Episode 8: "The Hidden Immunity Idol"
S11: Guatemala boxscores Episode 8
Filmed: July 15-17, 2005 | Aired:
November 3, 2005
- Ep8 Reward challenge: None. Two days of fruitless idol searching instead..
- Ep8 Immunity challenge: "Pot-Head" - Gary wins; Jamie, Lydia, Rafe & Steph feast.
- Voted out: Brandon, 6-4 over shiny new decoy, Jamie.
Episode 8 scoring notes
- Four people sat out the IC (Jamie, Lydia, Rafe, Stephenie). For MPF purposes, sitting out of an individual challenge scores as a zero. So Rafe's MPF drops from 100% (from the Ep6 IC) to 50%. Well done.
- Tribal diatribe notes: One of the legitimate criticisms of this season is the lack of strategy. Or more accurately, an unpalatable choice between rigid, tribal-lines strategy and oppressive moralism, instead of fun, fluid, unpredictable gameplay.
- In this episode, the only options considered, at least after Bobby Jon cut a deal with Stephenie to at least get him to the jury, were blindly sticking with the (Days 9-18) tribal voting lines, or a morality boot, voting Jamie out simply because he was rude. For his part, even though he actively sabotaged his own social game throughout the episode, Jamie at least had had the sense to recognize that keeping Judd around was smart, because *Judd* annoyed people. But for the rest of the cast, it was "deserving" Brandon vs. mouthy Jamie. ("Deserving" is code for "We're totally voting you out, but we feel obligated to act guilty about it." Side diatribe note: Was Jamie's beef with Bobby Jon mostly about not protecting Brian? Huh? That exchange didn't make any sense.)
- This is partly the fault of the cast itself, which, with the exception of Brian, seems to have been selected first for sharing Sue Hawk's visceral indignation that Kelly Wiglesworth would even consider flipping on her alliance in Borneo. (A similarly selected set of people would later scream "You disgust me!" at Cochran in South Pacific.) Even though, again, these alliances only formed within the last week. Remember when Stephenie and Gary were running Yaxhá together? Or when Judd and Brandon tag-teamed to win the muddy Ep.2 IC for Nakúm? Yeah, neither do they, and they refuse to even talk to each other now. Fun!
- But part of the blame is also attributable to the harshness of the conditions, conditions that were actively amplified by odd production choices that ratcheted up the suffering. For example, production already knew that Jamie and Cindy were balking at the previous episode's pre-merge tribal mixing. So instead of defusing that hostility with a pleasant, neutral ground reacquaintance -- say a merge picnic on a third beach? -- they send Yaxhá skulking into Nakúm camp in the middle of the night, then they yank away the expected merge feast. Then they further increase the divisiveness and paranoia by replacing the feast with a note describing a hidden idol. So instead of people relaxing and getting to know each other, it's: Everyone for themselves! No socializing, no strategy talk! Go look for the idol! GO! And if that weren't enough, they then offer the merge feast back, but only for people arrogant enough to conclude they're safe, and don't need immunity. It's like production looked at Yaxhá: starving, covered in scabs, eaten alive by mosquitoes, but still willing to push on, and said: "You know what? They look like they still have hope. Let's snuff that."
- The result? A retreat to the safety and predictability of assured numbers. It's the opposite of "immunity balls," where people feel free to make more risky moves whilst ensconced in the protective comfort of an idol or the immunity necklace. And that opposite plays out as by-the-numbers Survivor, as was seen here, no matter how desperately the editors tried to convince us otherwise.
Vote count:
- Brandon received 6 votes, from Stephenie, Rafe, Lydia, Cindy, Judd, and Jamie (voted out, 6-4).
- Jamie received 4 votes, from Danni, Gary, Bobby Jon, and Brandon.
Other S11 boxscores
| Immunity Challenge | Overall score | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contestant | ChW | ChA | SO | Plc | % Fin | MPF |
| Gary | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | 1.00 | 100% |
| Bobby Jon | 0 | 1 | - | 3 | 0.67 | 66.7% |
| Rafe | - | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 50.0% |
| Brandon | 0 | 1 | - | 4 | 0.50 | 50.0% |
| Judd | 0 | 1 | - | 2 | 0.83 | 48.8% |
| Cindy | 0 | 1 | - | 5 | 0.33 | 45.2% |
| Jamie | - | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 28.6% |
| Stephenie | - | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 28.6% |
| Lydia | - | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 28.6% |
| Danni | 0 | 1 | - | 6 | 0.17 | 16.7% |
| Tribal council stats | Overall scores | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contestant | VFB | VAP | TotV | TCA | SurvSc | SurvAv |
| Rafe | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.44 | 8.62 |
| Stephenie | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.17 | 7.62 |
| Gary | 0 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.42 | 7.43 |
| Judd | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.29 | 6.72 |
| Danni | 0 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.20 | 6.70 |
| Cindy | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.05 | 6.37 |
| Bobby Jon | 0 | 6 | 10 | 1 | 1.19 | 4.83 |
| Jamie | 1 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 1.15 | 4.12 |
| Lydia | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | 1.04 | 3.37 |
| Brandon | 0 | - | 10 | 1 | 0.97 | 2.78 |
| Amy | - | - | - | - | 1.12 | 3.40 |
| Brian | - | - | - | - | 0.99 | 2.31 |
| Margaret | - | - | - | - | 0.63 | 1.77 |
| Blake | - | - | - | - | 1.12 | 2.45 |
| Brooke | - | - | - | - | 1.06 | 2.17 |
| Brianna | - | - | - | - | 0.45 | 1.38 |
| Morgan | - | - | - | - | -0.65 | 0.11 |
| Jim | - | - | - | - | -0.39 | 0.11 |
Glossary of terms
- Challenge
stats
- ChW: Challenge Wins. For tribal challenges, a contestant earns a fraction of 1 win, depending on if they participated (no points for sitting out). So in a five-person tribe's win, each participant gets (1/5) of a point, or 0.2 points. Duels (or individual RCs as in Ep1) at Redemption Island count as half a challenge (and half a win). Individual challenge wins count as a full point.
- ChA: Challenge Appearances. Used to calculate ChW%. Fractional for tribal challenges (same as ChW), except sit-outs get charged for an appearance, because they could have participated.
- ChW%: Challenge Win%. Simply, ChW% = ChW / ChA.
- SO: The number of times a contestant sat out of a challenge.
- Tribal
Council stats
- VFB: Votes For Bootee. The number of times the contestant has voted for the person who was ultimately voted out. Applies only to initial votes (no points for revotes in case of a tie). Special case: In a final three TC, where only one vote is cast (by the F3 IC winner), only that vote counts.
- VAP: Votes Against the Player. The total number of tribal council votes cast against the contestant. Again, only initial votes count (no penalty for revotes), and here a hidden immunity idol (if played) erases the votes. In the special case of a final three tribal council above, only the F3 bootee receives a vote against.
- TotV: Total votes cast during the tribal councils the player has attended (again, only initial votes count). Used to adjust for different vote totals as tribes shrink.
- TCA: Tribal council appearances. The number of times a contestant has attended tribal council (at which they voted).
- TC%: Tribal Council percent. Attempts to reward voting for the bootee (which players controlling the vote almost always do), while punishing receiving votes yourself. The formula is: TC% = [VFB - (VAP/TotV)] / TCA.
- wTCR: weighted Tribal Council Ratio. Very similar in intent to TC%, but calculated as a ratio of VFB to VAP, while also scaling to a uniform number of TC appearances. The formula is as follows: wTCR =2* [VFB / (4+VAP)] x (14/TCA). I originally tried (1+VAP) to avoid dividing by zero, but this overly rewarded getting zero votes against relative to just one vote against, which seemed silly. (4+VAP) scaled that effect back comfortably. 14 was used as the scaling factor for TC appearances because there are usually 14 episodes, then a final scaling factor of 2 to bring maximal scores up to roughly even with ChW and JV% high scores.
- Jury
stats
- JVF: Number of jury votes for the contestant to win. Maximum nine (Earl Cole, Fiji), theoretically.
- TotJ: Total number of jurors. Necessary to not punish unanimous 7-juror winners (JT Thomas, Tocantins).
- JV%: The percent of total jury votes cast for the contestant, or Jur% = JVF/ TotJ. This number is used, raw, in SurvSc, and is scaled in SurvAv (multiplied by six) to make it similar in size to ChW and wTCR.
- Overall
scores
- Survival Score (SurvSc). It's simply the sum of Challenge Win% (ChW%) + Tribal Council% (TC%) + Jury Vote%, for a maximum possible score of 2 (3 after the finale).
- Survival Average (SurvAv). It's a simple sum of fractional Challenge Wins (ChW), weighted TC Ratio (wTCR), and (eventually) a weighted Jury%. The latter two max out at six points total, for a theoretical maximum score of around 18 or so.