Well, following “Survivor All-Stars”, the show seemed to be on a streak. “Survivor The Amazon” and “Survivor Pearl Islands” were both very well received, and “Survivor All-Stars”, while not the greatest season ever, was very much a tribute to the past, and so was still pretty well liked. But going into the 9th season (Vanuatu), the big question was “How do you top returning castaways?” The short answer is that you can’t, but unfortunately, it is part of what led to Vanuatu being seen as a poor season overall. However, is it really deserved, or was it just bad timing? Does the season whose best review calls it “forgettable” really fall at the bottom of the barrel? Read on and find out.
First, though, a quick reminder that this review does contain spoilers. If you just want an opinion on how watchable the season is, scroll down to the bottom of the page, where I will have an “Abstract” section that will answer this question, while only talking about this season in the broadest of strokes. But let’s waste no more time, and plunge into the review.
CAST
In my cast preview for “Survivor One World”, I listed off 4 types of seasons, and cited Vanuatu as an example of a strategy-dominated season. You can read my full description of the implications in my blog, the link for which I have provided (
https://idolspeculation.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/idol-speculation-survivor-one-world-cast-assessment/), but suffice to say that seasons dominated by strategists usually are not received well, and that’s certainly true of this season. A boring cast is one of the things most often cited as why Vanuatu was a bad season. Here, though, I have to disagree. While I do admit that Vanuatu had fewer “characters” than previous seasons, it was also one of the few seasons where nearly everybody was good at playing the game, and almost nobody shirked away from strategy. The few exceptions (such as Dolly Neely) were quickly disposed of, leaving us with an intriguing, unpredictable game. Seriously, looking at the season as a whole, without knowing the outcome, would you guess that Chris Daugherty would walk away with the million? The man lost the first immunity challenge for his tribe, and was the last man standing against a strong, six woman alliance that had systematically picked off his allies! I wouldn’t have given him any odds to win, and yet he did. While I won’t go into much detail on the others, you certainly can’t deny that everyone who made the merge, at least, went in for strategic thinking with few qualms. This, to my mind, made the season very intriguing.
Another major criticism of the season, which goes along with it having fewer characters, is that there were no villains to hate. You couldn’t root against anybody, couldn’t hunger to see someone gloriously voted off, because, even when being strategic, these people were nice, or else working out of desparation. Chris might have been good villain material, and he certainly had the one-liners for it, but having a villain win was considered bad P.R. This led to Ami Cusack (who my dog is named after) being classed as a viallian, which, to a degree, she deserved. I’m sorry, Eliza Orlins, but Ami snuffing out Travis “Bubba” Sampson’s and Lisa Keiffer’s torches after only the slightest HINT that they might vote you off, counts as villainous. Does this mean that she’s a bad person? No, none of the contestants are, they just played strategically. A lot of people don’t like the moral conflict, being unable to outright hate someone, but I personally find it fascinating. Pushing the limits of morals, seeing the duality of people’s personalities and actions, for me, that’s a thrill ride, and a big part of what I like about this cast.
While I will admit that this season did not have the biggest characters, I also wouldn’t say that it didn’t have ANY characters, it’s just that they’re not talked aobut very much. Lea “Sarge” Masters is the prime example, portraying the stereotype of the drill sergeant, barking orders around his tribe, and getting fed up with more lackluster members like Rory Freeman. Also a character was Twila Tanner, who portrayed the southern, hard working, no nonsense mom to the point where it cost her a million dollars. The problem was that these people were strategists as well as characters, and even then weren’t the most extreme characters ever, they still had some of the characteristics. Two other people I should note, even though they aren’t “characters” are Chad Crittenden and Julie Berry, the former being the first contestant with a prosthesis (which, in a sense, is all he is remembered for, as he had the approximate personality of white bread), and the latter dating Jeff Probst for a significant period of time. Both were ok strategists, who weren’t the greatest characters (although Julie’s attempt at nude sunbathing was a valiant effort), but got remembered for things unrelated to the game.
In short, I’ll say that what other’s see as weaknesses in this cast, I see as strengths. A cast doesn’t need to be polarized characters to be exciting, and it was refreshing to see a majority of strategists at the merge. It made for interesting psychology, and for my money, made this one of the better casts.
Score: 9 out of 10.
CHALLENGES
The best way I can describe the Vanuatu challenges is “meh”. This is not to say they’re bad by any stretch of the imagination, oh no! When they want to be awesome and epic, they take it to the extreme. For instance, the Final 4 Immunity Challenge, a Vertical Maze, was truly exciting and new, making it one of my favorites (not quite top 5, just due to the number of amazing challenges, but easilly top 10). The problem is that the inverse is also true: when the challenges aren’t amazing, they’re boring and forgettable. Seriously, although the challenges aren’t awful or cringe-inducing, everything just seems toned-down and phoned in this season. I think it was hindered by a few problems. First of all, the location is once again “Generic South Pacific Island”, so it didn’t have a distinctive culture to draw on. Scratch that, it DID, but aside from a few Tamtams (and a hilarious incident with a pig that I’ll discuss in the “Twist” section), they didn’t do anyting with it, and this was the nation that invented BUNGEE JUMPING! Seriously, you couldn’t come up with ANY good bungee jumping challenges? The other big problem, though, is the main twist of the season, which I’ll here reveal is the return of the battle of the sexes. As I mentioned in my review of “Survivor The Amazon”, when a season is “battle of the sexes”, you have to make the challenges fair for both men and women, which means generally toning down the intensity of the challenges. This is fine, as long as you make the challenges interesting and clever, as they did in “Survivor The Amazon”. However, the challenges in Vanuatu are simplistic and held back, which just doesn’t do it for me. It did give us one staple challenge, which is to line tribe members on a balance beam, and have them navigate around each other, but this was the exent of it. Again, the challenges aren’t bad, and when they’re good, they’re REALLY good, but for the most part, a weak season challenge-wise.
Score: 5 out of 10.
TWISTS
If people don’t complain about the cast of Vanuatu, the twist is usually their target, and with good reason. As I mentioned before, the main twist of this season was a redo of “battle of the sexes”, which in and of itself was a good idea. The problem is that it had been done not even two years ago, so it still seemed fresh in people’s minds, and it seemed like a cheap cop-out on twists. Now, the show was no stranger to reusing twists (the tribe swap being a prime example), but this was the first time a main twist was completely rehashed, so again, it seemed like a cheap move on the part of CBS. I would agree that reusing a twist so soon would be a bad idea, except for two reasons. The first is that it was somewhat forced on the producers, rather than a concious decision to reuse the twist. The DVD of Vanuatu (which I highly recommend) explains it better, but basically, the season’s opener (one of the best ever, I might add, with the natives attacking the boat, and a very violent welcome ritual) separated the men and the women, as part of the custom of the natives. The trouble is that when this happens, people talk, and once people talk, you have to put them on the same tribe, to prevent pre-game alliances from forming. The second reason I don’t mind a redo of the sexes is that the outcome was different. I don’t mean just the ultimate winner (although that was a change between seasons), but just in how the tribes played things. For one thing, while tribes did divide along age lines (so there were SOME similarities to the first battle of the sexes), this time the older group came out on top, as opposed to the younger group of “Survivor The Amazon”, which made for some interesting gameplay. Also, this time, gender loyalties stuck beyond the merge. Bottom line, same twist, different game, makes it ok in my eyes.
Part of the battle of the sexes twist was the opening ritual, in particular one aspect. The men were offered a chance to climb a tall pole greased with pig fat to retrieve a spiritual stone, rumored to bring good luck. However, were they to fail, the women would get it. Lots of superstition sprung up around the stone, so it made for good tv, and I’m glad it was in the game, and the challenge had a lot of potential as well, with lots of men falling flat on their faces in the offing. The problem is that the man the natives picked to go first was an FBI agent, who scaled the thing on his first try, with almost no effort. This really depleted the tension and the interest in the twist.
I suppose what could be considered the next “twist” was the “Fat Five” alliance of Chris, Chad, “Bubba”, “Sarge”, and Rory. Not so much in that the alliance existed, that was old hat, but that it was the first time someone (Chris) failed so miserably in the first immunity challenge, completely costing the men victory, and lived to tell about it.
Our next twist is a first, one not brought on by contestants or by the producers, but by nature itself. An earthquake shook the island, which was at least interesting to see. It was followed by natives coming to each camp, asking for a leader. “Sarge” was chosen for the men, and Scout Cloud Lee for the women. They were then designated to change up the tribes, with a “One cuts and the other chooses” deal. This was a fairly unique way to change up the tribes, and one that I rather enjoyed.
Coupled with this twist is another player-supplied one. Rory, who along with “Bubba” had been exiled to the women’s tribe, at a 5-2 disadvantage, somehow made the merge, “Bubba” having gotten the axe for trying to signal the men’s tribe to throw the challenge. The thing is, Rory was a throughly disagreeable individual. Loud, abrasive, and prone to tantrums, virtually everyone wanted Rory off. Given that he was the man who threatened to invoke the “slash, burn, and salt the earth” policy, this is hardly surprising. Yet he showed remarkable amounts of cunning and resourcefulness and made it through, much to everyone’s amazement.
One minor twist came a few days after the merge. At tree mail, rather than a challenge, a pig showed up, leading to hilarity and intrigue. No one knew what the pig was for, only that he could not be eaten, much to the dismay of “Sarge” and Twila. It was also funny trying to see Eliza haul in an entire pig by herself. So, a lot of fun and mystery with this twist. The one drawback was that it only lasted one episode, and the reveal was simply that it was a gift for a tribe that 4 people would visit for a reward, so a bit lackluster there.
The only other major twist to speak of has already been talked about, namely that Chris managed to survive 6 women who wanted his blood. This, for me, rocks my socks, and makes up for all the so-so parts of the season.
So looking at the season, one can see why others don’t like it. They reused a lot of twists, what few there were, and a lot of the twists were lackluster. While I admit this isn’t the greatest season twist-wise, I think a lot of the twists were underrated, particularly Chris’ feat. Also, a lot of the twists came from the people, which I liked, so I think this season is respectable on twists.
Score: 8 out of 10.
OVERALL
So I say there’s a lot to like about this season, so why is it so disliked? A lot of it, I think, has to do with timing. It came right after a run of really great seasons, not to mention the meta “Survivor All-Stars”, which would be hard to top in epicness without getting returning castaways. This made an alright season seem less good by comparisson. Also, the generic location worked against the season, hard though the producers tried to combat it. This, plus the reused twists, make a lot of people neglect this season. For my money, though, one thing saves it: the gameplay. As I said, nearly everyone this season came to play, and it shows with some really great gameplay, not to mention a lot of unpredictability. Bottom line, that’s enough for me, and I like this season a lot. It’s not the strongest season ever, but there’s a lot of things to love.
Score: 30 out of 40.
ABSTRACT
Vanuatu is a great season to watch for any fan of good gameplay. Nerely everyone brings their “A” game, and it shows, making for a delightful, unpredictable season. While this is not the best season for those who like big characters, or those who love watching challenges, it is still a very good season, and well worth a watch.
idolspeculation 
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