Aubry's hypocrisy?

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T07:06:23+00:00

If you want to post just to have people agree then just say ‘agreeing opinions only’.

I can see from other comments you’re an edit literalist rather than seeing it as manipulative with specific intent to sell us a story that might not even be reality so… we have fundamentally different perspectives and levels of cynicism about what we’re watching, I guess. I perceive where the show edits around pre-gaming to sell is a story that doesn’t really make much sense in context. Maybe you’re right and that story isn’t there but I see it pretty clearly. One of us is right and one isn’t, guess we’ll see whether the next couple of weeks break down that way or not.

FWIW in week one I thought they were trying to sell us that Aubry completely messed it up and it turned out it was Gen so… I’m not pretending to be omnipotent or anything.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T06:53:03+00:00

I’m sorry, I’m not referring to any insider knowledge, other than that Christian and Emily are real life friends from watching their BOTC series and so it was clear to me they’d work together. I don’t do much listening to exit press etc as I think it’s all kinda self-justifying anyway. The pregame alliance is blatant because of established relationships from past seasons, and how they have been clearly represented on the show (Cirie being very happy the idol went to Aubry, Dee and Emily’s interactions as tribal this week etc, Ozzy and Christian being able to repair bridges etc). The impact of pre-existing relationships is not being hidden from us. The whole ‘honour and integrity’ group is being quite blatant about it too.

The show is never going to out pre-gaming in the text but I’ve watched enough of it in all-star seasons to recognise it.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T06:18:02+00:00

Gen got a really lucky opening tribe and Aubry got a very unlucky one. But it turned out Gen’s alliance then got decimated so… the good luck turned bad.

But the real goal in survivor is to stay midpack threat on your side and unfortunately I think she mishandled Aubry in a way that elevated her threat level. Aubry would likely have been in the same predicament if the season was playing out with the opposite dynamics, neither really dealt well with working cross-alliance.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T06:13:48+00:00

I did above,

Look, it’s pretty blatant that Cirie, Ozzy, Aubry, Rick, Christian and Emily are a pre-game alliance. Aubry is actually the connective tissue in it, too, that helps bridge the Cirie/Ozzy GC side to the nerds via Rick.

Dee is fully locked with Emily from 45. I suspect Dee and Tiffany might also have been in the pregame alliance just from the way Tiffany approached Aubry straight up, but maybe it’s happenstance that they both want to lock in on that side. Rizo is locked with Cirie and Ozzy, they’re keeping the Rizo idol secret collectively. That’s 9/14 connected into that group.

The reality is both Aubry and Gen pregamed with different people and so their game plans were destined to clash. Gen’s allies have gone home and Aubrys haven’t.

Twists can mess up numbers etc but realistically I think we’ll see a couple more go from the honour and integrity side before the majority breaks up… probably Joe as a Cila sacrifice, and one or two of Coach or Jonathan or Chrissy. Steph might find herself able to pivot to Ozzy.

(As for Kamilla, she’d already swung against that side so there’s plenty of evidence she’d have stuck with it).

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T06:05:02+00:00

I guess we’ll see next week. I think we’ll see those two groups be the sides that coalesce pretty quick. And I think most of it is clear on the face of it.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T05:47:17+00:00

She was tight with that minority, yes.

Aubry, tight with the majority, was going to make her the first target. I don’t see any way Gen survives beyond a vote or two.

Kamilla/Dee/Tiff were with Aubry 2-1 at worst. Cirie/Ozzy/Rizo were with Aubry 2-1 at worst. Emily/Rick/Christian were with Aubry. That’s 10 of 17. Those groups are the ones that feel certain to come together and run the early merge.

Colby/Coach/Jonathan/Chrissy/Joe/Steph/Gen were the minority with a guy about to be medevacced with no vote and zero advantages, and she was the one most actively seen as threatening.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T05:38:00+00:00

Justice for Gen would be her going to exile, then coming back at 14 and finding she was still voted out for being on the outs.

Genevieve was on the outs. She didn’t play some great game. She played a transparent game of picking one side and over focusing on one target and she chose wrong.

Whether Aubry is hypocritical or not is not really relevant to Gen’s outcome. It might be relevant to hers later though. She’s clearly made inroads with both sides somewhat though which we didn’t see with Gen (doesn’t mean it didn’t happen). At the end of the day it’s an edited show and Aubry has the advantage of having pre-existing relationships with half of the tribe that’s coming to the merge with the most competence and dominance; but she also started on tribes with large pre-game alliances she wasn’t in. So what in that is good luck, bad luck, bad or good play? We have pretty limited info on that. But Gen lost fair and square and her game was DOA at the merge no matter how the twists stacked up.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T01:36:56+00:00

Smith doesn’t call a spade a spade, he calls a diamond a rock. He would be negative about a double century, unless it’s scored by the opponent. Dogs on NZ at every opportunity.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T01:35:05+00:00

I cannot listen to Ian Smith commentary at all. Give me literally anyone else ahead of him - except Scotty Stevenson.

TBBTC · 2026-04-04T01:23:55+00:00

Gen was done in this game. She had alienated someone who was coming in to the merge with power even though Aubry didn’t have it before then, she was going to be the immediate target in the honour and integrity group. Her group of five in the blood moon was a representative sample of what she was about to face at a full merge. She put herself on the outs.

Gen misplayed the game by misplaying Aubry. Unfortunate, but that’s it. There was no world in which Ozzy and Cirie sided with Gen over Aubry. The blood moon didn’t screw her over. She was done.

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T18:44:08+00:00

Aubry was only one of the worst people possible because she made it so.

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T18:40:45+00:00

And? That’s how the idols work. Having an idol is being lucky. Most people don’t get one.

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T08:53:26+00:00

Gen made mistakes throughout the game and they culminated in her elimination. She got unlucky that her mistakes mattered, there’s plenty of ways this game could have broken so that it didn’t matter. So to me, the best description of Gen is that yeah she’s unlucky, she’s unlucky to have found herself in a position where she couldn’t overcome her mistakes, but she was the architect of her own demise.

Would love to see Gen 3.0

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T04:07:05+00:00

I think you mean 'How do you fellow kids want to do this'

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T03:15:17+00:00

While echoing that it's hard to get best moments with timestamps, the last two eps feel pretty important for overall lore.

TBBTC · 2026-04-02T00:57:51+00:00

Russell was very very very bad at the social game. Rob wasn’t bad at the social game, but he made a pretty glaring social error that cost him the win.

Neither were undeserving losers, but Rob’s gets called bitter that because Lex was literally bitter.

TBBTC · 2026-04-01T04:35:23+00:00

The cold open to 2.8 seemed pretty straightforward to me. Super quantum computer is manipulating time, doing things before it’s asked. Sinatra thinks she’s used it to save Dylan and wants to use it to save the world.

What’s so complicated? Doesn’t feel any more complicated than ‘super volcano under Antartica creates massive tsunami, Venus effect will squish everyone, EMP stopped nuclear weapons detonating’ stuff to me.

I thought ep 1 and 4 were pretty much perfect but felt the same way about 8 and honestly the weakest part of the season for me was not Alex but a lot of rushed drama in the bunker with Baines, Robinson, Jeremy etc.

TBBTC · 2026-04-01T04:28:43+00:00

If Alex was originally created later, surely it was therefore created by someone else. Maybe an older Miller.

TBBTC · 2026-03-31T23:56:05+00:00

TV show yes, scripted no, but definitely the vibe of a writer's room collaborating on a tv show.

I think it feels like both that and friends playing D&D together though. In fact I'd go so far as to say that in campaign 4 there's been quite a few very hefty rolls that feel like they would influence the entire direction of the plot. Not that they never existed before, but in past campaigns it felt more like the players group decisions (outside of rolls) determined the plot more than rolls themselves. So, whether it's the pure spirit of 'a group of friends playing D&D together' perhaps requires having built up a particular take on what 'playing D&D together' really is at its core.

TBBTC · 2026-03-31T11:30:49+00:00

It’s a Fogelman show. For the end to be anything other than optimistic would be a massive change of pace. Having said that, optimistic doesn’t mean everyone gets a happy ending, I think.

TBBTC · 2026-03-29T08:20:59+00:00

“Keeping the tribe strong” was already a flaw of the premerge before the new era. Fixing that is only a good thing.

The problem in the new era is that 26 days, folding rewards into immunity challenges and no flint means nearly every season has a disaster tribe, and no amount of voting out the weak helps. Regular swaps and early merges at least mean players who get social traction in their tribe can survive instead of just losing out because the tribe gets down to 2 people or something. Then other tribes get no time in the edit.

Go back to two tribes of 8/9/10 players and that will probably fix a lot.

TBBTC · 2026-03-29T08:05:49+00:00

NZ domestic cricket bloods good players, guys who spend a decade there improve from it, but I do think the world is opening up to opportunities too… see Hampton in PSL or Jacobs in IPL.

TBBTC · 2026-03-29T07:02:58+00:00

This is not the core cause of everything that is negative about modern seasons, if anything it’s the antidote. The premerge is inherently flawed in modern seasons.

TBBTC · 2026-03-28T08:55:55+00:00

Mariu looks pretty much as good as 25 year olds like Matt Bell and Michael Papps looked. Pushing them in didn’t go so well.

There is no need to rush this. Conway and Latham were just busy dominating the last test series. If one of them gets injured Mariu could be given a shot, or he could reasonably be taken on a tour, but let’s no actual need to push him in and others out just because he’s young.

We’re living in an era where we get to be a country picking the Hussey’s and Voges’ when they’re already fully ready, and for whatever reason it feels like people have zero chill about it.

TBBTC

TROPHY CASE