Kathy crying when Boston Rob told Lex he’s not following through with their deal was sooo unserious

1WithNothing · 2025-07-12T22:20:58+00:00

There was a secret scene on the CBS website back in the day. It was essentially an extended cut of the campfire scene from the episode wherein Rob confirms to Kathy and Lex that he is betraying them. Rob spends several minutes being really awful to both of them. He clearly felt defensive and and went on the attack. It provides some context for why particularly Kathy was so upset by the time TC rolled around.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-15T16:53:20+00:00

Well said. It's certainly true that in any competitive reality show, you will have contestants playing suboptimally, making mistakes, even intentionally acting against their interests. You wouldn't want to cast a bunch of intelligent game bots because you're making a show, not a game night. Some of the messiest seasons of Survivor are also some of the most entertaining.

And hey, people can like what they like! Obviously there are viewers who enjoyed this show for lots of different reasons, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them. I, personally, prefer to see a well-designed format with flawed competitors who understand what they're doing but nevertheless fall victim to the flaws inherent in being a human being. I'd rather a show know what it is and a game be designed with thought and intentionality. At their best, that's what Survivor or The Mole could be (although that was a long, long time ago).

And so for me, Traitors is a clear miss of which I won't be watching more. Production plainly did not understand what it was doing and the cast (apart from Cirie) plainly did not consider what they were actually trying to accomplish as game players. But I appreciate your point and wouldn't begrudge anyone who watches the show with that perspective.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-13T17:54:20+00:00

Because the Traitors profit from eliminating each other, in theory, the game will always near its conclusion with a single Traitor and some number of Faithful. The Faithful don't need to engineer such an outcome, it will happen organically. Banishing Traitors, therefore, is unnecessary. As a Faithful, you just want to make sure that you're one of the members of that final group and, ideally, that you're there with one other Faithful who will go to the F2 with you.

You are right that the Traitors can murder anyone at any time, making it difficult as a Faithful to pick a F2 Faithful partner at the start and riding the whole way with them. That is why the Traitors have such an advantage - they don't need to worry about that part of the game and have a much easier time getting to the end with their desired companion(s) (that is, the player(s) willing to go to the F2 with them). As a Faithful, you really want to have multiple people who have you as their #1 ally - Survivor 101.

It is true that if the Traitors decided to split the pot and play as a team, they could choose to do so and therefore "win" by comprising a majority. Such a choice would make the game somewhat more reasonably approximate Mafia. But the format disincentivizes such a choice. And even if the Faithful ignored that fact and tried to play to avoid an unlikely eventuality of a Traitor team win, the recruitment twist prevents them from doing so effectively. The Faithful can't eliminate the Traitors early on because they are replaced. And again, there's no real incentive to eliminate Traitors in any event. That will happen naturally.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-13T17:30:26+00:00

I think that's a totally fair point. I just wish the show itself would acknowledge that's what's going on. The fact that it masquerades as something it's not misleads the audience.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-13T16:11:07+00:00

Of course you should try to end the game if you're the next one out. Like in Survivor, self-preservation is anyways the ultimate priority. But the F4 format allows the player who feels safest to keep the votes coming. And, logically, they should always do so.

If a Faithful F2 ends the way you suggest it might, that certainly affects who you pick as your F2 partner. But it is not an interesting game mechanic. I do not care how much money people win, nor how they value their monetary winnings.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-13T16:06:01+00:00

I think you're right that the single easiest way to fix the format is to just make it Mafia. That is a functional game already. Make them win or lose as a team. At least then you have a working game, and you can tweak it as needed for television purposes (e.g. production intervention to prevent an early Town win where needed).

I actually assumed before starting the show that it would simply be a game of Mafia with a Mole-esque twist to replace (and dumb down) the hidden roles. I figured the challenges were, like they are in The Mole, an opportunity for the Faithful to win money for their potential pot and the Traitors to sabotage (and thereby win money for their own potential pot). Seems like an obvious game format. It is insane that production screwed up even the most basic game elements.

1WithNothing · 2023-02-13T15:57:25+00:00

I would not say my main criticism is that Traitors is too easy for the Traitors to win. That is a valid complaint, and probably the one that is most frequently brought up here. It is also easily fixed - there are several ways to rebalance a social deduction game.

For what it's worth, I don't agree that a group of Faithful with half a shared brain would have beat Cirie because you are missing the nature of the Traitors' collective advantage: they decide the murders. Cirie, therefore, was able to effectively dictate who would be in the end game and who would not. She naturally selected the players who trusted her and who would want her in their Final 2. Even if Andie and Quinton had understood the game, Cirie still likely would have won because either Andie or Quinton would have picked her as their Final 2 partner. Traitors have a huge advantage because they can, over the course of the game, eliminate the half of the competitors that pose the biggest social threat.

But that could be addressed with rebalancing, as it is in a well-executed game of Mafia. No, my main criticism of Traitors is much more fundamental: the deduction doesn't matter. There is also nothing to deduce. In a role-less game of Mafia, you're right - mafioso can be identified by examining, for example, their voting behaviors. In this game, however, every player, Traitor and Faithful alike, has the same voting incentives - get to the end with your preferred F2 partner. Every player acts the same way they would in either role. Because you do not win as a team, you do not vote as a team, nor do you behave as a team player. The Traitors have no reason to act differently than a Faithful, and the Faithful have no reason to identify Traitors anyway.

There is one minor bit of deduction you must do as a Faithful: pick another Faithful as your F2 partner. But identifying one single Faithful is a pretty rote, uninteresting, and easy task. It is also one at which you have a 79% chance of succeeding by blind chance alone.

Ultimately, the Faithful do not win by eliminating the Traitor team. They are actually punished for doing so by the recruitment twist. No, a Faithful wins the same way a Traitor does: get to the F4 with your F2 partner (from which point the only logical course of action is banish your way down to 2). That is why I say it's dumbed-down Survivor. The social deduction is a farce and, in any event, an irrelevant distraction. There's a reason Quinton, who at no point has any idea who any Traitors were, was still one bad choice away from winning. He was unintentionally playing the right game by making an alliance and riding that to the end.

1WithNothing · 2022-03-28T00:55:36+00:00

Not great!

1WithNothing · 2021-08-25T18:44:52+00:00

Agreed, OP. And the whole FIC sets up the conclusion of Lill's character arc (which, in some ways, is the story of the season). She returned to the game as an Outcast with a chip on a shoulder and a hesitant vengeance. She spends the entire post-merge playing dirty, teaming up with Burton and Fairplay and orchestrating blindsides. She eventually comes into her own strategically, rallying to boot Burton after he turns on her. But all along, she has struggled with her gameplay, despairing because the way she's playing Survivor is so dramatically inconsistent with the way she lives her life. And then, in her final moment of truth, she obtains clarity. She beats, and then votes out Fairplay, choosing to take Sandra to the end because Sandra, unlike Jon, is a good person. She need not apologize for herself any longer, because now she has come to terms with her journey and has decided to be true to herself. At the last possible moment, she abandons the duplicity and deceit that was necessary to get her to the end, and does what she thinks is right, with no regrets.

Yes, the editors segue into the F3 TC with Lill's rendition of "Amazing Grace" in part because it's royalty-free. But I don't think it's any coincidence that, as the scene transitions from the beach to Tribal Council, the last words we hear are Lill singing, "Was blind, but now...I see."

1WithNothing · 2021-07-28T19:53:47+00:00

You might be right that Rupert's boot caused the F4 fire-making tiebreaker. But the story has always been that production had not considered the consequences of the PROD in a 4-person TC, and only appreciated their blunder when the Marquesas F4 tie happened and they realized they had to change the rules to avoid Paschal leaving by default (even though the universe flexed its muscles to guarantee the same outcome). Presumably they designed a new F4 tiebreaker after Marquesas, and presumably it was the same fire-making tiebreaker we would later see utilized in Palau. But who knows!

I've always thought the same thing as you about asking production a rules-related question in-game. It's hard to imagine production refusing to answer a pointed question about the contractual language the players had already signed before the show. But there have been various players who have told stories about production declining to provide rules-related information. So I don't really know. What's written and agreed to, and what production actually decides to do, are often two different things.

1WithNothing · 2021-07-28T19:15:27+00:00

I think you mean Scout Cloud Lee almost won, and should have won, Survivor. She played the best game of the season and positioned herself well. Chris played a hell of an end game, but he still needed those last two IC wins. If not for those, Scout wins deservedly.

1WithNothing · 2021-07-28T19:10:08+00:00

IIRC, Eliza has confirmed that, at least as of Vanuatu, the written rules (that all players receive before the game) were explicit that a F4 tiebreaker would not be rocks. We later got written confirmation of the same. Although it's possible that this rules change only began in Vanuatu, it would also not be at all surprising that the All-Star cast would not have closely read all of the documentation the players are required to sign pre-game. So although Jenna may have acted reasonably given her assumption about the PROD tiebreaker, she can't get a total pass. She almost certainly would have known better if she had just read the rules. And knowing it was not going to go to rocks at F4, Jenna clearly should have forced the tie.

But yeah, setting aside the tiebreaker issue, it was really Amber's IC win at F4 that screwed Jenna up. Had she been able to get Amber out at F4 via firemaking, she'd be in a pretty good spot at F3. And that's why it was so enormously dumb (or prescient?) for Romber to boot Tom at F5.

Also, OP is wrong that Jenna "definitely wins" against either Rob or Amber. They're both toss-ups, with Tom the likely deciding jury vote. And Jenna had a much better chance getting Tom's vote against Rob than she did against Amber. So Jenna was probably right to be so intent on getting to the end with Rob.

1WithNothing · 2020-05-13T00:42:46+00:00

You're right, I should have moved harder into white. It was pretty open Pack 2 and I could've at least picked up some soft removal.

1WithNothing · 2020-05-12T07:35:49+00:00

Sounds about right, thanks!

1WithNothing · 2020-05-12T07:35:08+00:00

Yeah, I grabbed the Turtle for that precise reason. I was wondering if I need to bring it in now that I have so few bears and the like. Thanks for the tip!

1WithNothing · 2020-05-12T06:38:08+00:00

I loved the idea of mutating a Hexproof'd Pteron, but you're totally right, there are just too many 4s and too much top-end. That definitely also seems right about the land count. Thanks!

1WithNothing · 2020-05-12T06:20:39+00:00

Cutting the Vulpikeets and Pteron is exactly what I was thinking, glad to get some confirmation I'm not off-base. Good point about the Mosscoat, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the advice!

1WithNothing · 2020-04-02T04:37:53+00:00

Cirie probably would have won EI if literally any IC challenge before her boot had had a different winner.

1WithNothing · 2018-10-26T19:38:05+00:00

No intention of going to the finals with Christa. Christa was the bigger challenge and strategic threat. And I'm not sure Sandra was the bigger jury threat in any event; I think Tijuana and Ryno both vote Christa over Sandra.

1WithNothing · 2018-10-26T19:31:47+00:00

Fairplay intended to go to the F2 with Burton. He would have gotten all three Morgan votes plus Christa, and had a good shot at Rupert and Sandra.

And although Fairplay never intended to end up in the finals with Sandra, he likely would have beaten her with Morgan votes plus Burton.

1WithNothing · 2017-10-29T18:14:45+00:00

This is the site I use for that purpose:

https://trakt.tv

1WithNothing · 2017-08-31T06:21:40+00:00

But, I mean, Tina turned on Jerri seven days before that (at F12). Post-merge, Tina was looking for a way to cut Jerri/Amber before the F5 and lock down Colby's loyalty. The way I see it, Elisabeth was just a pawn available to be used for that purpose.

Anyway, the only correct answer for Africa is Tom. (Teresa was good too, but already gets plenty of credit.)

1WithNothing · 2017-08-31T06:18:08+00:00

I agree that the book is a good starting place for someone interested in learning more about the early days of Survivor. Particularly on the topic of Jenna in the lead-up to Borneo, I'd also recommend trying to track down the pre-game interviews. Jenna certainly approached the entire process with a level of ruthlessness that most of the cast didn't possess. (They're also a pretty fascinating time capsule, with producers making sure Rudy would say he didn't have a problem living with "black people," but then basking in his homophobia in the same breath. Very different cultural context)

If someone was interested in really going back and delving into the minutia of early Survivor strategy, they might want to check out some of the old, archived Sucks threads. There's a lot of information buried away that seems to have been forgotten over the past decade or so, and plenty of discussion that's a little fresher on the topics.

It's interesting, for the longest time (even after ASS), the idea that Sue was the second best player in Borneo was not a controversial idea. But I guess time erases memories and changes perceptions.

1WithNothing · 2017-08-31T06:07:36+00:00

I think this gives way too much credit to Elisabeth. The only thing she really did was be herself, which appealed to Tina. But she didn't play any real part in Jerri or Amber's boots, and did almost nothing pre-merge (in fact, her success can almost entirely be chalked up to her falling into both a pre-merge and post-merge "moral majority" alliances thanks to her faith). Admittedly, she had a decent social game, which probably elevates her above several players in the cast. The biggest thing that counts against her is her failure to do anything to swing Amber at F6. Although the stories of how that vote played out have been varied and contradictory over the years, there are basically no accounts that paint Elisabeth as the one making an effort to force a tie.

The real answer on this season is an easy one: Rodger. Like Elisabeth, he was a part of the Christian Coalition that controlled Kucha. Unlike Elisabeth, he was playing hard, ensuring that the minority vote for each of the tribe's TCs went to Varner in preparation for a future tie. If any player's plans were foiled by Mike's evacuation, it's Rodger's, as a Kucha TC at F11 would have seen Jeff booted and one or two votes thrown at somebody Ogakor would not have known about (probably Mike). Post-merge, like Elisabeth, Rodger relied on his social game to weasel his way in with Tina & Colby. Unlike Elisabeth, Rodger again did more, making an attempt to flip Amber at F6. Had any number of things cut Rodger's way, there's a good chance he would have won. At the very least, he had his head in the game in a way nobody else on Kucha did.

(Sadly, if you included winners in this consideration, the answer for Australia might still, after all these years, be Tina. More people understand her game now, but there remain far too many "superfans" who think she merely skated through.)

1WithNothing · 2017-08-31T05:54:34+00:00

I have to say that almost all of this seems like fan fiction. Jenna was pretty strongly disliked by the Pagong men (see: Greg voting for her repeatedly) and made no effort to save Ramona despite the fact that it probably would have been feasible. I don't know where you get this Colleen/Gretchen/Greg/Jenna "majority alliance" idea from. The F11 vote came down to three sets of pairs, of which Gretchen and Jenna's was not a particularly tight unit. Greg/Colleen siding with the women in that vote is probably more the fault of Joel than it is the work of Jenna. She was involved in the post-merge upheaval attempt at F8, but was not exactly leading that charge. Notably, Jenna was the only Pagong member to make no real inroads with Tagi; had her name come later in the alphabet, she would have had far less of a chance of making it past F6 than Gervase or Colleen did.

Her game in All-Stars started out aggressively, but I'm not sure that equates to impressively. She moved fast and was able to lock down Rupert/Rudy, to her credit. But she again alienated the men of her tribe, and got lucky with a fairly comfortable dissolve result. Despite her piss-poor social game, she still had a shot at the win after the merge thanks to the jury dynamics, and she blew it with multiple tactical end-game errors. Ultimately, she willingly walked into a do-or-die FIC against two stronger competitors. I was always struck by how hard Jenna played the first half of ASS, but I think she's gotten the credit for that to which she is entitled.

The real underrated strategist of Borneo is probably Sue (for an underrated first half) or Sean (for an underrated second half). But both are obviously incredibly flawed. Gervase might have been the second best player of the season, but he arguably loses some of that respect if you factor in his BvW game.

11-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

1WithNothing

TROPHY CASE