The response to that question is "The point of the game isn't to work hard in order to get to the end - it's to get to the end". We like dominant play because agency makes for more complex televisiual shenanigans and it's respected generally in life but it's an arbitrary value we foist on the game.

Michelle Yi is the prototypical contestant for this year, given that no other player has had as little say in their elimination as she, and it's a shame she's not in the mix.

She's been so unpleasant for so long, though. I suppose she might slide in on the weakness of the field.

This is pretty much it. Dan sucks and the move solidified his elimination but it was a defensible calculation.

thiazzi makes sense. I'd be hopeful for this adaptation since cold amd snappy is within Garland's wheelhouse.

All the examples of her aggravating people have been socially tin-earred moments rather than insidious ones. People pounce on that in Survivor as it's easy to steer derision towards if you have confidence it's not a failing in yourself.

That's predicated on seeing life as a competition. There's always the option of saying "I don't want to play". (I don't blame Shirin for doing what she did given what was thrown at her but I won't cheer for it)

It wasn't standing up for the principle of human decency. That wasn't the reason she did it, it wasn't the reason she gave for doing it and it was directly opposed to the generosity of spirit that underlies it. Will's awfulness qualifies Shirin's bad form; it doesn't reform it.

Dan grosses me out like nobody has grossed me out since Judd grossed me out. I don't know what in this really is a reply to you, hornacek, but it feels so good just to say it.

Also his "people talk abut final fours and fives all the time". If they don't include you, perhaps listen!

They're lots of decent people playing every year.

She's adorable in these. What does she review?

To be fair, he is great at making schlock. He also wrote The Body and the Buffy scenes in Conversations with Dead People so it's not like he can't do other stuff well.

Also Charlie Cox and Hugh Dancy could be brothers.

My problem with its blatancy is that it deprives the show of texture, which is necessary to give life to its pretty boilerplate set up.

What was the article's intent? "Some rich guy should prove he's not guilty of something"?

That's a good point I hadn't thought of. I agree.

This episode was sufficiently entertaining set-up and I'm okay with that,

That's fair. My experience of organic chemistry was characterised by the barely shifting, ever-shifting models used to describe all the phenomena that you absolutely could not be without an understanding of which undermined the understanding I had previously had.

It's hard, is the problem, because you need to build your knowledge from fundamentals which are often hard to grasp in themselves and which shift in meaning later on.