“Survivor” Retrospectives: Palau

While all seasons of “Survivor” are different, regardless of placement, it’s rare that you’ll find two complete opposites, both in the qualities of the season and in fan reaction, than with “Survivor Vanuatu”, and the subject of today’s blog, “Survivor Palau”.  Reactions to “Survivor Vanuatu” range from neglected to outright hated, but the reactions to Palau are nothing but positive.  You’ll rarely find a “Top ‘Survivor’ Seasons” list that doesn’t include Palau on it somewhere.  So, is it wrong to say that I think it’s overrated?

Before we get into exactly WHY Palau is overrated, it once again falls to me to remind everyone that this review will contain spoilers.  If you just want a quick opinion on the watchability of the season, scroll down to the bottom of this page, and read the “Abstract” section.

CAST

When I said that “Survivor Vanuatu” and Palau were opposites, I meant it pretty throughly.  Although fan reaction is the most obvious of the disparities between the seasons, it’s by no means the only disparity, and cast is certainly one of them.  I said in my last blog that “Survivor Vanuatu” was a cast made up primarilly of strategists.  If Palau is it’s opposite, it falls to reason that Palau is mainly characters.  And there’s certainly a lot to choose from.  Probably the most well-remembered is Stephenie LaGrossa, who is remembered for being the last surviving member of the Ulong tribe, but we’ll get more on that in the “Twist” section.  Stephenie is mostly remembered as the tough Jersey Girl who never quit despite the odds.  It’s admirable stuff, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like her.  I’ll also give it to her that, while she is primarilly a character, she is a halfway decent strategist, as we would see in “Survivor Guatemala”.  Unfortunately, Stephenie’s strategic prowess didn’t really show itself well on Palau, so points off there.  I also have to admit, I don’t think she’s as amazing as the rest of America does, but again, that will come up in the “Twist” section.

Also well remembered is New York Firefighter Tom Westman.  Just winning the season wasn’t enough for him, hhad to ingrain himself into our brains by killing a shark with a machete, and to be fair, it was pretty cool.  Another distinctive feature is that he was the first “Alpha Male” to ever win “Survivor”.  I don’t mean that song men always lost beforehand (Brian Heidik of “Survivor Thailand” was fairly proficeint physically), but he was the first man to dominate physically, AND lead his tribe, AND play a (mostly) straight up game, and still win.  That sort of strategy takes guts and a lot of luck, and I certainly give him his due, he was memorable.

Even more memorable, perhaps, was Tom’s partner in crime, the tall, lazy-eye’d dolphin trainer Ian Rosenberger.  The other physical threat, Ian started off as a low-key Tom wannabe, then turned semi-villain in the latter days of the game, only to redeem himself very late (again, which I’ll talk about in the “Twist” section.  If this season’s cast has one flaw, it’s that they’re so tied into the twists it’s hard to distinguish them).  Cuddly, cute, a generally endearing character.

Stephenie, Tom, and Ian make up the core 3 characters of Palau, and are usually the ones refered to when talking of the brilliance of the Palau cast.  However, they were by no means the only ones.  Heck, one of the characters of this season only lasted one day!  Wanda Shirk, and elder elementary school teacher with a penchant for singing songs (of her own writing, and all concerning “Survivor” in some fashion) was the victim of one of the twists this season (which I will naturally get into in the “Twist” section), but even aside from that, she was famous for just being out and out crazy, but in a fun way, mostly due to the aforementioned singing.  For this, she got a solo during the reunion show, and a place in the history of “Survivor”.

Next up would have to be Jeff “Coconut Boy” Wilson, well known for being probably the most athletic male on the season, but effectively quitting in episode 3 due to rolling his ankle on a coconut.

I am not even kidding.

Williard Smith, the Koror Tribe’s resident crumudgeon, has mild fame for lasting even 12 days, having some very funny sarcastic comments, and, above all, looking like the Tribal Immunity Idol.  Also famous for her looks is Angie Jakusz (who’s last name I had to look up to remember how to spell), the heavilly tattooed tomboy, who was actually a decent strategist, and misfit amongst the tribe of misfits, Ulong.  She didn’t get too much screentime beyond the first episode, but I really liked her.  I felt that she ahad a lot of potential as both a character and a strategist, who got cut off too soon for being on the losing tribe, and not being as good physically.  A counter to her would be the ever serious, ever loud Jolanda Jones, who became the first person OFFICIALLY voted off (God, the twist section is going to be long.  Like War and Peace long.) for being far too abrasive.  She’s memorable, but I didn’t like her that much.  She just rubbed me the wrong way.

Also memorable was self-proclaimed redneck James Miller, who at least gave us a lot of great (albiet sometimes racist) one-liners.  Even more memorable would be his fellow Alabamian Bobby Jon Drinkard, best remembered for being one of the last two Ulong members, losing to a girl (Stephenie), and refusing to stop working until he passed out from exhaustion.

Moving to the Koror Tribe, we have the openly gay, “Survivor”-fanatic underdog Coby Archa, who was booted essentially because he was too eager to play the game, but won America’s collective heart by crying on national TV.  Still, I enjoyed him, and he was another one with a lot of one-liners, for instance, refering to stereotypical hot couple Gregg Carey and Jenn Lyon as “Ken and Barbie”.  We also had Coby’s ally Janu Tornell, the spiritual woman who ended up quitting the game for Stephenie (say it with me now, “We’ll go over that in the ‘Twist’ section.”), but had a nice experience on the show.  Rounding out the group, we had Caryn Groedel, the misfit lawyer, who somehow screwed up being the swing vote at the final 5.  Heck, even all this cast assesment is just an overview.  Even the least memorable castaways all had something about them that made them memorable.

It should also here be noted that there are two castaways who, while they did nothing much in terms of the game, are “Survivor” firsts, and do need to be acknowledged.  The first would be Ibrehem Rahman, thfirst and so far only Muslim contestant on the show.  This was shown on tv, but aside from that, Ibrehem unfortunately had no defining characteristics, despite being a personal favorite of mine.  I thought he had a quiet strength, and definitely more subtle strategic capabilities, as eveidenced by his talk at the reunion show, where he decided to change his gameplay after seeing Jolonda get voted off.  The second, and far sadder castaway I must note, is Jenn, who has the unfortunate distinction of being the first castaway to ever die.  Jenn tragically passed away on January 19, 2010, due to breast cancer.  Any death is a sad occasion, and this is no exception, and so, although I have never met her, I wish to dedicate this particular blog post to the memory of Jenn Lyon.  May she rest in peace.

So, I’ve certainly ranted and raved about this cast, why do I think it’s overrated?  I mean, this is the cast I’ve easily written the most about, so why don’t I like it?  Well, truth be told, that’ll be something to get more into in the “Twist” section (what else is new?).  What I can say here is that, although this cast had a lot of strategists in it, very little of the strategy got to shine through, and characters dominated the season.  Now, while I think a balance of characters and strategists is the best, if I have to choose between the two, I prefer strategists, as they make for a more crazy, unpredictable game.  I think the rest of America would disagree,, and the upcoming score is one of the most personal one’s I’ve given to date, but hey, it’s my blog!

Score: 7 out of 10

CHALLENGES

Like I said, Palau is pretty much in opposition to “Survivor Vanuatu”, and in the case of the challenges, this is a vast improvement.  Nearly every challenge on Palau was appropriate and epic in scale.  They were physically demanding, mentally challenging, and had the luck of being placed in a beautiful location with a very distinctive theme.  Admittedly, I’ll talk more about this in the “Overall” section, but I’ll keep this short (because the rest of the blog will be too long), that with a couple of exceptions where the challenges seem too simple (shooting a gun, for one thing), all the challenges hit their mark, and nearly all have good images to go with them.  Just overall an enjoyable batch of challenges.

Score: 9 out of 10.

TWISTS

Oh, boy, this section.  Well, you can’t say the season didn’t start off strongly.  Aside from being the first season with 20 castaways, it reused the twist first invented in “Survivor Pearl Islands”, of having a false start to the season, and thus having the castaways dropped off in civilian clothes.  It then took this a step further, not only by forcing the castaways to row a fairly large boat several miles to their beach (what would later be Ulong beach), but also by giving them absolutely no idea what was going on in the game.  Jeff Probst eventually came smugly by in a rowboat to inform the castaways that the game was on (prompting a funny one-liner from James), and their beach was several miles behind them.  He also added that there were TWO individual immunity idols, one each for the first man and woman to hit the beach.  This was actually a pretty good way to start the game, creating an aura of mystery, and a sense of uneasiness.  It also gave us a bit of hilarity when Stephenie and Jonathan deluded themselves into thinking that they were strong enough to, while swimming, outstrip 18 people using tools to help propel them along.  Why Stephenie wasn’t voted out after that stunt, I don’t know.

The mysteries continued once the tribe hit the beach (and the competition for individual immunity was over, Ian and Jolanda getting the immunity idols), and they found that there was no tribe flag, just a green banner with the logo of the season emblazoned on it.  There was a lot of good strategizing (and bad strategizing), and questioning of what was going to happen.  The answer came the next day, when Jeff Probst came to inform them that they would divide themselves into two tribes via a schoolyard pick method.  The twist, such as it was, was that only 18 people would be picked. Two people would not, and accordingly be sent home after a scant 24 hours on the island.  The selection happened, and Jonathan and Wanda were sent packing early, both due to annoying their fellow tribemates, and Wanda doubly for her overall weak performance.  While I admit that this is a unique way to start off the season, I’m not a huge fan of it.  It just feels like cheating to me to go to all the trouble of bringing people to the island, only to eliminate them.  It seems especially mean in Wanda’s case, as she had very little time to bond with her tribe to potentially save herself, and was nothing more than cannon fodder.

Probst informed the castaways after the tribes were selected that they would be living on one beach, though this proved to be only for a short time (the full impact of this idea would not be realized until the ill-fated “Survivor One World”). The real twist came with the first immunity challenge, which, should I ever do a “Top 5 and Bottom 5 First Immunity Challenges” list, will definitely be on the Top portion.  In addition to immunity, tribes got to choose a reward by deciding what to carry with them of Food, Water, Shelter, and Fire, the catch being that the more you took, the slower you were, and the less likely you were to win the challenge.  Koror won by doing the smart thing (a pattern that would continue throughout the season) and only took fire, while Ulong panicked at falling behind early.  The second part, which came as a surprise at the end, was the ability of the winning tribe to choose to either stay at the old camp, or head to a new camp.  Koror, being the adventurous sort, opted to take the new camp (funnily enough, the island the their camp was on was in fact called “Ulong Island”), which I have to admit, was a pretty stupid decision.  At the old camp, you have your shelter built, thus meaning less work for you, while at the new camp, you have to build a new shelter from scratch.  This is effectively a choice between saving your strength, and weakening another tribe, or weakening yourself and strengthening your opponants.  Given the ultimate result, I suppose I can’t complain, but it just seems stupid.  Still, I give the producers credit on a good twist.  It raised the stakes of the first challenge, and required brains as well as brawn.

Shelter would remain a problem for Koror until what I would argue is one of the most skewed rewards ever.  For building a better bathroom, with supplies picked by a tribe leader (which in itself was sort of a twist, and led to hilarity when Ulong was so indecisive as to be unable to pick a leader), Koror got the build team to go out to their cam and BUILD THEM A SHELTER!  I mean, my God!  A good shelter in NO way means you’ll get better sleep, and thus have more energy to kick ass in challenges!  And this shelter, to be fair, was amazing, although, with the use of chain saws, I’d expect it to be.

Another minor twist was thrown in the works with the double tribal council.  While it had been done in “Survivor Vanuatu”, it was a bit different here.  Rather than the winning tribe getting to play for individual immunity, their reward was a feast while while watching the losing tribe’s tribal council.  Additionally, before the losing tribe’s vote, the winning tribe would get to vote for someone on the losing tribe to get individual immunity.  Koror, as the winners, voted for Ibrehem to get immunity (as Ibrehem seemed likely to be voted out, due to his losing the challenge for Ulong).  A tie vote for Ulong led to a record number of votes cast in a single episode at 25 (9 Koror 1st Tribal votes, 8 Koror Immunity votes, 5 Ulong votes, 3 Ulong tiebreaker votes).  I do admit, while it seems a little skewed to give the winning tribe so much power, I do like this twist on the “Double Tribal” concept.  It creates a lot of suspense, and is a great reward to play for.

Now the next twist is a bit one, the one that everyone talks about, and the one that, in my opinion, makes the season a lot worse.  I’ve hinted before now that Ulong lost a lot.  This is an understatement.  Ulong lost EVERY SINGLE TRIBAL IMMUNITY CHALLENGE, the first tribe in the history of “Survivor” to do so, making them the universal standard for losing in “Survivor” lore (even though the Ravu Tribe of  “Survivor Fiji” actually lost more challenges, as well as all immunity challenges).  It got so bad that Ulong was actually decimated down to a tribe of 1, Stephenie being the lone Ulong castaway, and cementing her into the hearts of the American people.  Why do people like this twist so much?  Well frankly, because it was new.  This had never happened before, and was considered very unlikely to happen, so it was something of a novelty for old-time viewers, sort of revitalizing the status quo that had been established over the past five years.  I will admit, for all that I dislike this twist, it was pretty exciting to see THE FIRST TIME I SAW IT!  After that (perhaps because I rooted for the Ulong Tribe), it just became painful for me to watch, and seemed pathetic, with absolutely no suspense because you knew, no matter what, that Ulong would never be successful, and for me, that affected the rewatchability of the season.  First time viewers will love it, but that’s about all that makes this twist even one IOTA good.  It caused several problems, notably with the challenges.  “Survivor” challenges are designed to be epic competitions, pitting toughness against toughness.  This was somewhat affected by the predictably doomed nature of Ulong, but also due to the low numbers on the tribe.  It’s just hard to create that sense of awe when your challenges have to be playable by only two people, and so the season’s challenges suffer somewhat from that (hence my not giving this season’s challenges a 10, which they would otherwise have earned).  Unfortunately, I can’t go into my biggest grievance with this twist yet, as it belongs in the “Overall” section, but suffice to say that Ulong going to every tribal coucil got a bit repeptitive after a while.  I will say that one plus about this twist is that it introduced the concept of the fire-making challenge for tribal council deadlocks, when Stephenie and Bobby Jon had to duel to stay in the game.  After the “Purple Rock Incident” on “Survivor Marquesas”, people feared going into a tie, to the point where there was no tie for 3 years on the show!  The producers, meanwhile, had to come up with a new tiebreaker method, as the old one just wasn’t fair.  What they came up with (builiding a fire to a certain height, so as to set something on fire) is very appropriate for the “Survivor” aesthetic, a fair challenge, and a good method of deciding ties.  This made for the first time we had a single person-tribe ever.

Also, Tom caught a shark.  Awesome.

Now the next “Twist”, so called, is that this is the first and so far ONLY season to not technically have a merge.  The tribes did become one, it’s true, and there was a merge planned for the season (Green Palau merge buffs can be found pretty easilly on the internet), but technically, in cannon, Stephenie was just absorbed into the Koror tribe, rather than having a proper merge.  As evidence, the tribe buff color and name didn’t change.  It’s really more an interesting factiod than a “Twist”, but it’s a fun bit of trivia worth mentioning.

More of a twist, in my mind, is the fact that Stephenie, outnumbered at 8 to 1 post-absorbtion, was not the first person voted off the new Koror.  This is one of the few areas where her strategic prowess somewhat shines through (and consequently makes for one of my favorite episodes of the season), in that she was able to actually save herself, at least once, not through immunity, but through strategizing, and helping turn the tribe against the unfortunate Coby.  This is like what Chris Daugherty did on “Survivor Vanuatu”, but on a smaller, less impressive scale.  Still, fun to watch.

The next episode after Coby’s ejection brought us the next twist.  In a precursor to “Survivor Exile Island”, the first person to drop out of the immunity challenge would be sent to live alone for an evening on a private island.  Dramatically, there could not ahve been a better choice than Janu, who had been out of sorts and contemplating quitting for the last several days.  You’d think she’d go all to pieces on the island, but exactly the opposite happened.  It seemed that all Janu needed was isolation (and the small victory of starting her own fire) to revitalize her, and she became much more cheerful and different after the experience, and it did make for a powerful moment.

Then, in a pouring rainstorm, Janu decided to quit, having gotten what she needed to out of the experience.  Now, I said earlier that Janu quit to save Stephenie (who was crying in sheer frustration at her situation), but Janju claims that this is wrong, and she quit because she wanted to.  Personally, I think this is bullshit.  Janu only offered to quit AFTER Stephenie’s breakdown, saying to me that this played on Janu’s emotions, and got her to quit.  Still, it was a powerful moment, and Janu was such a whiner that I wasn’t sorry to see the back of her.  At least she got a nice dramatic moment the episode she left, so she can keep her head high.

Still, even this was not enough to save Stephenie (despite a valiant effort at starting a woman’s alliance), and she was voted off, making for the first (and so far only) Final 6 that was made up of all one tribe.  This led to the next “Twist”, which I only put on here because it was such a rare occurrence on this season.  I’ll talk about this in the next section, but Koror had not done any real strategizing up until this point.  With Stephenie gone, this changed in a BIG way.  Getting wind that Gregg set out to betray them, Tom and Ian opted to change things up, and betrated Gregg.  This is only notable because it’s the first time Koror had to do anything of the sort, and they actually pulled off a pretty good blindside.

The final twist is perhaps the other most well-known.  Ian had been taking a lot of heat over the past few tribal councils for being more of a strategist than his competitors (in other words, actually playing the game), and in particular, had lost the respect of Tom by plotting to betray him, had Tom not won the previous immunity.  Still, Ian was spared in another tiebreaker of making fire (agains Jenn), and the group proceeded to the Final Immunity Challenge.  I won’t talk about the challenge here, save to mention that it was awesome!  What I will talk about is that Ian and Tom created a (short-lived) record for longest challenge, lasting almost 12 hours on buoys.  It ended, rather dramatically, with Ian offering to step down, give Tom immunity, if Tom would agree to NOT take Ian, as a way to redeem the young man.  Tom accepted and, in an impromptu Tribal Council, voted off Ian.  While this was a big, dramatic way to end the challenges, there are two schools of thought on Ian’s move: that it was a bold, dramatic gesture which showed the nobility of the season as a whole, or it was just plain stupid.  I fall into the latter category.  Despite taking some heat, Ian was very well-liked by the jury, and, had he argued right, had a decent shot at winning.  Nice guy, but a really stupid move.

After Ian left, the season played out as predictably as possible, with Tom throughly annihilating Katie in Final Tribal Council (missing out on a shutout only because Coby was the victim of “Bitter Juror Syndrome”), and the fans loving the cast.

So yeah, looking back the season does have some really good twists.  However, I think a lot of them, especially the two big ones, get a lot more love than they deserve, as they were either stupid strategically (Ian’s jump) or destroyed the rewatchability of the season (the demise of Ulong).

Score: 8 out of 10

OVERALL

In terms of aesthetics, Palau really hit the mark.  It could very easilly have become another GSPI (Generic South Pacific Island), but the producers had the foresight ot give it a distincitive theme.  Having been the sight of much fighting during WWII, the producers decided to give the show a WWII theme, which was a BRILLIANT move.  Palau is easilly the most distinguishable theme of any season before or since, and the unique theme allowed for new creative challenge ideas and aesthetics, which contributed a lot to the greatness of the challenges.

What also helped this season was a lot of first.  General consensus was that “Survivor” was slipping back into a predictable rut.  Palau’s changing of the status quo, what with Ulong losing a lot, and having an alpha male for a winner, helped make the season memorable, and more well-liked.  Tom’s victory in particular was an asset, as we’d never really had an “Alpha Male” win before.  You could argue that Richard Hatch (“Survivor Borneo”) and Brian Heidik (“Survivor Thailand”) fulfill the requirements for being an “Alpha Male”, as they were physically strong leaders.  I’d argue, however, that their reliance on strategy to get them far in the game eliminates them from this category.  You could argue that Ethan Zohn (“Survivor Africa”) fits, but in my mind, he really wasn’t a leader.  Tom was the first up front, physically dominant person to ever be victorious, which was a new, exciting first.

My problem with the season, though, is that it relies so heavily on firsts. True, they’re exciting and change up the status quo, but the problem is that they only work the FIRST time you see them.  Look, I enjoyd Palau as much as the next person the first time I watched it, but it gets less exciting as I rewatched it.  Granted, this is true with all seasons of “Survivor”, but it’s particularly pronounced with Palau, as it relies so heavilly on surprise and shock value to provide entertainment.

My other issue with the season comes from its signature twist: the loss of Ulong.  True, it was excitin and interesting to see a tribe be decimated to this degree, even though it falls victim to the rewatchability problem.  However, my main issue is just that the twist itself made things boring and repetitive to watch overall.  I said in the “Character” section that this was a season made up almost purely of characters.  This is not entirely true, we did get to see SOME strategy from the castaways, and really, I think a lot of them had a lot more strategic potential than was shown.  They were UNABLE to show it because Ulong kept losing all the time!  While it was interesting to see if Ulong would keep losing, it meant that the last 1/3 of the episode was bound to be dull, because we’d seen Ulong at Tribal Council before. We needed some variety in voting strategy, but because Koror only went to Tribal Council when forced to do so by the “Double Tribal” twist, we didn’t get any.  This could have been exciting had they pulled some major twist vote out of their hat, but who did they eliminate?  FREAKING WILLARD!  While Willard was the smart choice, he was also the obvious choiced, and produced no drama in his exit.  Frankly, my favorite episodes of the season are AFTER Stephenie left, because Ulong’s gameplay was weak and competitive, and the first time Koror really had to make a tough choice about voting someone off (I’d argue that Coby really dug his own grave), they go with the obvious choice of the underdog, Stephenie.  After Stephenie left, however, they had to make tough choices and start strategizing, and this moral dillema made the season much more exciting in my opinion.  Still, that lasted for all of 3 episodes, barely a quarter of the season as a whole, so it’s still a major problem.

One thing I will give the season, though, is theme.  Not the WWII aesthetic I talked about earlier, although that is cool, but a recurring theme you can find if you look at the season.  That theme would be the rise of the underdog.  It started with the picking of tribes, which revealed two different strategies.  Ulong chose the young, strong, and generally less intelligent, while Koror went for older, wiser, but not necessarily as physical castaways.  Given how physical a game “Survivor” can be, it would seem Ulong would be the favorites, and Koror the underdogs.  This was further emphasized when Koror, having won the first imunity challenge, accidentally overturned their outrigger and lost their fire for several days.  Ian even commented at one point that Koror was the “Bad News Bears”, further emphasizing how much of an underdog Koror was as a whole. Thus, when Koror proved to be the powerhouse (and also not as bad physically as they would have had one believe), it was very exciting.  Underdog themes would also be found in Stephenie, as I mentioned in her ability to outlast her tribe, and even survive a bit on Koror.  Janu also follows this pattern to a lesser extent.  Finally, we have Tom, the ultimate underdog winner.  It might seem strange to dually classify someone as an “Alpha Male” and an “Underdog”, but on “Survivor”, that’s just the way it is.  Alpha males, generally, don’t do well on the show, especially not the overly moral, upright ones, and so, Tom’s victory cemented the theme.  People love underdogs, love to root for underdogs, and especially love it when underdogs win, so it’s not surprising that this season wormed it’s way into people’s hearts.

While it’s not my favorite season, mostly due to the limited rewatchability, this season does have a lot of things going for it, and although it does lose a point due to being less surprising in rewatches, I can’t dney the impact it had, nor the coolness of a lot of the challenges.

Score: 32 out of 40

ABSTRACT

Palau has a lot of good points about it, and I do reccomend watching it.  I will warn you, however, that it’s not a good season to be your first, as it’s very unique in terms of how it plays out, and that it’s the type of season that relies on surprises, at least more so than other seasons, so its rewatchability is limited.