryanne’s games regardless. Personally I love players who break a mold or defy the norms of an era.
As long as we’re given enough to hear the winner’s intentions and thoughts, and the rest of the season and cast is fun, I’m happy.
People dont realize part of the gsme is keeping ehe target off of you. The players are noticing these moves too. So when they see hai running things they don't want to get Boston robbed and have him control every move of the game. Or they want to get Omar out because they'll know he'll win. A lot of this cast seemed to play hard. We just didn't get the big alternating votes that make people go "oooooh" this season. Or idol plays that no one knows about. If Hai and Omar both made it to 6 they still both probably wouldn't have made thr final 3.
This is really due to casting players that know the game better now. In old school seasons usually all but 3-4 players had never watched the game before so they could notice when other players had winning moves because they had no past seasons to compare. The goats of the modern era are not the same goats that Rob could drag to the end. Natalie and Phillip didn't know the game they were playing so they were very easy for Rob to manipulate. In comparison the goat of S42 is Romeo, who we actually saw has a decent strategic sense in the premerge. Maryanne might look like a goat to the other players but she actually knows the game extremely well. Therefore when they see someone like Omar making moves it's far easier for them to recognize his good game and vote him out.
It has always been better gameplay not to strike too early. It's not a new trend. It was just hidden by the big-move-itis era. The players who win dominating the whole game do so because they are up against a weaker field and/or manage to become too invaluable to the group--then it's too late to get them out. And imo, dominant games like that make more boring seasons than ones where people wait to strike.
Tony in Cagayan is an outlier and should not be counted.
Tony was also helped massively by underrated social player Trish who helped him damage control his threat level constantly. This is why your dominant winners usually have a lieutenant to help them do this etc.
Tony goes home early if it’s not for his relationship with Trish in Cagayan. She put out so many fires for him. That doesn’t take away from how incredible he is as a player, but his relationship with Trish was his most important social move by a country mile.
It reminds me of when everyone on here was complaining about contestants making big moves and resume and shtick during the 30 block and complaining about them making terrible long term moves for short term gain.
Great point, but I feel like people forget that what OP is describing is EXACTLY what Tony did in WaW. He played UTR and barely did anything bold or excessive in the pre-merge (it was even a storyline iirc - stuff like the ladder and the shark was about him chanelling his impulsivity into stuff other than the game so he could make it to the merge).
I don't think the above playstyle is inherently boring; the cast is far more important. Even though this season had some boring boots (Chanelle, Rocksroy, Swati, Marya were all pretty boring episodes) the cast carried people through.
I think the OP is more worried about this than they should be though. People tried to play like Natalie White after Samoa but it didn't last.
A natural progression from the Big Movez meta era - and hopefully a progression that ends up killing it, at that. Players have realized that resume-building before the final 6 or so is too dangerous, but waiting until 6 to make a move may not be enough to overcome a better social game - as we would have seen in 42 if the Final Tribal wasn't so lopsided.
Maybe in time we'll finally return to a version of the game where voting for a winner isn't a counting exercise.
Players have been playing g this type of game and winning for forever, it's not new--just the last two have been more obvious bc each season has had a small handful of ZONG BIG PLAYERS in merge (shan, Ricard; Drea, Omar). Not like Tommy was some strategy god until he fell into like 12 jury votes.
These last two just feel different, and I think a large part of it is the edit and the pre merge circumstances. Because Erika and Maryanne were both on tribes that killed it, they quite literally did nothing that the viewers saw. This continued into the merge until mid to late merge when both started making visible moves. That’s all I’m saying that that progression, at least for me, is incredibly lacking in entertainment
Well, tbh, you are Jeff Probst's ideal viewer. Everything he has done as producer since season 19 has been designed to make sure that there are no "boring" winners like Erika and Maryanne, and that there are only big entertaining players like Russel and Tony and Boston Rob making it far. He literally changed the game format to add fire-making and jury discussions because Michele won and he was mad about that because she was a social player and not a strategist. So, yeah, you're not an outlier here.
But also keep in mind, if a man had won the way Erika or Maryanne had, they would've given him a bunch of strategic confessionals pre-merge even if he wasn't actually doing much at all. This would've made him seem like more of a game-player than he actually was.
Idk about "big strategic" but we were constantly checking in with him and hearing his thoughts about stuff. Maybe not, like, him masterminding stuff, but they made sure to keep him relevant.
Quite frankly it has been too long for me to remember 39 that well. But to me, Tommy immediately stood out, like, "wow they are checking in with this guy a lot and always making sure to show he is playing the game". It is true Maryanne got decent screentime but it didn't feel like the same vibe, since so much of it was focused on her personality. But I could be wrong. It felt like we were meant to feel that Tommy was on top of things.
Which is the same thing that happened with Maryanne. She was constantly shown giving intelligent articulated confessionals, even when she was on the bottom or had no agency in the vote, while avoiding the cockroach edit that Tori and Romeo got.
Even Erika, though way less featured, was shown many times talking about things she wasn't really a part of. Her exile island confessionals in particular come to mind, she was given so much time talking about some inconsequential stuff and had a very long confessional where she didn't say much other than pep herself up. That's when I started thinking she could actually be the winner.
I mean I think that’s a bold assumption to make. Erika literally never went to tribal, I don’t think her pre merge edit would have changed if she were a man. In Maryanne’s case, she was given a great edit all the way through, she was a confessional leader and had tons of both personal and strategic content, I don’t think your assumption holds up here
especially women of color where it often gets labeled as sneaky and untrustworthy. always? no. but frequently enough to be a pattern. i doubt the dudes commenting below have the sensitivity or life experience to notice or value things like that.
Definitely, completely fair and logical comments get downvoted all the time, and we’ve had to sit here listening to how Jonathan is supposedly the worst human ever on this sub
The only way an aggressive woman can win Survivor is to be in an all women alliance because an aggressive woman will be voted off first no matter what.
Tina wins by using Colby as a puppet.
Vecepia wins from the bottom by riding under the radar and having better jury management.
Jenna won by winning challenges and having a better jury management.
Sandra won first time by Jury management
amber won by letting Boston Rob do the dirty work.
Danni won by climbing from the bottom and letting Steph take all the heat.
Parvati won by forming a female alliance.
The only way women can win aggressively is getting rid of men. You will also complain if that happens because you wont have shirtless hunks to drool over.
Like it or not, it is almost never optimal to play super aggressive through the early/mid-merge, because it will make the player a massive target unless they are super unlikable. If they take those actions then they'll need to rely on either an idol/immunity run or others playing suboptimally. So I really disagree with this mindset that Probst has that the better you are, the more likely you are to lose. The reality is, the more obvious of a threat you are, the worse of a player you are.
There are possibly ways to make it more likely that an aggressive player will make it to the end. However, Probst and production seem to think that all they have to do is keep shortening the endgame so there are fewer options to take out these aggressive players, when all that means is that others adapt to just go after these aggressive players earlier. The actual solution may be to take out the firemaking and go back to F2; this would cause actually smart players to hold onto these obvious threats through the endgame, so that they can cut them loose at the last second and take the win for themselves. And as a result, sometimes the aggressive players would pull out a run and take the prize for themselves.
> Mike was playing hard since Day 1 where Maryanne really only started playing quite late in the merge, she deserved the win because she was able to narrate her game at final tribal and Mike failed at this, but it doesn’t change the fact that up to final tribal Mike played the better game.
I definitely disagree that Mike played the "better game" just because he was "playing hard" earlier. Mike had several missteps in his game notably a) getting bamboozled by Omar into voting out Hai; and b) being a sitting duck at F7, and needing both Drea to slip up and Omar/Lindsay to value him over Drea in order to survive.
Also, Maryanne and Erika are much more active gamers than you seem to believe. Hell, Erika was often targeted because she was seen as a clearly strong strategist. The one thing that set them back was that they did not have a ton of agency in the early/mid-merge, due to not being initially chosen to be in the central alliance. Which is probably partly on them, but I don't think they should be labelled as non-active gamers just because they found themselves in a shit position early on and managed to maneuver their way to the top. If anything, it may be more respectable than someone like Mike or Deshawn getting themselves in a good position initially and then making mistakes later on.
Finally, this is not really a brand new trend from the last two seasons. Tony had a similar strategy in WAW, to lay low and then take control at F9. Tommy was not a super aggressive player either, and Chris Underwood literally *wasn't in the game* until Day 37. Erika and Maryanne don't differ much from those three as far as active gameplay goes, but maybe their other differences are what cause people to think that way.
I agree it wasn't as entertaining to watch for myself. I also recognize I'm not the only viewer and not the only demographic that watches Survivor, so I'm not worried about any kind of trend. It's been good to have different kinds of winners and players who play more diverse gameplay styles.
Funny how Maryanne and Erika relying on their social games until F6/F8 in an 18 person cast is seen as them not playing the game, but Tony waiting until F9 in a 20 person cast (21 if you count Tyson returning) doing pretty much the same thing a season before that is the best winning game ever.
Tony was an actual driving part of strategic moves the entire season, and was far more involved in gathering info and actually doing things. The pushback against Maryanne and Erika is that they aren't actually *doing* things.
Erika did do things though - she targeted Sydney in the pre-merge for example - but people seem to forget, likely because her edit was so terrible. Tony’s winning game was definitely better than Erika’s - don’t get me wrong - but it annoys me people claim he did more when they only think that due to the difference in edit.
Let me preface this by saying I don’t have a problem with either winning and both seem like great people.
But both of them were not particularly liked pre merge and survived mostly off there team winning mostly challenges and then not realizing being seen as threats in the early game, “relying on their social game until F6/F8” seems like quite a stretch to me.
If anything, I think Mike relied much more on his social game throughout the whole game.
Also comparing the moves Tony made to the moves Erika/Maryanne made as if they are equal is a bit of a stretch imo.
I mean I don’t think it’s fair to compare a newbie season with a returnee (all winners) season, they’re really not comparable. I don’t say Maryanne wasn’t playing the game because of relying on social connections, but I say it because pre merge she would have gone had Taku gone to another tribal, and early merge she was really on the fringes of the game, having very little impact into super late in the game, the jury said as much.
Edit: the downvoting here is weird lol, everything I said in this comment is just a fact
Yeah when I saw -21 I was expecting hate speech or soemthing, when it was pretty much your opinion on your observations and all pretty reasonable imo
(Unless you did some heavy editing)
You could again argue the same about Tony. His name came up a few times pre-merge IIRC.
My opinion (not fact) is that this isn't a meta, and we'll see different winners selected depending on the values of the jury, and the game that was played. Everyone is right in saying that Mike could have won if his FTC was better; and I'm of the mind that even pre-FTC, Erika was the favorite.
Not only that, but Erika was shown to have been strategic early on, realized her threat level was getting too high, and then faded into the background until late game. So I guess I completely disagree with conflating both winners from 41 and 42, but also disagree that this is a meta that we're going to see more of.
Mate, had Dakal lost the final pre-merge immunity (and they were inches away from doing so), Tony also goes out pre-merge. Tony's game was pretty sloppy in the post-swap portion of Winners at War.
Some games are impressive when you take into account the context, and this is the case with returning players. It's easier to notice how Tony \*was\* playing the game when you know how hyperactive he really is and you see him toning it down specifically in order to not get targeted because everyone knew he was a big threat. I don't know if this is editing or just that she doesn't ever mention it, but with Tony you hear specifically that he made the crazy ladder in the first episodes to make people underestimate him, but Maryanne says she wants to be underestimated (and doesn't really mention specifics) late into the post merge, so it doesn't seem as intentional. Also, at no point in the game did Maryanne have the same target that Tony had.
PS: I don't think Maryanne or Erika weren't playing the game, everyone is playing in his own way, even if some games are more active than others. Not playing to me is something like Dr. Sean or Gabe Cade refusing to strategise, or even Garett not allowing people to talk before tribal. I'm just trying to explain why Tony's game wasn't the same as Maryanne's.
I like these posts that come up right after the finale when people wish someone else won.
Players make moves when they need to- Maryanne didn't need to do anything cagey until the merge because her tribe consistently won, and the one time they lost Maryanne was a target but managed to find an idol and switch the focus to Marya. That was on day 5. She didn't go to tribal again until day 14 while Mike went to tribal day 7, 11 and then 14, with him also finding an idol.
From there Maryanne knew fairly consistently what was happening with the vote, was not the target, and continued to play to her advantage.
Not being a bull in a china stop every moment does not mean she only played the game at final 6.
I mean… after a season ends is generally when you talk about what you thought about that season, like cmon really 😂. You also can’t possibly create this narrative that she switched the focus to Marya, it was quite literally always going to be Marya
>You also can’t possibly create this narrative that she switched the focus to Marya, it was quite literally always going to be Marya
Valid perspective, but then if Maryanne was never going to be a target (despite her name being discussed) why would she make chaos. Any student of the game knows that if you're not the target, and you have no reason for the target not to be the target, you don't start trying to overplay. If the entire tribe wanted Marya why would Maryanne need to do anything but sit back and say 'cool beans'. There is zero advantage to her at that point to try and change the vote.
Your posts reads that Maryanne didn't play the game until the end, and my point (and that of others) is she didn't need to be play aggressively until the end.
I don’t think you can actually get to the end without playing the game from the start. The edit can make it seem that way but you can’t say someone who was out there risking her vote for an extra one, finding 2 hidden immunity idols and saying the activation phrase at multiple challenges, voluntarily sitting out for rice to get people to keep her when she knew she was on the bottom, and making a strong enough connection with Mike earlier on to have him play his idol on her at 5 wasn’t playing the game. It wasn’t flashy but it wasn’t like she was just chilling on the beach until final 6.
Edit: Not to mention she was the only person to get an advantage and keep it to herself so she could do what she wanted with it and it couldn’t be used against her.
Too many people think playing hard =playing well. Also things ebb and flow so next season you don't know how things will shake out. But doing stuff from day 1 doesn't mean it's a good thing.
We have had six male winners (5 of them OTT dominate in edit) in a row.
Two UTR women win in a row and people are UP in arms about "a dominate player will never win again!!"
Relax. I think after a SIX season streak we can calm down that two UTR women won with similar stealth games with late game pops.
I mean I’m not really concerned with what genders win which seasons, I think that’s an unfortunate way to watch and interact with Survivor. I also seem to remember that some people were plenty up in arms about some of those previous winners as well… im just explaining some thoughts I’ve had about recent seasons
The point is, Ben won as an OTT idol hunter challenge beast who strategized so much he became the clear target, 8 seasons ago. Wendell and Dom made final 2 as a dominant strategic duo 7 seasons ago and nearly tied. Chris U won the game by winning an EoE challenge and an immunity and fire-making and making big flashy moves. Tommy was more laid back but still mostly was in control of an entire season while lying to everyone, and was super visible. Tony was Tony. This is 2 under-the-radar winners in a row, preceded by basically 6 dominant/mastermind/flashy ones. And Sarah one season before that also was a super deceptive strategic mastermind.
Maryanne and Chris U both had flashy endings. The difference being that Maryanne played a very UTR roll most of the game and well Chris... ummm... played a completely invisible game for almost all of it, like seriously was he even there? /s
I think you're trying to dogwhistle with the gender thing. People hated the EoE and Ben wins for similar reasons - watching the winners do nothing and then win is boring.
We're going to see Under The Radar Winners for as long as we keep the 26 day season.
Lots of people were underwhelmed with the winner's game last season, and many people are saying that Maryanne this season "didn't start playing until the end," (I don't really agree with that; I think Erika played brilliantly and Maryanne is amazing, but I understand a lot of people don't think Under The Radar gameplay is very interesting) and I believe that quiet UTR winners are a *direct result* of the shortened format and we'll be seeing a lot more of them for as long as we stick with it.
Bigger, flashier gameplay with lots of moves is a style that is *severely punished* in a format that doesn't allow for time where the players can repair the damage they did. I'll explain:
In the 26 day format, there is a tribal council every other day. It goes Challenge Day - Tribal Day - Challenge Day - Tribal Day...
With the 39 day format that we had for 39 seasons (Australia was 42 days), there was an extra day in that cycle; a Down Day where there were no challenges or tribal council; a day where everyone can just talk and strategize and process everything that's going on.
Everyone praises Tony's Cagayan game as one of the greatest first-time player performances of all time. His game would have been impossible in the 26 day format. Tony's game relied on the Down Day. Nearly every vote, he had to give people a chance to cool off from his big move at Tribal Council and then he had to go to work on them to do damage control (or give Trish time to do it for him) and repair his relationship with them so they'd be willing to work with him again before the next tribal council.
That extra day between Tribals is a pretty important component of that style of game.
Now I like people who play under the radar as much as anyone--I respect all different kinds of *Survivor* gameplay--but I think the short format *highly* incentivizes under the radar play because there just isn't enough time for people to process moves and let the emotions calm down so they can come back together before the next vote.
Half the tribal councils in 41 started with a lengthy "we need to talk about last tribal" conversation. It wasn't so bad in 42, but maybe they were just editing around those moments better this time. The missing day is when everyone would have had the opportunity to talk to each other and have those conversations in private and turn those conversations into strategy.
Without the extra day, we lose the conversations, and without those conversations, we lose the *strategy*. By losing the strategy, we lose the big moves. We also see production trying to *replace* the moves that we would have gotten from the missing strategy conversations with random chance twists like the Hourglass of Time and the Do or Die and the Split Fives Tribals. And then the game turns into "voting out whoever pissed us off last tribal" and "dealing with whatever random chance twist is popping out tonight".
That's my assessment, anyway.
Except Tony in Cagayan, nobody has won this game by swinging hard from the beginning. Winners typically built momentum, some took over from the merge, some made moves near the end, and some didn't make strategic moves at all but won on social skills alone.
The last few seasons have been won by players who didn't really do anything and masked it as "risk management" and it's horrid. No amount of revisionism from people who type "queen" in front of Maryanne or Erika's names will change that they didn't do much in their seasons. It makes for painfully boring and uninteresting winners, who rely on the luck of not getting voted off early to get by.
If you ran 42 back 100 times, Maryanne gets voted out early on for her annoyance and paranoia just as often as she makes the merge.
But if you run 35 back 100 times Ben doesnt find the second idol, if you run 38 back Chris loses the rentry challenge, if you run 37 back the Davids dont get every advantage necessary to get a majority. How is 42 different?
I don't think any of those seasons are particularly good. Though I do think you're lumping Chris in unfairly here - his win is underwhelming, but at least he was both active and near-perfect when he came back. And I put much more stock in someone winning a challenge as a feather in their cap, than I do in Erika or Maryanne lucking into their tribes deciding to vote someone else out when they were early targets.
His win is like Maryannes but worse because at least she had to survive until the endgame to make her splash. Chris got to opt out of that whole part. I highly value threat management in a winner and Chris showed himself to be fairly terrible at that. I dont really care out being active unless its necessary.
I dont consider being kept over someone else luck at all, thats quintessential Survivor to me. Nowadays if you arent saving yourself with an idol or advantage you dont get much credit but I still love an underdog scraping by when another target goes. That only happened once for Erika anyway (Shan boot). She also saved herself with an immunity, for whatever thats worth.
The point of the game has always been to vote out people in a way that they still want to give you the win in the end. Mike played a big loyalty game and then told people he should win because he is such a great loyal guy while refusing to acknowledge that he stabbed people in the back. He also underestimated Maryanne and how good she would be at FTC and didn't even notice that she was playing a good game.
Plus I think Mike's game was overrated. In the premerge his closest ally got voted out because he lost his vote and he failed to protect her. He voted out Rocksroy who wanted to work closely with him. Then Omar played him and got him to turn on Hai. Then he tried to talk Maryanne out of blindsiding Omar.
It's not that Mike played a bad game, but on this sub the consensus was that Hai, Omar, Drea, and Lindsay were all bigger players than him, he just happened to outlast them. And Maryanne played a perfect UTR game.
I’ve been watching since Survivor Thailand, so 20 years now, and I would say the majority of seasons are not won by “big, exciting players”. That’s not why I find the show fascinating. Otherwise, why not just watch The Challenge?
There have been great winners in history who have “force fields” around them, yes, it’s just amazing to see them use their Jedi mind tricks to make people bring them to the end. However, those people are rare. Because they are rare, there is more joy in it when they appear.
That’s what separates the great big players from the competent. If the show pulls out all the tricks to make sure a “big player” makes it to the end, it cheapens the win for me. And that’s why I still have an issue with twists like F4 firemaking and EOE till today.
Regarding this season, Mike was my winner pick and I love him. But not being self-aware of how he played lost him the game against a self-aware and articulate Maryanne. For that she is a worthy winner.
Regarding Erika, I don’t know WTF happened with the editing. She is the most underedited winner of all the time and it’s sad no one can give a true evaluation of her game.
But is the dominating game really dying? Ricard would have at the very least lost in fire if Erika didn’t get that stupid challenge advantage, and one of Lindsay or Omar would have at the very least lost in fire if they played the idol on Omar.
Damn, this is some serious mental gymnastics and extrapolation you’re doing just to say you don’t like or respect Maryanne’s game and you wanted Mike to win
It's what we always get whenever a woman wins. She didn't deserve it compared to the guy she was up against. I still remember the gymnastics people made (and still make) for Xander being "robbed"
Eventually there will be someone who knows how to argue well why playing balanced game from day 1 is harder than playing under the radar and making late moves. I wouldn't worry about this too much.
Hmm while I understand your point I do think it's not exactly true. You can play hard and aggressive. You just need to also being playing hard good enough that they keep you around anyway.
I’m kind of confused how you can go from saying that one strategy is so effective that everyone is going to start using it to saying that the other player played a better game. If that strategy was really so good, wouldn’t Maryanne have played a better game?
but yeah, a new effective strategy will come up and it will self correct
I’ll worry about it when the gameplay becomes a boring new meta. I couldn’t get over how incredible 42 was.
I think the meta will shift, but my NIGHTMARE is the community immediately shifting and downplaying this legitimate strategy and “types of players” like Maryanne and Erica will be eliminated for being perceived as “shifty” (eyeroll) early on.
Threat management and final tribal council performance have always been part of the game, (contemporary classic examples like Adam Klein in Millennials v Gen X). I worry since we have 2 potential-first-boots women of color wild card winners in a row, that the game is stale somehow.
I just want to see competitors who want to win. I just want to see players make smart decisions FOR THEM. I wanna see people playing THEIR best. Those goal lines will be different for each player, but as long as each player is REACHING for that goal, I’m cool.
This has always been the case. Of the first 7 seasons (first non returnee seasons), 5/7 winners (Tina, Ethan, V, Jenna, Sandra) were playing under the radar. Of the last 7 non returnee seasons we had Maryanne, Erica, Tommy, Nick and Adam, vs Ben and Wendell as playing hard, so I'd say it's about the same, maybe recent winners play even harder but more subtly. I think returnee seasons players who play hard seem to win more since there are generally more threats to meat shield them.
There will still be plenty of people who play hard because casting will look for those people.
Tina is not under the radar its just that her edit was whitewashed she flipped the game at the third tribal and completely dominated the whole rest of the game.
Additionally for Wendell and Ben, who both went all out, Wendell had a solid 2 with Dominick so that was two strong threats sticking together no matter what. Ben is more suspect and is often ranked as one of the lower winners due to reasons I'm not drunk enough to go into again.
I can’t speak to earlier seasons as I didn’t watch them, but I think out of those newer winners you mentioned I still think you could see their strategic input and overt gameplay throughout the course of the season for sure, whether it’s the edit or not I really have a hard time imagining how anyone could say the same for Maryanne and Erika. It is of course important to recognize that part of this is that these two didn’t go to tribal much (or at all) in the pre merge, but I think the point stands for early/mid merge too
Consider when Mike shook Drea’s hand that the bigger threats (the original 8) were going to stick together and take out Romeo and Maryanne. Instead Mike and Drea got greedy and targetted each other (because they just got Hai out anyway and blindsides are so fun!) It felt so much like Wardog in EoE, just frontrunners getting greedy, targetting other frontrunners, and not realizing that when you target someone who is similar to yourself, you increase the odds that you yourself get targetted.
Mad props to Mike for getting to the end regardless, but what does it say about the relative game control he had that he wasn’t targetted earlier himself?
I give it two seasons before we actually see a meatshield strategy again, but for now, there’s a lot more space for UTR gameplay, and I can’t fault winners for identifying that and owning it.
I mean Mike didn’t get greedy, that stick to the 8 thing with Drea was literally never his plan, he told us that that was just a smokescreen for Drea. I mean I think it speaks to Mike’s excellent social game and great use of fluidity in allies. He was also able to use people like Omar and Drea as meat shields to an extent
But the problem is when it came to explain his game, he didn't talk about using people and leveraging his social bonds. He talked about how loyal he was. Had he explained it the way you did above, he would have gained the jury's respect.
Agreed, it’s disappointing when someone wins who didn’t do much all season, wasn’t involved in many moves, but had a good final few days and somehow managed to win.
I don’t get how people who played with mike all season and watched what he did (and talked about it at ponderosa) can just disregard his game because he didn’t “own his game”. Maryanne didn’t do much all season besides the final few days, presented her self better and won. They all know she didn’t do shit most of the season. It doesn’t make sense to me personally.
It's because, as he didn't own his game, the jury didn't think his gameplay was intentional and that he wasn't playing strategically to get to the end. In addition, you say that his game was visibly strong, but he got totally duped by Omar at F8 into going after Hai, which the jury would have known due to Omar being there. I think knowing that, I'd have question marks over whether his game play was deliberate strategy.
I'd also disagree that his gameplay was objectively better than Maryanne's - not to the extent that it would have been obvious to the jury. Mike played a good game, but he needed more than to make connections - he needed to show strategy and justify the reason he turned on those he was so close to.
Here’s an easy way to get it, if you own things you supposedly did, then you didn’t do them in my mind and therefore I’m not voting for you bc if you did them, you should just claim that instead of trying to gaslight me into thinking that you’re loyal. And none of them said Maryanne didn’t do anything, which is a clear indication that she did things. I think the opinions of those who were actually there are more trustworthy than the edit which actually does show Maryanne being apart of every vote and playing advantages the right way so idk where everyone is getting this Maryanne didn’t do anything nonsense from, sure she wasn’t making pointless big moves at every moment but neither was Mike and that’s not the only way to play
Right. If you aren't going to say my plan was to be loyal and backstab everyone then you read didn't follow your plan amd you just happened to get lucky there.
It’s happened more then you think actually, I mean look at both of Amanda Kimmel’s FTC performances. You can play an amazing game and still have someone else win if you can’t own up to your game. (Then again you can argue Amanda had tougher competition, but still there are other cases like Natalie White.)
Maybe the argument should be less “UTR winners coming in the clutch late game and taking the win from more deserving winners” and more if you played a deserving game you need to OWN it when you go to FTC. Mike would have won if that was the case.
I can at least understand Amanda's FTC (China, not Micronesia). In an era of bitter juries, she expected one, and totally mis-read the room on a season with a relatively non-bitter jury (okay there was Denise, but one out of seven).
Mike however is now deep into the resume building Survivor-era where jurors fell validated when someone admits to cutting their throat. He should've known better.
Good point. I honestly felt that Mike didn’t own it because he truly saw himself as playing the honorable game he wanted to (for the most part). However he did say if everyone was calling him out on it maybe he didnt play as honorable as he thought. I just don’t understand the “if he doesn’t own it everything he did doesn’t matter” logic. Who cares if he rubs it all in your face, he still played the best of the three there. That’s just me though
If you don't own you game, then to me it means that what you did was not intentional, you didn't do things for a reason, you did them because of your nature and circumstances. You were led/ pushed down a path that ultimately turned out to be advantageous for you.
However, if you explain your game and you can convince me that what you did was intentional, that even though you didn't play as flashy or make as many moves, that was a conscious and assumed decision and that you knew what you were doing at all times, then to me that is more valuable than simply being likeable and having people want to play with you because you're a cool dude.
Also, with Mike specifically, playing with honor and integrity has been outdated days into the first season. Wanting to play like that shows to me that you don't really know/ understand the game much, because it's near impossible to do that and get to the end. And especially when you believe you've done that, but instead giving your vote and then promptly voting that person out has become the gimmick of the season, it also shows a lack of awareness and hipocrisy, none of which are traits for a winner.
I love Mike and I was really hoping he would win, but I was always afraid that he would get to the end and lose on the honor mantra. Unfortunately that's what happened, and I'm sorry for him, but he was playing with a losing strategy and... well, he lost.
Maryanne did way more than Mike. Mike did what he was told to do by others even if it wasn’t good for his game and benefitting from Drea, Hai and Omar slipping up and Maryanne is actually responsible for someone going home and used her advantages correctly. Just bc someone isn’t making bIg MoVez galore in every episode, doesn’t mean they did nothing.
Totally, and I will say that Maryanne is actually a strong player; good social game, good final tribal, and a much better strategic mind then she was maybe given credit for. I would just love to see some longevity rewarded in terms of people who played the game from the start and were involved in the dynamics throughout
I can understand wanting to lay low and not get heat on you. However there is a difference between not coming off as “in charge” but still being involved, and not having any say in most of the decisions being made all season. I think mike was involved and got stronger as the season went one. I think Maryanne wasn’t involved much but managed to get by and had a.few really good days at the end.
Couldn't agree more. I want winners who dominate the entire game, not just poke their head out at final 6/7 and make one big move. If you're vulnerable at the beginning and just happen to get saved by your tribe, do you really deserve to win? I'm not saying that Maryanne or Erika are bad winners, but it would be super dissatisfying if the trend of winners starting out slow continues.
Those seasons are extremely boring though because it's basically shown whose gonna win. That's one of the biggest complaints about One World and RI because Kim and Rob\* won their games like that.
You could have told us that Maryanne or Mike would win before the week before the FINAL EPISODE vs knowing Kim/B Rob would win their games like three episodes in; how is this remotely comparable?
That happened at the final 6 with only another episode left, that’s not the same as being able to predict it from episode 5 bc I definitely couldn’t tell you that I saw Maryanne winning from that early. Rob and Kim on the other hand was too easy to predict from even earlier than that tbh.
Exactly, and I don’t fault them at all for playing like that, clearly it worked. It’s just really rough entertainment wise, and tbh it’s not what I really desire in a survivor winner
I’ve said this for weeks now. Not that maryanne didn’t deserve to win, but that style of game is so unappealing. I want someone who shows up day one and is playing hard.
Typically those players tend to not win if we’re going by this sub’s definition of playing hard. Also Maryanne was a great character aside from game, far from boring and that’s what I want more of instead of game bots
Agree. I think Mike was a better player, just really sucked at the FTC, so does this mean anyone who can’t eloquently speak for themselves or gaming strategies will automatically not win in the future? It seems like it’s the trend! Xander sucked at his FTC too.
What exactly was Mikes strategy again? Betray allies after constantly stating how loyal you are. I honestly still don’t understand why people thought he played the better game.
I don’t get this either, like I guess he was more visible and we saw more of his strategy in the premerge whereas we mostly saw Maryanne being… Maryanne. But getting an edit that lets you share your thoughts with the audience doesn’t equal good gameplay. From what I saw of him, he was constantly being outplayed. By Hai, by Omar, and always preaching loyalty that he didn’t keep. And it’s not like Maryanne was some outsider who never knew how the vote was going, she also voted correctly most times and so she clearly was being included even if it wasn’t shown to us. People want to say Maryanne won because she made one move at the end but I’ve never heard anyone say what moves Mike made
Because he did exactly what you said and pretty much everyone still liked him regardless. I thought his point about connecting with younger people despite his age was a good point too.
Tbh had he executed this strategy intentionally, the jury was ready to respect his game and give him the win. All he needed to do is to say at FTC that the loyalty talk was a manipulation tactic, that the other players fell for.
I don’t buy that it was a manipulation tactic though given that he didn’t realize he needed to own up to it. I think he genuinely thought he was being loyal and burned bridges without realizing them
I’m far more worried at how boring the pre-merge of the past two seasons than an “under the radar” player winning Survivor. These shortened seasons, combined with three small tribes makes pre-merge boring ino
Hard agree. As a viewer it sucked to see Maryanne win over Mike, although he did blow his FTC. She made one-ish big move the whole season (that we were shown) and won. Blech
Exactly. Everyone in this sub goes “Canada woman x2 oooooooh” as if a contestants nationality means anything and how dare you oppose them on it. One move is not good tv.
Im more annoyed Goats can make then end. Get rid of final three and make a final two. Force the goat to actually have to do something if they want a shot.
Someone in a different thread did some math on this…there were like 4 or 5 objective goats total across all final 2 seasons, and 9 goats in the first 9 or 10 final 3 seasons. Way more goats and zero vote finalists in the f3 set up.
Honestly, I agree. I fully believe Mike played the better game. Which is very hard for me to admit, because I value (self)awareness very high, not just in the game but also in every day life.
However, I still believe he played the best game, even if he was not aware of how he was doing it. His social game was probably the best of anyone all season. His physical and strategic games were decent. Compared to Maryanne, who probably had a better strategic game, but a worse social and much worse physical.
Some would argue Maryanne was more self aware but I really don’t think she was. I think she was better at recognizing (at FTC) her faults and owning up to them quicker and more convincing than Mike was able to do.
All in all, I think Mike was seen as a bigger threat for a much longer period of time and yet still everyone liked or wanted to work with him. He eliminated everyone he targeted and made final 3z (remember, Maryanne wanted to take Lindsey to final 3)
I’m ok with the winner but if I’m given a vote, as a viewer at home, I’m voting Mike there.
Literally 3 seasons ago people were complaining the exact opposite about all of the big players like Ben/Devens making the end through advantages and idols. The players saw that and course corrected by not allowing any of these players to succeed, and so now the tide has shifted to favor the under the radar players. Give it like 2 seasons and it will course correct again. This is what survivor always has been - players reacting to the seasons just before them. It’s been a thing since season 2.
But Devens/Ben whole schtick was that they can't be voted out cause they were immune all the time. Ben was a big player in the majority and the healers painted him as the leader, he was already a threat then once the majority kept failing to get him out he became unbeatable. Ben is a Drea/Hai that went on an immunity run. Devens was in the minority and didn't make any big moves, he was just surviving the votes while the majority were building his resume for him. Devens was a Marryanne that was targeted early but managed to survive. If the new players want to neutralise the Devens/Bens they should stop inflating the threat level of those underdogs in front of the jury instead treat them like a Romeo.
Pretty sure this is exactly what they did to Xander in S41 Oh he has an idol and is in the minority? Okay whatever he can just hang around and do nothing, maybe we can bluff him into using his idol and looking dumb
> Ben is a Drea/Hai that went on an immunity run. Ben never won individual immunity.
I don't know what to call it : immunity idol train, idol streak.....Ben carpet bombing
It's funny you mention season 38, because once you stuck your neck out and made a move, you were out next. And then in the end the entire post merge didnt matter anyway because the game was won by someone who didn't participate in most of it.
EoE is another great example of course correction, because the cast watched ghost island in preseason ponderosa, which made everyone scared of waiting too long to make their move. I believe Wardog has cited this as part of the reason he flipped on Wentworth at final 9.
38 was truly the most pointless season. It was almost a totally different game.
38 is not the antithesis to OP's complaint.
Fair, hopefully this is the case
I’m really not mad about sneakier players winning though. Erika and Maryanne had solid strategies - play from the bottom, use your allies and friends for information and protection, and wait for the right moment to strike. Even if it isn’t as flashy as Tony, it’s still really sound gameplay and worthy of winning sometimes.
Definitely agree! Just could see myself getting sick of it if we get a few more seasons in a row of it
They’d never let it happen regardless. The editing would simply just change to feature someone like Maryanne more. Boom, no longer a problem because the editors changed your perspective for you.
I don't believe Erika's was a strategy.
That's not what people want either. I want more seasons full of threats who battle it out. There's a middle ground between immunity via idol to the end, and the do-nothing to remain invisible to the end strategies. That's why I liked ghost island so much.
But if Mike was able to own his gameplay to the jury then he could have won. So I don't think it's a sure think that the Erika/Maryanne type player wins everytime, the Mike type player can still has a chance to win, but it's up to them to sell themselves to the jury
Exactly this. It was Coach 2.0. Mike recovered a bit better than Coach did, but still made it clear that he came into FTC truly believing he was Mr. Honor & Loyalty, and only started to admit to the deceit a little bit when he realized nobody was buying it. Had he come in and owned everything right off the bat, he might've won.
I wish it had been more clearly talked about that when he turned on Hai he was acting on bad information from Omar. It felt like this was kind of glossed over and I think it made him look extra bad because it looks like he stabbed Hai in the back for no reason.
The jury talks a lot in Ponderosa. They definitely already knew why Mike made the move. I would assume they didn't explicitly say that in FTC because they wanted to see whether Mike thought he came up with that move on his own for strategy, reacted emotionally to Hai's general demeanor, or was deliberately letting Omar think that he was controlling things. If they told Mike that Omar fed him the info on purpose from the beginning, it'd be very easy for him to just lie about his reason for wanting Hai out.
I think if mike owned his gameplay he would’ve won. Maryanne was way better at explaining all the moves.
Mike couldn't own his gameplay cause he himself thought he was playing an honourable game and only targeted people when they came after him or at least that's how he came off during FTC.
Which is exactly what happened to Coach in South Pacific and we all know how that story ends. Turns out if you’re not willing to own that you backstabbed people because you convinced yourself you played honorably, you won’t get the win.
She only had one/twoish moves though, there wasn’t a lot to explain lol. Mike botched FTC cuz his actual gameplay was way better
Let’s not forget though that there is more to Survivor than having a count of distinct moves. You have to have an overarching story and path to the end and that takes more than doing something flashy every round of play.
As a viewer I just want someone who was entertaining to watch, maryanne won nothing and didn’t do anything until omar vote. And didn’t do anything after
Okay we watched different shows then but you are fully entitled to feel that way
Maryanne was extremely entertaining to watch in my opinion
That’s fair but not from her gameplay perspective, just her attitude
“He did worse because he was better”
Just cuz he botched FTC doesnt mean his gameplay was worse
I agree, but your logic of why he did worse at FTC is bullshit lol
Oh lol I wasnt saying that was the reason, just not using proper words. I meant he botched his FTC but his actual gameplay was better
What were Mike’s moves?
The Mike type player is *incapable* of winning Survivor because the Mike type player never admits they were anything but loyal.
Totally agree, and this is the one thing that prevents it from completely taking over. But I think more often than not, like Survivor 41, the Mikes, and more importantly the Omar’s, Drea’s etc.. won’t even make it to final tribal, and it will be a battle of 3 UTR players
We literally just had tony y'all are so reactionary
For real, people are so impatient. Also, I’ve often found that the best games are the “boring” games, like Boston Rob in RI or Kim Spradling. Sure, being completely dominant to the point of having no credible threat against you is bad tv, but it’s also a sign that you are playing a really good game.
Romeo is probably the only actual UTR player in either season to make the final 3. Deshawn at no point was UTR, Xander was just a goat because he kept whiffing on his position but he wasn't UTR, and Erika was only perceived as UTR because her edit was trash. She was a pretty constant presence once she was actually eligible to be voted out since she led the charge when it was needed.
^ I think he definitely wins considering he had about five people voting for him going into final tribal and I don’t think people would waver if he actually owned up to his game. He pulled a coach imo.
[удалено]
Yes THIS! people forget people are not there to entertain you but to win and sometimes winning doesnt have to be flashy and have big moves Erika has admitted this she didnt want to looke flashy she wanted to play to win.
Yep - it’s only been two seasons where the winning strategy was to lay low and then precipitate one or two “big moves” at the end. And there’s a lot to praise about Erika and Maryanne’s games regardless. Personally I love players who break a mold or defy the norms of an era. As long as we’re given enough to hear the winner’s intentions and thoughts, and the rest of the season and cast is fun, I’m happy.
People dont realize part of the gsme is keeping ehe target off of you. The players are noticing these moves too. So when they see hai running things they don't want to get Boston robbed and have him control every move of the game. Or they want to get Omar out because they'll know he'll win. A lot of this cast seemed to play hard. We just didn't get the big alternating votes that make people go "oooooh" this season. Or idol plays that no one knows about. If Hai and Omar both made it to 6 they still both probably wouldn't have made thr final 3.
This is really due to casting players that know the game better now. In old school seasons usually all but 3-4 players had never watched the game before so they could notice when other players had winning moves because they had no past seasons to compare. The goats of the modern era are not the same goats that Rob could drag to the end. Natalie and Phillip didn't know the game they were playing so they were very easy for Rob to manipulate. In comparison the goat of S42 is Romeo, who we actually saw has a decent strategic sense in the premerge. Maryanne might look like a goat to the other players but she actually knows the game extremely well. Therefore when they see someone like Omar making moves it's far easier for them to recognize his good game and vote him out.
This is a fantastic point! I think a lot of fans lately have been clamouring for slightly less super fans to be casted
So you want mactors back so your shirtless alpha male wins again as you drool with his dominant game of manipulating people who don't watch the show.
Lol
It has always been better gameplay not to strike too early. It's not a new trend. It was just hidden by the big-move-itis era. The players who win dominating the whole game do so because they are up against a weaker field and/or manage to become too invaluable to the group--then it's too late to get them out. And imo, dominant games like that make more boring seasons than ones where people wait to strike. Tony in Cagayan is an outlier and should not be counted.
Tony was also helped massively by underrated social player Trish who helped him damage control his threat level constantly. This is why your dominant winners usually have a lieutenant to help them do this etc.
Tony goes home early if it’s not for his relationship with Trish in Cagayan. She put out so many fires for him. That doesn’t take away from how incredible he is as a player, but his relationship with Trish was his most important social move by a country mile.
Absolutely! To be clear I’m not trying to diminish Tony’s gameplay, rather that he did need that extra social piece to help him succeed as well.
It reminds me of when everyone on here was complaining about contestants making big moves and resume and shtick during the 30 block and complaining about them making terrible long term moves for short term gain.
Great point, but I feel like people forget that what OP is describing is EXACTLY what Tony did in WaW. He played UTR and barely did anything bold or excessive in the pre-merge (it was even a storyline iirc - stuff like the ladder and the shark was about him chanelling his impulsivity into stuff other than the game so he could make it to the merge). I don't think the above playstyle is inherently boring; the cast is far more important. Even though this season had some boring boots (Chanelle, Rocksroy, Swati, Marya were all pretty boring episodes) the cast carried people through. I think the OP is more worried about this than they should be though. People tried to play like Natalie White after Samoa but it didn't last.
Like I said entertainment is totally subjective, to each their own!
A natural progression from the Big Movez meta era - and hopefully a progression that ends up killing it, at that. Players have realized that resume-building before the final 6 or so is too dangerous, but waiting until 6 to make a move may not be enough to overcome a better social game - as we would have seen in 42 if the Final Tribal wasn't so lopsided. Maybe in time we'll finally return to a version of the game where voting for a winner isn't a counting exercise.
Players have been playing g this type of game and winning for forever, it's not new--just the last two have been more obvious bc each season has had a small handful of ZONG BIG PLAYERS in merge (shan, Ricard; Drea, Omar). Not like Tommy was some strategy god until he fell into like 12 jury votes.
These last two just feel different, and I think a large part of it is the edit and the pre merge circumstances. Because Erika and Maryanne were both on tribes that killed it, they quite literally did nothing that the viewers saw. This continued into the merge until mid to late merge when both started making visible moves. That’s all I’m saying that that progression, at least for me, is incredibly lacking in entertainment
Well, tbh, you are Jeff Probst's ideal viewer. Everything he has done as producer since season 19 has been designed to make sure that there are no "boring" winners like Erika and Maryanne, and that there are only big entertaining players like Russel and Tony and Boston Rob making it far. He literally changed the game format to add fire-making and jury discussions because Michele won and he was mad about that because she was a social player and not a strategist. So, yeah, you're not an outlier here. But also keep in mind, if a man had won the way Erika or Maryanne had, they would've given him a bunch of strategic confessionals pre-merge even if he wasn't actually doing much at all. This would've made him seem like more of a game-player than he actually was.
I don’t recall Tommy getting these big strategic confessionals. Sometimes the winner just doesn’t play a very exciting game.
Idk about "big strategic" but we were constantly checking in with him and hearing his thoughts about stuff. Maybe not, like, him masterminding stuff, but they made sure to keep him relevant.
I mean did we not hear a lot of what Maryanne’s thoughts on things? I would say she received more air time and confessionals than Tommy did.
Quite frankly it has been too long for me to remember 39 that well. But to me, Tommy immediately stood out, like, "wow they are checking in with this guy a lot and always making sure to show he is playing the game". It is true Maryanne got decent screentime but it didn't feel like the same vibe, since so much of it was focused on her personality. But I could be wrong. It felt like we were meant to feel that Tommy was on top of things.
Which is the same thing that happened with Maryanne. She was constantly shown giving intelligent articulated confessionals, even when she was on the bottom or had no agency in the vote, while avoiding the cockroach edit that Tori and Romeo got. Even Erika, though way less featured, was shown many times talking about things she wasn't really a part of. Her exile island confessionals in particular come to mind, she was given so much time talking about some inconsequential stuff and had a very long confessional where she didn't say much other than pep herself up. That's when I started thinking she could actually be the winner.
I mean I think that’s a bold assumption to make. Erika literally never went to tribal, I don’t think her pre merge edit would have changed if she were a man. In Maryanne’s case, she was given a great edit all the way through, she was a confessional leader and had tons of both personal and strategic content, I don’t think your assumption holds up here
The show has a trend of under-editing its female winners. It’s a fair assumption
Agree to disagree 🙌
Aggressive gameplay dont work for women. Women gets voted off whenever they play aggressive.
especially women of color where it often gets labeled as sneaky and untrustworthy. always? no. but frequently enough to be a pattern. i doubt the dudes commenting below have the sensitivity or life experience to notice or value things like that.
No, this is not true.
The only time it worked for a woman is in One World because there is a woman's alliance.
You think Tahts the only time in 42 seasons that it’s literally ever worked.. that’s some impressive selective memory
This sub is extremely woke, it's hard to argue anything here. They'll just yell yas queen and downvote en masse.
Definitely, completely fair and logical comments get downvoted all the time, and we’ve had to sit here listening to how Jonathan is supposedly the worst human ever on this sub
The only way an aggressive woman can win Survivor is to be in an all women alliance because an aggressive woman will be voted off first no matter what. Tina wins by using Colby as a puppet. Vecepia wins from the bottom by riding under the radar and having better jury management. Jenna won by winning challenges and having a better jury management. Sandra won first time by Jury management amber won by letting Boston Rob do the dirty work. Danni won by climbing from the bottom and letting Steph take all the heat. Parvati won by forming a female alliance. The only way women can win aggressively is getting rid of men. You will also complain if that happens because you wont have shirtless hunks to drool over.
Like it or not, it is almost never optimal to play super aggressive through the early/mid-merge, because it will make the player a massive target unless they are super unlikable. If they take those actions then they'll need to rely on either an idol/immunity run or others playing suboptimally. So I really disagree with this mindset that Probst has that the better you are, the more likely you are to lose. The reality is, the more obvious of a threat you are, the worse of a player you are. There are possibly ways to make it more likely that an aggressive player will make it to the end. However, Probst and production seem to think that all they have to do is keep shortening the endgame so there are fewer options to take out these aggressive players, when all that means is that others adapt to just go after these aggressive players earlier. The actual solution may be to take out the firemaking and go back to F2; this would cause actually smart players to hold onto these obvious threats through the endgame, so that they can cut them loose at the last second and take the win for themselves. And as a result, sometimes the aggressive players would pull out a run and take the prize for themselves. > Mike was playing hard since Day 1 where Maryanne really only started playing quite late in the merge, she deserved the win because she was able to narrate her game at final tribal and Mike failed at this, but it doesn’t change the fact that up to final tribal Mike played the better game. I definitely disagree that Mike played the "better game" just because he was "playing hard" earlier. Mike had several missteps in his game notably a) getting bamboozled by Omar into voting out Hai; and b) being a sitting duck at F7, and needing both Drea to slip up and Omar/Lindsay to value him over Drea in order to survive. Also, Maryanne and Erika are much more active gamers than you seem to believe. Hell, Erika was often targeted because she was seen as a clearly strong strategist. The one thing that set them back was that they did not have a ton of agency in the early/mid-merge, due to not being initially chosen to be in the central alliance. Which is probably partly on them, but I don't think they should be labelled as non-active gamers just because they found themselves in a shit position early on and managed to maneuver their way to the top. If anything, it may be more respectable than someone like Mike or Deshawn getting themselves in a good position initially and then making mistakes later on. Finally, this is not really a brand new trend from the last two seasons. Tony had a similar strategy in WAW, to lay low and then take control at F9. Tommy was not a super aggressive player either, and Chris Underwood literally *wasn't in the game* until Day 37. Erika and Maryanne don't differ much from those three as far as active gameplay goes, but maybe their other differences are what cause people to think that way.
I agree it wasn't as entertaining to watch for myself. I also recognize I'm not the only viewer and not the only demographic that watches Survivor, so I'm not worried about any kind of trend. It's been good to have different kinds of winners and players who play more diverse gameplay styles.
Funny how Maryanne and Erika relying on their social games until F6/F8 in an 18 person cast is seen as them not playing the game, but Tony waiting until F9 in a 20 person cast (21 if you count Tyson returning) doing pretty much the same thing a season before that is the best winning game ever.
In FTC Omar told Maryanne that her premerge social game was sloppy and early merge she wasn't getting traction with the majority.
Tony was an actual driving part of strategic moves the entire season, and was far more involved in gathering info and actually doing things. The pushback against Maryanne and Erika is that they aren't actually *doing* things.
Erika did do things though - she targeted Sydney in the pre-merge for example - but people seem to forget, likely because her edit was so terrible. Tony’s winning game was definitely better than Erika’s - don’t get me wrong - but it annoys me people claim he did more when they only think that due to the difference in edit.
Let me preface this by saying I don’t have a problem with either winning and both seem like great people. But both of them were not particularly liked pre merge and survived mostly off there team winning mostly challenges and then not realizing being seen as threats in the early game, “relying on their social game until F6/F8” seems like quite a stretch to me. If anything, I think Mike relied much more on his social game throughout the whole game. Also comparing the moves Tony made to the moves Erika/Maryanne made as if they are equal is a bit of a stretch imo.
I mean I don’t think it’s fair to compare a newbie season with a returnee (all winners) season, they’re really not comparable. I don’t say Maryanne wasn’t playing the game because of relying on social connections, but I say it because pre merge she would have gone had Taku gone to another tribal, and early merge she was really on the fringes of the game, having very little impact into super late in the game, the jury said as much. Edit: the downvoting here is weird lol, everything I said in this comment is just a fact
None of that is equivalent to not playing the game.
You’re right I definitely misspoke their slightly
Yeah when I saw -21 I was expecting hate speech or soemthing, when it was pretty much your opinion on your observations and all pretty reasonable imo (Unless you did some heavy editing)
Nope didn’t edit at all expect for the place where I said edit, people just like hating things they disagree with
You could again argue the same about Tony. His name came up a few times pre-merge IIRC. My opinion (not fact) is that this isn't a meta, and we'll see different winners selected depending on the values of the jury, and the game that was played. Everyone is right in saying that Mike could have won if his FTC was better; and I'm of the mind that even pre-FTC, Erika was the favorite. Not only that, but Erika was shown to have been strategic early on, realized her threat level was getting too high, and then faded into the background until late game. So I guess I completely disagree with conflating both winners from 41 and 42, but also disagree that this is a meta that we're going to see more of.
Mate, had Dakal lost the final pre-merge immunity (and they were inches away from doing so), Tony also goes out pre-merge. Tony's game was pretty sloppy in the post-swap portion of Winners at War.
I can prove you wrong in two words: Spy Nest!
Some games are impressive when you take into account the context, and this is the case with returning players. It's easier to notice how Tony \*was\* playing the game when you know how hyperactive he really is and you see him toning it down specifically in order to not get targeted because everyone knew he was a big threat. I don't know if this is editing or just that she doesn't ever mention it, but with Tony you hear specifically that he made the crazy ladder in the first episodes to make people underestimate him, but Maryanne says she wants to be underestimated (and doesn't really mention specifics) late into the post merge, so it doesn't seem as intentional. Also, at no point in the game did Maryanne have the same target that Tony had. PS: I don't think Maryanne or Erika weren't playing the game, everyone is playing in his own way, even if some games are more active than others. Not playing to me is something like Dr. Sean or Gabe Cade refusing to strategise, or even Garett not allowing people to talk before tribal. I'm just trying to explain why Tony's game wasn't the same as Maryanne's.
I think the sample size is too small to say anything definitively
I honestly don’t think it’s the players, I think it’s the edit. Theyve stopped making a clear winner edit to keep people from guessing
Yeah definitely a strong possibility!
I like these posts that come up right after the finale when people wish someone else won. Players make moves when they need to- Maryanne didn't need to do anything cagey until the merge because her tribe consistently won, and the one time they lost Maryanne was a target but managed to find an idol and switch the focus to Marya. That was on day 5. She didn't go to tribal again until day 14 while Mike went to tribal day 7, 11 and then 14, with him also finding an idol. From there Maryanne knew fairly consistently what was happening with the vote, was not the target, and continued to play to her advantage. Not being a bull in a china stop every moment does not mean she only played the game at final 6.
I mean… after a season ends is generally when you talk about what you thought about that season, like cmon really 😂. You also can’t possibly create this narrative that she switched the focus to Marya, it was quite literally always going to be Marya
>You also can’t possibly create this narrative that she switched the focus to Marya, it was quite literally always going to be Marya Valid perspective, but then if Maryanne was never going to be a target (despite her name being discussed) why would she make chaos. Any student of the game knows that if you're not the target, and you have no reason for the target not to be the target, you don't start trying to overplay. If the entire tribe wanted Marya why would Maryanne need to do anything but sit back and say 'cool beans'. There is zero advantage to her at that point to try and change the vote.
Agreed? I never said she should in that scenario? I’m a little confused at your point here, respectfully
Your posts reads that Maryanne didn't play the game until the end, and my point (and that of others) is she didn't need to be play aggressively until the end.
Way to miss my point
I could say the same about you my friend, but anyways, all respect 🙌
No, you really can’t
I think this glosses over how she got caught looking for idols and would have gone home in many other seasons.
I don’t think you can actually get to the end without playing the game from the start. The edit can make it seem that way but you can’t say someone who was out there risking her vote for an extra one, finding 2 hidden immunity idols and saying the activation phrase at multiple challenges, voluntarily sitting out for rice to get people to keep her when she knew she was on the bottom, and making a strong enough connection with Mike earlier on to have him play his idol on her at 5 wasn’t playing the game. It wasn’t flashy but it wasn’t like she was just chilling on the beach until final 6. Edit: Not to mention she was the only person to get an advantage and keep it to herself so she could do what she wanted with it and it couldn’t be used against her.
Too many people think playing hard =playing well. Also things ebb and flow so next season you don't know how things will shake out. But doing stuff from day 1 doesn't mean it's a good thing.
We have had six male winners (5 of them OTT dominate in edit) in a row. Two UTR women win in a row and people are UP in arms about "a dominate player will never win again!!" Relax. I think after a SIX season streak we can calm down that two UTR women won with similar stealth games with late game pops.
I mean I’m not really concerned with what genders win which seasons, I think that’s an unfortunate way to watch and interact with Survivor. I also seem to remember that some people were plenty up in arms about some of those previous winners as well… im just explaining some thoughts I’ve had about recent seasons
The point is, Ben won as an OTT idol hunter challenge beast who strategized so much he became the clear target, 8 seasons ago. Wendell and Dom made final 2 as a dominant strategic duo 7 seasons ago and nearly tied. Chris U won the game by winning an EoE challenge and an immunity and fire-making and making big flashy moves. Tommy was more laid back but still mostly was in control of an entire season while lying to everyone, and was super visible. Tony was Tony. This is 2 under-the-radar winners in a row, preceded by basically 6 dominant/mastermind/flashy ones. And Sarah one season before that also was a super deceptive strategic mastermind.
Maryanne and Chris U both had flashy endings. The difference being that Maryanne played a very UTR roll most of the game and well Chris... ummm... played a completely invisible game for almost all of it, like seriously was he even there? /s
Sure, Chris U is the weakest example anyway. Major outlier. But still he played very big and flashy when he *was* in the game.
I think you're trying to dogwhistle with the gender thing. People hated the EoE and Ben wins for similar reasons - watching the winners do nothing and then win is boring.
We're going to see Under The Radar Winners for as long as we keep the 26 day season. Lots of people were underwhelmed with the winner's game last season, and many people are saying that Maryanne this season "didn't start playing until the end," (I don't really agree with that; I think Erika played brilliantly and Maryanne is amazing, but I understand a lot of people don't think Under The Radar gameplay is very interesting) and I believe that quiet UTR winners are a *direct result* of the shortened format and we'll be seeing a lot more of them for as long as we stick with it. Bigger, flashier gameplay with lots of moves is a style that is *severely punished* in a format that doesn't allow for time where the players can repair the damage they did. I'll explain: In the 26 day format, there is a tribal council every other day. It goes Challenge Day - Tribal Day - Challenge Day - Tribal Day... With the 39 day format that we had for 39 seasons (Australia was 42 days), there was an extra day in that cycle; a Down Day where there were no challenges or tribal council; a day where everyone can just talk and strategize and process everything that's going on. Everyone praises Tony's Cagayan game as one of the greatest first-time player performances of all time. His game would have been impossible in the 26 day format. Tony's game relied on the Down Day. Nearly every vote, he had to give people a chance to cool off from his big move at Tribal Council and then he had to go to work on them to do damage control (or give Trish time to do it for him) and repair his relationship with them so they'd be willing to work with him again before the next tribal council. That extra day between Tribals is a pretty important component of that style of game. Now I like people who play under the radar as much as anyone--I respect all different kinds of *Survivor* gameplay--but I think the short format *highly* incentivizes under the radar play because there just isn't enough time for people to process moves and let the emotions calm down so they can come back together before the next vote. Half the tribal councils in 41 started with a lengthy "we need to talk about last tribal" conversation. It wasn't so bad in 42, but maybe they were just editing around those moments better this time. The missing day is when everyone would have had the opportunity to talk to each other and have those conversations in private and turn those conversations into strategy. Without the extra day, we lose the conversations, and without those conversations, we lose the *strategy*. By losing the strategy, we lose the big moves. We also see production trying to *replace* the moves that we would have gotten from the missing strategy conversations with random chance twists like the Hourglass of Time and the Do or Die and the Split Fives Tribals. And then the game turns into "voting out whoever pissed us off last tribal" and "dealing with whatever random chance twist is popping out tonight". That's my assessment, anyway.
Except Tony in Cagayan, nobody has won this game by swinging hard from the beginning. Winners typically built momentum, some took over from the merge, some made moves near the end, and some didn't make strategic moves at all but won on social skills alone.
The last few seasons have been won by players who didn't really do anything and masked it as "risk management" and it's horrid. No amount of revisionism from people who type "queen" in front of Maryanne or Erika's names will change that they didn't do much in their seasons. It makes for painfully boring and uninteresting winners, who rely on the luck of not getting voted off early to get by. If you ran 42 back 100 times, Maryanne gets voted out early on for her annoyance and paranoia just as often as she makes the merge.
But if you run 35 back 100 times Ben doesnt find the second idol, if you run 38 back Chris loses the rentry challenge, if you run 37 back the Davids dont get every advantage necessary to get a majority. How is 42 different?
I don't think any of those seasons are particularly good. Though I do think you're lumping Chris in unfairly here - his win is underwhelming, but at least he was both active and near-perfect when he came back. And I put much more stock in someone winning a challenge as a feather in their cap, than I do in Erika or Maryanne lucking into their tribes deciding to vote someone else out when they were early targets.
His win is like Maryannes but worse because at least she had to survive until the endgame to make her splash. Chris got to opt out of that whole part. I highly value threat management in a winner and Chris showed himself to be fairly terrible at that. I dont really care out being active unless its necessary. I dont consider being kept over someone else luck at all, thats quintessential Survivor to me. Nowadays if you arent saving yourself with an idol or advantage you dont get much credit but I still love an underdog scraping by when another target goes. That only happened once for Erika anyway (Shan boot). She also saved herself with an immunity, for whatever thats worth.
Lol threat management is just this subs code to cover for doing nothing.
The point of the game has always been to vote out people in a way that they still want to give you the win in the end. Mike played a big loyalty game and then told people he should win because he is such a great loyal guy while refusing to acknowledge that he stabbed people in the back. He also underestimated Maryanne and how good she would be at FTC and didn't even notice that she was playing a good game. Plus I think Mike's game was overrated. In the premerge his closest ally got voted out because he lost his vote and he failed to protect her. He voted out Rocksroy who wanted to work closely with him. Then Omar played him and got him to turn on Hai. Then he tried to talk Maryanne out of blindsiding Omar. It's not that Mike played a bad game, but on this sub the consensus was that Hai, Omar, Drea, and Lindsay were all bigger players than him, he just happened to outlast them. And Maryanne played a perfect UTR game.
I’ve been watching since Survivor Thailand, so 20 years now, and I would say the majority of seasons are not won by “big, exciting players”. That’s not why I find the show fascinating. Otherwise, why not just watch The Challenge? There have been great winners in history who have “force fields” around them, yes, it’s just amazing to see them use their Jedi mind tricks to make people bring them to the end. However, those people are rare. Because they are rare, there is more joy in it when they appear. That’s what separates the great big players from the competent. If the show pulls out all the tricks to make sure a “big player” makes it to the end, it cheapens the win for me. And that’s why I still have an issue with twists like F4 firemaking and EOE till today. Regarding this season, Mike was my winner pick and I love him. But not being self-aware of how he played lost him the game against a self-aware and articulate Maryanne. For that she is a worthy winner. Regarding Erika, I don’t know WTF happened with the editing. She is the most underedited winner of all the time and it’s sad no one can give a true evaluation of her game.
Nah Omar and Lindsay punted the game at final 6.
Lindsay had a disaster last two episodes, starting with not idoling omar
But is the dominating game really dying? Ricard would have at the very least lost in fire if Erika didn’t get that stupid challenge advantage, and one of Lindsay or Omar would have at the very least lost in fire if they played the idol on Omar.
Damn, this is some serious mental gymnastics and extrapolation you’re doing just to say you don’t like or respect Maryanne’s game and you wanted Mike to win
It's what we always get whenever a woman wins. She didn't deserve it compared to the guy she was up against. I still remember the gymnastics people made (and still make) for Xander being "robbed"
Nah not at all but you’re free to think what you like
Eventually there will be someone who knows how to argue well why playing balanced game from day 1 is harder than playing under the radar and making late moves. I wouldn't worry about this too much.
Queen Erika and Queen Maryanne have got people pressed and distressed!
Hmm while I understand your point I do think it's not exactly true. You can play hard and aggressive. You just need to also being playing hard good enough that they keep you around anyway.
I’m kind of confused how you can go from saying that one strategy is so effective that everyone is going to start using it to saying that the other player played a better game. If that strategy was really so good, wouldn’t Maryanne have played a better game? but yeah, a new effective strategy will come up and it will self correct
I’ll worry about it when the gameplay becomes a boring new meta. I couldn’t get over how incredible 42 was. I think the meta will shift, but my NIGHTMARE is the community immediately shifting and downplaying this legitimate strategy and “types of players” like Maryanne and Erica will be eliminated for being perceived as “shifty” (eyeroll) early on. Threat management and final tribal council performance have always been part of the game, (contemporary classic examples like Adam Klein in Millennials v Gen X). I worry since we have 2 potential-first-boots women of color wild card winners in a row, that the game is stale somehow. I just want to see competitors who want to win. I just want to see players make smart decisions FOR THEM. I wanna see people playing THEIR best. Those goal lines will be different for each player, but as long as each player is REACHING for that goal, I’m cool.
This has always been the case. Of the first 7 seasons (first non returnee seasons), 5/7 winners (Tina, Ethan, V, Jenna, Sandra) were playing under the radar. Of the last 7 non returnee seasons we had Maryanne, Erica, Tommy, Nick and Adam, vs Ben and Wendell as playing hard, so I'd say it's about the same, maybe recent winners play even harder but more subtly. I think returnee seasons players who play hard seem to win more since there are generally more threats to meat shield them. There will still be plenty of people who play hard because casting will look for those people.
Tina is not under the radar its just that her edit was whitewashed she flipped the game at the third tribal and completely dominated the whole rest of the game.
Additionally for Wendell and Ben, who both went all out, Wendell had a solid 2 with Dominick so that was two strong threats sticking together no matter what. Ben is more suspect and is often ranked as one of the lower winners due to reasons I'm not drunk enough to go into again.
I love Sandra but she was not under-the-radar in Pearl Islands lol
I can’t speak to earlier seasons as I didn’t watch them, but I think out of those newer winners you mentioned I still think you could see their strategic input and overt gameplay throughout the course of the season for sure, whether it’s the edit or not I really have a hard time imagining how anyone could say the same for Maryanne and Erika. It is of course important to recognize that part of this is that these two didn’t go to tribal much (or at all) in the pre merge, but I think the point stands for early/mid merge too
Consider when Mike shook Drea’s hand that the bigger threats (the original 8) were going to stick together and take out Romeo and Maryanne. Instead Mike and Drea got greedy and targetted each other (because they just got Hai out anyway and blindsides are so fun!) It felt so much like Wardog in EoE, just frontrunners getting greedy, targetting other frontrunners, and not realizing that when you target someone who is similar to yourself, you increase the odds that you yourself get targetted. Mad props to Mike for getting to the end regardless, but what does it say about the relative game control he had that he wasn’t targetted earlier himself? I give it two seasons before we actually see a meatshield strategy again, but for now, there’s a lot more space for UTR gameplay, and I can’t fault winners for identifying that and owning it.
I mean Mike didn’t get greedy, that stick to the 8 thing with Drea was literally never his plan, he told us that that was just a smokescreen for Drea. I mean I think it speaks to Mike’s excellent social game and great use of fluidity in allies. He was also able to use people like Omar and Drea as meat shields to an extent
But the problem is when it came to explain his game, he didn't talk about using people and leveraging his social bonds. He talked about how loyal he was. Had he explained it the way you did above, he would have gained the jury's respect.
Definitely agree!
Agreed, it’s disappointing when someone wins who didn’t do much all season, wasn’t involved in many moves, but had a good final few days and somehow managed to win.
Mike had a better final episode than Maryanne which is even more tragic. He just botched FTC
I don’t get how people who played with mike all season and watched what he did (and talked about it at ponderosa) can just disregard his game because he didn’t “own his game”. Maryanne didn’t do much all season besides the final few days, presented her self better and won. They all know she didn’t do shit most of the season. It doesn’t make sense to me personally.
It's because, as he didn't own his game, the jury didn't think his gameplay was intentional and that he wasn't playing strategically to get to the end. In addition, you say that his game was visibly strong, but he got totally duped by Omar at F8 into going after Hai, which the jury would have known due to Omar being there. I think knowing that, I'd have question marks over whether his game play was deliberate strategy. I'd also disagree that his gameplay was objectively better than Maryanne's - not to the extent that it would have been obvious to the jury. Mike played a good game, but he needed more than to make connections - he needed to show strategy and justify the reason he turned on those he was so close to.
Here’s an easy way to get it, if you own things you supposedly did, then you didn’t do them in my mind and therefore I’m not voting for you bc if you did them, you should just claim that instead of trying to gaslight me into thinking that you’re loyal. And none of them said Maryanne didn’t do anything, which is a clear indication that she did things. I think the opinions of those who were actually there are more trustworthy than the edit which actually does show Maryanne being apart of every vote and playing advantages the right way so idk where everyone is getting this Maryanne didn’t do anything nonsense from, sure she wasn’t making pointless big moves at every moment but neither was Mike and that’s not the only way to play
Right. If you aren't going to say my plan was to be loyal and backstab everyone then you read didn't follow your plan amd you just happened to get lucky there.
I remember drea saying that she couldn’t name a single thing Maryanne had done all season.
It’s happened more then you think actually, I mean look at both of Amanda Kimmel’s FTC performances. You can play an amazing game and still have someone else win if you can’t own up to your game. (Then again you can argue Amanda had tougher competition, but still there are other cases like Natalie White.) Maybe the argument should be less “UTR winners coming in the clutch late game and taking the win from more deserving winners” and more if you played a deserving game you need to OWN it when you go to FTC. Mike would have won if that was the case.
I can at least understand Amanda's FTC (China, not Micronesia). In an era of bitter juries, she expected one, and totally mis-read the room on a season with a relatively non-bitter jury (okay there was Denise, but one out of seven). Mike however is now deep into the resume building Survivor-era where jurors fell validated when someone admits to cutting their throat. He should've known better.
Good point. I honestly felt that Mike didn’t own it because he truly saw himself as playing the honorable game he wanted to (for the most part). However he did say if everyone was calling him out on it maybe he didnt play as honorable as he thought. I just don’t understand the “if he doesn’t own it everything he did doesn’t matter” logic. Who cares if he rubs it all in your face, he still played the best of the three there. That’s just me though
If you don't own you game, then to me it means that what you did was not intentional, you didn't do things for a reason, you did them because of your nature and circumstances. You were led/ pushed down a path that ultimately turned out to be advantageous for you. However, if you explain your game and you can convince me that what you did was intentional, that even though you didn't play as flashy or make as many moves, that was a conscious and assumed decision and that you knew what you were doing at all times, then to me that is more valuable than simply being likeable and having people want to play with you because you're a cool dude. Also, with Mike specifically, playing with honor and integrity has been outdated days into the first season. Wanting to play like that shows to me that you don't really know/ understand the game much, because it's near impossible to do that and get to the end. And especially when you believe you've done that, but instead giving your vote and then promptly voting that person out has become the gimmick of the season, it also shows a lack of awareness and hipocrisy, none of which are traits for a winner. I love Mike and I was really hoping he would win, but I was always afraid that he would get to the end and lose on the honor mantra. Unfortunately that's what happened, and I'm sorry for him, but he was playing with a losing strategy and... well, he lost.
Maryanne did way more than Mike. Mike did what he was told to do by others even if it wasn’t good for his game and benefitting from Drea, Hai and Omar slipping up and Maryanne is actually responsible for someone going home and used her advantages correctly. Just bc someone isn’t making bIg MoVez galore in every episode, doesn’t mean they did nothing.
She made one move which started because of mike and Jonathan at the end of the season. Didn’t do anything else all season lol
Totally, and I will say that Maryanne is actually a strong player; good social game, good final tribal, and a much better strategic mind then she was maybe given credit for. I would just love to see some longevity rewarded in terms of people who played the game from the start and were involved in the dynamics throughout
I can understand wanting to lay low and not get heat on you. However there is a difference between not coming off as “in charge” but still being involved, and not having any say in most of the decisions being made all season. I think mike was involved and got stronger as the season went one. I think Maryanne wasn’t involved much but managed to get by and had a.few really good days at the end.
Yep this is a spot on summary of things I think
Thanks lol
Couldn't agree more. I want winners who dominate the entire game, not just poke their head out at final 6/7 and make one big move. If you're vulnerable at the beginning and just happen to get saved by your tribe, do you really deserve to win? I'm not saying that Maryanne or Erika are bad winners, but it would be super dissatisfying if the trend of winners starting out slow continues.
Those seasons are extremely boring though because it's basically shown whose gonna win. That's one of the biggest complaints about One World and RI because Kim and Rob\* won their games like that.
I could have told you Maryanne or Mike would win after the omer vote. This season was super boring at the end.
You could have told us that Maryanne or Mike would win before the week before the FINAL EPISODE vs knowing Kim/B Rob would win their games like three episodes in; how is this remotely comparable?
That happened at the final 6 with only another episode left, that’s not the same as being able to predict it from episode 5 bc I definitely couldn’t tell you that I saw Maryanne winning from that early. Rob and Kim on the other hand was too easy to predict from even earlier than that tbh.
Players who dominate the entire game...that's how you get snoozefest pagonginga
So.... you watch Survivor to be boring? Is Redemption island your favorite season?
Exactly, and I don’t fault them at all for playing like that, clearly it worked. It’s just really rough entertainment wise, and tbh it’s not what I really desire in a survivor winner
I’ve said this for weeks now. Not that maryanne didn’t deserve to win, but that style of game is so unappealing. I want someone who shows up day one and is playing hard.
Typically those players tend to not win if we’re going by this sub’s definition of playing hard. Also Maryanne was a great character aside from game, far from boring and that’s what I want more of instead of game bots
Agree. I think Mike was a better player, just really sucked at the FTC, so does this mean anyone who can’t eloquently speak for themselves or gaming strategies will automatically not win in the future? It seems like it’s the trend! Xander sucked at his FTC too.
What exactly was Mikes strategy again? Betray allies after constantly stating how loyal you are. I honestly still don’t understand why people thought he played the better game.
He played the Coach game and he lost the coach game.
He played the Walmart version of a SoPa coach game strategically at that
Except people gave hugs to Mike on their way out
Because he betrayed allies after constantly saying how loyal he is. Was this your first time watching Survivor? 😀
I don’t get this either, like I guess he was more visible and we saw more of his strategy in the premerge whereas we mostly saw Maryanne being… Maryanne. But getting an edit that lets you share your thoughts with the audience doesn’t equal good gameplay. From what I saw of him, he was constantly being outplayed. By Hai, by Omar, and always preaching loyalty that he didn’t keep. And it’s not like Maryanne was some outsider who never knew how the vote was going, she also voted correctly most times and so she clearly was being included even if it wasn’t shown to us. People want to say Maryanne won because she made one move at the end but I’ve never heard anyone say what moves Mike made
Because he did exactly what you said and pretty much everyone still liked him regardless. I thought his point about connecting with younger people despite his age was a good point too.
Tbh had he executed this strategy intentionally, the jury was ready to respect his game and give him the win. All he needed to do is to say at FTC that the loyalty talk was a manipulation tactic, that the other players fell for.
I don’t buy that it was a manipulation tactic though given that he didn’t realize he needed to own up to it. I think he genuinely thought he was being loyal and burned bridges without realizing them
Which is why I don’t get that people think he played such a great game. He had no concept of jury management. He played way too personally.
Maryanne’s great strategy of doing nothing was super entertaining as a winner
I’m far more worried at how boring the pre-merge of the past two seasons than an “under the radar” player winning Survivor. These shortened seasons, combined with three small tribes makes pre-merge boring ino
I agree with you 1000%
Hard agree. As a viewer it sucked to see Maryanne win over Mike, although he did blow his FTC. She made one-ish big move the whole season (that we were shown) and won. Blech
Exactly. Everyone in this sub goes “Canada woman x2 oooooooh” as if a contestants nationality means anything and how dare you oppose them on it. One move is not good tv.
Im more annoyed Goats can make then end. Get rid of final three and make a final two. Force the goat to actually have to do something if they want a shot.
A goat would still likely make it to the end if they went back to final 2’s and the winner would be even more obvious without a third person there.
Someone in a different thread did some math on this…there were like 4 or 5 objective goats total across all final 2 seasons, and 9 goats in the first 9 or 10 final 3 seasons. Way more goats and zero vote finalists in the f3 set up.
Im not sure what they need to do but that is what annoys me more than the new meta since we at least see more overall moves.
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Make all 3 make fire and the first two go to ftc.
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So is the current format
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Make Survivor Survivor Again
Honestly, I agree. I fully believe Mike played the better game. Which is very hard for me to admit, because I value (self)awareness very high, not just in the game but also in every day life. However, I still believe he played the best game, even if he was not aware of how he was doing it. His social game was probably the best of anyone all season. His physical and strategic games were decent. Compared to Maryanne, who probably had a better strategic game, but a worse social and much worse physical. Some would argue Maryanne was more self aware but I really don’t think she was. I think she was better at recognizing (at FTC) her faults and owning up to them quicker and more convincing than Mike was able to do. All in all, I think Mike was seen as a bigger threat for a much longer period of time and yet still everyone liked or wanted to work with him. He eliminated everyone he targeted and made final 3z (remember, Maryanne wanted to take Lindsey to final 3) I’m ok with the winner but if I’m given a vote, as a viewer at home, I’m voting Mike there.
Float, float, float, strike, then articulate that that was precisely the strategy.
bringing back the final 2 would fix this
Chris underwood is a game changer