About Heather

I'm a Writer, Artist, and proud snarky person.

Now a days I'm living it up here in Skiatook, Oklahoma. No matter where I go my love for comedy, Reality TV, and many other things will forever litter this little blog of mine.

E-mail me at HeatherNS17@Ymail.com and follow me on Twitter at Heather_Short17.

Thanks for your support!

~Heather Smith.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Flop of an anniversary...

Hey folks time for another Heather Writing essay thing.  Now for a rant that I've had... for a long time.




Why Heroes Vs Villain’s isn’t an amazing season
(A.K.A Heather’s HvV rant)

For two years straight in the Survivor Oz poll of “Greatest Season” Heroes Vs Villains has walked away with the award.  This gets me confused.  I have always wondered what is the aspect of HvV that appeals to a lot of fans.  It’s not the case of the returning player aspect (reminding that my favorite season is Guatemala, a season which features returning players) but rather what happened and the edit of the season in general.  I’ve had a long standing HvV rant that I would happily speak had anyone asked, although this is the first time I’ll post it in its entirety, rather than speak it.

The first part of what is wrong with Heroes Vs Villains started before the season even aired.  The season meant to represent that tenth anniversary of the long standing series only used players that were seen in thirteen seasons.  This is without considering that no original players from Guatemala nor Micronesia was present and completely disregarding the full returning player cast of All Stars this is only ten seasons out of eighteen.  If I convert this into percentage only 55% of the seasons of Survivor were represented by an original castaway from their season.  Among these seasons with no representatives include the very first season of Borneo.  Heroes Vs Villains was set up as the big season celebrating “every” year it’s been on the air, unfortunately HvV failed what it was set out to do before it even aired. 

The second part is the castaways themselves.  Nine of the twenty players had already received their second chance on another season.  While many a people complained about the inclusion of Danielle (runner up of Panama) and Candice (best known for being the first contestant to willing switch tribes) I was complaining about seeing Parvati, James, Amanda, Rob, Rupert, Stephenie, and Cirie again.  I usually give a free pass to Colby and Jerri because of the format and they are the original Hero and Villain respectively of Survivor, however that is still seven people who I believe had no business being there and whose spots could have easily have been filled by players that we have yet seen again, perhaps from seasons that weren’t even invited to the tenth anniversary season of Survivor.  So far, this is two points of facts against the season in the casting alone and we are just getting started.

Heroes Vs Villains failed in being a tenth anniversary season before it even aired.  However it could be a great season even without that fact looming over it right?  Wrong.  I have the confessional count of HvV and it isn’t good. (Special thanks to my friend SleepTight from SurvivorSucks for Confessional data.)


Confessional counts are handy in getting a rough idea on the edit each player got for that episode.  Let me point out some surprising facts on the confessional data of this season.  Let’s start with Sandra and the fact that she spent six episodes in a row without a single confessional, or how about the fact that Courtney’s confessionals per episode average is .44 which is because she only had four confessionals despite on being the second jury member.  How about Russell getting 68 confessionals for the total of all of the season, with the second highest being Rupert’s 38?  How can this be a true All Star season when we see someone get a single digit confessional despite making the merge?  You get a sense of a balanced edited season if the confessional per episodes are around the same number, but Heroes Vs Villains was anything but a well edited season.

Now let’s get a look at each contestant who participated in this season.  For one, the “epic” characters in this season can be counted on one hand.  The Heroes tribe overall had the personality of a wet piece of cardboard and the Villains tribe had a few good characters, but are also overshadowed by wet pieces of cardboard.  I’d like to believe that casting was a huge factor in this, but the edit sure didn’t help with this either.  Also I’d like to point out that nearly every player had their reputation take a giant nose dive, this is completely ignoring the fact that no one but Jerri even improved on a past finish this season, discounting Candice and Sandra who finished in the same placing.  Let’s go through them all shall we?

Sugar- The “robbed” fan favorite from Gabon finally seen as annoying and grating and booted first

Stephenie- The underdog of Palau and played a strong game in Guatemala showed her self-centered Guatemala self and was second voted out.

Randy- Strong challenge performer in Gabon who was voted out third for being a challenge liability.

Cirie- Seen as a robbed mastermind from Micro and Panama but was idol’d out by Tom for being a threat.

Tom- The beloved winner and leader of the unstoppable Koror in Palau to the person on the outs and was voted out

Tyson- a lovable goofball in Tocantins who “voted himself out” by swapping his vote from Russell to Parvati (which by the way that choice had nothing to do with Russell.  From an interview (here) he pretty much had said that he wanted Parvati gone over Russell and switched his vote based on his own choice.  It was only edited the way it was to trick people into thinking that Russell influenced anyone out there.)

James- Does this need explaining? Okay, the fan favorite from two different seasons becomes a giant bully and gets voted out because of an injury in the only season were he didn’t make the merge.

Rob- Even though he did grow from his ASS expectance and became a father since then, he was voted out by the people he thought he could trust the most just before the jury.

Coach- While he was still the same old goofy Coach from Tocantins, he was thrown under the bus for screwing with the villains order of how they sit people out and had he was voted out in the same spot Tocantins he wouldn’t have made the jury.

Courtney- The main comic relief from China who was almost completely ignored and had a grand total of 4 confessionals

JT- The lovable fan favorite and winner from Tocantins to Dumbest Survivor ever.  Does this need explaining?

Amanda- While I’m not sure if Amanda had much of a legacy or exactly why she’s a hero, but this is the first season she gets voted out in.  Amanda is pretty unimportant in the long run. :/  

Candice- While people wonder why she is included, she was a record breaker in her original season for multiple reasons, but in HvV she pretty much did the same thing with flipping and didn’t improve in standing.

Danielle- Panama’s runner up that backstabbed Terry who got into an alliance out of desperation with Russell, left in tears because of Russell deciding to vote her out.  Also got a whopping eight confessionals despite being a huge part of the reason why Russell lost again.

Rupert- Not as big nor epic as he was in past seasons.

Colby- Probably took the biggest hit out of everyone in this season, the challenge dominator of the second season to “superman in a fatsuit”.

Jerri- Okay, Jerri is the biggest expectation to this list as she was widely loathed by everyone but really came together as someone who we can root for and love.   

Russell- Lost the exact same way as he did in Samoa.  See Russell is probably the polar opposite of a great player.  All he did in both of his seasons was flash around idols like crazy and that never impresses me because any idiot can play an idol to get out someone like Tyson or Kelly.  He didn’t know how to play Survivor as he voted out his own allies (Daneille) and made fake promises to those that weren’t his allies (Colby, Rupert) just to add the sting to it all.  How anyone can say that he was robbed is beyond me, except for the fact that HvV was just Samoa part two.

Parvati- I think this was the best showing of Parvati, who had a personality aside from one dimensional flirt.  However like Russell I have to point out that her double idol play was really overrated and could have played by any idiot who realized that their friends were in trouble.  Also just like Russell she wasn’t robbed.

Sandra- I hate that it was only her second win that won her the respect that she deserved in Pearl Islands.  She won using the exact same strategy in Pearl Island and Sandra finally getting the respect that she deserves is easily the best thing about this trash season.

Tl:dr this season was full off underwhelming characters completely ran on Idol Shenanigans.  If someone wants to point out a reason why this season is better than the 17 other seasons that I placed above it in my personal season rankings go right ahead and E-mail me. (HeatherNS17@ymail.com)  However a lot of seasons are better than the Russell show 2.0 and the season of character suicides.  Not to mention that Heroes Vs Villains was a flop of an anniversary season that only included reps from 55% of Survivor Seasons. 
  
Thank you for your attention.  Hope you enjoyed the truth tea. :)

Heather


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