The Vitruvian Survivor

This Week in Bold Strategy #2

Welcome back to This Week in BS, where we break down highlights of Bold Strategy from Survivor Australia, Survivor 44, Big Brother Canada 11, and whatever the hell I want.

As always, scroll to the shows you watch and skip the ones you don’t. Or read everything and see how consuming seven hours of competitive reality TV programming a week affects your personal relationships, your career, and the rest of your life.

Survivor 44

⛑ Bruce Not-So Almighty

When I was 20-ish I was seated in a makeshift dugout at summer camp with a crappy fence in front of me as my team was up to bat. My teammate hit a single to right field and when an errant throw to home plate went above the crappy dugout fence and dinged me right in the temple, I went limp and fell to the ground. Yes, this is funny to me now. Not so much then. When I came to, I couldn’t see for a few minutes and I felt fine. An hour later I was in the ER in Orillia, Ontario having a tantrum with the worst pain of my life. And no, you shouldn’t know where that is unless you’re a fan of the writer/humourist Stephen Leacock or if you love Casino Rama. Point is, concussions are horrific beasts that manifest in unpredictable ways and I have no problem with pulling Bruce from the game.

Your brain is way more valuable than a million bucks and I appreciate production removing him. That said, it’s worth considering whether medical leave can happen without removing a castaway. In Survivor Australia this year, George was allowed to leave and come back after a tribal after, similarly, getting his forehead split open. Some people felt like production was protecting him by allowing him to miss tribal. There is a reasonable middle ground where a player should be able to leave for a day or two to get medical attention if they don’t miss a tribal.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a big enough Survivor fan to know that there are a million cameras and production crews and medical meetings and emergency IVs and more that go on. The façade of a legit castaway fantasy is no longer there and I think the general viewing audience would be fine with someone leaving to get important medical attention and coming back if they were cleared. With that said, this is more of a general point, and I’m no medic, but starving on a beach in the hot Fijian sun with a concussion seems like a nightmare.

💪 The Vitruvian Survivor

Ok this is the kind of weird shit you might be here for. Let’s talk about bodies on Survivor, specifically getting your body right for Survivor. I’m very into how people physically prepare for Survivor and it’s relevant for a couple reasons: Carson’s weight gain and Brandon’s challenge performance.

First, Carson, picture above from his Instagram, gained 30 pounds in three months before the show. That’s a massive amount of weight to gain in a short period of time. I’ll have yearly, intentional 60 pound swings, when I’m biohacking or whatever pseudoscientific nonsense I call it that day, so I love this stuff. For Tom Holland lite over there, he probably had a good amount of noob gains, the kind of early success you get at the gym if you haven’t trained before. This isn’t bad muscle or fat by any means - it’s generally accepted that you can’t usually gain one without the other and it seems like he did it in a fairly healthy way.

This is ideal for the island. With minimal food, his body will quickly revert to what it was before, and I bet, if he goes far, he’s not someone who is going to struggle with the elements as much as others. If you’re a tiny person, having a larger amount of body mass than you did before, with muscle and fat mixed, I would argue, is far better for making a run on the island, than going on as a smaller version of yourself.

That’s not true for everyone though. I bring this up because we see what I’ll call “muscular struggling” this week. Brandon went into the game jacked as all hell and THEN RATU PICKED THE SWEAT CHALLENGE. I don’t understand why people do this or volunteer for it. I mean, I get Matt saying that he wants to prove himself to his tribe, although this is 2023 not 2003 (as we saw when the majority of Ratu, two people 😆, tried to vote out Brandon, the biggest guy there, in the first tribal council), and people just don’t care as much about your value to the tribe. Don’t isolate yourself from 66% of your tribe on day one while they bond.

Brandon spent all of his good Ponderosa-all-you-can-eat energy on dragging coconuts. Why?! Yeah, sure it’s 26 days and not hard and all that but why?! He used all of his calories to walk back and forth with Matt, who might be an ally now but doesn’t even vote with him later, and then, of course Brandon’s going to be too gassed to finish the immunity challenge.

Here’s my opinion why: he’s carrying too much muscle mass. I don’t think it’s a good thing to go into the game as someone who needs 3000+ calories a day just to stay at maintenance, or your current weight. Over and over, we’ve seen muscular dudes needing medical attention, or in some cases (e.g. Beastmode Cowboy) being medically evacuated because they’re so used to fuelling their bodies properly.

Yes, he had a brief NFL career as a fullback, and yes it’s good to be in shape for a physical Survivor game. No, he shouldn’t have done what Carson did. Obviously Survivor is not a healthy thing to do for anyone.

I recognize this is a ridiculous diatribe and I’m nowhere near in shape enough to be throwing stones here: it’s worth thinking about though! If you’re playing for a million dollars you should optimize every single aspect of your approach, including your body, and Brandon should have came in a bit more lean. I have nothing but respect for Carson’s prep level for this game, both from a physical and strategic standpoint, and I hope it pays off for the kid.

Survivor Australia: Heroes V Villains

🥽 Collateral Damage in a Power Struggle

No matter where Stevie went after Day 22, this season was a win for him. He doubled his 11 days from his first time out AND THEN HE TORE OUR HEARTS OUT OF OUR CHESTS AS HE BECAME THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN A WILD POWER STRUGGLE. It’s still a pity to see him go because his smoke and mirrors were very fun and his wild card energy added a lot to the season.

George is an excellent negotiator and showed it here. He knew that when he asked Gerry if Gerry wanted Matt or Stevie to go that Gerry would say Steve. His gameplay has been dissected enough, and we’re about a week out from this now so I’ll just add one more George note. What sometimes gets lost are how good his reads are. He knew Flick would immediately defect back to the OG Heroes after she fooled Shonee and Liz and she did. It’s scary when you’re as good as George, or as Shaun calls him, Hannibal Lector.

The merge episode was really intriguing and it continued my favourite story of the season, Simon’s role as Charlie Brown, with everything going wrong, then getting better, then going wrong again. This time it goes right, as he finds an alliance, The Vigilantes. My hope is they don’t run the next few votes, and instead, try to kill each other. Simon is due for more bad news unfortunately.

☃️ The Importance of a Cooldown

Episode 15 was the Shonee revenge story. Flick picked the wrong side and got her comeuppance. This episode provides a nice cooldown to a season going at breakneck speed. Usually that’s a way to say that this episode sucked; however, it was actually quite good. There were a lot of fun moments, like Matt owning his flip, calling the group The Vigilantes and having Nina’s reaction to that at tribal, Shonee’s confessional about how she and Flick had talked about getting “Margies”, and Liz winning immunity.

Side note: if we’re talking optimizing your body for Survivor, grip strength is an excellent thing to train. You can almost guarantee some sort of individual immunity challenge involves holding onto something, whether it be a rope or a bar (a la Gabler during his mini-Hubicki monologue in Survivor 43), and you can almost guarantee a win too if you spend time training your forearms.

Having a cooldown episode is important for the overall pacing of the season, especially in one like this where it has all-time potential. If every episode is a blindside, then blindsides lose their weight. Storytelling works best when it has ebbs and flows. I’m expecting this early merge phase to have a lot of the big players at each other’s throats. Just how we like it.

Big Brother Canada 11

👁 Let’s Talk Feeds

These are the words I was looking for. I’m with ya.

But if you’re someone who is going to spend all season complaining, go for it. I’ll be enjoying whatever is to come. I trust that within the confines of this new structure - which is different - that the product of BBCAN11 will turn out well.

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is that exit press will need a new lens. We know how skewed, and ignorant, BB players usually sound immediately after the house. And while I don’t blame them, we usually have feeds to keep them honest. We’ll have to take any exit press with a big grain of salt and like some analysts say, exit press is not canon.

🇿🇦 Early Favs

I shared some early picks to do well in an interview with ET the other day and I’ll add some details to the two I mentioned: Kuzie and Daniel. Kuzie is a 9-1-1 operator. BBCAN will throw all sorts of twists and intense moments your way and if you can handle people’s real-life emergencies you can handle Arisa telling you it’s a triple eviction. Kuzie is also originally from South Africa and Zimbabwe and if you’re a feeder (RIP) you’ll know my parents are from SA, so I have no choice but to jump aboard.

Daniel seems to have a lot of support online from the superfan community so hopefully he can continue the trend of different types of players thriving. We are due for a different kind of winner than the Adonis-like, extremely handsome, intelligent alpha males that we got in Dane, Tychon, and Kevin Jacobs from the last few rounds. I like to see people living their dreams out there so I hope Daniel gets a chance to thrive. If he’s as loud as he claims, he should be ok surviving the first couple of weeks which tend to be precarious for superfans. Being a loud and charismatic person can give a kind of “Don’t try to put me up,” energy that’s useful early on.

😴 Some Sleeper Picks

Here’s a sleeper out of left field for ya: Zach. This guy comes across as loud and full of bravado, and that might be him. But also, he seems to be good pals with Emmett Blois from BBCAN1. And if you’ve got a good friend who played a great game coaching you up… well that’s a huge advantage. There are so many little things you’d never think about training for in the house: how to talk to someone in a mirror, how to build trust, how to manage little side conversations, how to navigate tough conversations, and a kajillion more. If you’ve got someone who has done it before in your corner, I think it puts you in a decent position.

Other houseguests have tweeted out who they’re friends with:

• Spicy Vee knows Dan (the DJ, not Daniel)

• Pili knows Claudia

• Stephanie knows Roberto

Now none of this means that these houseguests were actually mentored or anything like that - it’s just speculation on my end. That said, even just being in a social circle with people who have done this before sometimes means that the lights aren’t as bright and the pressure is a little less on day one. Could make a huge difference.

You just gotta hope that none of the houseguests know each other, or that if they do it ends up in flames. That’s truly the biggest advantage you can have in a season of newbies: actually knowing someone in the house. The beauty of Big Brother is anyone can be anyone they want, but if you know someone from the outside you can confirm they are who they say they are. You hope this can be avoided yet it seems to happen every couple years on North American BB and usually the people who know each other end up working together - or having a major blow-up in week 3 - either one.

I teased a podcast and yes, I’ll be covering BBCAN weekly. I should be announcing it on Tuesday so I won’t tease it again - oh wait I’m doing that right now.

🕊 Tweet of the Week

If you need context, Zach won his season, Millenials vs Gen X (33), then came back for a fun run on Winners at War (40).

💜 Brice and Wen Presents: Toronto

I really had a blast at Brice and Wendell’s premiere party (the above poster is the closest I’ll ever get to headlining Bonnaroo). It’s great to meet other reality TV folks and it’s also nice to meet fans/friends from the internet. There were almost 500 people there so although it can feel lonely searching #SurvivorAU hashtags on Twitter, we so-called superfans do actually exist in human form.

I loved hanging out with everyone from Toronto and everyone who came in for the event and don’t be surprised to see more events popping up in the city down the line. The community is f-ing incredible.

We’ve got a huge week of SurvivorAU coming up, episode two of 44, and better yet, two BBCAN episodes, including the premiere. Look out for the BnB this week as I talk more about ideal muscle mass and forearm training in Survivor.

Until next time,

Kevin 🐍

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