As I recall, Ethan didn't actually do that well in the challenges in Africa, which was quite surprising. I could be wrong, but I remember Lex doing better in more physical challenges than Ethan back then.

The one thing that I realized, especially after watching the reunion, was that I truly hope they never do an All-Star season again. The basic premiss was fine, but I really didn't like how it became evident that the All-Stars may have tried to form alliances with their friends before the game started, and at the very least had strong friendships going in that the average viewer wouldn't know about.

I wouldn't mind seeing another All-Star edition again so long as they space them out - like 1 out of every 8-10.

But this is what made the inter-personal stuff kick up the whinefest a notch or two higher than usual. :D

Exactly. :thumbsup: This was certainly one of the more entertaining Survivors and the reunion was definitely the most entertaining and they didn't even touch the Richard/Sue issue - hopefully they will on Thursday.

Actually, I was disappointed in the All Stars. I can't believe how utterly DUMB some people were. You'd think doing it once would make them smarter, but for most of them, it didn't.

Two people I don't want to ever see "touched."

das

You have to admit that the spectre of the "Wrath of wRob" scaring the beejeezus out of the rest of the contestants should Amber be given the boot was pretty cool. How many other times did a player weld that much fear in the hearts of the other players?

That is the main reason, I think he deserved the million.

When only ONE member gets sent to the opposite tribe, and then lose the next immunity, and knowing a merge is coming.................yet the Robfather still controls the other side's vote.

That was a GREAT MOVE and he deserved to win for that move alone and for the others falling for it.

In the grand scheme of things for Rob/Amber to win it had to be played that way. (unless pure luck dictated otherwise).
If he allowed Lex/Kathy to stay I think he would have run into trouble later in the game.
At the latest, in the final 4 Lex/Kathy wouldn't have done what Jenna did.
But more likely the trouble would have been much sooner.

Lex would have made a move on Rob as soon as possible.
Once you kept Lex/Kathy and watching their relationship, Rupert/Jenna/Shi-Ann/Alicia would have woken up real fast.

Ah, I long for the days of "Greg asking Richard and Kelly to pick a number".

A few random thought from the reunion show.

Sue not only did not sit next to Rich as she was supposed to, but she also had her back turned to him the entire time. As much as she could considering she was sitting a bench, she was turned away almost 90 degrees from Rich the whole show.

I thought it was odd that Big Tom told Rob that, unlike himself, Rob didn't have a family to fall back on. Hello, Rob just got a fiancee during the show and his parents were in the audience giving thumbs up. I guess they're not good enough to call family for Big Tom.

Big Tom's a dumbass.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

My favorite comment so far (and I have several pages to read yet!!). :D

Nope, on the CBS Early Show interview, Rob said Burnett didn't even know about the proposal until 10 minutes before the live show, and even then all Rob did was go up to Burnett and say, Mark, I have a bit of a surprise I'm going to work in.... he wouldn't tell Mark what it was, and he said Mark was pretty hyper about it, all "WHAT surprise??" :D Burnett couldn't have paid for a ring he didn't know about.

At first, I wondered how Rob could afford such a rock. However, I remembered that the runner-up gets $100,000 IIRC. So, with at least that coming to him, he was probably able to get it on credit from somewhere. He should have won outright, but hopefully it won't matter and things will stay good with Amber.

Interesting comments on the Early Show. Tom saying that he will burying the hachette - hmmm, I wonder why. Rudy saying that if he wins the $1M, he will donate half to families who lost servicemen in Iraq.

I think Big Tom meant he was literally going to bury the hatchet. He's going to dig a big hole on his farm, put a hatchet in it, and cover with dirt.

I actually stood up and yelled "yeah b1tch!" and was glad the rest of MSG agreed when Probst pointed out Lex did the same thing to others as Rob had done to him.

I should know better by now to give some buffer room to recordings. Where is the next Survivor location?

A YEAR??? You're not under the impression that Survivor is shown in realtime and they've been gone from their families for the past few months, are ya? :D

I'll probably vote for Rup also, but he was gone at max 39 days each time. Not exactly like joining the military. ;)

On the reunion show, Jeff Probst specifically said that we could only award the other million to one of the OTHER 16 Survivors (i.e. not Rob or Amber). However, this doesn't seem to correspond with the vote on the CBS site. Did Jeff make a mistake? I hope so because Rob deserved to win, and I'd like to see him get his own million and winner title (even though he and Amber are together etc.). He dominated the game and controlled pretty much everything important about it. If the jury wasn't full of crybabies, he would have won.

BTW, it was clear after the reunion show just who the real All Stars were. To my surprise, even though I'm not a fan of either, both Jenna and Shi-Ann are more All Star than a lot of the others. Like Hatch and a few others, they understand it is a game. It isn't about making friends. Lex was just pathetic. And Alecia? Well, perhaps she would have done better had she realized that "Outclass" isn't part of the game of Survivor--"Outwit, Outplay, Outlast."

The videos at the CBS site are interesting, some of them are downright funny. Jenna says vote for Rupert because she betrayed him. Rob C says if he wins he'll give half the money to Rupert.

Amber says "Yeah, 2 million? Why not, vote for me."

No, Jeff said that when he was telling Amber to award the CAR to someone... he said she couldn't award it to herself or Rob, since they'd already won a car. The million dollars can go to any of the 18 all stars. :)

Oh, yeah, as someone said the week after Lex was first voted out, what's he going to do in his next desperate cry for attention, come out wearing a Catholic schoolgirl's outfit?

I wrote this just to remind some people about the game of Survivor (someone wanted just Probst or Barnett to name the winner - a la "The Apprentice" and ditch the jury):

Every season I tell people that Survivor is not purely a physical game whereby the sole Survivor is the one who can win immunity challenges (and "runs" the order of elimination), and thereby appears to be the "best" player in the game. No. Survivor is at its core a study in sociology and accountibility of one's actions or non-actions as deemed fit by the remaining 7 members of the jury.

There are many ways to get to the final two. You can be the overt leader who appears to be capable of winning each challenge to be untouchable at tribal council, or you can be the covert follower who positions yourself to be the alternative to the lightning rod. You can be a despicable person to contrast yourself with anyone else with a conscience. You can just be lucky to align yourself with another person truly trustworthy.

Failure to cajole the jury as you send them along their way to the jury room, and you run the huge risk of alienating them. Rob did fail in the sociological aspect of the game, and in the end, it cost him the one vote he needed to gain a victory.

Probst has always said that the best player is the one who ends up with the most votes from the jury. I suggest we all deal with that interpretation because it's the one that follows the structure of the game and is why Survivor can be a fascinating look at how the process of eliminations every 3 days comes about in ways both overtly and covertly.

To have one person make the choice as to who the sole Survivor is would be akin to reducing the game into some form of Nascar points standing at the end because the game is then predicated on one person's idea of what the sole Survivor should be and whether they have attained enough "points" (caught enough fish, won enough challenges, etc) to win the title. That is not what this game is all about. The strain of inter-personal relationship that this game puts on the contestants is the draw of the game. Therein lies the drama, the conflict, the clash that produces one winner out of the starting group of contestants.

Nice, Patman. If the voting were any other way than it is now it would suck. Having voted out members choose the eventual winner is what makes this show good.