The Prestige TV Podcast - What We're Watching: 'Survivor: Cagayan'

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Amelia Wedemeyer, a 'Survivor' expert, and Craig Horlbeck, a 'Survivor' newbie, talk about 'Survivor: Cagayan' and what makes this season—and the franchise in general—so great. Hosts: Amelia Wedemeyer and Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the ultimate challenge, brawn versus brains versus beauty. Which trait will prove the most valuable? I'm super smart. I have what it takes to win this game. I don't see the guy is going, oh, I want to vote her off right away. They don't want to look at ugly girls someday. I'm known as the tough brawny girl. When I feel like someone's out to get me, I'm going to get you back,

and I'm going to get you 10 times harder. And who will have what it takes to outlast all the rest? I will go down as one of the best players to play, and I want to play an awesome game. In the end, only one will remain to claim the million-dollar prize. 39 days, 18 people won. Survivor. Welcome to TV Concierge. It is a podcast on the ringer.com that helps you navigate the vast streaming landscape.

My name is Amelia Weddemeier. You can find me on Tea Time. And Craig Horlebeck from Fantasy Football is joining me to talk about Survivor Kagayan. I want to make Survivor a fantasy game. Can I do that? I'd love to draft people every season. Can we start that, The Ringer? Yes.

Honestly, I'm so down for that. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, let's do it. Yes, definitely. Okay, so here's the thing. So I guess I'm a long-standing Survivor fan. I mean, I won't get super into my history, but like, huge fan. And then I kind of went away, but then the pandemic hit.

And I was like, you know what? What else have I got to do? Survivor. And then, Craig, you're a new fan. This is very exciting. Yeah. It's taken, you know, 11 months into the pandemic is how I decided to start Survivor. I've watched every other show.

How many seasons have you watched? See, I'm like kind of more of a fan of old school Survivor. So I've watched a lot of them up to season 20 and then very sporadically. Because there's 40 seasons if the people don't know. So yeah, I don't know how. So like, so there's 40 seasons. Like, do people still consider Survivor as good as it used to be or has it fallen off in people's minds? It's hard.

I think I have a good friend who is a huge Survivor fan. And see, he loved the most recent season, which is Winners at War. So they took all the winners and played them against each other. Tony. Tony was there. And I cannot wait for you to watch him on Winners at War. And I think there's been a lull as of recent, but Winners of War has kind of brought back the franchise to its exalted space in the TV reality TV pantheon. So it's good.

This is a good time to get back into it, I think. Okay, good. I'm happy. So I'm a big Bachelor fan. Yes. Right. You know that. This shows world's better than The Bachelor.

It's like not even fucking closed. Like this show is 30 times better than the best. Craig, you are speaking my... Oh, my... I mean, yes, Craig, honestly, you're 100% correct. It is just... It's just better. Everything about it is so much better.

It's an hour shorter. I just want to put that out there for everyone. That's a great point. And also, so how do we feel about Probst v. Harrison? I think Probst... I mean, his usage rate is 10 times higher. He's, like, really a part of the show. Harrison shows up once every 30 minutes, says,

ladies... Right. The final rose. The final rose. My dad gets so pissed off about that because my dad has started to watch it with me now. But yeah. And Probst, he's out there. He's involved.

He's involved. He's like bartering with the teams being like, oh, you want rice? Well, you're going to have to give me your Flint. Like, he's stealing things. He's like making up rules as we go. He's very involved. It's amazing. No, totally.

And other seasons, like, you see him and he's like walking out in the rain. And you're like, I wouldn't, Chris Harrison would never walk out in a rainstorm. Jeff Proops would. Do you know where Probs? lives during the filming? Is he just like at a hotel or something? I don't know. That's a, there's like an area where all the, um, if you make it to the jury. Yeah. You can go and get treated to like, you know, a shower and food. And it's called Ponderosa. And they actually have a Ponderosa episodes on YouTube. It's like extra scenes. Yeah. And I think he probably lives there.

So do you think all the jury, the people who get voted off just, so they all get to stay at this hotel together and do you think they just kind of hang out for a week and just talk shit about everybody else? That's, yes. I'm pretty sure that's what. what they do, but if you don't make it to the jury, they treat you to like a trip to neighboring islands. And it's like a little, yeah, like a cruise. So it's like either way, I mean, it sucks not to make it to the jury, but you also get a little tour, but, you know. So I was very curious because when watching this show, I, you know, it's tough these days with TV. You don't believe anything. You just assume, you know, secretly they're maybe getting a toothbrush or they're secretly

getting soap or something like that. I looked it up. They get birth control and condoms. They do? Wait, what? Yes. They get birth control and condoms. And then like one other thing, they get nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Probes, after, I watched season 29, which is the following season. Probes was like, oh, you know, people have been talking about like how much do they really need to eat because I don't know if you've watched season 29, which is blood versus water too. But one of the teams uses all their rice really quickly. So Probs is like, okay, I'll give you more, but I'll have to trade you this. And then so in the live show at the end, he was like, people were wondering how much people

actually get to eat. And he was like, he pulled up a little cup of rice. And he was like, each person gets this cup of rice a day. Like, if you rationed it out. I know. I know. It's messed up. It's 100 calories.

You get 100 calories a day of white rice. Exactly. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And not only that, they're like, and there's, I don't know if they showed it in Kagan or blood versus water, but like sometimes there'll be like a monsoon in some areas and they are freaking cold as shit. Like they are- Sleeping on bamboo.

It's the sleep deprivation. I heard, okay, so like the starvation is horrible, but I heard what's even worse is the sleep deprivation that goes on in the show. I know. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, all these people lose so much weight by the end of the shit. Oh, so much weight. And we wouldn't get into Tony.

So obviously Tony won. Tony the legend. He said he lost 40 pounds and he had like a tapeworm or something. thing. I'd by the end of it. I can't believe that this show exists. They sign away their lives. I know. It's crazy. So, okay. So as like a new survivor fan, I guess someone who you love the show, right? I love it passionately. So what do you love about Survivor and then Survivor Kagaayan? Like, why do you think that was a good start for you? Okay. So what I didn't really know, so you know, when I heard about Survivor, I think I maybe like watched in the background and as a kid, my parents. I always thought it was just like, people go live on an island. I don't actually

know how realistic it is. You vote people off games over. But like, I guess I didn't realize how diabolical and conniving it gets. And then the whole jury situation where I assume that the end was just like, I don't know, you compete in a challenge at the very end and whoever wins the challenge wins. I had no idea. It was like the people that you have voted out now have to vote for you. So it's like this weird game where you want to like build this temporary society. But then you're you vote them out, but you want to keep them in your good graces, it's just, it's so complicated, but in like a really strategic great way. Totally.

And it's what's interesting. And if you watch more Survivor, you'll understand it's like the game has evolved so much from when it first began that like people were more willing to, if you didn't ruffle any feathers, they were like, oh, we're going to vote for you for the million dollars. And now it's just like, if you don't make a big move, then you're not winning the million dollars, which is interesting. Oh, yeah. Because Spencer, so at the end, you know, all the people on the jury, they like get to ask the final three a question. And Spencer went on this whole spiel about like, guys, like he was a real survivor purist. He was like, regardless of what you think about Tony. Like he wins, like he won this game. Like he was fucking light years ahead of all of you in planning this. So he deserves to win, even though like Wu was way more liked. Totally. And I think if it were like not, I mean, even five years ago, five years prior to Kagayan, um, Wu would have

won. But Tony, I mean, people were like, you maniacal son of a bitch. I, so before we watched, people were like, oh, Tony's season? Oh, wow. Tony's legend. We were like, what does this Tony guy do? We still didn't know he won, but like we, I watched it with Liz and her brother and we were just baffled every step of the way. I wrote down all the things that Tony did that was fucking unbelievable. Please. Every step of the way. He convinced people. I would love to hear them. Yes. Okay. One, Tony convinced his entire team to throw a challenge to vote off Cliff, which is unbelievable. Obviously. Cliff is so likable.

Oh, love Cliff. I was so sad. I know. That was horrible when I found out. I know. Liz said that she loved Cliff too. And I was like, exactly. How can you not?

Tony doesn't care. Tony's like he's my biggest threat. He's gone. And so he tried to throw the challenge, which of course didn't work because it was a basketball challenge and Cliff won. Right. Still manages to do that. Later on, he swears on the amount of

things Tony swore on. He swore on his badge. She was a police officer to Sarah, that he wouldn't vote her off. He then voted her off. He did. He swore on his wife and his baby to Cass. His new baby, like his firstborn child. He swore in his dead father to Trish, who then berated him for that at the end of the show. She did. Tony created two spy shacks where he built a shack out of shrubberies and weeds to spy on people. It didn't even really work, but I respect that he did it. And I need you to watch his other seasons because I just want to say that it might show up again. That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. So the reason why I'm worried about other seasons with Tony is that there's no way people are going to let him win. They know he's insane.

Like they can't. He won't win unless he's that good. Tony is like, we should give him the highest rank in the Pentagon. That man can convince anybody to do anything. He convinced Wu to give up a million So that was wild to me. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. And it's just like, okay, fine. Fine, Tony, fine. I wrote down what, I went back and looked. I wrote down what Tony said to Wu.

So basically, it was Cass, Wu, and Tony. Right. You can only go down to two people. There's three left. If Wu voted off Tony and just kept it him and Cass, Wu would have won. Oh, 100%. A hundred percent.

Wu even said to Cass, Cass, I'd be the stupidest survivor player ever taking Tony to the end. Ooh. Here comes Mastermind Tony, goes, Hey, Wu, you're a Taekwondo instructor. So you have discipline, honor, integrity, and loyalty. You were loyal to me from day one. So if you vote me out, you no longer have honor or integrity.

And it worked. It's amazing. He appealed to the ethical code of Wu's life. And it worked. Spencer's face when they voted cast off, he was like, oh, my God. Tony is like, the thing about, so watching the first season of Survivor's tough for me because I think I may have just watched like Michael Jordan and it's never going to be as good. This is a good season, but I promise you there are other good seasons.

I told you guys, maybe you should watch Millennials versus Gen X. That's a good one. And then there are also some older seasons that are really good. I honestly recommend seeing the first season just to kind of see how the game evolved and how it began. Pearl Islands is really good. Yes. Yeah. I personally love Palau, which is season 10.

token cheans is really fun trying to I mean honestly you've got the time because it's like what else are we doing I think you should watch I think you should watch all the seasons I think I'm gonna so the the Kagayan format was brains versus brawn versus beauty yes which I thought was pretty cool do you think that's better when they have teams opposed to just like here's 16 people like do you think it's better when they're is every season broken up into like this category of people sometimes it is um sometimes it's It's not like the earlier seasons. It's really broken up by location. And now they've kind of decided just to film in like, I think, Fiji. But yeah, so they used to go to like South America and there were some in Africa and Asia. Well, I guess, well, this is the Pacific like islands.

But now, yeah, they do. They have one that was like hustlers versus healers versus. Oh. So, yeah, like kind of obscure. They're really kind of reaching. I saw one was blue collar versus white collar versus no collar. Yeah.

Another iconic season. They also do like all-star seasons once and why. Like the Winners at War was an all-star season. My favorite season of all-time is Heroes versus Villains. That is an all-star season. But I think you'll enjoy it. Once you see more seasons, you'll be like, oh, you'll have favorite characters and they'll come back, which is...

How often do they come back? Like, have they only done reunion shows like two seasons? Or do they do it all the time? That's a really good question. I don't really know, but they do it every few seasons. Honestly, they're pretty good at bringing people back. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'm extremely excited. I'm so excited for you. Okay. So if you had to bring back other people from this Kagayan season, who would you bring back? Like, who are your favorite people? Well, my favorites, I loved Cliff. He was so, he was just the sweetest man on Earth. And honestly, we all loved Wu. Like, how can you not like Wu? He was the nicest. Sweetest man. Him with those children?

Did you remember him with their little kids? Yes. Yes. So sweet. So sweet. So sweet. Honestly, if we bring back Trish, we got to bring back Cass with her because those two are unbelievable.

Trish is really a shining star of the season. Yeah. She's a little nutty. But I appreciate her. I loved her flirting with L.J. And then how different L.J. Did you notice how different LJ looked without his hat on? Yes.

Losing his hair. Yes. Didn't have a lot of hair. I know. I was like, wow, interesting. I wonder if you would have been on a different tribe, had we known. I know. And poor Trish looked like a damn bag of bones by the end of it.

Poor Trish. They did the, what's it called? The auction for food, right? So Tony and Spencer are the smart ones in the back being like, I'm not falling for any food. The first thing they offer, which you should obviously realize is going to be the worst thing. It was like a bag of gummy worms and microwave popcorn and like a Coke. And Trish is like, done. 60 bucks.

She's like, you guys are morons. She's like eating fucking gummy worms and everyone else is getting hamburgers and buffalo wings. Poor Trish. I know. I know. Poor Trish.

We have to briefly talk also about Jatia's rice revenge. Do you remember? What did you think of that? Because they were like, okay, we're going to hold an unprompt to vote. And then everyone was like, Jatia. And then they all went away. And that's one of the things I love about Survivor is that the strategic game.

And just like, I think the malnourishment and the sleep deprivation gets to people. And they're like, I don't fucking care. And Jatia was like, fuck you guys for saying my name. I'm going to make this horrible. This is my revenge. And honestly, we stand. I love it.

She stayed around for like three episodes. She was failing upwards. She literally ruined every challenge for the brains, which, by the way, I guess, you know, if you were a viewer and you didn't go to an Ivy League school, watching the brains just crumble

for the first three seasons, it kind of made you feel good. It made me feel so good. It did. You know, like the beauties winning and you're like, okay, cool. Like, I respect these people. This is nice.

Yeah. Jette was a nice. nuclear engineer. Yeah, super smart. Super smart. Perhaps book smarts and island smarts are a bit different. Exactly. I honestly, I'd bring you to you back. Just for some fun. Yeah, let's see. Let's see what she does. But this show is so interesting because, like, I don't necessarily know if, like, I think the best person usually does win. Yeah. But it's weird because if you're too good, too quick, you don't move on. Exactly. And I think that's where people really get tripped up, especially in these. Like, Kagayan is close. enough to, and they divide it by new school and old school survivor. And it's a Kagayan, yeah, is new school, but it's so close to it being almost old school that I think people hadn't

totally caught on yet, or else they would have voted out Tony really early, I think. So. Right. But yeah, it's like, I don't know. I mean, Tony's just unbelievable man. Tony never won an immunity challenge and he won the damn show. He is unbelievable. He got that fake, he found an idol and convinced everybody that it was a special idol that he couldn't do. get voted out in the final round, even though it was not true. It's just every second of the day he was looking for an idol. He even said in the live show, he was like, I slept one to two hours in night because I was game planning while everyone else is asleep.

It's amazing. And when he had his, where he told Sarah, Sarah Lucina, because they're both cops. And Tony was like, I'm a construction worker. And that lie. Shouts out Sarah for being able to figure that out. I know. That was impressive. I know.

I don't really like her that much. but you know what? Impressive. I thought she was good. It was a smart vote out. Like I thought she was going to go far. Tasha was great too. I thought Tasha was going to go well far.

Talk about someone who deserved better. Honestly, bring her back for another one. Honestly, she did, she won three challenges back to back to back, I think. She did. She's amazing. And then Spencer was really good, too. I didn't really like him. He kind of pissed me off.

He's annoying. Yeah. But if he were on any other season, he probably would have won, except he went up against the LeBron James' Survivor and he lost. It's true. It's true. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. Yes. Well, I'm so glad you're so into Survivor. Any last thoughts about Survivor? Survivor Kagayan. Just, you know. Yeah, I got one question for you. Mm-hmm. Would you go on? Okay. Here's the thing. I was actually talking about this with some people like Sean Yu and others. But I, well, honestly, one little rice thing a day, I don't think I could do it. And also the sleep deprivation, that's, that.

sounds horrible. And also, if I were voted out before a jury, I don't, I would, they'd have to put me into, I don't know, a hospital because I'd be so just upset at myself, even though it's like, it's a game. I get that. But also, I'm just very anxious and like, you know, how about you? Yeah, you know, I would. I think I would do it. Screw it. I. I think I, you know, I have no idea if I'd be good or not. But watching it makes you, you know, we're so coddled these days. Like, you kind of want to know what your body's capable of. Like, I want to know if I can apparently a lot of people can live off 100 calories of rice a day. So I want to give it a shot.

It's just so brutal that one person wins out of however many there are. Like if you go 39 days and you get nothing. Except here's the thing. If you make a good enough impression, okay, so you know the singer Sia? She's like a huge fan of Survivor and they invite her on to the reunion every year and she gives money to her favorite people. No way. Yeah, just wear a Sia shirt the entire. time you're there. Oh my God. That's incredible. They allow that. She just gives money to the people. She likes. How much money? Like, I think someone would have, like, she gave like 10 grand to someone last time or something. It's like a decent amount of money. So, I mean, I know. I know. So just do that. Wear it to see a t-shirt, you know? Oh, my God. This is why I come on the show. See you give you those facts. I love it. Oh, my God. Well, I'm so glad you had such a good time watching Survivor. Everyone who's listening to this, thank you for listening.

Survivor. Tell us what you think of Survivor Kagayan. It's on Hulu. It's also on Netflix. They have two seasons on Netflix. My name is Amelia Wademeyer. You can find me on tea time every Friday. And this is Craig Horlebeck. You can find him on the ringer. Fantasy football show. Fantasy football is over, but we're still cranking out content. Exactly. Hop on over. What days can they find you? Well, after the Super Bowl, we'll be doing every Wednesday. Danny Kelly talking about the NFL draft. So check that. Love that. Okay. Thank you.