Wednesday, March 2, 2011
HE'S NOT A NUMBER: If there's an element of tonight's Survivor which wasn't wholly satisfying, I'm going to ignore it. It started with a Redemption Island challenge stolen from the Brady Bunch episode with Jim Backus in the ghost town on the way to the Grand Canyon, flowed through what happened with the HIIs and the immunity challenge, and ended with another graduate-level course in strategery at Tribal. If you missed seeing purple rocks on the show or wondered whether Survivor could be improved by having a weasel-y Sarah Silverman lookalike as a Russell Hantz factotum, well, you even got that too. This is a season worth your time.
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I just wish Probst would stop calling Russell "one of the greatest players in Survivor history", because it is not now, nor has it ever been, true. But yeah, I may have gotten sucked back into Survivor this season, after vowing to ignore it. Damn you, Burnett!
ReplyDeleteSorry: two final threes, one in an All-Star Season, makes you one of the greatest of all time. Russell is essentially the Lawrence Taylor of Survivor: his superlative abilities changed the way the game was played, and while he may have committed crimes against the game he was an absolute force of nature while he played.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the shit-eating-grins on the faces of the Zapatara tribe after they voted him out? It wouldn't have meant so much if he wasn't one of the GOATs.
But... to be a great player, you've got to have a chance to win. And to have a chance to win, you have to make it to the final Tribal Council AND convince people to vote for you. And that second part is something Russell was unable to do, and why Russell could never win. And if he could never win, how could he be considered one of the all-time greats?
ReplyDeleteI think that's an entirely unidimensional view of the game. Until tonight's episode, Russell had never been voted out of Survivor. The man played in three seasons and was only eliminated once. That is a titanic, Herculean feat; one only approachable by highly skilled women playing a different style of game (Parvati, Amanda Kimmel, Sandra). And, frankly, Russell was only voted out this time because people knew what he was capable of.
ReplyDeleteAs for your "he was never, ever going to win" argument... It would be reductive and myopic to say that the point of an at-bat in baseball is to get a hit. The point of an at-bat is to not make an out, and while getting a hit is one way (the predominant way, really) to do that, there are other methods. Just because no one HAS won Russell's way doesn't mean that no one CAN. What is undeniably, tautologically true is that you cannot win Survivor without getting to the final three. Russell is the only person to go to two final-threes, and the only man to get into more than one top two/three.
He's the best male contestant, and an argument could be made best overall contestant, at putting himself in position to win. Dan Marino never closed the deal, but we call him one of the best. Ted Williams, Charles Barkley, Barry Sanders, Dick Butkus, Anthony Mu<span>ñoz,</span> Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds... Lots of all-time greats never win the big one. Yes, the way Russell plays the game appears to hurt his chances, but he GETS THERE, which does a hell of a lot more for his chances than anything the vast majority of Survivor contestants have done.
<span>Sure, "Russell was only voted out this time because people knew what he was capable of." But that makes the fact that he played 2x without anyone knowing his game the trick, and the accomplishments of others (Sandra & Parvati - did Amanda play back to back?) that much more impressive. </span>
ReplyDelete<span>To be clear, I dislike Russell for his palpable misogyny and all-around asshat nature, but have no opinion about "greatest" Survivor player qualities. </span>
Sandra made the finals twice and won twice, the latter in an all-star situation with everyone knowing what her game was. I don't know how you can put Russell above that. He's lesser than Parvati too, who unlike Russell actually won once in her two finals appearances.
ReplyDeleteI want to take issue as well with Dan's general suggestion that short of winning Survivor, the goal is to get as close as possible to winning it. I disagree. The only goal is winning.
ReplyDeleteAs his history confirms, you can get very close to the game's end with almost no shot of actually winning it, given the quirk in the game that encourages you to bring to the finals folks who cannot win. You'd never say that Crazy Matthew played a great game in Amazon because he made it to the final two, since he was only there because Jenna knew she'd slaughter him in the jury vote while Rob C actually played the game better. Ditto Katie in the Tom/Ian season, or Scoutmaster Lil, who found herself in the odd position of having to select who would beat her given how many tribe members she had alienated along the way.
I was following Probst's tweets during the show and after. He referred to the fact that if Russell wins the duel it will be the GREATEST COMEBACK IN SURVIVOR HISTORY. I just don't see it.
ReplyDeleteGreatest comeback in Survivor history was Chris Daughtery, who was the last guy left against six women in a gender-themed season.
ReplyDeleteMy only problem with giving too much credence to winning Survivor is that there are a lot of winners who win just because they're there. I am still really annoyed that Sandra won that All-Star season over Parvati because she did nothing the entire season except suggest at one point they vote Russell out, and no one even listened to her plan.
ReplyDeleteTake the last season. Fabio, the genial and athletic dopey guy, coasted along while various alliances did battle, won a few immunity challenges and then was the most palatable option at the end. He won, and he executed a strategy, but really? I've only seen about half the seasons, if that, so I'm sure there are plenty more examples of less than stellar winners.
I'm not even sure what my point here is other than I think that not too much credit should be given to actually winning Survivor, because of how someone who actually makes moves will usually piss the jury off and not get their votes. Russell took that to an extreme and didn't really even have a chance to win due to the way he played, but there are plenty of winners of Survivor who wouldn't even get mentioned in the greatest Survivor player discussion.
(And even if Russell survives Redemption Island, won't he get voted out as soon as he gets back to the main camp?)
Why do you discount something like "winning a few immunity challenges" as if that's not part of the game? In the Fabio case, the rest of the players wanted to dump him through a number of challenges (at least 3) but he prevented that, to his credit. It seems like a lot of the fans of the show don't really respect the physical competition/winning challenges side of the game. It's still part of the game, and to me it's the best part. Moreso than the social game, which almost always boils down to who pissed off who the least.
ReplyDeleteI haven't watched Survivor in ages, but is that really that impressive? Near the end in particular, they're very heavy on the endurance/physical strength challenges in which a male is likely to have an advantage. There are two ways to win Survivor--socially/politically (alliance leadership) and physically (winning immunity challenges, and being a valuable enough asset to your team to get to the individual rounds).
ReplyDeleteHe won three of the five immunities from that point, one of which was shuffleboard, one a strength/speed one and one of which was endurance (holding a bow and arrow in place). But give Chris credit for aligning himself with the older members of the tribe and voting out the stronger ones.
ReplyDeleteCalm down there, Charlie Sheen
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly part of the game, but can you call that a strategy? That would be everyone's strategy.
ReplyDeleteExcept then you've got someone like Terry Dietz, who had the (first ever) HII, but kept winning individiual immunity (5 straight) and wasn't smart enough to covertly lend his HII to someone else to flip the game. Just winning challenges isn't enough.<span> </span>
ReplyDelete(I love this conversation.)
ReplyDeleteI think a huge part of the problem in assessing Russell (or - as Ralph hilariously put it last night - "Ressell") is that, as Adlai mentions, he played twice back to back. Many of the Heroes v Villains cast members have stated they would have voted Russell off way earlier if they'd realized the way he played - he seems to have had a huge leg up from no one having seen his game, and - now that he's on a season where they have - they didn't need him. He's never been a challenge monster or someone who helps around camp, so is easy to dump early on without much regret.
The person who wins Survivor is the person who wins Survivor. There's no "almost." Yeah, if you come in second you get a nicer cash prize than everyone else (sans the winner), but there are tons of times (Matthew, Katie, etc) that the second place person was brought purely as a straw man the winner knew (s)he could beat.
Oh - so basically, what Adam said below. (That'll teach me to post before reading the whole thread!)
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, though - the point of winning Survivor is to win Survivor. You don't have to be especially great at ANY part of the game - sometimes people do indeed win by just outlasting. The best candidate doesn't always get the job - it doesn't mean that they weren't the best candidate, just that they didn't get the job. Is it unfair that the "best" Survivor players don't win? Of course! But it's also unfair, if you follow that logic, that the best singer on American Idol goes home because she doesn't have enough votes, that a talented Chef gets booted off Top Chef early because he had one bad dish, etc etc etc. The only difference is that, ideally, the talented singer and the talented chef will likely get recognized outside the reality arena with radio play or restaurant gigs, whereas the "talented" Survivor player probably won't find a real use for his Survivor skills in the professional arena (unless you count Boston Rob, I guess).
ReplyDeleteBut it is sometimes. Look at Brett, the random Galu who was just the least worrisome target for the Foa Foa Four. He hung around (unbeknownst to most viewers who had no idea who he was), then won a bunch of challenges and would have won the million if he hadn't lost by a hair to Russell in the last challenge.
ReplyDeleteMy only point here is that Survivor is such a screwed up game with so many variables - especially when it gets down to the end - that putting too much emphasis on winning in determining greatness seems wrong. It seems incorrect to say "Player X won Survivor, therefore Player X is a great Survivor player."
Precisely--who's the better Survivor player--Rob or Amber? Colby or Tina? In both cases, the loser is the one who'd be more commonly referred to as the "Great Survivor Player" than the winner.
ReplyDeleteYes, totally concur with this point. I agree with Randy that Russell isn't the greatest because he never had a chance to win (although he did garner two votes his first season), but I also disagree with Adam that Sandra should be considered the greatest because she won twice. I did not watch Sandra's first season, but I did see her second, and she was just sort of there when people were so mad at Russell (legitimately) and Parvati (not nearly as legitimately). I realize this makes no sense and will now stop posting about it. I apologize to everyone who wasted their time reading these posts.
ReplyDeleteSandra's strategy the first time around was to avoid being a target during the Rupert/Fairplay wars and made one essential strategic move at the end. I don't think she has ever won an individual challenge.
ReplyDeleteAll Colby had to do was drag Keith into the finals instead of Tina, but he wanted to be well-liked as well as win. He only got the first one.
ReplyDeleteColby wanted to have a career, and knew he wouldn't be able to get a "Mr Nice Guy" hosting career if he was seen as the jerk who screwed over the nice mom. He's been a TV host ever since. I say well-played - bet he's made more than the $1M he would have won in the game at this point.
ReplyDeleteSugar tried the same tactic in her season (she was even more honest, I think she talked about it on the finale - "I know I'm not going to win, I just want to be an actress anyway, so I'm going to encourage all of you to vote for Bob."