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tullfan2 wrote:

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Dr Will Hatch two point oh wrote:

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Actually Vanuatu was the first season that placed emphasis on game over personality. It was also one of the first seasons to emphasize making people more likeable or noncontroversial. Fuck it, I wanted to see Ami kiss her girlfriend. With me it's the opposite as far as loyalties. I actually found the womens tribe insufferably boring and grew to appreciate the mens tribe.

Actually, personality started to take a back seat to strategy in post-merge portion of Survivor Amazon because of Rob C . The post-merge portion of Pearl Islands was even crazier than Amazon's with all the flip flopping. All Stars was a major step backward because two thirds of the cast were from the first 3 seasons when alliances stuck together for the whole season based on tribal loyalty and many of them did not even watch Amazon and Pearl Islands. With the exception of Dolly and John K., Vanuatu had the best cast of gamers of any season because they watched Amazon and Pearl Islands. People were making strategy moves pre-merge that you generally didn't see till post-merge in the earlier seasons. The Fat Five formed their alliance on day 1, even though Chris/Sarge/Bubba and Rory/Chad were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, because the 4 young guys were hamging out together. Eliza and Lisa turned on their allies in episodes 2 and 3. Ami's paranoia took out Bubba and Lisa. Julie lied to Twila to keep her from siding with the men.

The ideal Survivor season emphasizes character development and camp life before the merger and emphasizes gameplay after the merger. The main flaw to the original format of the show during the first 5 seasons was that there were always stretches of 3 to 4 predictable and boring episodes during the post-merge where a larger group just picks off the smaller group and at that point the contestants are so weak and hungry that they have little incentive and energy to do much of anything other than sit or lie around. Production really needed to do something (eg. the Outcasts) to shake up that part of the season. As much as it seems to be despised around here, starting with Fiji, the Hidden Immunity Idol has livened up the post-merge part of the season as compared to Australia/Africa/Marquesas/Thailand post-merge which were boring for the most part.