Not to piss in your cheerios, but KPaggie should only have 16. Had 13 last week and got 3 this week (no points for Jeff). And Bobcat06 should only have 15. Had 12 last week and got 3 this week (no points for PG).

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What's your take on Kimmi mobilizing to get rid of Monica? Was that done out of genuine concern of Monica flipping, or was it more of a personal beef that Kimmi had so she used the female alliance comment as an excuse to get rid of someone she just didn't like?

JEFF PROBST: I was really impressed to see Kimmi light up like that. I really was starting to wonder about her drive. But that convinced me, she is definitely here to play. She's jut been playing a nice quiet game until things aren't going as she wants them to, then BAM! That was a big move. It sent a big signal. Nobody is safe and if you say the smallest wrong thing, the game can turn very fast.
As for her true motivation, I don't know. These players are very sophisticated. I'm choosing to believe that she really did sense a potential longterm problem with Monica. And it wouldn't surprise me if Monica was just tossing an idea out without really thinking it through or necessarily intending to do it. But Kimmi took it and ran. Man, Survivor is so hard. It's like the movie Body Heat where Mickey Rourke (who is in prison) is explaining to William Hurt (who is his lawyer) why he should not commit the crime he is considering: Any time you try a decent crime, you got 50 ways you're gonna mess it up. If you think of 25 of them, then you're a genius and you ain't no genius. It's the same on Survivor there are 50 ways to screw up any given situation in the game and even if you're a genius, you'll only come up with 25.

Woo shares a very emotional story about his mother needing a heart transplant and naturally Abi thinks he is using it as a strategic move. Is that really the essence of daily life in Survivor, where everything anyone says even real life tales that seemingly have nothing to do with gameplay are scrutinized as having ulterior motives?

I think each situation is highly influenced by the person telling the story and the person/s hearing the story. Personally, I don't believe Woo was manipulating. I think he was feeling some emotion, maybe thinking about home, and he just started to share. But even if he was, it was putting on a bit of sauce to try and gain some sympathy I think it was overshadowed by the true emotion and connection to his mom that came through. That's hard to fake.

But then, that's how I see people. I generally see the good and believe they're being honest. So maybe that makes me a good target to get blindsided onSurvivor. Abi sees the world very differently and so she was alarmed and offended. And I think equally important in that scene was the fact that Abi saw someone getting sympathy and she wanted some of that attention as well. Overall, I think the truly smart players are very good and noticing nuance and how a story can impact the group. If Woo starts to get momentum in the game and some people start to think he's more deserving because of his family situation, then the good players have to take that into consideration. Maybe they have to vote him out before the end.

But where I think a lot of players screw up is by making a big general assumption and conclusion as opposed to truly assessing the impact. The real impact. Did it make a lasting impression or is it fleeting. Because I'm on an airplane and have some time, let me pontificate a bit more. Here's a different example: The Savage story about meeting his wife could work in reverse. Here is a guy who was genuinely sharing, in a vulnerable moment, how much he loved his wife. He wasn't intending to brag, but to others who maybe don't have that kind of love affair, they might hear it and resent it and equate it to the same thing as having millions of dollars in the bank. And in that case it could work against Savage even though his intention was to create bonds through sharing. That's why this game is tough to play. It's almost impossible to play a perfect game.

Take us through that immunity challenge. Was there any scenario where you envisioned someone like Stephen Fishbach hitting ANOTHER TEAM'S target?

Nope. Not even for a moment. We rehearsed that several times and it never even came close to happening. In fact, you have to aim so far off that it would almost seem purposeful. Which I know it wasn't. But here's what's really interesting. During the walk-through, Stephen asked me, "What happens if I hit the other tribe's target?" Crazy, right? He was already seeing it happen. He put the thought in his mind. It blew me away that ten minutes later he HIT THE OTHER TRIBE'S TARGET! The mind can't differentiate he envisioned hitting the target and that's what he did. Vision fulfilled. That's why you never want to say, "I hope I don't throw it over his head," but instead say, "Just a nice straight toss right into his glove."

Hit us up with a preview for next week, sir!

Oh, man, there is so much. I don't want to give much away. Major emotion. Major reversal. And a lot of gross stuff to eat. How's that? Great questions!

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Not to piss in your cheerios, but KPaggie should only have 16. Had 13 last week and got 3 this week (no points for Jeff). And Bobcat06 should only have 15. Had 12 last week and got 3 this week (no points for PG).

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I want to thank you for this. Although Bobcat06 does only have 15 in the spreadsheet. Please accept my humblest gratitude to you. Your maths are destroying my maths, although I got a BA in Journalism, so it's kind of a wonder that I can even count.

Math

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Not to piss in your cheerios, but KPaggie should only have 16. Had 13 last week and got 3 this week (no points for Jeff). And Bobcat06 should only have 15. Had 12 last week and got 3 this week (no points for PG).

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I want to thank you for this. Although Bobcat06 does only have 15 in the spreadsheet. Please accept my humblest gratitude to you. Your maths are destroying my maths, although I got a BA in Journalism, so it's kind of a wonder that I can even count.

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hard to know whether or nor it is intentional based on the way you seem to "confuse" people on every death/RIP thread.

I tell you what, when I die, you can post a picture of Muckraker95.

you seem upset when chip points out your math errors.
i'm not mad,i am just trying to figure out why you troll all of the celebrity death threads.

are there multiple people who share your username? on the maureen ohara RIP thread you posted an intentionally trolling reply about marcia brady (which staff deleted) and then 3 replies later attempt to post a serious reply about rita hayworth.

I'm not mad, I thanked Chip and he responded with a thumbs up. I think he and I are OK, thanks for your concern. We're both passionate about Survivor, and ribbed each other early on. It is, after all, just the Internet.

As for the RIP posts, I find them dumb, so I make fun of them. But I'm human, and like most TexAggers, I go back and check out my posts in hope I got some blue stars or a reaction. In this case, I saw a question someone had so I answered it. No harm is intended in any of my posts.

Did I... die?

Nope, salvatore doesn't like my posts on another thread, so he's mentioning them here. It makes total sense.

So anyway, Monica was one of the very few hots this season. Hate to see her go.

i'm not upset,and i am sorry if my post to you (muckraker96) came off a bit too dick-ish. i was mostly just busting balls since you seem sensitive to math errors here yet on that thread you were trolling in the first post and then "sincerely trying to help answer a question" about the dead actress you were mocking in your first post.

again, my apologies to all for the temporary thread derail - back to survivor

finally caught up with this season....great season so far

i dont hate kass as much as i did last season. but i still hate her.

and omg abi is the most annoying attention hoaring terriblest person to ever play this game

No more Woo :/ figured he get brought along further. Not sure why the girls turned on him rather than Savage.

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No more Woo :/ figured he get brought along further. Not sure why the girls turned on him rather than Savage.

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I said that exact same thing when Cass was doing her confessional. It was either Spencer (but saying Ciera) or Woo, yet Savage was the one that created it all in the first place.

Agree. Woo is a good dude but a mental midget. Vote out Savage and he is in your pocket. Really tough for Terry but good to know that his son is OK. I cant ever remember a player being taken out of the game because of something back home.

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No more Woo :/ figured he get brought along further. Not sure why the girls turned on him rather than Savage.

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It was Abi.

She has it out for Woo and if they weren't going to vote as a whole tribe, they had to target Woo to get her vote

Abi might be a B, but she is wrecking shop.

LHIOB 22
MuckRaker96 22
Longhorn Nation 22
Ronnie 22

Pro Ag 21

AcctAg11 20
MooreTrucker 20
gravy97 20
double aught 20
TheSheik 20
txaggiefarmer05 20

CheeseSndwch 19
hurleyag 19
kpaggie05 19
zap 19
Unthought Known 19
tallgrant 19
Quinn 19

Bobcat06 18

jdgilberg 17
ChipFTAC01 17
salvatore_ditmars 17

BlackLab 16
tx1c 16


Southlake 14
Moxie 14


Cris_Dishman 12

Was Savage the one with a supermodel wife? He needs to stay in until at least the family reunion episode for that reason.

Your're probably right. Still doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but I probably shouldn't try and figure out what's going on in Abi's head.

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Your're probably right. Still doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but I probably shouldn't try and figure out what's going on in Abi's head.

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But how did she convince the others? That's what we didn't see, I guess.

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Agree. Woo is a good dude but a mental midget. Vote out Savage and he is in your pocket. Really tough for Terry but good to know that his son is OK. I cant ever remember a player being taken out of the game because of something back home.

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I think Parvati left early her first time playing because her mom was dying. They didn't pull her out, but she left because she had a bad feeling about it, and wound up being right. She got home maybe 1-2 weeks before her mom passed.

The ending with Terry and his son was one of the best things Survivor has ever done. I have very rarely if ever felt emotional about this show, but that was very touching.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was Steven's emotional breakdown about getting so close his year, and how he missed his chance, blah blah. I watched JT's season and I don't remember a single thing about Steven; had to look him up this time around. He must realize he's just a vote.

Smartest line of the night - Jeremy telling the camera that he needs Joe to stay out there because he doesn't want to be the strongest guy in the tribe.

Looks like the merge next week - so remember there are bonuses for your people that make it, and whoever wins the first II, you get those points too, but after that we all have to shave our choices down from 4 to 2. I will repost those rules after next week's episode.

Closing thought - Starting to wish I had picked Tasha. She was so timid her first season and has really turned it up a notch all the way around; she was friggin beast mode in the immunity challenge for the win.

So did Jeff wait to bring out the plate of brains for Kimmi or was that just an extreme coincidence?

I had forgotten about Pavrati. Good call.

I wish they wouldn't tell us about the merge...unless they merge only to split back up the next week. That would be EPIC.

My wife asked if I thought they were doing a redemption island and just not telling us. I wouldn't put it past them.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: A really tough situation with Terry, who had to leave the game due to his son Danny needing a heart transplant. Take us through how you all got this information, what your next steps were in terms of informing Terry, and then what happened after Terry left his tribe beach in that boat.

JEFF PROBST: I got a call on my radio around 1 a.m. (We keep our radios on all night and next to our beds for situations like this.) Our production office had received a call from the U.S. informing us of the situation with Terry's son. Terry's wife had been very clear that both she and the doctors felt that Terry needed to return home immediately. In other words, don't ask him if he wants to come home, he needs to come home. That's as urgent as anything that could ever happen on our show. A contestant's family is in crisis and we need to get them home. Everything else stops and that becomes our number one priority.

We have a very good system for something like this and within about twenty minutes a large group of us had risen from a dead sleep and we had boats and crews heading to the beach. You can't do it much faster than that. The chatter on the radio is exhilarating to listen to at times like this because you are hearing very precise and calm communication by our most seasoned leaders directing everybody what to do. In moments like that, it's really easy for me to get lost in the mastery of what our crew does. They're brilliant. Simultaneously, our production office was already making travel plans for Terry so that he would be on the very first flight out. Between all of our senior executives, our Cambodian crew, and the U.S. crew, we had probably 40 people working to make sure we got Terry home safely.
When I arrived at the beach to inform Terry of the news, I knew there wasn't going to be a discussion. I was going to tell Terry the news and he would be on a boat immediately. But even I didn't anticipate how fast Terry would respond. I had barely uttered the words "your wife called" and Deitz was out of that bamboo shelter and ready to get on the boat. All that military training was very evident. There was zero debate. Terry's family needed him and there was no other place he wanted to be.

What you didn't see in the episode was the minute we got on the boat, I handed him my cell phone and believe it or not, in the middle of the ocean in Cambodia we got reception and he talked to his son and told him he was coming home. It was a very powerful moment that I was honored to witness. And the only reason we didn't show it is because we didn't have a camera on the boat. I just handed the phone to him as an afterthought. The best news in all of this is that his son received a heart transplant and is doing incredibly well! I'm hopeful we'll see the entire family at the live reunion show in December.

Another tribe switch! Clearly you don't want these veteran players to get comfortable. What was the thinking behind reshuffling the deck yet again?

That was the plan from the beginning the only thing that sped it up a bit was Terry's surprise exit. But otherwise, there's not much more to it than that! We used to fret a lot more about the audience not being able to keep up with the story if we switched tribes more than once. But I've not seen any evidence that is the case, and so in a situation with this many returning players it seemed a perfect time to truly keep them on their toes, which makes it hard to hold onto an alliance.

So Savage constructs this plan to vote out Spencer, but tells him that they are all getting rid of Ciera. Ciera doesn't like that so she puts a new majority together to get loyal Savage ally Woo out instead. Was this a simple case of Savage's fatal flaw being that he dictated the action instead of asking others what they wanted to do? Isn't it always better in the game to ask rather than telling?

That's such a good question but tough to answer objectively because it really does depend on the situation and the people. My hunch is Ciera would say the tone in his delivery was part of the reason she fought back, along with just never wanting your name "out there" for any reason at any time! But anytime you are in a leadership position you risk alienating someone with your decisions. Savage was riding high, he'd come back from the dead at Angkor, and I think he lost sight of how he was coming across. In theory I like the ask instead of tell approach, but in my "Monday morning quarterback, never actually played" opinion, it really does depend on the particulars. Savage played it wrong and Ciera bit back hard.

Hook us up with a preview for next week, my man!

Next week a first. Don't you love it when in season 31 you can still say a first? That's all you get.

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Obviously Probst has the best hindsight of anyone; but in this case it rings true. Savage forgot how most women think and how paranoid they get. He should have had one of them tell Spencer that the girls were in control and were voting out either Woo or Savage, and that he should vote one of those two to stay with them. Then nobody's feelings get hurt, and Spencer goes home.

Blah blah on winner's edit; but Spencer is doing exactly what he did in his first season, improbably surviving (pun intended) sometimes by his own doing, sometimes by sheer luck, and now that he's about to make the merge, his combo of brains, desire, and physical ability are going to make him really dangerous. How many of the other players left are smart and strong?

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Closing thought - Starting to wish I had picked Tasha. She was so timid her first season and has really turned it up a notch all the way around; she was friggin beast mode in the immunity challenge for the win.

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I was hesitant at first to pick Tasha, but I am glad I did. I thought she was very risky as she could blow up anytime and ruin her game, but she has been real good at patience. I though for sure she would go off on Abi at one point.

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I think Parvati left early her first time playing because her mom was dying. They didn't pull her out, but she left because she had a bad feeling about it, and wound up being right. She got home maybe 1-2 weeks before her mom passed.

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This is what happened to Jenna Morasco on the first all star season.

I picked Savage in our office pool. Glad he made it another week.

That's right, it was Jenna, not Parvati. I got my epic hotties confused.


I picked Savage as one of my 2 in our pool. But I think he's too emotional to get a whole lot farther. A lot of the newer players have gravitated to him because he's got his heart on his sleeve, but that will end soon enough.

Looking forward to the merge. The constant tribal switchups have made things a little too disjointed for me.

Heading into the merge, it's almost like watching the Hunger Games.

You've got the Careers who can go on an immunity run in terms of physical conditioning - Joe, Savage, Jeremy, Spencer

the physically strong females who will compete in every challenge - Kelly, Kelley, Tasha, Kimmi

the ones who get eaten by pack of mutated dogs at some point - Abi, Steven

and the wild cards - Kass and Keith and Ciera.

For being a returning popular player, Keith seems like he's gotten about 10 seconds of airtime.

Normally I'd put Ciera in the bunch with Abi and Steven, but she swung that vote around to take out Woo, and she's got one of only two HIIs.

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That's right, it was Jenna, not Parvati. I got my epic hotties confused.

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Survivor's Epic Hotties needs it's own thread.

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the ones who get eaten by pack of mutated dogs at some point - Abi, Steven

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If only......

I don't think Ciera has an idol. Jeremy and Kelley (blonde hair) have the idols.

Anyone remember who I picked?