Survivor Strategy 5.0

What a long and crazy road it's been.

My obsession with Survivor began in their second season, Survivor-Australia. Specifically the Jerri vote. Before that I was only a casual watcher, mostly there because my wife had been going on about the show since Borneo (which I completely missed due to it being a summer fill in - I just don't watch TV in the summer). When Jerri got the boot and it was clear that we had a crew of people actually playing a game as opposed voting for a prom queen, I became hooked.

Over the years my interests have waxed and waned with each season. When players were stupid, petty and vindictive, I tuned out, but when there was actual game play going on (whether it was good, bad or ugly) I was right back into it. As with most of my obsessions, they manifested themselves into reams of text, charts and graphs which are still all kicking around at my website.

Survivor Strategy 1.0

After half a dozen seasons or so posting analysis there my enthusiasm for the project began to finally temper a bit. For a season (S7 - Pearl Islands) I merely contented myself with posting a my favourite Survivor Board - Voted Off.

Survivor Strategy 2.0

With the prospect an All-Star edition (S8) I became excited again and started up the voting analysis once more but it soon become apparent that season was not exactly going to be filled with brilliant game play. After the miserable conclusion to S9 (Vanuatu) I packed in the website and little has happened there since. But I was dragged back during S11-Guatemala through a friend's blog.

Survivor Strategy 3.0

The previous season, S10-Palau, was a refreshing joy to watch despite all the good players ending on the same tribe making the first half of the season incredibly lopsided causing the Ulong tribe (led by the mysteriously fan-popular Stephanie and Bobby Jon) to go down in well deserved agony. It was great, but what does CBS do? They bring back the leaders of the lamest tribe of all time for the next season which, predictably, turned out to be one of the lamest seasons of all time. Go figure? Well, I was not to be deterred, even when AJV found he could no longer keep the blog going. I had already created a movie blog with Rotten Tomatoes, so I decided to pick it up there.

Survivor Strategy 4.0

I began posting regularly again for S12-Exile Island and S13-Cook Islands - one lame and one good season (I'll leave you to decide which I thought was which).

So with S14-Fiji around the corner, here I am at Blogger, trying to spread the word that Survivor doesn't have to be about petty, juvenile, egos trying to decide who the coolest kid on the beach is. It can be a game and, perhaps, it can actually be a game that can be played well.

I invite you to join the discussion.

HC