I often compare Survivor to poker tournaments. Both require difficult-to-quantify degrees of skill and luck to win. Strategy is endlessly deep and creative in both. But within a single game, that strategy is insignificant relative to the variance of the game. I've thrown out a number of castaways as potential GOATs should they win this season. But two to six seasons is no sample size in a game with so much variance. It might take a hundred seasons to determine someone's skill for Survivor. For all we know, the true GOAT could be someone who played once and quietly expired before the Merge. It could even be Vytas. Not.
But the game doesn't really behave like a poker tournament. As poker tournaments progress, players extend advantages over their competitors by acquiring more chips. A big stack is a weapon. In Survivor, it's often a disadvantage. Smart opponents preemptively strike down the "chip leaders" before their advantage can be realized at Final Tribal.
Bicycle racing is the better analogy. The leader of a bike race sits in its most difficult position. The leaders face more air resistance than those drafting behind them. It's harder for the leader to progress than it is for the coattail riders in the peloton. Leading, in fact, usually ends up destroying the leader. Here's a dramatic example, featuring our friend Mara Abbott:
Mara may have been the most impactful member of this race. She may even have been "the best." But she didn't win this one. Her followers identified her as the big threat and chased her down right before the finish. Mara needed the race to be over a kilometer earlier. She didn't quite time it right - or perhaps there just was no way to time it right.
It takes tremendous physical effort to chase down a biker hell-bent on a gold medal. In Survivor, all it takes is shared recognition that the leader is in fact leading. Savvy players eliminate their greatest competition with alacrity. Survivor is a race to a finish line. But you lose the race if you build too big a lead, perhaps any lead. It's a fascinating, delicate balance. It's been starkly illustrated in the post-Merge world of Winners At War.
Standings
Ben & Michal - 94 points
Sarah - 18
Nick - 12
Tony - 31
Baggins - 90 points
Tony - 31
MoonBee - 83 points
Ben - 15
Doug - 64 points
Jeremy - 14
Nick - 12
Denise - 20
Phil - 61 points
Jeremy - 14
Sarah - 18
Michele - 19
Eric - 45 points
Ben - 15
Power Rankings
6. Eric
I've been rewatching Game of Thrones. It's not as good as I hoped on second viewing. It's not poorly made or anything (at least through five seasons, where I'm at) but it depends on plot to do the dramatic heavy lifting. It's not as compelling when you know what's gonna happen. Which I'm sure would be true of Survivor too. Anyway, I'd forgotten the nastiest scheme Ramsay Bolton comes up with to torture Theon: after a few weeks of standard torture Ramsay hires a couple hot girls to wake Theon up and seduce him (not a challenging ask in Theon's case). Right at the moment of insertion, Ramsay comes in and cuts Theon's genitalia off. (Why doesn't Melissa want to watch this show?? I have no idea).
That's what happened to Tyson and Big Eric Schwartz this season. They went through a few weeks of standard torture before getting exiled to the Edge of Extinction. They recognized hope as their most dangerous enemy and bottled it deep within. At the exact moment their fortunes appeared to turn, they were bamboozled. Their fate was not redemption, but rather an even worse version of torture. Now they know never to hope again.
5. MoonBee
We had five players left after episode seven. Four episodes later, we have one. In the last month there's only been one elimination who wasn't on our team, and that player (Tyson) had already been eliminated a month ago. It's been a precipitous fall. I'm just glad it happened to Eric Schwartz first.
Speaking of Eric, he's the other player with Ben on his team. Meaning nobody in this pool needs to worry about Ben. Not that I believe anyone was losing sleep over the cowboy's chances. He doesn't seem to get much respect from other castaways or the viewing public. He's certainly a strong and accomplished player, but even a surprise WaW victory wouldn't put him in GOAT consideration.
4. Baggins
It was surprising to see Sophie confess she'd considered herself a "Bottom Tier Winner" before this season. I remembered her victory as dominant. But that memory might be biased since she was on my team. In any case, Sophie proved to the world and to herself that she's a Top Tier Player. More importantly, we found out the Michal Greenberg doppelgänger is in fact engaged to a Ben Greenberg lookalike. Cheers, Sophie.
Also, RIP Baggins. He was the bike racer who destroyed his quads to win the big climb to the mountaintop and had nothing left for the final chase.
3. Doug
Nick keeps grinding, but he needs a huge and visible move to convince these former champs he's worthy of a second belt. You could say the same of Denise, but she already made her huge and visible move. Sharp as these final few are, they'll identify Denise as an ideal mate for Final Tribal. She's got a good shot at final three and almost no shot at Sole Survivor. Doug needs all his players to contribute to the thirty point hole he finds himself in.
2. Phil
Jeremy faced a rare and imperative scenario in Episode 11: who he voted for determined his own fate. If he'd voted for Sarah - as he intended until a few minutes before Tribal - it would have been him heading to the Edge. Jeremy needed to trust Tony and switch his vote to Sophie to survive. He appeared to wrestle with this abrupt and stressful decision, but got the right grail in the end. He chose wisely. If Jeremy hadn't trusted Tony in the crucible, here's what would have happened:
Also note that Jeremy would have been skeletonized if Tony hadn't decided to save him. Tony has been searching for shields all season. In this episode he decided to save one GOAT (Jeremy) at the expense of another (Sophie).
1. Ben & Michal
We've been talking about Tony waiting to flip the switch all season. He waited and waited and then Wednesday night he flipped the switch so violently it ripped out the electrical socket, the drywall and the pillars the game stood upon.
I won't recap Tony's incendiary episode. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it "one of the most stunning and dominant episodes of Survivor ever" as Mr. McAtee did, but I'd agree it was "classic, chaotic Tony, and also a magnum opus." Indeed, Tony reasserted himself as a GOAT. What made it truly impressive was how long he waited to take the mask off.
2 comments:
Will Tony be able to control his current “bossdom”, or will he be this season’s Icarus? I predict the latter, but am seriously respecting his play to this point.
I wouldn't admit this to my friends in NJ (?), but my team sucks. They are the worst.
Your analsysis of my team would have been even funnier if you just stopped after paragraph 1.
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