So yeah, it’s been a while….
To those of you still here, or coming back to read this, thank you. My promises of a productive off-season have clearly been shot at this point. In my defense, I’ve had a rough few months at work, and that plus the lack of new “Survivor” news killed a lot of my incentive to use my free time to talk about all things “Survivor” (as a side note, perhaps it’s the restart of season production that has incentivized me to get back on the horse). But from an outsider’s perspective, I get that doesn’t matter. I said there would be more off-season content than there has been, and even left a six-month gap or so with no new content. For that, I’m sorry, and thanks for sticking with me/coming back. I hope to do better moving forward. Maybe not weekly content, but hopefully at least one new blog a month up until we start getting solid information/content about the newest seasons.
Given the gap between blogs, I think a quick refresher of what this one entails is in order. This is “Survivor What-Ifs?”, a speculative blog where I go back and change one small moment in “Survivor” history. I then discuss the impact this change would have on the course of all seasons that came after it, dividing my analysis up into three sections: The Impact, where I discuss what specifically I’m changing in the timeline and any changes that happen within the same episode as a result; The Fallout, where I discuss how that change impacts the rest of the season the change occurs in; and The Legacy, where I discuss how this change impacts the seasons that came after. How much detail each section gets varies depending on where in the timeline said change takes place. For example, the change we’ll be discussing today takes place near the end of the season, so The Impact and The Fallout will be shorter but have more specifics in them. Conversely, The Legacy will be longer, but be more of a generalization than the other two sections.
All this leads into the usual reminder that there will be SPOILERS ahead. It’s rather difficult to talk about how a timeline differs from our own without referencing our own timeline. I’ll mainly be discussing the outcome of “Survivor Marquesas” in this blog, but other seasons may be mentioned in The Legacy, so if you want to be safe, maybe don’t read ahead until you’ve seen all seasons from Marquesas on. With all that business out of the way, let’s go ahead and dive into the change with…
THE IMPACT
Marquesas is an interesting place to shake up the timeline in, as it’s a season with a lot of mixed opinions. Some find that it’s an underrated gem of a season; others find it decent, but nothing to write home about. For myself, I kind of fall somewhere in the middle. From a strategic standpoint, it’s a VERY important season, delivering us the first full alliance-flip, as well as Vecepia’s innovative strategy for the “Fallen Comrades” challenge that got it discontinued from the show. I fully acknowledge and respect this. That said, for my money, while important things HAPPEN, on the season, the PEOPLE they happen to by and large aren’t that interesting to watch from a viewership perspective. Oh, the season has some great characters to be sure. Kathy Vavrick-O’Brien is a treat, and both Sean Rector and John Carroll are underrated gems who deserve another shot in the game. But most of the big characters go out pre-merge, in part, I think, due to the losing Maraamu tribe being stacked in terms of characters. They were definitely the more fun tribe to watch, but their early losses meant most of the big characters went out early, thus leaving us with an inoffensive, but overall not that dynamic, merge cast. Put another way, I feel like our timeline of Marquesas is what “Survivor Exile Island” would have been like if the La Mina/Casaya wins and losses had been flipped. There would have been nothing WRONG with La Mina dominating the merge and post game, and interesting strategy would doubtless still occur, but we would have lost most of the fun people to watch along the way.
Well, now that I’ve talked up how the pre-merge of Marquesas kind of torpedoes a lot of the good of the season, let’s make a change as far away from the pre-merge as possible! When I say we’re making a change near the end of the season, I mean the VERY end of the season. We’re going back to most of the way through the finale, at the Final 3 Immunity Challenge. Those of you who have seen the season will recall the dominance that was and is Kathy. She was the audience favorite, and also the favorite to win the challenge, having won several immunities and rewards by this point. Not that Vecepia and Neleh weren’t good competitors, but Kathy was just in another league. However, as Kathy herself put it, she lost her focus for a second, slipped, and fell out of the challenge. At that point, Vecepia made the obvious play and made a deal with Neleh to step down, since neither one of them wanted to take Kathy to the end at that point. Why waste the time, after all? A perfectly logical and rational decision, but one that eliminates the last exciting person left from a television viewer perspective.
So, for our change, let’s let Kathy keep her focus. Let’s let her keep her head in the game, and not make the slip-up which cost her immunity and the game as a whole. What happens in the timeline where Kathy stays 100% focussed on the challenge at hand 100% of the time?
THE FALLOUT
Kathy wins. Yeah, shocker, I know. Real hot take from the guy who’s been gone for six months. It take you that long to think through that complex scenario, genius?
But seriously, whether you’re talking about the challenge or the game, Kathy keeping her focus in that final immunity challenge wins her everything. She was the favorite to win the challenge for a reason, and I’m not one to go against the odds. Who she takes to the end almost doesn’t matter, since I’m pretty sure she wins either way. That said, it’s still my duty to make a guess. I couldn’t find any evidence that Kathy has ever said who she would have taken had she won, but my guess would be that she takes Neleh. The pair were always on the same tribe from the beginning, Kathy played a big part in Neleh and Paschal flipping on the Rotu 4, and Kathy would have voted out Vecepia at Final 4 had she not won immunity. True, Kathy did have a deal with Vecepia as a result of that Final 4 challenge, but I don’t see that overriding a 38 day bond with Neleh.
As I say, the discussion is ultimately kind of pointless, since Kathy wins either way, but I’ll be going forward as though it’s her versus Neleh. Kathy definitely wins the votes of all the Rotu 4 in this scenario (while Zoe did vote for Neleh in our timeline, I feel like she ultimately got along with Kathy best of all the remaining finalists), and possibly gets more. Paschal is the only one she definitively loses, as there’s no way Paschal doesn’t vote for Neleh. Sean and Vecepia are the only ones I have difficulty figuring out. They’re both probably not happy at Kathy voting them out, but also have no respect for Neleh. I’m inclined to say they vote for Kathy, since Neleh seemed to annoy them on a more personal level, but they could go either way. All it changes is Kathy’s margin of victory though, not the victory itself.
THE LEGACY
In a bit of a reversal, I’m going to talk a bit about the trends this change to the timeline causes to later seasons first, rather than how it changes the makeup of returnee seasons down the line. Specifically, I’d like to talk about what the absence of Vecepia’s win means to the timeline going forward. Say what you will about her as a character, but Vecepia was both a good strategist and important for “Survivor” as a whole. Around this time, you started to get people noticing that POC’s in general, and African-Americans in particular, were not making the final rounds of the show. They weren’t even making it that close. Vecepia making the finals here is a big deal, but now that she doesn’t win, the controversy remains. Recall that during the “Early Show” segments for this seasons, one of the hosts would regularly joke about the need for “Black ‘Survivor’” for African-Americans to have any chance of winning. Vecepia’s win shut up that sort of talk, but without it, now that talk persists. This both means that discussions about the success and portrayal of POC’s on the show probably comes up much earlier in the show’s history, possibly even leading to a Cook Islands “Divide the tribes by race” twist earlier in the timeline. It also means that Earl’s win on “Survivor Fiji” becomes a much bigger deal, as he becomes the first African-American to ever win in the show’s history. This means that, with Kathy winning Marquesas, Earl definitely gets brought back sooner rather than later. I suspect he probably comes back for “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” as a Hero, probably taking Tom Westman’s spot. He sadly still has to miss “Winners at War”, as I doubt his real-life obligations change as a result of this, but he probably gets brought back one more time after Heroes vs. Villains at least.
Of course, Kathy is a big deal even in our timeline. She was voted “Most Popular Contestant Ever” around the end of the season in our timeline, which is probably somewhat due to recency bias, but also because Kathy is just a good character. But if you thought her zeitgeist was big in our timeline, hoo boy, you can imagine how big it is if she wins. Kathy is beloved, arguably the most beloved winner ever. She’s probably the only person who rivals Ethan Zohn in terms of popular winners during the single-digit seasons. There’s probably a lot of ongoing debate, even to this day, of which of them played the better game. Think “Team Ethan” and “Team Kathy” t-shirts going around.
Kathy herself is also a hot ticket item who comes back more than once. There’s her appearance on “All-Stars” to be sure, but I’m sure they want her back for other seasons as well. It’s tempting to say that she’d also be brought back to “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”, but I’m not sure about that. She’d definitely have to be on the Heroes tribe, but I’m not sure who she can replace. In terms of archetype, she most closely matches Cirie, and production’s not giving up Cirie’s spot to anyone, even in this timeline. While it’s then tempting to say she takes Candice’s spot, especially given how controversial Candice’s inclusion was to begin with, but recall that production, for whatever reason, likes to give a lot of its spots over to women who look good in a bikini. Kathy, for all that she is a lovely person with many great qualities, does not fit this mold, and when you’ve already got Cirie on your tribe, that’s 2/5 of the women on your tribe given over to “non-eye candy”, which I just don’t see production doing. I DO see them getting a lot of flak for not having Kathy on this season, but I don’t see them changing their minds.
No, given how popular her son Patrick’s appearance on the show was during the family visit, I would guess that she and Patrick get tapped for “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, though if that falls through I could also see Kathy ending up on “Survivor Game Changers”, probably in Sierra’s spot, since that originally belonged to Natalie Anderson, another female winner that Kathy could easily replace in this timeline. This probably shakes up the tribes of the season, as again, production won’t want Kathy and Cirie on the same tribe initially. And of course, there’s no way in this timeline Kathy isn’t brought back for “Survivor Winners at War” as a four-peat. She probably takes over Amber’s spot.
But, of course, there’s one big returnee season Kathy impacts that I’ve only barely touched on. Yes, folks, Kathy’s win definitely has an impact on “Survivor All-Stars”. Now, on the surface, it might seem like a minimal impact. After all, Kathy was on that season in our timeline, and her winning doesn’t seem like that would preclude her from appearing again. It’s not in Kathy’s nature to say “no”. Yeah, maybe Kathy has a bigger target as a result of winning now, but would it really change the season that much?
Yes, dear reader. Yes it would. Maybe not from a player standpoint, but from a production standpoint. I don’t think the All-Stars we have in our timeline would be the All-Stars we have in this timeline. But that is a complicated change. One that, I think, merits its own write-up. So, join me in what’s hopefully only a couple weeks this time when we look at “Survivor What-Ifs: All-Stars”!
In the meantime, though, thank you once again for joining me on this little thought experiment, and sticking with me after a long, unplanned hiatus! The next blog topic may be reserved, but blogs down the line aren’t. If there’s a “What If?” scenario you want to read about, I would be happy to write it up if it looks interesting! Feel free to submit your ideas in the comments below, or anywhere else I’ve linked this blog! You will be credited if your idea gets used. Since it’s been a while, a reminder of the ground rules for any idea to be considered for the blog:
1. One Change Only: This can’t be a whole bunch of things or multiple things going another way to alter the course of a season. This must be one singular event that alters the season in some way. Cascade effects, where one change naturally leads to another, are ok, but they have to be natural and logical. As an example, Shii-Ann not flipping and Chuay Gahn losing the final 10 immunity challenge on “Survivor Thailand” would definitely change things, but those are two independent changes that need to happen, and therefore not appropriate for this blog. I should also mention that the change has to be an EVENT, not a play style. Yes, “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” probably goes much differently if Russell Hantz (“Survivor Samoa”) isn’t an asshole to everyone, but apart from that never happening, it’s a change in overall play style, not a single moment. It’s also, as I say, implausible, which leads to my next ground rule…
2. The Change Must Be Realistic: An unlikely change is ok, but it has to be something that COULD have happened, or it’s not worth writing about. Yes, Fang winning the first immunity challenge on “Survivor Gabon” would drastically change the season. Would it ever happen? No. So there’s no point in writing about it.
3. The Change Must Have An Impact: By this, I mean the change has to actually alter the season in some significant way. Simply changing up the boot order is not enough. Someone new has to win, the perception of the season has to change, or both. As an example, I originally planned to do a blog on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”, with a timeline where Candice didn’t flip at the final 9. I thought this could lead to a Heroes victory. Then I remembered that Russell Hantz plays his idol in that same episode, meaning the flip most likely doesn’t matter, and apart from a slight boot order change, the season as a whole remains untouched. Uninteresting, and therefore not worth talking about.
In addition to these hard-and-fast rules, there are two what I call “Flexible Rules”. As the name would imply, these rules can be bent with a compelling arguments, but they are two things that should be borne in mind when suggesting new situations to examine:
4. US Seasons Only: This is nothing against international seasons of “Survivor”. From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, they can be quite good. The trouble is, as a citizen on the US, the US version of “Survivor” is the one I’m most familiar with, know the most about, and have seen the most of. I haven’t even seen a full international season of “Survivor”, just the occasional clip. Nothing knocking them, of course. I just haven’t gotten around to viewing them. So, while I won’t outright ban the suggesting of changes from non-US seasons of “Survivor”, bear in mind that I’m unlikely to pick them due to a lack of knowledge and lack of time to catch up on the seasons.
5. I Will Not Do Brandon Flipping At The Africa Final 9: A flip by Brandon Quinton at the Final 9 of “Survivor Africa”, voting out Lex instead of Kelly, would indeed fit all the criteria mentioned above. I’m refusing this particular scenario, not because it isn’t interesting or worth talking about, but because it was already covered by Mario Lanza in his book “When it Was Worth Playing For”. He covered it so well and so thoroughly that I don’t think I would have anything to add. I’m willing to consider this scenario if someone can give me a compelling reason that Mario is wrong, or there’s some aspect he didn’t consider, but until that time, this scenario is out. Other “Survivor Africa” scenarios are ok, though.
Again, I cannot thank you all enough for sticking with this blog through an annoyingly long hiatus, and I look forward to your feedback and thoughts in the future!
-Matt
idolspeculation 