[Celirra]

Season 1, Episode 1: The Marooning
“Volunteering to be marooned” is some truly world-changing role playing.

I somewhat enjoy the salvaging of the boat, and it’s one of the cooler parts of early survivor seasons; as much as strategy is great, the survival aspect is an interesting component and actually ends up playing a big part into winning and strategy too; after all, a physically weak player is a mentally weak player.

On a very serious note, it’s sad seeing B.B.; I’m pretty sure he died a few years ago to a stroke. Rest in peace, but I won’t let it change what I say regarding him (I promise!!) and such.

Probst’s accent sounds so much different compared to the newer seasons. It’s almost unnerving.

“To win, you must survive the island, survive the vote, and ultimately survive each other” is a really good way to describe the early seasons. Surviving the island and each other is paramount to the vote, particularly the first. Most people aren’t even terribly bothered by the vote element, but I feel like Hatch’s little gears are spinning in his head right from the get-go. Note how he’s the first to mention just sitting around to talk; he knows how important relations are, and that it’s an important aspect; potentially even more so than the “survival” itself to him. Contrast this to Rudy, who gets flak from Kelly for being too focused on giving orders and such to optimize survival, and it’s… more clear somewhat why Hatch would have been deemed more likeable than a Rudy-esque. I also find it interesting how Kelly and Hatch are somewhat contrasted, seeing as they were ultimately the two finalists; Kelly is seen as negative about someone right away, while Hatch is positive and attempting to unify everyone better. The winner should be seen as more positive than the runner-up, after all (see: editing analysis).

Speaking of editing, Pagong pretty much instantly comes off as complaining and such. The struggles of Pagong and such I’d say are foreshadowing in a sense to later in the season, but that may be my own hindsight.

What kind of name is Dirk, anyways?

“I’ve got the million dollar cheque written already” is such a good winner’s quote.A lot of people look for these kind of little tidbits from people in early phase to base their winner guesses off of, and they’re often little subtle things that you may miss until you look back on it. It’s another component to using the editing to craft an idea about who might win, though there’s also a fair bit of fake-outs & red herrings so I have trouble looking specifically for it while the season is going.

BB’s joking strategy of “well hey, only we know where the water is so they can’t vote us out!” is funny to me, because that would legitimately be a strongly considered strategy in modern Survivor, and one that works to a certain degree as well. Similar-ish to something that happened in Samoa, but hey that’s many seasons from now.

Rudy: “I’ve gotta fit in, not them”. Guarantee you most people, regardless of age or lifestyle, would be too stubborn to think this way. Gosh, I love Rudy.

Hatch being shown just talking to a bunch of people and humouring them and such, he did a really good job with just getting on people’s good graces, save for maybe a couple of people. I actually forgot just how focused on him this episode was.

“All a rat is is a squirrel without a fuzzy tail” ok, Sue.

Early challenges are pretty neat, and are much more… maybe not intricate, but less factory-like. It’s maybe less balanced and fair for both teams, but it’s cool to see anyways. Admittedly, I don’t care a ton about challenges beyond just an entertainment side, so don’t expect much from me on that front beyond a “wow, __ did well!”

Sonja saying “I feel totally responsible” is a good example of a boot quote, which can go two ways typically. There’s two forms of “loser edits” so to speak; one in which the person seems weak and they go home because of it, or one where they seem very weak and is played up, for that *woah check out this sick #BLINDSIDE* element, and there can typically be little nuances to help point it out. S1 was largely before the whole surprise element that survivor editing goes for, so a lot of the writing was in the sand, despite a ton of people voting in different directions. Also the girls’ alliance is neat to see, given that they’re very very common in many seasons, but it’s also interesting that there’s a dissenter (Sue) as those are fairly common too, and the dissenters are usually the ones that go the furthest.

From a personal level, Sonja was pretty sweet in my mind and Stacey was a bit of a bitch, but in the end that’s more a personal thing and Sonja was the “correct” vote-off for sure, for whatever that’s worth. Sonja’s closing remarks of “go get ‘em, you guys” also shows an interesting note of how team-driven early survivor is, and how it is very much tribe vs tribe, rather than person vs person vs person etc etc.


Looking forward to Greg, too bad he wasn’t in this episode at all really, but that’s largely because Tagi lost the challenge, and therefore went to TC, and therefore needed more attention to get the story more fleshed out etc etc. before their vote-off.


I should practice this whole blogposting thing, this seems like a mess to read.