Challenges?

[Modesty]

Does anyone know whether the challenges are fixed - in time, I mean - or if they can occur at any point in the game, so as to give one team or the other advantage at a critical point in the game? (For example, a not so physically demanding, team-oriented challenge right now would be advantageous to CG, I think.) Also, are they (the challenges) fixed as to what kind of challenge they are - RC/IC?
"Newbie"

[fluff]

I can give you a couple of examples where I think the challenges were "fixed", or at the very least heavily favoured one team over another.

S2 - Maze challenge.
The Kucha tribe had a 7-5 lead over the Ogakor tribe yet the Kucha's had to have all of their team compete in the challenge, instead of sitting two of them out (which basically consisted of running through a maze).
The challenge was not over until all the members were back at a given point.
This clearly benefitted the tribe with fewer members.

S4 - The distress signal challenge favoured Maraamu, who had just won an IC to raid the Rotu camp and picked up all the items Rotu would have logically used to make their signal.
I don't know if this as clear cut an example of any one tribe being given an advantage over the other, but I do think the challenge is likely to have been won by which ever team had the items Marramu took during the raid.

[Modesty]

Well, that sounds like pretty compelling arguments to me (i.e. they can choose a certain challenge - or perhaps modify it - to "help" one team).
If so, then I guess the question really is: How much does Jeff hate Robb compared to how much he hates watching Jan's pigtails and saggy butt??

[fluff]

Some of the challenges are very complex so it would be difficult to change them around in respone to whatever was taking place among the tribes.

I certainly think it can be done though and at times has.

[Paulie]

The "company" answer, though, Fluff, is that the challenges are scheduled well in advance.

That being said, you're right. It's awfully fishy when some of these challenges have come up.

[Invisigoth]

In Stacey's lawsuit over S1 - She claimed MB influenced the game by getting Dirk to vote her out.

Since then, there is someone from the game show monitoring police (or whatever they are called) to make sure the game is fair and that the producers are not fixing the results.

So the party line that the "challenges are planned in advance" and the game show police should satisfy most people. I assume MB has the latitude to modify the challenges to keep it competative.

But the examples mentioned above of tilting the playing field are difficult to dismiss.

[Bill]

Does anyone know whatever happened to that Stacey lawsuit?

Get settled? Still going to court?

Thanks

[fluff]

Hmmm, I haven't heard anything abut that for a while.

The last thing I heard is that someone else (I believe Dirk) said he had been approached by someone while the show was being filmed to vote Stacy out instead of Rudy.

[Invisigoth]

I live in the Bay Area and hear Stacey on a local radio station periodically. I think her lawsuit is going forward, and much of the countersuit (filed by MB) was thrown out.

Somewhere I read a letter from Dirk Bean to MB which had only the vaugest reference to MB trying to influence him. But the letter was mostly filled with how God put the two of them together etc. and provided little in the way of info. I believe Dirk has been deposed, and the deposition was sealed.

This info is probably 6 months old, so depending on how fast the wheels of justice are turning, there could have been some progress.