The producers play of six-save-one makes sense. On reflection I like it better than eight-save-two, as it forces more interesting choices and conflicts. It also potentially shields someone who they wouldn’t have wanted to risk. In particular, my guess is that the issue was Clarke would have been in danger, which in turn also endangers Taylor.
The players voting here have to balance all their different audience plays plus the impact on the result.
There are a number of obvious votes. The pure obvious ones were Clarke saving Taylor and Iris saving TJ, so they went first. Almost as obvious was Ace and Nic backing Taylor. They sandbagged that, so that viewers and potentially other islanders would not realize.
The question then is, do you engage in expressive voting, or do you engage in strategic voting, and what do you want to try and make happen or be seen as trying to do?
If you don’t want to save Taylor, you can either try to get momentum behind TJ because of Iris, or you can try to assemble a coalition to save Andrina or potentially Jayden. The original girls managed to coordinate to back Andrina, but too many others used expressive voting rather than anticipating this. From a strategic standpoint this seemed like a major error, especially by Elan. Yes he likes Jayden and it’s a 4TRR play, but there’s no path there, and the village is much better for him with Andrina surviving instead of Taylor even if he doesn’t get to explore Andrina directly.
It then came down to Cierra, who chose to back Nic up and save Taylor. This was a major error except if it was done at the behest of producers, which would make sense (they certainly have the leverage) and given the previous votes she had enough information to know this. The image of her actively backing Taylor was pretty bad for a lot of the audience, and they also don’t like that she was doing it ‘for her man,’ which seems like a pretty consistent pattern. Whereas the vote was already 4-3 without her, so she had three options: TJ to stand with Iris, Jayden or Andrina.
If she votes Andrina, we don’t know what happens next, since the producers decide. The default is the others revote, in which case without producer pressure Andrina probably survives. So they’d try to do something else.
What about the other votes? They illustrate first of all the big difference between choosing a favorite versus ranked choice voting. The bottom was based on negative polarization (and also happened to take place before the public knew about the Cierra situation, and before standing on business, which would have been big shifts). You absolutely want to run impactful votes as ‘vote for one’ rather than ranked choice, exactly because you want polarizing figures that make good TV.
I note also that I really liked making everyone guess, the same way I loved it in the suitcase challenge earlier, and I think they should use that mechanic more often.
The crashing out challenge is one of those low-key bits of fun. I don’t think the ‘pick a door’ thing worked at all conceptually, they needed to lean into it more, but it’s mostly fine that it made no sense, and this was just an excuse to be fun and positive. Sure. And in general it felt good to have a ‘breather’ episode that reset things and sets up the future, before they unload a presumed movie night on us.
So now the show has to deal with Cierra. They’ve now had enough time to have their meetings and decide what to do. I don’t know enough to say. We shall see.
Strategic voting is hard, yo.
The producers play of six-save-one makes sense. On reflection I like it better than eight-save-two, as it forces more interesting choices and conflicts. It also potentially shields someone who they wouldn’t have wanted to risk. In particular, my guess is that the issue was Clarke would have been in danger, which in turn also endangers Taylor.
The players voting here have to balance all their different audience plays plus the impact on the result.
There are a number of obvious votes. The pure obvious ones were Clarke saving Taylor and Iris saving TJ, so they went first. Almost as obvious was Ace and Nic backing Taylor. They sandbagged that, so that viewers and potentially other islanders would not realize.
The question then is, do you engage in expressive voting, or do you engage in strategic voting, and what do you want to try and make happen or be seen as trying to do?
If you don’t want to save Taylor, you can either try to get momentum behind TJ because of Iris, or you can try to assemble a coalition to save Andrina or potentially Jayden. The original girls managed to coordinate to back Andrina, but too many others used expressive voting rather than anticipating this. From a strategic standpoint this seemed like a major error, especially by Elan. Yes he likes Jayden and it’s a 4TRR play, but there’s no path there, and the village is much better for him with Andrina surviving instead of Taylor even if he doesn’t get to explore Andrina directly.
It then came down to Cierra, who chose to back Nic up and save Taylor. This was a major error except if it was done at the behest of producers, which would make sense (they certainly have the leverage) and given the previous votes she had enough information to know this. The image of her actively backing Taylor was pretty bad for a lot of the audience, and they also don’t like that she was doing it ‘for her man,’ which seems like a pretty consistent pattern. Whereas the vote was already 4-3 without her, so she had three options: TJ to stand with Iris, Jayden or Andrina.
If she votes Andrina, we don’t know what happens next, since the producers decide. The default is the others revote, in which case without producer pressure Andrina probably survives. So they’d try to do something else.
What about the other votes? They illustrate first of all the big difference between choosing a favorite versus ranked choice voting. The bottom was based on negative polarization (and also happened to take place before the public knew about the Cierra situation, and before standing on business, which would have been big shifts). You absolutely want to run impactful votes as ‘vote for one’ rather than ranked choice, exactly because you want polarizing figures that make good TV.
I note also that I really liked making everyone guess, the same way I loved it in the suitcase challenge earlier, and I think they should use that mechanic more often.
The crashing out challenge is one of those low-key bits of fun. I don’t think the ‘pick a door’ thing worked at all conceptually, they needed to lean into it more, but it’s mostly fine that it made no sense, and this was just an excuse to be fun and positive. Sure. And in general it felt good to have a ‘breather’ episode that reset things and sets up the future, before they unload a presumed movie night on us.
So now the show has to deal with Cierra. They’ve now had enough time to have their meetings and decide what to do. I don’t know enough to say. We shall see.