So let's start with the worst of all possible falsehood-loving openly biased sources: Jeff.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/05/21/survivor-san-juan-del-sur-blood-vs-water-jeff-probst/

Things to take away from this, other than excess buckets leaking Full Of Himself:

1. The 'new' location was pretty much a matter of bothering to look around. Check this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_del_Sur

2. Waste Of Our Time Island is back whether we like it or not. Having the B vs. W theme is the excuse. Also, Jeff feels there is explosive energy in having contestants run back and forth. With occasional bits of 'down'. Along with all that counting to one hundred.

3. Casting had to play a lot of games this time. It's not easy to cast relatives when you're looking for new players. Expect a very high degree of recruits and idiots who said 'Well, it can't be that hard.' Visible family connections also equals 'Casting for appearance more than usual'. And of course, they want pairs targeted.

3a. Beware the 'something out of the gate'. However they do it, it'll work out to Jeff pointing out pairs and setting up ousters. Again.

Keep the untruths here for a while. Let's try to isolate the stink.

• RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,RachelOH1, 01:49 PM, 05-22-14
  • RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,Estee, 01:58 PM, 05-22-14
    • RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,Outsider32, 09:29 PM, 05-22-14
• We already have 2 quitters,tribephyl, 04:36 AM, 06-03-14
  • RE: We already have 2 quitters,PepeLePew13, 12:54 PM, 06-04-14
    • RE: We already have 2 quitters,Estee, 02:33 PM, 06-04-14
      • RE: We already have 2 quitters,PepeLePew13, 10:05 PM, 06-04-14
        • RE: We already have 2 quitters,Estee, 07:41 AM, 06-05-14
    • RE: We already have 2 quitters,Brownroach, 06:47 AM, 07-15-14
• But ... ,Georganna, 03:38 PM, 06-04-14
  • RE: But ... ,tribephyl, 03:50 PM, 06-04-14
    • New RI: "Reward Island!",tribephyl, 06:27 PM, 06-05-14
      • RE: New RI: "Reward Island!",Georganna, 04:33 AM, 06-06-14
      • RE: New RI: "Reward Island!",Estee, 08:04 AM, 06-06-14
        • RE: New RI: "Reward Island!",MCPorche, 07:42 PM, 06-09-14
          • RE: New RI: "Reward Island!",PepeLePew13, 10:56 AM, 06-10-14
            • RE: New RI: "Reward Island!",MCPorche, 02:56 PM, 06-10-14
• Last day of filming,tribephyl, 03:20 PM, 07-10-14
• Tribe colors/names,tribephyl, 03:37 PM, 08-13-14
• Survivor Editors Strike,tribephyl, 01:19 AM, 08-14-14
  • And...,PepeLePew13, 12:48 PM, 08-14-14
    • RE: And...,SOAR66, 02:38 PM, 08-14-14
      • RE: And...,tribephyl, 04:00 PM, 08-14-14
    • RE: And...,Brownroach, 00:53 AM, 08-15-14
• Exile Island Returns!,tribephyl, 04:34 PM, 08-27-14
  • CBS Press Release (with EI explantion),tribephyl, 08:29 PM, 08-27-14
• EW's Dalton & Jessica share some tidbits,tribephyl, 09:12 PM, 08-27-14
  • RE: EW's Dalton & Jessica share some tidbits,Outsider32, 07:16 PM, 09-01-14
• RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,kingfish, 10:46 AM, 09-02-14
  • RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,SOAR66, 12:06 PM, 09-02-14
    • RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,kingfish, 08:55 AM, 09-03-14
      • RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,SOAR66, 09:05 AM, 09-03-14
• RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,Outsider32, 10:47 PM, 09-02-14
• JP talks F2/F3 (again),tribephyl, 05:16 PM, 09-08-14
• John Rocker,PepeLePew13, 08:46 PM, 09-24-14
• RE: The lies begin early: S29 press & rumors,Georganna, 10:59 PM, 09-24-14

I would think Spencer and sister would be on it. But my co-worker says Jiffy asked Sarah and Cliff if they'd play again....which I recall, is what Jeff did with Malcolm at the reunion, when we already knew Malcolm was playing again. I can't see Cliff and Sarah as the top choices for bringing back....

One of the things Jeff specifically lied about this time was 'No returning players in this season.' Which doesn't mean we couldn't have a pair of relatives for former contestants -- but the boomerangs are supposedly staying home.

I suspect one of Jeff's qualifiers for 'favorite' is Person Unlikely To Do Anything Differently. In that sense, Sarah and Cliff could be locks.

There's no way BvW without returning players will be a success. After this season even casting for a normal season would be hard, this season is not gonna be topped for a while.

Quit boat arrives early.
The 29th season of CBS’ Survivor has begun filming in Nicaragua, and host Jeff Probst says that two contestants left the show 48 hours before the competition began for medical reasons.

“We just lost two contestants (on Friday),” Probst tells EW’s Dalton Ross, who’s hosting EW Morning Live with Jessica Shaw from the set of Survivor: San Juan del Sur — Blood vs. Water all week on Entertainment Weekly Radio. “We came out here with 20. We spend months casting our show — months. I mean, this is like….who you’re gonna ask to prom. All year you’re like, ‘Is it her or her?’ and ‘Will she say yes?’ And you finally get your 20 people, and then through no fault of their own — just a medical situation — they can’t play…. So instead of 20, it puts us at 18. Instead of equal men and women, it puts us uneven men and women.”

The mega-annoying Twinnies (Natalie and Nadiya from The Amazing Race) are going to be on this season.

Hopefully they're the first two booted out of the game.

You have ten seconds to tell us you're playing a very cruel and incredibly effective practical joke.

I wish I was.

http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/survivor_san_juan_del_sur/2014_Jun_03_twinnies-natalie-nadiya-anderson

*sigh*

Well, I did say a very high degree of recruits. Now we know how you get family and relationship pairings willing to compete on reality shows: let someone else do the work for you. Kind of makes you wish to start with a double-elimination episode.

I doubt they're the quitters, though -- and if they were, it was a legitimate medical issue. Too competitive to leave because something looked hard.

Oh, NO! I watched some of TAR the season they were on. I absolutely despised them.

No Redemption Island !

“instead of Redemption Island, we decided, we have this arena being built. What instead of that, we use it for something else. Something that will make Blood vs Water a little more.. interesting.”

Still in question but Redmond thinks it will run like so...
the idea would be that both tribes pick a representative to face on in a duel at the former RI arena and the winner would receive a reward for the tribe plus a clue to the whereabouts of a hidden immunity idol which they must give to someone on the opposing tribe

I think, regarding the use of the (Not) Redemption Island Arena, that sounds reasonable. But, listening to the interview, I got the impression that there is also a - new and improved - relationship-straining twist planned to reproduce the drama that the Redemption Island format created in the original Blood v Water Season.

Which turns into 'punish the strong' again, as anyone consistently winning duels will be targeted. Plus unless you rewrite the rulebook, there's no way to make the clue receiver stop burning their helpful hint. Make reading mandatory and they're the target.

On this show, the nail which stands out gets vaporized.

What I'd love to see is the winner of the duel/challenge get offered two foled parchments. They take one, and then loser gets the other.

One is a clue to an idol, the other is nothing. Both must read their parchment privately and then burn it.

That way, you know that one of the two got a clue..but there is the possibility that the person on the other tribe got it...

So, you force them to read the clues before burning, *AND* you preserve the "does he have it or not" mystery.

But then there's no incentive to win the duel if it's only going to be a 50-50 chance of getting an useful clue and there's nothing to stop the one who got the empty clue from going up to others in his/her alliance to reveal who has the actual clue.

>But then there's no incentive to
>win the duel if it's
>only going to be a
>50-50 chance of getting an
>useful clue and there's nothing
>to stop the one who
>got the empty clue from
>going up to others in
>his/her alliance to reveal who
>has the actual clue.

You don't think that when a person goes to their alliance members and says "No, the one I got was the blank one..." no one is going to think they are lying?

And, I wasn't implying that the clue was the prize for winning the duel. There would still be a reward for winnin the duel...the clue would simply be an extra layer added to it.

No spoilers attached to this, just remarking that today, July 10th is "Day 39" for the cast of Survivor: BvW2.
Starting tomorrow we should begin to see some social-media die-hards reaching out to the masses of prying eyes.

Coyopa yellow
Hunahpu blue

With about a week remaining before the initial edited version of the 90minute premiere needs to hit the desks at CBS, Survivor editors decide to strike for benefits that most shows (including MBs SharkTank and TheVoice) already enjoy.

“They seek the same health benefits, pensions, and basic protections that their counterparts elsewhere in the industry have long enjoyed.
After 28 successful seasons and 16 Emmy nominations (including 2014 noms for cinematography and EDITING), that doesn’t seem too much to ask.”

Let's hope this is just a matter of not seeing the emails in time and that everything will be rectified soon.
Really soon.
Because if not, it could mean the premiere (at the very least) gets delayed/shortened.

...it's over, already.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/08/14/survivor-strike-over/

Seems like a perfectly reasonable request from the Survivor editors if other EPMB projects have unionized editors. Glad it got resolved quickly, particularly since they'll have more work than usual to do to edit a 90-minute premiere instead of the typical 60.

Just wanted to say it's great to be back. I have had a lot of stuff going on at home the last year. Things have cleared up and can not wait for the start of the new season. I did have problems signing in. It would not accept my user name and password. Had to change my user name from SOAR64 TO SOAR66. Did anyone else have a similar problem?

Did anyone else have a similar problem?

Sadly, everyone did. To some degree or another.
The culprit being a hacker which attempted to use our memberlist to spam the heck out of the Ukranian War. They ended up deleting a massive amount of memberships.

A great thread was started to help peeps recover their old usernames. Solutions were posted in both OT and at the Facebook group.
Check out the topic called Knock Knock (Post#169). It worked for many, enabling them to recover their old nics and DAWcounts. Some still have to operate under different nics and a scrubbed DAWcount.
Alas, we lost many many DAWS.

Regardless, welcome back!

Now if only the Metropolitan Opera would get its union problems resolved.

JP comes clean about the "new" twist.

(When) production scrapped that plan (Redemption Island) when they came up with another idea at the last minute instead — to bring back Exile Island. A twist that was introduced in season 12 (Panama) and discontinued after season 18 (Tocantins), Exile Island is where contestants were sent away from the rest of their tribe to live on their own in between challenges. Making Exile Island even more brutal this time around is that your loved one will be sending you there after a one-on-one duel. “You’ve got to go up against your loved one and here are the stakes,” explains Probst. “Winner gets reward. Loser goes to Exile Island. Where it’s going to really suck. And it’s going to suck because you put ‘em there!”

However, there is a silver lining in the form of a clue at Exile Island to the location of a hidden immunity idol back at camp. “The good news is you at least have a shot at finding the immunity idol,” says Probst. “And it’s up to you if you want to share that there was a clue or not. The complication is, that clue will lead you back to your beach where the idol is hidden, so you’re going to have to dig it up while everybody else is there. So nothing’s going to be easy this season, but I really do believe that the game play is ratcheting it up so we have to ratchet up with it, so we’re trying to complicate it as much as we can.”

CBS announced today the 18 castaways who will compete against each other on SURVIVOR, when the Emmy Award-winning series returns for its 29th season with a special 90-minute premiere, Wednesday, Sept. 24 (8:00-9:30 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Emmy Award winner Jeff Probst is host.

This fall on SURVIVOR, the “Blood vs. Water” theme returns as all-new castaways compete with – and ultimately against – their loved ones who share the same goal: to outwit, outplay, outlast and ultimately be crowned Sole Survivor and winner of the $1 million dollar prize. Alliances and relationships will be tested and bonds will be broken when mothers, daughters, brothers, spouses and partners vie against each other in the ultimate competition, raising the question of which is thicker: Blood or Water?

This season marks the return of Exile Island, where each week two loved ones square off against one another in a battle that will send the loser to isolation on Exile Island, while the winner receives reward for his/her Tribe. However, the winner will also have to choose a tribemate to accompany their loved one to Exile Island.

The scoop via SF

* Dalton Ross and Jessica Shaw had rehearsed the challenge with other press and dream teamers. It involves players from a tribe each performing a certain leg of the challenge. Jessica did a leg that involved something similar to skeeball, at which she sucked. She was throwing overhand instead of underhanded. Dalton's leg involved dexterity and balance. The challenge was eventually tweaked a lot to make it harder before the tribes ran it.

* There is a day 0 for the 2 person teams to bond and get a feel for survival.

* There are 4-5 teams that viewers will totally get that they go together, (meaning they look very similar).

* Some kind of major event happens while Dalton and Jessica were visiting (one of) the camps. Players scramble to resolve the issue. Dalton said it will definitely make the show.

* The other tribe was just laying around their shelter at camp talking about players from other seasons. One player who would be thought to do good was a loner and not in the mix. One woman who they thought would be in bad shape was doing great.

I'm going to assume Coyoya lays around because thats what the screencaps showed. The loner? John? The woman that does great? Missy? From looking at the cast members originally Missy is my pick to win.

I have an idea for a twist.

Go back to the original Survivor season rules and challenges.

A throwback season, with bugs, and Tagi and Pagong rat eating.

I can remember that each team received a message attached to a can of dog food. They were happy to have received it. Not up to the standards of The Outback Steak House reward in the future, but you got the feeling that they were really living up to the name of the show "Survivor".

Clues in dog food cans. I don't remember that, but I like it.

The instructions were not in the cans, they were attached to the outside of the cans. Both teams consumed their dog food and one team even tried to cook the dog food.

Okay from what I'm gathering at the other board.......I was looking back in some older posts in July.

Drew had a scruffy beard upon coming back per a Instagram video someone posted(I didn't watch but seen his face in the freeze frame)

The twinnie are making the jury according to MissCleo

Josh lost some muscle so its likely he got to the merge.

Reed mentioned "moving forward" on his twitter, assuming he didnt do well at all.

John didnt seem to lose any weight or muscle based on a photo after Survivor he took with Bill Elliot. Safe to say he's out pre-merge.

And not sure if it was a fabrication of "We predict he'll go far" in his assessment by a writer, but a poster said Wes goes far.

He does love his F3 so it's no surprise that on paper this season was meant for an F3 and even with the early med-evac is/was still on track with an F3. However...

Regarding F2: “Yeah, it’s possible, it depends what happens over the next 39 days. As it is right now — no. But if somebody were to be evacuated or to quit, now we’re getting to a small amount of numbers in order to finish our show.”

And while he defends his F3 option, he is on board with how stupid the Medallion of Power was. Phew.

Dunno if this is truly indicative of how he did in the game, but I'd be willing to bet he goes pre-jury based on his interview today:

http://thebiglead.com/2014/09/24/john-rocker-survivor-is-the-worst-thing-ive-ever-done/

I have a Facebook account. That I don't use.

I have no idea how Twitter works.

But, in pursuing birthdates, I've spent a good deal of time chasing down the social media sites of this Season's contestants and those of their extended families. Some very nice families, I might add.

So, is it considered ill-mannered (or, for that matter, illegal) to copy and re-post profile photographs from those sites? Or to quote a close family member regarding the significant experiences, weight loss, beard growth, etc. of their relatives playing the Game?

Links?

G