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Mameblanche
Member
08-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:52 am
The Heroes and Villains should be fun! BUT my fave hero, Ethan Zohn, the 2002 winner of Survivor: Africa, is extremely ill with a recurrence of his cancer and I can't imagine he'll be able to participate, and it sure won't be the same without him.
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Gidget
Member
07-28-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:58 am
Social skills have nothing to do with the way you play golf. But they have everything to do with your popularity in professional sports. And popularity equals endorsements equals more popularity. This is true of every competitive endeavor on the planet. It is true in politics, religion. reality shows and employment, etc. And not all social skills are created equal. A physically ugly person can have a heart of gold, yet be shunned. While a pretty person on the outside can have a heart of evil and get away with murder.
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Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:58 am
Mame, he's back in remission and doing well again. They had a spot on the news about him a while ago. He needs a bone marrow transplant to stop the chance of further recurrences but it's looking hopeful. Of course not well enough to be on Heroes, but great news anyway!
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Catfat
Member
02-27-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:19 am
On this Survivor and on Big Brother, the winner both times wa a pretty young blonde woman who basically stayed in the shadow of a stronger man and rode his coat tails in for the win. For some reason, this relly irritates me. Does this mean that this is the way for women to win in this world? Women with any spunk and intelligence were targeted by Russell on Survivor and were very shortly gone. So is the way for woment to win is to be cutsey and blond and hide your skills? This is all rhetorical, but I still think Natalie did not deserve to win by just following along in Russell's shadow and basically doing nothing, even though that is a strategy itself.
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Mgmriver
Member
04-27-2009
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:25 am
Russell didn't play a great game. He did make for good survivor tv. He did find idols everyone gives him props for that. Other than that he's a flawed player. By not being able to put his ego aside and because he thought he deserved the win he forgot a major part of thre game...The Jury. Who ER thought deserved to win means nothing-it's the jury who decided who wins the million dollars. EvilRuss had a chance if he only pretended to make amends while being questioned before the vote. A little stroking of others' egos would have been a major help, probably. As good as ER was at finding hii idols Natalie played just as good of a social game and the fact that she won the prize speaks for itself about this jury. They had no love for Russ and he let it happen by tottaly ignoring that part of the game. Although he did try tp wor Brett at the very end. So what happens when there is a conflict between the 2 aspects of the game - who wins the vote. I think it depends on the jury. ER was with these people long enough to know the ousted people were furious and and not likely turn the other cheek. He just had to look at how Shambo was treated. He knew they were pissed, their egos where slaughered by giving up the 8-4 lead. Natalie had the foresight to realize she needs to make some kind of connection with the ones ousted and she did a good job of it. Riding coattails as Jeff say's is a legitimate strategy. I'm still confused what ER strategy was??? Finding HII idols? Vote people off one by one with the help of the FoaFoa 4 and shambo? I think that was a collective strategy. Both Mick and Natalie were smart to let ER be the bad guy and he didn't even realize he was being used. He says "they" all rode his coattail when in reality "they" all used each other and in the end Natalie won the votes because she understood the jury better the ER.
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Kitt
Member
09-06-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:29 am
I think it says a good thing about women (not so much Jordan maybe, but Natalie). It says that a woman's strong points may not be as obvious as a man's, but they are still important, still worthy, and can still get you what you want. I think it's a good thing and it's about time. You can't win everything by brute force. Natalie had the finesse Russell lacked and it gave her the win in the end.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:30 am
We are talking about winning the game, not product endorsements. Social skills don't win you golf games. I stand by my point that the analogy is senseless.
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Marameko
Member
07-15-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:31 am
I'm glad Russell did not win; even though he did have very good strategy at times. His bad behavior proves that one does not have to be "down and dirty" to win. Very funny from Jeff in how a dumb*** had kicked his a** by winning. I may have been ½ asleep but I got that. Am I shocked Natalie won........you betcha.But I am more shocked and happy with the jury.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:41 am
I agree that people were voting against Russell and not for Natalie. I understand some people's frustration with Russell's loss. Logically, he should have won. He was phenomenal at strategy and manipulation. Unfortunately, he neglected people's emotions and that is huge. I really think he could have won with a different approach to the jury. He basically just rubbed it in their faces and they were not ready to hear that. Whether you like it or not, this is a key part of the game and it cannot be neglected.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:44 am
I still think it is an inapt comparison. The people voting for Tiger Woods as athlete of the decade were not people whose emotions were raw from being crossed and manipulated. It doesn't compute.
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Jimmer
Moderator
08-30-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:44 am
My first thought was that Russell lost because he played a poor social game. However, based on what the jury saw from what we were shown on the show (excluding Russell's monologues which no one on the jury saw), I think Russell did play a solid social game. He manipulated the votes, he found or won the II when he needed to and he clearly filled the three criteria supposedly listed for winning Survivor. The only reason that Natalie won was because Russell eliminated the opposition. Plus he did try to emphasize that Laura and Brett (to name two) were strong opponents. I'm not sure how Russell could have sugar coated it but it was a brutal defeat for Galu. I think it was too bitter a pill for them to swallow. I'm not sure that Russell could have won with this jury regardless of how much he sucked up to them at the end. It was a crushing defeat of Galu and there is no nice way to put it.
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Adven
Member
02-06-2001
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:52 am
I stand by my point that the analogy is senseless. The analogy has nothing to do with the game of golf. That's objective. Voting for the best golfer, however, is subjective. My point was simply that I believe by almost any objective criteria you can use - other than "social skills" ( in Russell's case his arrogance and ego, in Tiger's his infidelity), Russell/Tiger dominated their respective games. To then deprive them of their "title" because you disapprove of their behavior seems petty to me. That's why I think the analogy is valid. Now, if someone genuinely feels Natalie was a better player than Russell or that Phil is better than Tiger, then that's fine. The impression I got from the jury, though, was not that they thought Natalie was a superior player to Russell, but they simply didn't like Russell. They have every right to vote based on that, just as the Golf Writer's of America would have every right to reward Phil Mickelson. In my opinion, it would reflect poorly on them, though.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:53 am
As I just pointed out above, I still find it to be an inapt analogy.
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Hermione69
Member
07-24-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:57 am
Adven, whether you like it or not, how you play to the jury counts in Survivor. Period. Tiger Woods didn't have to play to a jury of people he had double-crossed. It wasn't a part of that vote.
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Lilfair
Member
07-09-2003
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:57 am
Oh, I think Natalie is every parents dream daughter, smart, good job (she'll find another), well spoken, fearless, and tough not to mention likable. All traits that can get you far in this game and in life. Natalie saw pretty early on that not only Russ but the guys weren't keen on the females especially when they began to lose challenge after challenge. To Russ's credit and unbeknownst to the guys Russ would pick the female that would call him out that week and the guys went along with Russ's choice and so did Natalie. Russ kept Natalie because he saw her as the most weak, most blond, I think. I don't think Natalie had any illusions about Russ, she was just happy that Russ was the one doing the dirty work and therefore she could begin to work the jury, one by one and it worked for her. Is that riding coattails or is that foolish of Russ to be allowed to be the constant bad guy while no one ever noticed Natalie was gungho for each eviction. While Natalie was winning over the jury members Rus was alienating them, happily, showing a total lack of knowing the full game. Russ kept Natalie over Shambo who was iffy with the jury, kept Natalie over Jaison who I don't think stood out as a very strong mental or physical player. He kept Natalie because she's a dumb blond chick and obviously he doesn't hold women (in general) in high regard. That thinking came to cost him a MILLION dollars. LOL Russ made a lot of mistakes. Maybe he'll do better on season 20, although I doubt it. He probably thought he won this season and probably thinks he won next season and his ego already thought he could brag winning 2 seasons of Survivor in a row. Now that foolish dumb blond beat him out. He's losing it, his mind, I'm sure.
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Brenda1966
Member
07-03-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:58 am
On Survivor the jury doesn't have to be professional. They get to vote any lame-brained, emotional, stupid way they want. They can even ask the final 2 to pick a number between one and 10 and cast their vote that way! That's the weakness of this survivor jury (and others we have seen in the past). Not a single one of them could convince me that Natalie actually had a strategy and deserved the win for anything other than being "nice".
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Adven
Member
02-06-2001
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:01 pm
Adven, whether you like it or not, how you play to the jury counts in Survivor. Period. Tiger Woods didn't have to play to a jury. It wasn't a part of that vote. No, an athlete doesn't physically go before a panel, that's correct.
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Ladytex
Member
09-27-2001
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:01 pm
They don't have to convince you. Whenever you insert the human factor in voting, whether it be Survivor, BB, AI you insert a performance factor. You have to play to those whose vote you want. Period. Russell did not do that. Russell lost. He was too busy tooting his own horn to realize that his performance was not working.
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Bonbonlover
Member
07-13-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:09 pm
Watching Russell trying to literally BUY the win from Natalie at the finale/reunion last night was single most pathetic thing I've ever seen.
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:15 pm
I actually wanted Russell to win right up until the camp scene after the final immunity challenge. His doggin' on Natalie and Mick was ugly and mean. As was his bragging on and on about himself. At that point, I really wished that Brett had pulled it off, altho the jury questions would have been anti-climatic. Russell would have been voted out, and we wouldn't get to see them face him. I think in the end, Russell got what he deserved. He did miss a big element of the game, and that is relationship. He didn't develop any, and so he lost. And yes, Bonbon, that was pathetic. He had invested so much of himself as winner, he really was desperate to not have to face that he didn't. I almost felt sorry for him, but hey, karma.
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Jezzedout
Member
09-07-2006
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:15 pm
Great article on NPR. I'm including only a portion of it below. Here's a link to the full original -- http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2009/12/survivor_crowns_a_winner_offen.html On the topic of whether Russell was robbed of the win... The way Survivor works is that a final "jury" made up of everyone booted in the second half (or so) of the game votes on the winner out of the last two or three (this year, it was three) people standing. Everyone knows it works this way. Everyone knows that it is meaningless, in terms of winning, to be one of the final people being voted on if you can't get people to vote for you. There are no rules about how jurors are supposed to vote. There is no requirement that they vote for the nicest person, the person who needs the money most, the person who helped them out personally, the person who helped everyone be fed and hydrated, or the person who played the hardest (which, in the show's parlance, usually means "loudest and least subtly"). There is no rule that you're supposed to vote for a person who played one way versus another way. There are also no rules about how they can decide who not to vote for. You can not vote for someone because he's a jerk, because he got you voted out and you're still mad, or simply because you like the other guy better. You can follow promises you made earlier, or not. All of this is just as much a part of the rules as people being voted off. In the end, out of nine jurors, Russell managed to snag a total of two votes, and was trounced by Natalie, his alliance-mate, who played a much quieter and more respectful game in which, compared to Russell, she thought a lot more about winning the money and a lot less about getting the most camera time. Throughout the season, CBS, which seemed to have suffered a massive casting failure in which the vast majority of the 20 people competing this season simply had very little to say that was interesting, struggled to make more out of Russell than was really there. If a group of people decided to do something, even if Russell was not the first person to suggest it, it would somehow later be reported in one of the increasingly delusional Jeff Probst "Previously on Survivor" summaries (which became the funniest part of the season for me and many people with whom I discussed the show) that it was all his idea. What Russell did the most was talk about himself. If you excised Russell's confessionals in which he told the camera what a genius he was, and you excised Probst's rooting openly for Russell (as he always does for whatever man he deems the most manly), the perception that Russell did more than everyone else would largely disappear. (Yes, you would be left with the fact that he found a couple of immunity idols, now that the show has stopped burying them or really hiding them and has started hiding them in near-plain-sight. This is not "mastermind" play. This is being good at scavenger hunts.) It was Natalie, in fact, who pulled off the single most difficult and significant maneuver of the season: getting a much larger eight-person alliance that was facing her four-person alliance to turn on one of its own, which ultimately fractured it permanently. She had an absolutely unassailable claim to the title. She made the single most important move of the game. Much of Russell's bragging, on the other hand, was about the two most meaningless, obvious boots of the season: the first two. The first person sent home was an aggressive young woman perceived as physically weak and disliked by several members of her team. The second was a 48-year-old female police officer, also perceived as physically weak and not very comfortable socially with a bunch of young bartender types. These are the same two kinds of people -- annoying young women and older women -- who go first in every other season. They'd have gone anyway. But because neither of them believed anything Russell said, he put this toward his legacy: "They were onto me, so they're gone now!" Here's the problem: Just about everybody was onto him. There are perhaps two people all season (Shambo and Ashley) who thought Russell was telling them the truth. Everyone else knew the entire time when he was lying and when he wasn't. Despite his conviction that everyone was under his mind control, there is strong evidence that he fooled absolutely nobody. The people who believed he was going to stick with them were, by and large, the people he stuck with: Natalie, Jaison, and Mick, his alliance-mates. He didn't manipulate them into anything. They correctly ascertained that he was, indeed, intending to go forward with them. Everybody else he approached with handshakes and secret deals expressed frequently their belief that those secret deals probably meant nothing. Whoever went, whenever they went, it was easy for Russell to say, "That person was a threat to me, because he didn't believe me, so I had to get rid of him!" When everybody thinks you're full of it, it's pretty easy to argue that there's a perfect record of eliminated players being the ones who think you're full of it. In retrospect, it's fairly obvious what happened: Russell hooked himself to three people -- Natalie, who won; Mick, who's a doctor; and Jaison, who's a Fulbright Scholar -- all of whom knew that he would run around all season acting like a jerk, but figured if they remained in a nice, solid four-person alliance with him, they had a decent chance of getting to the end, and when they got there, the jury would probably dislike him and vote for someone they liked better. This is basically exactly what happened. This is how smart people play if they're confronted with an attention-hogging personality eager to align with them. And, in fact, the best way of all to do it is to be the person the attention hog feels least threatened by, because he'll be trying to make sure it's you he's up against at the end. Natalie, in short, played Russell perfectly, as it turned out, and understood how their alliance would be perceived. Russell, on the other hand, thought that when he sat in front of a bunch of people who didn't like him, he would be able to say, "I was in charge and made the most noise, so you should vote for me." He was completely, utterly, totally mistaken. And somehow, despite the fact that the rest of his alliance correctly understood the social dynamics and Russell massively misread them, there are cries that this is -- wait, what was it Dalton Ross said at Entertainment Weekly? -- yes, there it is. A travesty. You may have been rooting for Natalie because you liked her better (And that's fine. I get that.) but if you are voting, and you take that job seriously, you have to put that aside and vote for the best player. Any way you slice it, Natalie was not the best player. First of all, if you are voting and you take that job seriously, you have lost your grip on reality, because voting on Survivor is not a "job" to "take seriously." Second of all, there is no such thing as a "best player" other than the player who gets people to vote for him or her. It is an intrinsic part of Survivor to play to a jury in a way that gets them to vote for you. It's the hardest, most mysterious part of the game. Winning challenges is easy; understanding what somebody will do with his or her vote is hard. If she hadn't been trying to make sure she would do well in the final vote, Natalie would have played entirely differently. Everybody else in Russell's alliance tailored their performance to that final vote. He didn't. He forgot, or mishandled, the entire last step of winning the game. Natalie both played in such a way that she got to the end and played in such a way that people voted for her. Russell played in such a way that he got to the end and then got two votes. Like it or not, for all players, this game ends with a final challenge called Get The Most Votes. If you stink at that challenge, you deserve not to win. Third of all: If you're a juror, you don't have to put aside anything! You have the ultimate power of your own reckless, irrational whimsy! That is the absolute essence of the game. The essence of being a juror on Survivor is that you can do whatever you want. The fact that some jurors vote out of a twisted sense of "respect," some vote out of resentment, some vote out of loyalty, and some vote because they think one person needs the money more? That's the game. Those are the rules, and everybody knows them, and everybody has the same opportunity to take them into account and play accordingly. Interestingly, this season has been compared to the eighth season, which was an "All-Star" season, where the final two were Rob and Amber, a couple who fell into a pattern that was in some ways similar: he was far more aggressive and mouthy; she was quieter and more passive. The difference between Rob and Russell (other than that Rob got four votes and almost won, while Russell got two votes and didn't) is that Rob knew the entire time what he was doing. He never believed he was going to walk in there, say "I did all the work," and be handed a bag of money. He thought that might work on some people, but he knew other people would never vote for him. He played in the only way he could, with a pretty solid understanding of the gamble he was making, and hoped for the best. He lost the gamble, but he wasn't deluded. (Furthermore, everybody acknowledged that Rob genuinely did make most of the decisions, which Russell didn't; some of the votes for Amber seemed to be spite votes against Rob because he ran the show. The votes for Natalie seemed more based on a personal dislike of Russell's obnoxious, sexist, bullying behavior and a genuine affection for Natalie.) Russell, on the other hand, lectured and taunted Natalie and Mick before the final tribal council about how everyone was going to vote for him, how he would make them look like fools if they even tried to defend themselves. He insisted that he had it in the bag. In short, he had no idea how he was perceived. His social skills are, despite the "manipulative mastermind" narrative the show tried so hard to present, very, very poor. That's why he sat at the reunion show almost in tears over not winning. He was stunned and shocked that his plan didn't work, because it never occurred to him that other people didn't think he was as great as he thought he was. It never occurred to him that other people correctly read his bluster as bluster; that his alliance was saying, "Oh, yeah, buddy, you're the big genius, I'm sure you'll win" and then turning around and rolling their eyes when he walked away. It never occurred to him that he was being simultaneously used by three other people, all of whom had the same plan to let him bluster and brag and make himself someone nobody wanted to give money, and then to grab the money right out from under him, taking advantage of his enormous blind spot when it comes to social relationships. Ultimately, one of those three people had the game go precisely as she planned. How, exactly, is this not deserving to win?
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Gidget
Member
07-28-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:17 pm
The people voting for Tiger Woods as athlete of the decade were not people whose emotions were raw from being crossed and manipulated. Put that way, I do agree.
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Jimmer
Moderator
08-30-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:19 pm
LOL – What could Russell say to the jury to ease the misery and bitterness of losing a slam dunk 8-4 advantage and having 3 of the 4 Foa Foa tribe sitting there at the end? I guess he could say "Gee guys you played a great game" but I don't think anyone would buy that. They all knew that the only reason they were all sitting on the jury was Russell, capped off by Russell beating the final Galu member in the final II challenge.
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:22 pm
That last camp scene was pathetic, I actually lost respect for Mick and Natalie for putting up with his derogatory and degrading comments. I had hoped one of them would crop up with a superior speech at tribal, but obviously they didn't need to because Russell just kept hammering nails in his own coffin. The jury didn't deny Russell his righteous win, Russell handed the win to Natalie on a platter. He has no one to blame but himself.
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Askme_who_ur
Member
08-19-2006
| Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:23 pm
I think that both Natalie and Mick looked deeper into what they would say to the jury because of Russell. He told them they better think of something to say. And they did.
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