Which Survivor are you?

I liked the cast more last season, but I'm enjoying the gameplay. Last ep's tribal council was a gut punch

i feel like this cast could have a lot of "growers," and there are a few shining stars already, but I agree that the 41 cast popped more right out the gate.

fun season! an excellent final jury performance for the win

just got together with our Survivor buds to watch it last night! we had a blast and started the ep rooting for the eventual winner but also on board for the eventual runner-up. so the mood was buoyant. lots of applause at the big moments. the way the final 4 challenge played out delivered some serious emotional lows and highs!

overall a very very strong season. the rich characterization we saw some people get last season was spread around a lot more evenly, with a lot more camp life and personal interactions, letting people's stories come through. pound for pound i think 41's cast is better, but 42's werr much more in focus. maybe one of the best-edited seasons ever?

next season's cast looks amazing too!

I'd still love to see the game design calm down postmerge. there are so few rounds where you just go to tribal council and vote someone out, which means way fewer chances for the players and their skills of maneuvering and persuasion to drive the story and boot order, rather than the votes being overdetermined by the game mechanisms. how much of a "resume" can anyone really have at the end?

season 43 premiered tonight and it rules so far. cast is fire.

also never thought I'd see "pretend to like Mastodon and the Dead Kennedys" employed as a strategy but I'm here for it.

these days lots of people pretend to like Mastodon

season's getting good!

Yah this weeks episode was incredible

agreed!! awesome awesome episode. juicy and fascinating and suspenseful in the best ways. overall feel like casting is continuing to nail it with great people, and I'm loving the return of a more variegated set of challenges. gives the show more texture and difference from week to week.

ours is very much a Karla household, so this week was PAINFUL tbqh but what excitement and drama! also we really like Jesse a lot, and he's cleaning UP so it'd be great to see him pull off a win. owen is also delightful.

got to be one of jesse or karla winning, right? what a fantastic episode. a double blindside of the other two big forces in the game.

the jury freaking out was also really fun

All the players are so nice now lol I think the removed player was gonna go scorched earth but they got over it in like 15 seconds

Jesse definitely leading the pack right now, could be the classic "out at 4" person though. would LOVE a Karla win, but not sure if her recent missteps have made that impossible. honestly feel like we might be heading towards Karla at 5, Jesse at 4, and Gabler taking the win?!? he's been getting a lot of smart confessionals, all depends on how everyone else perceives him / how well he can make the case to the jury.

so...

I hope Dr C is putting money on these predictions

lol sadly no, and even as it all happened i found myself feeling more and more deeply out of touch

really really enjoyed season 44, some great people on the cast. nice to finally get a clearly deserving winner, but Carolyn would have been just as worthy to my mind.

agreed, terrific season, best in a long time. stellar cast, super satisfying winner. though i agree about Carolyn, and would just add that i was very happy with 42's winner, and appreciated 41's even if the storytelling really fumbled that one. at this point the main thing holding the show back is being stuck in the same location and having it all feel like a set formula that different casts just get tumbled into. a certain look-and-feel sameyness has definitely settled in. but the casting is on fire.

42's was definitely worthy too, but the alli-gabler left a bad taste. regarding the formula, I thought it was telling that the cast were ready with their stuff when they had to move camp. they've cracked the code!

Carolyn was definitely my favourite, what a great human being. I wonder if her inability to create a social facade hurt her in the final vote. like she was too intimidating for the jury members to make the same kind of connection with her that they had with Yam Yam

she probably could have found a way to vote out Yam Yam in one of the last two votes. On the other hand, maybe it's cool to care more about having good vibes and hanging with your crew. It's just money lol

She was crazy expressive. Cameras had to stick to her cos she was always pulling faces. Fun season

45 is three episodes in and fantastic so far. the 90-minute time slot seems to be a game-changer in terms of telling a coherent story with developed characterization. they've also got a better handle on the gimmicks and advantages... there's still too many of 'em, but they stage comprehensible risk-reward dilemmas, and therefore at least tell you something about the person tackling them. super promising start.

last episode was great, and 90 minutes are a huge improvement. so what happens when one tribe is wiped out early like this?

idk if you saw the teaser for the next episode but they’re reorganizing the tribes which i think is their typical move when one tribe gets decimated pre-merge

agree entirely about the 90 min episodes btw. the arc with the losing tribe this season has been really well done, a classically great tribal in this episode. i was watching thru my fingers

J0rdan is right about the preview, so it looks like we won't get down to 2 this time. But FYI they've played the wiped-out tribe a few different ways. No spoilers for specific seasons but:

* one time (wayyyy back in the day), they once let it just. play. out. got to two people left, they did a fire-making challenge and the last one standing merged with the dominant tribe after one spooky night alone.
* one time (in the middle years), they've let it play out down to 2, and then those two then each joined one of the other two tribes for a couple rounds.
* one time (very recently) they've let it play out down to 2, and then they just went to the merge

More typically, there's a swap before the numbers get that lopsided, but it's hard to say whether those swaps were just pre-ordained, or if there was a line in their flowchart that said "if any tribe gets down to 3, activate the swap contingency."