Survivor: Gabon - Season 17 (1 Viewer)

[MarkMel]

Randy's gone all Travis Bickle.

 

[mike caronia]

Wow, losing must really suck...or are these folks just losers at life???
After the 2 minute mark....check out how childish Marcus, Corinne, Randy and Charlie are.
At least Charlie recognizes he's being a 2 year old....



Crystal wasn't my favorite...by far.
But when your game is over, get over it.
IT'S A GAME.
They should at least be able to laugh about it when it's over.
It's gotta be a great feeling just to get on the show and go to a faraway land.

Go Sugar!!

 

[Mark Kalzer]

Randy's mohawk is courtesy Corrine as the Survivor Ponderosa videos show. It was a bit confusing for a while though as they posted online a video of Randi's thoughts after the game wherein he had the mohawk, yet appeared on the show at the next tribal council without! The order of events got a little confusing for me here!

I've also found on the Ponderosa videos just how much of a terrible person Corrine really is. I mean, I'm not one at ALL to judge people harshly, most especially real people who put themselves on TV, I traditionally sympathize with them, but wow. She is just completely full of herself. Just watch the Ponderosa videos of her after being voted off.

She is that high school bully who is so convinced of her superiority to others that she cannot resist reminding everyone of it at every opportunity. You ever wonder how those oh so 'popular' or 'cool' kids in school turn out? Well Corinne is your answer. She repeatedly refers to her friends as attractive and therefore worthy of that plateau over the other 'losers' who remain in the game, never mind that they are in contention for a million dollar prize and she is not. Crystal arrives at Ponderosa, and she just makes it clear by completely shunning her that she is not worthy of her attention. She is 'uncool' and a waste.

The high school at Ponderosa continues with Marcus being the ultra cool alpha male who agrees with Crystal's exclusion but does not express in as many ways to her. Randi remains the unlikeable (but strangely likable to us!) bully he was on the show, while Charlie is stuck as that really nice guy who doesn't want to be mean to Crystal, but restraints himself from talking to her just so he can keep his 'friends'!

I mean really, Crystal may have been aggressive in the game and socially unskilled, but she remains a human being. You can at least show her that simple respect right?

I'd almost venture to say that Survivor Ponderosa is becoming even more interesting a social experience then the Survivor game itself!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Mike, thanks so much for posting that video and Mark, thank
you for your thoughts.

I never knew this stuff existed. Is this what gets posted on the
Survivor website?

Now I have to spend time and look at these videos as they are
posted as indeed they are as interesting as the Survivor game itself.

 

[dfergie]

Good prevailed for once
Good show!

 

[Lucia Duran]

THANK GOD, for a second I thought Susie was going to win.

Sugar looked absolutely fabulous this evening. She is very stunning.

Corinne is such a complete waste of space. Her attitude made me think of Jerry from Survivor Outback(she even looked a bit like her at certain angles) and made me even despise her more. She is what she is, but not a person I would fancy being around. I am so glad that Jeff called her out after making such a tacky statement to Sugar. The booing made me happy as well.

Bob was VERY deserving of both cash prizes. I think he is right up there with Rupert as being my favorite Survivor.

Randy seemed like he was on the verge of laughing all night long. Like he was trying NOT to smile, but every now and then you would see him hold it in. It was odd!

 

[Patrick Sun]

I still hate having 3 in the final tribal council to decide who wins.

I'm still amazed that Susie got 3 votes, but then again, given the mental make-up of the jury, maybe I shouldn't be that amazed.

Glad that Bob took home $1.1 million. I wrote him off when it was down to 14 players, shows you that this game can change on a dime, and you just have to be prepared to roll with the punches and make moves when the opportunities present themselves.

Corinne's parents must be so proud of her outspokenness. not.

 

[RAF]

Good for Bob! (Great first name, BTW.)

And Corinne represents all that is ugly about the human species. What a loser (in more ways than one.) The only good thing about her is that she actually made Randy look good by comparison. And that's a tough task. They deserve each other.

This season of Survivor was memorable on several counts. First and foremost is the HD aspect which provides a completely new dimension to the show. And the number of twists and turns (despite the seemingly contrived tribe shuffling) kept things interesting up until the final episode. While Bob was the dominant player, Sugar provided the most interesting interplay in my opinion.



And pending verification, congratulations to mike caronia for winning the prize in the HTF Top Ten Challenge in a real cliffhanger (the closest finish yet!) See the separate thread for all particulars.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Sugar was, indeed, an interesting player.

The only way Corinne could have saved face would have been to said that yes she had regrets and apologized. She didn't. There is...no...excuse for her behavior. She should have listened to Sugar's "lesson" in the hut. She is very, very sad.

I really applaud the way Sugar handled both Randy & Corinne in the final tribal council. She basically let them both know they were jerks and she wasn't going to take their crap. I think that what everybody seems to say about personal growth from the Survivor experience is definitely true for Sugar.

I was so sure Randy had voted for Susie (because of his disdain for both Bob & Sugar) that it had been "apparent" to me that Kenny & Crystal had split their votes between Bob & Susie. However, this was the final vote tally:

For Bob: Marcus, Charlie, Corinne, Randy

For Susie: Kenny, Crystal, Matty

What a surprise that Randy voted for Bob! If he had voted as expected, Susie would have, indeed, been the winner!

Probst was pretty obvious in his disdain that Susie came thatclose to winning the grand prize.

I would have liked to have seen Sugar win the $100,000 Sprint prize.

Bob owes his win entirely to Sugar. If she hadn't completely helped him out on a couple of occasions near the end (not to mention voting for Matty to force the tie-breaker), Bob would have been sitting on the jury a number of different times.

Sugar must have REALLY ticked everyone off with her emotions. Even Marcus piled on during the reunion interviews.

It was very satisfying to see Bob win the prize. His strategy of being resourceful, being "necessary", and trying to be likeable paid off--not only with the jury but, I suspect, with the audience as well.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Glad that Bob won the whole thing. But I was a little surprised to see him so tongue tied during the reunion show. Jeff Probst was having a hard time trying to get some words out of him.

Sugar was also deserving of winning the whole thing because she was the brains behind this whole thing. But apparently she pissed a lot of people off because almost half of them gave their vote to Suzie, even though Suzie was the least deserving of them all. She was just a sheep following the group along.

Next up...Brazil. Should be interesting.

 

[Hanson]

Ugh. I hate players like Sugar, who go into the game not expecting or even wanting to win, and basically screw over other players for no good reason. You can claim she made a bunch of strategic moves, but she didn't do anything to really help herself win, and her engineering of Bob in the finals and her performance in final tribal sabotaged any chance of her winning. Players who aren't trying to win are maddening because they don't do anything rationally. She's like a walking tribal switch up.

And the thing that irks me the most about players like this is that they act like they are sooo righteous and do-goody, but in reality do the same things they rail against -- she didn't like Crystal and Kenny picking on Matty, but she previously rubbed Randy's ouster in his face. She doesn't like how conniving Ken was and all of his lies, but she set up blindsides with lies with Crystal and Kenny (and right to Kenny's face). She is the worst kind of "player" and the worst kind of person, the hypocrite who thinks she's some sort of special, nice person. Well actually, Corinne is the worst kind of person, so Sugar is the second worst. She is Loki.

And she screwed over Matty by not telling him about the planned tie. She claimed it was left to fate, but letting Bob practice fire making all afternoon isn't really a fate kind of thing. She likes to justify her actions to make it seem like she's nice, but the reality is she's a kook job who just does what she wants and then thinks a good cry absolves her of all sins.

 

[Lucia Duran]

I agree about Randy being a sad person. I cannot even imagine what he must have went through to be so bitter and angry. Well, we do know he lost his dog, but what human destroyed his faith in mankind?

I'm always amazed at how the people on the jury are so judging and mean. If they were in the top three, they would feel much differently. Every year that I watch this, I hope to see someone come right out and give sincere congrats to those who make it to the end, but every year I am disappointed.

The jury usually ends up to be a bunch of poor sports that want nothing more than to make their digs at the winners. Corinne is probably the worst ever! Kenny still seemed like he didn't get it when he questioned Bob. Of course Bob didn't say what he wanted to hear.

 

[Stephen_L]

I thoroughly enjoyed the final episodes and was delighted with Bob as champion. Though I was rooting for Bob for most of the game, I found myself rooting for Sugar to take the million. It was so refreshing in the jury interrogation to see someone not butt-kiss jury members for votes. Sugar could have defended her strategic moves better, but she refused to play ball with the more infantile members of the jury (the majority of the jury sadly). Corrine and Randy are unapologetic jerks: don't pull punches, that is what they are. Marcus was a self-righteous jack-ass too. Kenny really disappointed me the most. He played a solid game based on lying, deception and manipulation and he's going to call Bob out for not giving him immunity so he could stab him in the back? He still feels wronged by it! Kenny, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, bro. Take it like a man.

This game and the comments of 'arm-chair survivors' on line continue to intrigue me. The game makes it okay to lie, cheat, fake friendship, and stab allies in the back to win a million. What confounds the game and always makes it interesting is there will always be some players who won't do some things even if it means a million bucks. Some wish to retain some ethical code even if it means losing. Sugar just didn't like people being cruel to one another. The only person she was cruel to was Randy, who was a caricature of anger and cruelty. She turned on Kenny and Crystal when they became cruel to Matty. And she knew that would cost her the million; she even said so. I found that refreshing.

 

[Brent M]

Well said. As soon as she made her comments, the first thing that popped into my head was "this b!tch needs to get hit by a bus".

 

[Patrick Sun]

It makes you wonder what will it take to humble Corinne to the point where she finally "gets it", where she finally figures out that there's no real value in boasting of her self-imposed superiority complex. But, it's probably so firmly ingrained in her psyche that she will always have such strong feelings that her drive to achieve gives her the right to judge those on a different life's course, and justifies, in her mind, that it's okay to demean such inferior human beings. For all her "learning" and "education", she has failed in understanding the value of humility and compassion. She's a small-minded person still stuck with uncontrollable juvenile reactions to situations and people.

 

[todd s]

I don't watch the show anymore. But, my wife does. She was pissed that Susie almost won. On a side note. She thinks that the 100k should not go to the person who won the million.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Agreed. Seems like a no-brainer, actually.

Randy intrigues me. Seemed to me like he was playing a part. There's a lot more to what he was doing during this season than what Corinne was all about. It almost seemed to me that his suppressed smiles/laughs were attempts to not "break character." When Probst was going through his accomplishments in life (IQ score, degree in engineering from Vanderbilt, etc.), Randy almost seemed "outed" and like he just wanted Jeff to stop. I was just left with the feeling that maybe we (the audience), and maybe even the show's staff, all got played.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Like everyone else, I'm glad Bob won. Never would have thought he would even make it to the merge due to him being "too nice" and "too old" and so on.

I still don't understand how Susie got 3 votes. I wouldn't mind her as a neighbor, but she was hardly deserving of winning. I thought Sugar would at least get a vote or 2.

I also think Randy's anti-social thing is at least a bit of an act and his facial expressions last night did nothing to change my mind. He's like Jonny Fairplay's uncle.

How did Bob do so badly in the final challenge of building the tower, which should have been tailor made for him... and why did Jeff not ask about that?

The jury did seem bitter- I don't remember any of them congratulating the final 3, as some have done in previous seasons. It's like people still don't get that this is a game and react as if their real-life friends had screwed them over.

Who else was surprised there was no endurance-type challenge at the end as usual?

I also hate having 3 at the end instead of 2. Made me wonder what would have happened if Sugar got 1 vote, leaving the others tied. Would Bob and Susie have split the million, each got a million, or had to make fire on the live finale to decide that? With an odd number of jury members and 2 finalists, a tie is impossible.

Glad to see they are going to Brazil, another non-island setting.

 

[Mike Frezon]

You're right about the "house of cards" challenge. We were expecting an endurance challenge AND expecting Bob to build a Tower of London in about two minutes.

He hardly got his structure off the ground!

 

[Chris Lockwood]

If it hadn't been the final challenge, I might have thought he threw it just to look more vulnerable.