SSAC Report: One World E01 Welcome to Nutsville

Assembled deep in bowels of the interwebs is a group of Survivor fans, a gathering of analytical, bright, and clever minds know as The Midside's Survivor Story Analysis Commission. That’s right. They know their ABCs. Their mission is to analyze the story of Survivor better than ever before in the history of the universe. What follows is their first report for the One World season.

In regards to the first episode “Two Tribes, One Camp, No Rules" in the 24th season of Survivor "One World," The Midside's Survivor Story Analysis Commission has reached the following conclusions:
-An alternate thematic title for the episode would be “Welcome to Nutsville”
-The theme of the episode was “How will the players respond to the lack of rules?”
-To explain why they dominated this episode, the Manano tribe was shown establishing firm order and boundaries.
-To explain why they lost this episode, the Salani tribe was shown descending into anarchy.

When Jeff Probst says a line in the opening of an episode and it’s also the episode’s title, we’re forced to pay attention—especially when it’s reiterated again at Tribal Council. That symmetry is a nice bit of framing by the editors. This season after the traditional opening confessionals, Jeff Probst stated, "For the first time, two tribes, one camp, no rules.” At Tribal Council, Monica explicated the state of the Salani tribe, "It's almost like whatever is right in front of us that has to happen right now takes precedent. It's crazy. It's total anarchy,” directly explaining how the women responded to the lack of rules. They never climbed out of anarchy because they were reactionary to the men’s actions and all talk. As Jeff Probst summed up, “And you're laughing about it like it's kind of funny, but what's not funny is coming to Tribal Council...right now the guys are thinking those women are all over the map, we have them right where we want them, nutsville." That is the story of the episode. Lawlessness caused the women to hem, haw, deny, and protest while the men made quick decisions and confidently stood by them leading to Manano dominating Salani.

The dominance started in the intro when four men spoke in comparison to only one woman. Each of the men talked about how he was specifically approaching the game. Most notable were Jonas, who said the lack of rules would play to his advantage because no one would see a sushi chef as badass, and Michael, who said that he was mentally prepared for any twist the game threw at him. Neither man had any preconceptions. The other two men, Colton and Jay, talked about how they would relate to both genders in the game. In contrast, Alicia, the player most symbolic of the female stereotype in the episode, started shit-talking the men saying she’s going to play them if they like her. Really Alicia, how? And how is that going to help you survive? The divergence had begun, and it only grew from there.

Right before he split the tribes, Probst talked about gender issues with a few players and Troyzan stated exactly what Alicia and Sabrina had just done, "Those women are just purely all talk right now.” The comment followed Sabrina’s, "We all know men can't survive without women." As we learned in the episode, the men could survive without the women (getting fire and winning the challenge). Thus Alicia and Sabrina’s statements never came to fruition, nor did Chelsea’s statement about the women sticking together and being a big ball of badassness. By the end of the episode they were disjointed and anything but badass. Hell, in the opening 60 second stripping of the truck the women already showed they were ill-equipped for the lack of rules. The men stole most of the women’s items, taking the majority of the bounty, and the women went off to camp bitter and understocked, their talk getting them nowhere except a reactionary position.

On the hike to camp, things began to unravel even more for the women. Kourtney introduced craziness to the conversation, "I'm a girl, I know, I'm crazy. We're all crazy. I mean women, and that's the thing too, no offense, but women can be so warm and they seem so understanding and compassionate and accepting and before you know it it's just like (throat stabbing motion), you know?" And who immediately began that throat stabbing? Alicia, one of the biggest blusterers and the villain of the episode, tried to play by traditional Survivor rules and formed a five person alliance with Kim, Chelsea, Kat, and Sabrina. Nuance in the character portrayals becomes more apparent, however, as Kim begins to differentiate herself from the rest of the women by saying, “I didn’t plan to form an alliance right off the bat. I was just going to lay low but, when we saw the guys stealing off the truck, that was a huge rivalry right off the bat so, when the guys did that, the women were like: Women Power! I’m not a big fan but I am going with it.” To her credit, Kim is adapting to the situation rather than going with her preconceived notions. She is doing more than talking. However, she is still making a partially reactive decision based on the men’s stealing by going along with the talk of “women power.” The gender divide only gets wider with the chicken incident.

After Jonas tells Colton, "It doesn't look like One World to me, bro. It looks like their world and our world” (a sentiment Jay later echoes), Chelsea rebuffs on a chicken deal over what has happened before. The setup here is interesting, as it subtly demonstrates who actually forced the gender chasm—the women. Jonas’ statement to Colton isn’t a desire. It’s a statement. He’s seeing two different worlds. Likewise, who is the one who tries to strike a deal for the chicken? Matt. And who rebuffs it? Chelsea. It makes sense psychologically why Chelsea wouldn’t agree to the deal, but in reality, why would she antagonize the men? And that’s definitely what she did, as Matt, in a seeming villain’s edit, declared to close the scene "It was obvious from that minute that I'm with the guys, not these girls.” Storywise, this was what solidified the gender animosity, as Bill and Michael echoed those feelings right before and Jay did in the later fire incident.

In a series of scenes that show the men acting and the women as all talk, Jay states, “"Even though this is one world, to me it's two hemispheres. I don't think the girls' tribe wanted to be in with us. I think they made it apparent by scavenging around themselves, they was keeping everything on their side, so I don't want to help them in any way possible.” Like Jonas before him, Jay is simply saying he already sees it as two hemispheres. Like Bill and Michael before him, Jay is saying that the women are the ones who made it that way. And the men are completely satisfied with it as they get to work building a shelter and making fire. The women, on the other hand, aren’t shown doing anything except failing to make a fire and saying they need the men for help. The instant the men have a fire, edit-wise, Sabrina walks over and asks for some. In separate attempts, Alicia and Christina fail to steal fire from the men. It is here Troyzan equates the women’s perspective (remember, he’s the one who brought up the talking earlier right before the tribe split was revealed) with craziness, "I mean these chicks, they're in cuckoo land. I mean they want to come and trade fire for a chicken. It's the first day, the first hour, we don't need a chicken." The assessing reality vs. talking dichotomy is clear here, and clearly not working for the women…yet they continue.

Still in need of fire, Kim and Kat decide they should go to the Manano camp and talk to the men about it. Kat even suggests they do the stereotypical thing—act like they just want to hang out and don’t have another agenda. They get there and Michael stonewalls them. Jay joins the conversation and stonewalls them again. It’s an interesting visual divide that echoes the conversation post-chicken catching with Alicia and Matt conspicuous in their absence. The talking does eventually make slight headway though, but not in the way it’s been attempted so far. Rather than try to con them out of fire, Christina is able to strike a deal with Jonas. It is one of two successes the women experience in the episode, the other being catching the chicken.

The Immunity Challenge is likewise embarrassing for the women. Not only does one of their members get taken out of the game because she breaks her wrist in multiple places, but Probst presents a situation that causes them to resort to the only thing they know how to do—talk. Because Kourtney got injured, the men could decide to either finish the challenge or take the win. Manano takes the win causing the women to try and goad them out of their decision. Troyzan once again shuts them down by claiming they’re all talk, “I understand. If it was reversed and one of us got hurt, I just don't think it would be the same thing.” In the viewers’ ears, those words echo as true. It’s clear the women are just trying to talk their way out of their predicament…and failing.

Tribal Council, as always, puts a point on this talking theme. Monica, to essentialize her words, says the women have no plan. They’re just addressing whatever the most immediate problem is—and without a plan that causes a whole lot of bluster. They even try to talk circles around each other as Alicia, playing her edited role well, bends and twists the details of the fire deal with Jonas to make Christina look bad. Christina demonstrates they have indeed reached Nutsville by screaming “Because you’re wrong. So shut up.” Christina may be right, but her outburst doesn’t play well rhetorically, as even Probst is shocked by it. He puts a bow on this all, echoing Troyzan’s sentiments all episode, "And you're laughing about it like it's kind of funny, but what's not funny is coming to Tribal Council...right now the guys are thinking those women are all over the map, we have them right where we want them, Nutsville."

In regards to the overall themes of the 24th season of Survivor “One World,” The Midside's Survivor Story Analysis Commission has reached the following conclusions:
-A thematic subtitle for the season would be “Beyond the Charm.”
-The theme of the season is “Which gender is better suited to survive without the other?”
-The dominance of the Manano tribe was exaggerated in order to set up two possible outcomes:

1. A member of the Manano tribe wins following through on the strength of the men in this episode.
2. A member of the Salani tribe wins proving the strength of the women in an epic underdog story.
-The exaggeration of Manano’s dominance was so measured and great that #1 is the likelier outcome.
-It is likely a cross-gender alliance will develop and control the game.
-Five characters delivered a possible winner’s quote: Troyzan, Sabrina, Chelsea, Kim, and Jay.
-Two characters were built as villains: Alicia and Matt.
-One character was built as a proxy of the opposite gender: Colton.
-Several characters were given nuanced edits that signal a possible winner’s story:
-From Salani: Sabrina, Kim, and Chelsea
-From Manano: Troyzan, Jonas, Jay, and Michael

The men’s imperviousness to the women’s charm was more than a one episode story, it was the hidden answer to the season’s question, “Which gender is better suited to survive without the other?” This episode was a huge opening salvo by the men, best summed up by Bill, “They need us more than we need them.” The women were knocked down like an overmatched boxer. Nina’s face post-IC was the visual representation of that. That fact leaves us with only two possible stories: options one and two as listed above. If number two were to come to fruition, it would be an incredibly epic underdog story (so that is something to watch for in the coming episodes, the groundwork being laid for that comeback). However, this episode was more than building a Goliath for the David to fell. Amongst all the gender posturing and stereotypical behavior, it was the systematic demonstration that the women are overmatched.

The master key to this dungeon was hidden within the fire incident. Monica attempts to distract the men by holding a conversation with Tarzan so Alicia can go for the fire. Tarzan defends the men’s not sharing fire due to the outcome of the chicken incident and then says “we’re beyond the charm,” meaning the men are impervious to the stereotypical wiles of women. What makes the quote so interesting though is the context it appears in. First, while Tarzan is the one talking, he is not the one shown. Instead Matt and Jay are shown—two of the men who have taken hardline stances in shutting the women’s talking down—and, when Tarzan says “we’re beyond the charm,” Alicia was shown, the woman who personified the female stereotype in this episode. Second, Monica then repeats the phrase herself saying, “I’m beyond the charm,” but is immediately proven a liar when Alicia attempts to steal the fire and is blocked by Leif (in his second appearance of the episode, the other being Jonas calling him buff). In other words, Monica and Alicia were attempting to use charm and even the minor character seemingly insignificant to the story men (if Leif comes back and wins, the theme of the season was “buff little dudes ftw) rebuff them. Troyzan puts a cap on it: "The girls are so typical. I've been around 50 years, lady. You can't come over here with your set of taters on you and walking around with your little bikini. You're not going to get fire from me on the first day. You better suffer for like two or three days. Maybe they just want my one quit 'oh, I'm done, this is not what I signed up for.’" Still, this is only one scene, right? That doesn’t say much for the rest of the episode.

Before the tribes were split, Sabrina claimed that men couldn’t survive without the women. The opposite proved to be true. From the 60-second-truck-stripping to the immunity challenge, the women were at the men’s mercy. Sure, the women caught two chickens, but what good is it without fire—fire, which the women were unable to attain until they made a deal with the men. What about shelter though? Were the women able to build that? While it’s true the women offered woven palm fronds in exchange for the fire, Kat was shown suggesting during the chicken incident, “We will give them a chicken, but we need them to help us with our shelter.” As for the immunity challenge, the women couldn’t even get through the first leg of it without one of their players breaking her wrist so badly that she almost passed out due to the pain. If there were a Survivor checklist, the women might have earned half a check, but certainly nothing more. They failed at surviving in every way possible—and it was all because everyone fell in line behind gender stereotypes.

The women and men were equal in one area, the way they approached alliances. Both opted for assembling a quick five based upon physical strength. How they went about it suggests a negative portrayal of the extremes of each gender, which in turn suggests an ultimate failure of these alliances. The key to understanding the extremes of the genders are the portrayals of Alicia and Matt, the supposed alliance leaders, and the relation of the portrayals of the other alliance members to them. The key to understanding the ultimate failure of the alliances is the Sabrina-Colton dynamic. Both aspects were framed by Probst at the start of the episode.

In the intro, Probst told us, “They think they've got Survivor figured out…They think they know the rules…They think they've seen everything, but they're in for a huge surprise." This is a huge red flag for typical tribe play and the success of early built alliances (which is the exact opposite of the last two seasons). It’s especially interesting as the Jay, Michael, and Colton’s quotes in the intro were about working with the women, whereas Alicia’s was about playing the guys. That’s where Alicia’s insanely negative portrayal began. From saying both tribes living together would be a party to targeting Christina, she was shown as the epitome of a bitchy catty woman. Who said Matt wasn’t serious about the chicken deal? Who first tried to steal fire? Who got upset over a deal being made for fire with the men? The answer to all of these questions is Alicia. She was the one leading the divide on the women’s side. Likewise, Matt was the one portraying the stereotypically male bravado and callousness. When the chicken deal fell through he said, “I don't care about those girls. Give us that chicken as an apology and then we'll think about talking.” When he made his alliance he said, "Well the way Survivor always works initially is that the strong stay because they benefit the tribe and the weak go...it's an easy alliance. We're not going to get any Survivor points for that one." The last sentence was meant to be humble, but based upon what Probst said it actually carries a double meaning. None of these alliances will be getting credit for being good at Survivor, because they’re not, because the rules have changed. Their leadership is misguided.

Below the leaders, however, are interesting gradients of loyalty to the gender to openness to working with the enemy. On the women’s side, Kim flat out stated she was just going along with the women power thing and her and Kat’s discussion with Michael and Jay was a very interesting scene. After the challenge, she also gave a very in-between confessional where she was disappointed the men weren’t more chivalrous yet understood their decision. Chelsea, on the other hand, seemed to be more for the split with her rallying cry to make the women one giant ball of badassness. The woman who best summed up the mixed feelings though wasn’t even in the alliance. Christina said, “I think some of these girls who have this chip on their shoulder thinking like we don't need the guys, look, it's not so much about pride, it's about yes we have a game to play, but we also need to survive as well.” That reinforces that the women can’t survive without the men and is pretty strong foreshadowing, especially considering Michael and Jay’s behavior in the episode. Michael looked the worst of the two. When the “frat boy alliance” was formed, he asked “Who’s going to stop us?” Jay was the more balanced of the two. When the alliance was formed he warned, “You know we're putting a huge target on our back.” Likewise in the scene with Kim and Kat he said they needed to get girls on their side (as well as saying he wanted to align with girls in the intro). To be fair though, he did say this was a war and it didn’t make sense to work with the girls “at this point.” At this point is an interesting inclusion, especially as Michael was shown in conversation with Kim and Kat as well…and gender lines were already crossed.

Perhaps the two most interesting gradient characters in this episode were Colton and Sabrina. Colton, for all intents and purposes, was the female surrogate on the men’s tribe. In the intro he said he worked better with women. After the tribe split he said he wanted to be on the women’s tribe. He even flat out said, “I'm the girl within the guy tribe.” No, this isn’t insensitivity towards homosexuality. This is the story. Matt even said as much (well, minus a meta-comment about the story). On the women’s tribe, Sabrina is the player who most stepped up to the game. Perhaps it was a factor of her finding the idol so she had to be edited that way, but she still said “Colton's a wild card. My gut is telling me to believe in him, but who knows, anything can go down in Survivor,” a quote that may as well have been said by one of the guys. She then, of course, gives the idol to Colton, beginning the tribal line crossing, calling back to the other important Probst line in the intro: “Who will stay true to their tribe and who will make alliances with the enemy?”

Winner’s Quotes

Troyzan:
“One guy's called Tarzan, and I'm like 'He can't be Tarzan. I'm Troyzan.' It's like, I'm, um, this is my island, baby.”

Sabrina:
“If I had to do the jumping on the truck 60 second grab all over again I would've stole some things from them that they stole from us. They definitely played dirty on that truck. I said ok, we got a good inclination of how they're gonna play the game and, um, Game on.”

Chelsea:
“Don’t mess with the country girl.”

Kim:
“I didn’t plan to form an alliance right off the bat. I was just going to lay low but, when we saw the guys stealing off the truck, that was a huge rivalry right off the bat (Note that Matt was shown at this moment) so, when the guys did that, the women were like: Women Power! I’m not a big fan but I am going with it.”

Jay:
“Even though this is One World, to me there’s two hemispheres: Their tribe versus our tribe. I don’t really think that the girl tribe wanted to be in with us. They made it apparent by the way they were scouting around and keeping everything on their side. I don’t want to help them in any way possible. As far as I’m concerned, they need to stay on their side, I’ll stay on mine and, if they need us more than we need them, then we are in charge of this game.”

Players to Watch

Troyzan:
His winner’s quote looms large as well as his incredibly unique edit. He was the only one continually calling out the women on their talking. On the other hand, his “this is my island” statement is bravado that matches Matt’s. What it amounts to is this: he either wins the game or is the wise old sage that told the men how to win it.

Jonas:
He is the other male with the unique edit. He’s not in the power alliance, yet a point was still made of including him in the episode, as well as establishing his badassness and likability. If he doesn’t win, he’ll at least have a long Dawn Meehan-esque arc.

Jay:
His winner’s quote at least seems to point to a male winning, but internally to the episode the women needed the men more than the men needed the women, and if a man is going to win, who better than Jay? He hasn’t seemed to make “the single biggest mistake in this game (of) making decisions early on that nobody will forgive you in the end” of alienating the women and not wanting to work with them. In fact, if there is a man ready to work with both, it is him.

Michael:
In some ways, he’s a less fully realized gradient than Jay. He seems to be more in the arrogant male camp. However, he was shown saying he was ready for twists and then adapting to the twists well. He stole from the women in the 60 second truck strip. He got into the frat boy alliance and still talked to the women. He seemed at least destined to be a major player in a cross-gender alliance.


Sabrina:
Out of all the women, she was the quickest to adjust to the lack of rules. Out of the women’s alliance, she seemed to be the most distant from Alicia’s influence. It remains to be seen if this edit is just because of her finding the idol and working with Colton or not.

Kim:
Kim's quote could be a winner's quote because this episode really highlighted the initial divide between the two sides and how some players were all about the women and some all about the men. If the story is going to be about how the winner balances the two and goes along with whatever her circumstances are, she has shown to be adaptable and able to see both the men’s and women’s perspective.

Chelsea:
Her victorious moment of catching the chickens was huge. In the middle of a gender war, she holds them up and says “Don’t mess with the country girl.” If she does win, that will be the scene she is remembered for in Survivor history.

Friday Night Lights S1E1-11: Dimming Quickly

Because I'm a huge football fan, over the years numerous people have told me to watch Friday Night Lights. I've procrastinated due to being equal parts afraid I'd love the show and hate the show. My reaction has been squarely in between. Initially, I fell in love. The show's inciting action is a perfect bit of plotting that appealed to my intellect and emotion. I wanted to know what happened next and really cared if the characters overcame. By the end of episode two "Eyes Wide Open" when backup-turned-starting-QB Matt told Coach Taylor his eyes were wide open when he threw up the game winning pass in the first game, I was hooked. It was a literal ending. It was a metaphoric ending. It was the perfect balance.

Then some more stuff happened...and more stuff happened...and more stuff happened. The show become obsessed with progressing the plot without telling me why it was progressing. What began as a heavily serialized drama about a high school football team's season transitioned into loosely linked stand alone episodes about people who happen to be involved in football. In the middle of episode seven I was confused if I had skipped an episode. Outside of one line, the plot and tensions from episode six were largely dropped. And then some more stuff happened, implanting one pulsating question in my brain: Why?

What frustrates me most is that I don't know why the characters do anything. Despite all the talking that goes on, I don't understand what motivates them, psychologically or philosophically. What do they want? The best example might be the return of Matt's father in episode 11 "Nevermind." Through the first ten episodes, Matt juggled a job, taking care of his senile grandmother while his father was in Iraq, becoming the new starting QB, and successfully wooing the girl he has a crush on--and all the seems like it will be taken away when his father comes home from the conflict on a two week leave. Apparently grandma is so bad she needs to be put in a home, except committing her would leave Matt without a legal guardian upon his dad's return to Iraq which means Matt would have to move to Oklahoma to live with some relatives which means he couldn't play for the Dillon Panthers anymore. Matt points this out to his father who retorts with the completely reasonable, "You can play football anywhere."

Look, I understand why Matt doesn't want to leave Texas. I know what it's like to have friends and play on a team. I get that his girlfriend is smoking hot. And, as with anyone who's been to college or moved to a new town, I know what it's like to have to start all over and build anew. All of those statements however start with me, not the character of Matt. I have no idea why Matt wants to stay. What exactly is it about this town, this school, this girl (besides her being smoking hot), this coach, and this team that is valuable? What are Matt's thoughts? We never find out. Instead, he has a conversation with his coach about how he doesn't want to leave and his girlfriend tells her mother that she doesn't want to lose him. Yeah, I got that, I'd just like to break through the barrier and understand the source of these desires.

Ultimately, the town of Dillon and its residents are sealed in a hermetic bubble. I can observe everything but understand nothing. Sure, in the gaps where there is meant to be emotion (and this show is marvelous at using visual and auditory spacing to its advantage) I can substitute in my own experiences to conjure the requisite smiles and tears. However, when I do, I'm really retelling my own story to myself, not experiencing the story of the Panthers football team and their friends and family. And if that's the case, who's the storyteller here? It'd be like if your father told you a bedtime story while you kept interrupting with "So it's like that time I..." Before long you'd lose interest in his daily narratives and dim the lights yourself.

Friday Night Lights is like watching a talented team execute a bad game plan to perfection. The acting, directing, music, and other technical aspects are all top notch. The issue is that they're in service of a blueprint that just isn't detailed enough to bring home the W(ant).

To Fill the Requirements You Must Know the Requirements

"Ok, so I'm just gonna cut to the chase. It's on our buffs. It's about outwitting, outlasting, and outplaying. And when it comes to outplaying I felt like I held my own in challenges. When it came to individual immunity, I won three individual immunities. When it came to outwitting, I definitely felt like there were two parts to it. And one part was the strategic part. And I felt like I did that well. I made a five person alliance from the beginning and I wanted to keep that five person alliance to the end. And it wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to do, but I made sure that my strategy revolved around it. And then the other half of outwitting I think was the social game. And I think it became more clear to me a couple tribals ago that maybe I wasn't so good at the social game. I felt like I made some genuine friendships back at Upolu, but, you know, I’m not a used car salesman. I came out here and I was myself. And I do think I was as honest as possible, so I think I filled the requirements.” - Sophie Clarke

If a player wants to win the game, he has to convince the jury that he is more deserving than the other two people he is sitting in the final three with (or other person, in the case of a final two). The sticking point here is "deserving." What does it mean to be "deserving" of winning the game? Aren't you just the person who played the game the best? And isn't the person who won the game the person who played the best? Well, yes, but when the game is still being played--which is true while the final tribal council is going on--it's impossible to say who is most deserving based on the criteria of "the person who won the game deserved to win." This is the challenge faced by the players arguing to the jury, and it's what makes Sophie's opening statement so incredible. For the first time in Survivor history--both externally and internally to the game--someone attempted to explain what the requirements are for being deserving of winning the game.

Sophie Clarke delivered the best final Tribal Council performance in Survivor South Pacific because she knew what she wanted to say. She broke her game and the game of Survivor down to their most basic level--what their defining characteristic or characteristics are--beyond the generally given "Survivor is Survivor." That statement is certainly true. A thing is what it is. However, it is not sufficient. In order for Sophie to know what she wanted to say, she had to know what she was talking about--the game of Survivor in general and her game specifically. Why? Because every argument is based upon a foundation, some fact or set of facts in reality that the points (and ultimately the claim) in the argument refer to. To better demonstrate what I mean, I'm going to quote Erik Caronda's jury comments from Survivor Samoa:

"If there's one thing that I've learned in this game it is that perception is not reality. Reality is reality, and you (Natalie) are sitting there and that makes you just as dangerous as any one of those guys there. You would say that you are probably the least deserving of the title of Sole Survivor, but maybe, just maybe, in an enviroment filled with arrogance, delusional entitlement, maybe the person who thinks she is least deserving is probably the most."

What Erik is doing here is explaining how his beliefs about the game changed because of what happened in reality. He does this through two steps. First he says that what happens in the game is what happens in the game. The people sitting in the final three are the people sitting in the final three. This statement is the same as the one I already made about who deserves to win the game, just taken back one round of the game to the final three. Second he defines what he thinks are characteristics that a deserving winner would NOT have--arrogance and entitlement. Since Natalie had neither, he deemed her most deserving and voted for her---and because of this content, Erik's speech is the logical predecessor of Sophie's.

What makes Sophie's speech more impressive than Erik's is its two major difference from it. The first is the level of detail. Erik only claimed that someone is, in reality, more deserving of winning the game. He then said that, in the specific instance of Survivor Samoa, Natalie was that person. It's great that he was able to figure it out for his purposes, but not going into detail about what it means to be deserving leaves a player like Sophie in the dark. She is forced to either argue that she deserves to win because she is like Natalie or figure out why Natalie deserved to win beyond the simple statement that she won the game. Sophie tackled that foreboding task with seeming ease.

Just as Erik stated why Mick and Russell didn't deserve to win, Sophie could have easily argued why Albert and Coach didn't deserve to win. Don't misunderstand me. Sophie certainly talked about why Albert and Coach (ok, mainly Albert) shouldn't win at some points, but the primary thrust of her arguments were positive--why she deserved to win. This perspective can clearly be seen in her opening statements. She stated a condition of what it meant to be deserving and then provided a concrete example of how she filled that requirement. She then stated another condition and then another relevant example. It was an approach that let the jury know where she stood and what they would be voting for if they wrote her name down. It was something that Albert and Coach did not do and perhaps the power that pushed her to the final victory.

Being able to argue for herself increased the value Sophie took from the game. She earned the title and the money. She is now a million dollars richer (well, pre-taxes anyway) and is in an elite group of 22 people. The title of Sole Survivor can never be taken away from her for the rest of her life. No matter what happens to her (barring NCAA investigations), she can always look back on her accomplishment and be proud. In other words, in order to be the most deserving, she first had to know what it meant to be most deserving. Only then could she go about checking the boxes and explaining how she did.

Unless we're one of the lucky few who get to play the game, we'll never have a chance to be able to check those boxes. However it is still to our advantage to figure out what they are exactly. Why? Because, like Sophie, the more we know about them, the more value we get out of Survivor. It is impossible to talk about what it means to deserve to win Survivor if you don't know what it means to be deserving. Yes, you can always say a player deserved to win if he won, but that only points back to the question of what does it mean to be deserving. Imagine if Sophie had argued that she deserved to win because she deserved to win. No one would have taken her seriously, and she might not have won at all.

The title of Sole Survivor is an achievement and people deserve to be praised for it. However, they're not the only players who deserved to be praised. Many players check many of the boxes but fail at the most important ones. Knowing what it means for a player to be deserving, allows us as fans to praise players for checking any assortment of boxes--and that is what being a fan is about. You appreciate the thing you're a fan of. I don't know about you, but I'm a fan of Survivor so I appreciate it and those who excel at it.

Erik taught us that Survivor is Survivor (reality is reality). Sophie taught us that there are requirements to fill to win the game. She also provided us with a good start as to what those requirements are. Now it's up to us to define them on a detailed enough level to know who the players we appreciate the most are and argue for them. Otherwise we're just doing Coach Things. I suppose that's good enough for three votes. I just prefer to win.