#Survivor49 prediction: The big surprise this episode is that the IC winner gets to spend the afternoon on a yacht with Sean Kenniff, who advises them to reboot everything and form an alliance of all the people whose names start with S, because they would have a 5-3 majority.

#Survivor49 My recap of Episode 9, which was a little frustrating, but at least featured a set of moves that were contestant-driven, rather than twist-forced: www.truedorktimes.com/s49/recaps/e...

If you’re a journalist who’s still on Twitter, from now on in your writing you have to replace “the American people want” with “troll bots in Eastern Europe demand” Being there makes your judgment suspect. I don’t care how savvy you think you are, you’re marinating in a disinformation campaign.

#Survivor49 What if the “bananas” end of this season is that nobody ever tries to flush Rizo’s idol?

#Survivor49 The Ep1 fight for supplies was basically a fun, foreshadowing-filled synopsis of the first 9 episodes. Alex's team loses, Rizo's team wins, and Rizo succeeds despite not really doing most of the stuff in the middle right, mainly because his opponents beat themselves.

#Survivor Kinda grim 7-day multiplatform series rankings from a Paramount press release. Survivor49 is trailing basically every police/lawyer/fire/rescue show on every network. (At least I hope there aren't too many more, because that would be insane.)

#Survivor49 I had forgotten that Cirie Fields lasted over 53 minutes (longer than Savannah and Sophie) in this challenge in #SurvivorAU: Australia v The World. She finished third (!). The top two eventually negotiated a win/drop at around 80 minutes.

Can we make tribal council fun again?

#Survivor49 Here's Damnbueno on whether new era minority players stick together, and his recap of Ep9's finally becoming a regular post-merge individual game, with multiple contestants playing strategically, with a broad range of subtlety (a lot to none). www.truedorktimes.com/s49/damnbuen...

What I love about new era #Survivor is how different it is from week to week. Anything could happen.

#Survivor contestants: "That person keeps winning immunity. They've gotta go, so I can win!" #Survivor49 contestants: "That person keeps having an idol. Better keep him around. I don't wanna have to look for it if it's rehidden!"

#Survivor49 I really think everyone should just change their name to Soph to see what happens.

#Survivor49 Parvati won basically this same IC on Australia v The World. Weird that Savannah, who feels very much like the new Parvati, won it here. And that both challenges had two winners. But Probst doesn't think this season (AU v The World) counts, of course.

#Survivor49 Steven's Space Facts Montage is great, but it gives me hope that the Survivor 50 premiere is 3 hours because there's an uncut Christian Hubicki monologue in there somehow.

#Survivor49 The CBS press release for this IC described the second necklace as "the stakes are raised." Isn't it more accurate to say the stakes were halved?

#Survivor49 This was Jawan's 10th team challenge. He is the only person left who has never won (1st place). Everyone else has won at least twice.

#Survivor49 There are a lot of people playing really well this season, and it sucks that we barely see them. But Sophie and Alex trying to work with the people on the bottom is really smart, as is Steven trying to lock in Sage. I'd rather watch people playing well and failing than not playing.

#Survivor49 Watching from the east coast for the first time in a couple of decades is ... weird. But I like not having to avoid social media for the next three hours.

Is the #Survivor50 premiere three hours because they’re just showing the first two episodes back-to-back?

New trailer for The Traitors US season 4, premiering Jan. 8 on Peacock. #TheTraitors #TheTraitorsUS

#Survivor49 My Ep8 recap, which looks at some of the more subtle ways production choices for the central twist drove the outcome of the episode. Not necessarily intentional, but still impactful: www.truedorktimes.com/s49/recaps/e...

#Survivor production: "I don't know what the fans are complaining about. They get tiny tribes at every Tribal Council, even in the individual phase of the game, AND they can buy a Soviet propaganda-style "Probst's Passion" candle. What more could they possibly want?"

You know, #Survivor50 will be the first US season to have a whopping 23 contestants who did not win. Is it too late to switch to Roman numerals, so it can be Survivor L?

#Survivor49 I think we may have a new contender for the most hilarious "giant Probst, tiny contestants" camera positioning.

Savannah got 13 confessionals this week. She is only the 14th player in #Survivor history to get 13+ confessionals in one of the first 8 episodes. #Fact

Foolproof #Survivor49 boot predictions based on The Pattern: - Ep7: MCU - Ep8: MC ... - Ep9: M (possibly C) I will accept gifts in lieu of praise when Alex M or Kristina M is the next one out. (Neither seems likely at the moment, unless Sophi's KiP finally gets used.)

#Survivor49 Here's Damnbueno on playing from the bottom in the new era and (mostly) the optimal timing for flipping a plan around before Tribal, as (mostly not) seen in Episode 8: www.truedorktimes.com/s49/damnbuen...

#Survivor49 Two bizarre new firsts made by Savannah this episode, for no obvious reason: - First person to have to put the immunity necklace on herself, not at the site of the IC. - First person to walk out of Tribal (still in the game) without a torch, after being eligible to vote.

#Survivor49 The RC/IC is very challenging to score. Is it a simple team RC for food? It kind of is? It's different from past split challenges, because nobody on the losing team won anything.

#Survivor49 I never liked Live Tribals all that much to begin with, but not subtitling anything is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

#Survivor49 Did the decision to send the losing team to Uli camp vs. Hina camp affect how people aligned with each other? Two original Hina (Sophie, MC), two Uli-strong people (Savannah, Rizo), and two have voted with both (Jawan, Sage). Did being at their old camp change the latter pair's thinking?

#Survivor49 Jawan: "Her (Sophie) and Rizo are sharks." ... ... Rizo? What has he done that's shark-like? Find an idol in the water after you dug up the clue for him?

#Survivor49 This advantage is kind of like John K getting to visit Yasur in Vanuatu, except instead of awarding individual immunity, Savannah gets a super-complicated (possible) vote. I guess if it had just been the Vanuatu version, that would have been dumb (Rizo gets immunity). But why here?

#Survivor It’s fascinating that the two biggest fan beefs about S14: Fiji were the haves-vs-have-nots start and Michelle Yi being twist-screwed by a random-drawn team Tribal post-merge. Jeff Probst’s response in the new era? “Let’s bake those in to every season!”

#Survivor49 Kind of disappointed production went with "Rolling Stones" (yawn) for the title of the RC, instead of "A Large Boulder the Size of a Small Boulder."

#TheTraitorsUS Season 4 episode release schedule, per Peacock: January 8: Episodes 1, 2, 3 January 15: Episodes 4, 5 January 22: Episodes 6 January 29: Episode 7 February 5: Episode 8 February 12: Episode 9 February 19: Episode 10 February 26: Finale + Reunion

#Survivor49 My recap, in which I pose the question "Who's the monster now?" (see if you can guess before the end) and talk about ways to fill 90 minutes. www.truedorktimes.com/s49/recaps/e...

#Survivor49 My recap, in which I pose the question "Who's the monster now?" (see if you can guess before the end) and talk about ways to fill 90 minutes. www.truedorktimes.com/s49/recaps/e...

#Survivor49 The next time there's a time-filling scramble for a challenge advantage, I hope this is the collective response.

#Survivor49 I'm not sure what it means that every major announcement used to be "We have treemail!" Now we're lucky to get a deleted scene with treemail, and in-show it's almost exclusively "There's a boat with a note!" The producers want the audience to see how much work they're doing, I guess?

Finally got around to VPN-ing my way to 10's website and discovered that Lisa won #SurvivorNZ: Thailand a full 38 years before the Norman invasion. Man, I've been doing this longer than I thought.

#Survivor49 I saw it, but it didn't really register until now that Uli's icon was a shipwheel. Let's hope the shipwheel is bookending the start and the end of the new era.

Apologies in advance to all affected by this development. #Survivor49 #SurvivorAU

First pass at the #SurvivorAU cast photo: -While the AU alums are split evenly between the blue (Simon, Harry) and green (Brooke, Mark) tribes, it looks like the other RTV vets (Cat, Johnson, Don Rogers) are all on the green tribe. -The word on the buffs is probably "Redemption," not tribe names?

FRIENDS please come out to my book launch events in Jan! Jan 27: Washington DC @Politics & Prose - no tix required Jan 29: Austin @t Book People with @rickdevens.bsky.social - free tix! Jan 30: NYC at the Strand with @emilynussbaum.bsky.social !! TIX AVAILABLE ON MY WEBSITE's EVENTS PAGE!!

#Survivor49 Damnbueno has thoughts on everyone left's games so far, and of course the events of Episode 9. Mostly, a shifting set of targets that was not quite the Four Horsemen, especially with where the votes ended up. www.truedorktimes.com/s49/damnbuen...

#Survivor49 I don't understand why we needed the reward challenge part. Could production really not build five more ramps and poles? The only thing that makes sense is they needed to fill 90 minutes, so we got a scramble for challenge advantage and an extraneous challenge.

#Survivor49 Probst: "We had a very close first phase of this challenge." It's not the first stage, it was a separate RC. The IC is a completely separate challenge, and for individual immunity. They're not related in any way! (You'd think he would know this after all this time.)

#Survivor49 Yellow and blue tribes at the first swap, yellow and blue teams on the merge RC. What did Uli do to piss off production?

#Survivor49 Probst: "You have made the merge. That does not mean everyone will participate in the merge meal." (And only half get to compete in the IC.) Good fake-out with the buffs, I guess. To think I was about to say something nice about not having to earn the stupid merge.