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Ep 1 analysis of seasons past:

We now have five seasons worth of edgic ratings to mine for possible winner patterns (6 if you include S1). I thought it would be fun to look at the first episode edits from Thailand to Vanuatu and see if there were any interesting patterns. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1) No one who has been rated OTT in the first episode has ever won. We’ve had 2 CPs (Brian, Chris), 2 MORs (Jenna, Sandra) and 1 UTR (Amber). Based on my memory and subjective opinion, I believe that Ethan and Vee would have both been rated MOR in their first episodes. I’m not placing much emphasis on S1 & S2 for obvious reasons (S2’s edit was done intentionally to be different than S1, therefore INV Tina). What’s this indicate? The preferred edit for the winner for the first episode seems to be MOR, especially if the winner is female. CP edit has been used when the winner was portrayed as a schemer of some kind, and has only been applied to men (this was true of Hatch, too). Amber’s UTR episode seems to be an abberation, and considering that we were dealing with known players for ASS, it makes sense that this would be so.

2) The proportion of “small impression” characters (INV, UTR, or MOR ratings) to “big impression” character (CP or OTT rating) has dramatically increased as the number of players has increased. In S5, S6 and S7, the number of players who were rated UTR and MOR was split about evenly with those who were rated CP and OTT:

        S5 - UTR: 7; MOR: 1; CP: 3: OTT: 5;
        S6 - UTR 6; MOR: 2; CP: 5; OTT: 3;
        S7 - UTR: 5; MOR: 4; CP: 1; OTT: 6;

Once MB boosted the number of players to 18, the small impression players vastly outnumbered the big ones.

        S8 - UTR: 7; MOR: 6; CP: 3; OTT: 2;
        S9 - INV: 3; UTR: 4; MOR: 7; CP: 3; OTT: 1.

I’m not sure what to attribute this to. More players? Shorter episodes? Totally unnecessary tribal ritual in the Vanuatu premiere and general ineptitude of the editing team? Rater bias? A “push to the middle” tendency brought on by an increased number of edgic participants? The addition of the INV rating? Combination of factors? Who knows.

The interesting thing is that, even with this big difference, there are some similarities in what happens to the “big” characters. The player who just misses the jury is almost always a “big” one (S5 - Shii-Ann; S6 - Roger; S7 - Andrew; S9 - Rory). Once again, ASS was kind of an aberation. The last pre-jury player was rated MORP2 in the first episode. However, that player happened to be Jerri Manthey, the biggest female “villain” this show has ever seen. So I’m not sure how much of an aberration ASS was. Also, once again, S1 also followed this pattern; Gretchen was rated OTTPP in the first episode. I don’t know this as fact, but my guess is that this is also true of S2 (Jeff Varner) and S3 (Clarence). Not sure about S4, because I don’t remember Rob M. playing a very prominent role in the 1st episode. Anyway, the point is - regardless of how many “big” players they introduce us to in the first episode, one of them tends to go just before making the jury.

The other interesing thing is that, no matter how many “bigs” there are, two of them almost always make it into the F4. In ASS, 3 of them made it, which is rather incredible considering they only started with 5. in S9, 2 of them made F4, and they only started out with 4. Only S5 had less than 2 (only Brian), but one of their 8 “big” players made it to F5 (Ted), which was close.

Of the rest of the “bigs”, I can’t figure out any discernible pattern. They can go at any time.

In sum, if you are a “big” player in the first episode, your odds are good for making the F4 once you are guaranteed a jury spot, but you’ll only win if you’re a CP rated man.

It’ll be interesting to see how this latest edition fits into this.

Anyone else notice any interesting patterns in the prior seasons data?