What You Didn’t See is a weekly feature where we gather a selection of behind the scenes information relating to the latest episode. Most of this information comes from the exit interviews of the recently eliminated castaway. The information is linked to the original sources within the article, but the majority comes from Parade, People, Entertainment Weekly and Xfinity – with a little bit of Redmond sourced info sprinkled on top.
For a feature that was initially intended as a one-off for Episode 1, we have certainly a come a long way! I’d like to thank everyone that has read the What You Didn’t See columns and offered your feedback throughout the season. So, for one last time, let’s break down what you didn’t see in the latest episode.
Challenge Practice
In an interview with The Wrap, fourth place finisher Kelley Wentworth said that the final four got to do a practice round of the final immunity challenge. “We got to practice that final challenge once before we did it. We had one practice run, and I killed it.” When it came to the filmed round, Wentworth got in her head and messed up.
Final 6 Tribal Council
After both idols were played at the Final 6 and the vote ended up in a deadlock, it apparently took the players over 30 minutes to come to a decision on whether to eliminate Keith or Kimmi.
As far as the unprecedented move itself, Jeff Probst handled the entire situation himself and did not have to stop the proceedings and discuss what to do with fellow producers. Update: Other than a quick talk with co-producer Matt Van Wagenen while he was putting the votes in order.
Final Tribal Council
At the final tribal council, all the jury questions were directed towards either Jeremy or Spencer. Nobody had anything to say to Tasha. The jury was pressured to come up with things to ask her.
Abi-Maria referred to Spencer as a sociopath and told him that he had played the game like Chaos Kass.
Second Chance Letters
After each player was voted out this season, Jeff wanted that person to write a letter reflecting on their second chance. They were told to think about it as potentially a letter to the final five. It is believed that they were either going to be used in the game as letters for the final five or posted online as part of CBS social media.
However, despite the pre-jury members having written their letters, the jury members refused to do it. The idea was therefore abandoned.
Vytas Ban
Many people have been wondering why Vytas wasn’t present at the live reunion. He was in fact banned from attending, as can be gathered from his tweet to Jeff Probst before the finale.
@JeffProbst great season through and through. Bummed I’m not invited to participate in the finale with all my castmates!
— Vytas Baskauskas (@vytasyoga) December 15, 2015
Vytas was banned because he left Ponderosa and flew back home to the US while filming was still in progress. The pre-jury members stay at Ponderosa until the jury phase of the game begins, after which they are taken on a trip until filming wraps. Vytas refused to stay and even had social media activity during filming. For this blatant violation of the rules, production decided to ban him from the reunion.
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Really enjoyed this feature, especially since the edit seemed to leave so much out this season. Thanks for supporting my addiction for all things Survivor (esp behind-the-scenes gossip) and hope this becomes a regular thing. Cheers.
“What you didn’t see” is something I look forward to reading. It’s perhaps one of the most informative post episodic articles presented across all media.
The bitter sweet part is… it is all ex post facto. It doesn’t change the episode we saw days before. All the information WAS present at one time before the editors cut the info from the finished product.
And that’s what “Bonus Clips” on the CBS website are for.
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Kudos to Redmond for doing the heavy lifting to nail down the loose ends and reveal the buried details.
Shame on SEG/Survivor for being lame ass lazy! Are they afraid of a little hard work?
“Are they afraid of a little hard work?”
Very crappy way to look at it. They have little more than 40 minutes of airtime to sum up what is generally three days of action. Furthermore, much of “What You Didn’t See” has consisted of things that couldn’t have been shown. For example, how would you expect SEG to broadcast producers pressuring jury members to acknowledge Tasha at FTC?
What about things that were deliberately not shown to increase suspense at the tribal council segment of the show? Do you really think Savage’s boot episode would have been better if we saw Joe tell Kelley that she was getting all the votes? Part of what made that TC so exciting was the fact that we didn’t know who the majority was voting out, didn’t know they wouldn’t split the votes, and didn’t know Kelley was going to play her idol.
Even other things, like Peih-Gee’s sneaky jewelry and clothes or justification behind Keith’s “random” vote for Tasha would be aired at the cost of other material being cut.
Not saying the editing of the show is perfect, but I don’t think Redmond’s point in creating this feature was to exploit laziness from SEG.
I really loved these last year! No updates for this season?? 🙁