Board Thread:Virtual Tribal Council/@comment-1294345-20160428081722/@comment-27638357-20160429033053

Aspiring wrote: I say this with every winner, even Natalie White and Boston Rob (who had to play four times to actually get a win) ... it doesn't matter what you did, how you did it, or how boring/uninspired your gameplay is. If you get to the end and you get the votes, whether through respect of the jury or because you were the lesser of two/three evils, then you deserve it. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You did what you came there to do -- you outlasted fifteen to nineteen other people to win. And no one can take that away from anyone.

I'll refrain from beating this dead horse too much (although it may not even be dead), but there are some problems I have with this contention. My most important counterargument is simply the number of unforeseen circumstances that always factor into a game. No one that has or will ever play this game knows every single circumstance in the game. It's impossible to know for sure. We can take the Natalie White win that you mentioned. I have less of a problem with her beating Russell than I do with how she positioned herself at the merge. Galu and Foa Foa had minimal contact with each other and never had a tribe swap, so counting on a 4-8 numerical disadvantage is just absurd, and the circumstances it took for Foa Foa to overcome this were very particular, and none of the Foa Foa had a gameplan we knew of to overcome this coming into the merge. Since it's more than likely a tribe can't survive a 4-8 disadvantage, there are so few circumstances that could even get Natalie to the end. Ultimately, Foa Foa all made the Top 5, but you can't say anyone out there knew that was going to happen. Natalie can't be faulted entirely for the descend of Foa Foa, obviously. But I'm simply providing an example where circumstances play a huge role. For me, deserving a win is when you position yourself to win in the most amount of circumstances and in the most likely circumstances. No one can accurately predict the future, so the best thing to do is to prepare. If we contend that Cirie would have won Micronesia had it been a F3, then she "deserves" to win in my book because everyone that season thought and played according to the assumption that there was a Final 3, and Cirie best prepared herself for that situation. Parvati does get the win, but A) Obviously, none of them know it's a F2, and B) None of them have seen Amanda's atrocious China FTC performance, so Parvati can't rely on that, and if Amanda had a better performance, she could've won.

Anyways, though, I digress down a canyon of no end, so let's talk about the episode :P.


 * Very predictable episode for me. There were soooo many hints that Julia was going home. What really signaled to me that she was going home was at the reward challenge when all of a sudden she says "Why doesn't it work?", and that coupled with her saying "I don't care" during the night and "As soon as Tai's gone, we're eating that chicken" is just the biggest death knell of this season. Cydney couldn't even look at Jason when they talked about flushing Tai's idol, and it was evident to me that Probst was trying to force down our throats that "it was going to be an unpredictable Tribal", as he tried to get Tai more and more paranoid. I definitely think this was one of the weaker episodes.
 * It's pretty much a guaranteed F2 right now, unless they skip the Day 37 elimination ala China. The days just line up perfectly for this, although apparently no one on the island can figure this out.
 * Julia was an interesting player. I appreciated her drive to play hard and to avert the connotations associated with a teenager playing Survivor, and she played pretty hard. She had her mistakes, but in the grand midst of things I enjoyed her while she was present.
 * Mark The Chicken is winning Player of the Season. Calling it right now.
 * Also, if Mark gets 5 confessionals next episode, he'll officially have a higher confessional count than Whitney from South Pacific, I believe.
 * I always thought Michele was going to win, but the closer we reach the finale the less I want to see her win. I agree with Tangle that she's mostly floated through the game and has done little to take the game into her own hands, and she'd definitely be on the lower spectrum of winners for me.
 * My strategy for the immunity challenge would be to swim to the wheel, say "Screw it" and just head back to the station, take a look at my 5 symbols, and then go back and memorize the numbers. Much easier, especially after living on an island for 30-something days.
 * Aubry should've told Tai to use the idol. Why in the world didn't she do that? Even if Tai is mad at her, she could just say that it was a test of loyalty and reassure him that they're all on equal footing and they can all trust each other. Now Tai has leverage and power to be able to flip to Jason.