“Survivor” What-Ifs?: Cambodia

Quick, gotta get one of these out before the next season’s cast gets announced, which I’m betting will be in the next week or two at the time of this writing.  Better be a pretty simple change, preferably from a season I know pretty well… Yep, Cambodia will do nicely.  

Before I delve into the change we’ll be exploring, however, there are a couple of notes that should be given out.  Firstly, I myself did not TRULY come up with this scenario.  Credit for that goes to the “Survivor” YouTuber Peridiam, whose content I quite enjoy.  I’ll go into more detail when I discuss the change itself, but suffice to say, he informed me of something I did not previously know about in a recent video, and that led to the creation of this scenario you’ll be reading about.  Thus, it’s fair to say this is really his idea, rather than mine.  

The other note is the usual warning about SPOILERS!  Given the nature of this season as a second chance for non-winners, I’ll not only be discussing the outcome from Cambodia on for the sake of comparison, I’ll also be spoiling a lot of earlier seasons as well.  Thus, be wary should you read ahead.  It will not be spoiler safe.  

As you’ve now been duly warned, let us dive in.  

THE IMPACT

Doubtless all my readers remember the Final Four of “Survivor Cambodia”.  We’re left with two from San Juan del Sur, in Kelley and Jeremy, and two from Cagayan, in Spencer and Tasha.  They end up competing for immunity in “Simmotion”, quickly becoming an all-too common final challenge, and an underwhelming one at that in my opinion (for those not familiar, I don’t think the challenge is bad per se, but it feels too small yet too complex for a final immunity challenge.  Either give me some massive structure or a straight endurance challenge at the end.)  Jeremy ended up winning, thereby getting rid of pretty much all doubt that anyone but Kelley was going home at that point.  Granted, I don’t think most of us saw Spencer shooting himself in the foot quite as badly as he did, but still, pretty low tension.  

What you may NOT know, or at least I didn’t know, is that this was NOT the first time this challenge was run that season.  As Peridiam detailed in his “Top 10 Game-Ending Chokes in Survivor History” video, there was actually a practice round held before the actual challenge we saw.  And THAT challenge ended quite differently, with Kelley creaming the competition.  Only because a second round was needed did Jeremy win.  

So, what if that DOESN’T happen?  What if there’s not practice round, just one run of the challenge?  Well, assuming that’s the first run, the same as in our timeline, then Kelley wins, obviously.  I’d normally cover what’s next in the next section, but with how simple this change is, we can fudge the borders a bit.  With Kelley now immune, I’d say Jeremy becomes the obvious target.  He’d used his “shields” strategy well, but his shields were now gone.  Kelley was aware of how big of a threat he was, so I’d wager Tasha and Spencer were as well.  Couple that with Tasha and Spencer being allied on their original season, and Jeremy’s a goner here.  How does this change the season?  Find out in the next section.  

THE FALLOUT

Kelley wins.  Yeah, there’s not really a good, clever segue or lead-in to that.  It’s the obvious outcome.  Now, it’s fair to say that Kelley does not have the dominating performance that Jeremy does.  If nothing else, Savage is never voting for her to win under basically any circumstances.  But for the other votes?  At a minimum, I’d say she has Kass, Ciera, Abi-Maria, Kimmi, and Keith on lock.  That’s five out a needed six, and I’d say the likes of Joe, Kelly, and Jeremy lean in her favor as well.  Fishbach is a bit more up in the air, but I could see him being persuaded to vote for her in certain circumstances.  Point being, Kelley is easily the frontrunner to win.  The rest of the changes, however, come in the section I call…

THE LEGACY

For once in this off-season, we’ve got something far back enough in the timeline that it actually changes returnee seasons a bit.  Surprisingly, our first change is actually to “Survivor Game Changers” rather than “Survivor Edge of Extinction”, which Kelley was on in our timeline.  But no, I say the cast of Game Changers is itself changed, simply due to the fact of Jeremy not winning.  In our timeline, Jeremy was victorious one, with Kelley the good-but-robbed player.  In the timeline of a Kelley victory, those roles are reversed.  In our timeline, Kelley was asked to come back for Game Changers, but felt it was too soon.  As such, I don’t doubt that Jeremy is asked back here as well, but he always seemed a bit hungrier for the win, so barring some external life circumstance, I don’t see him saying “no”.  Much as I’d like to say he takes Varner’s place, I don’t see that happening.  

The good news is that the Varner/Zeke incident probably doesn’t happen as a result of this change, but it’s because Zeke, not Varner, gets replaced by Jeremy.  Zeke always seemed a bit “on the bubble” in terms of the cast; brought in more for being from a popular season than being super stand-out as a character his first time around.  Not dissing the guy, to be clear.  He seems like an awesome dude IRL, just not the biggest character from his season.  Add on that it’s always dicey bringing back cast members from a season that just wrapped filming, and I’d say Jeremy is more of a slam-dunk for this spot than anyone else.  Jeremy taking Zeke’s place changes that season in ways that would take a whole other blog to consider, so for now, we’ll leave that change here.  

It may not come first, but as Kelley’s win makes her ineligible for “Survivor Edge of Extinction”, someone must take her place.  I think the smart money would be on Chrissy Hoffbeck of “Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”.  They don’t quite fill the same demographic age-wise, but they are both women known for being good in challenges and overcoming great odds to make it near the end.  Decent enough parallels, and I’d say Chrissy was/is popular enough to merit a second shot.  Again, her place on the season changes too much to go over here, though I will say in the aggregate, I think she and David do worse than their placements in our timeline.  Part of the reason Kelley and David were “successful” (at least compared to Joe and Aubry) is that they worked against one another, thus diluting their threat level in the eyes of the fans.  Chrissy and David seem more on the same wavelength, and unless someone on Manu had the same hero-worship of Chrissy that Lauren had of Kelley, they do worse.  

This, then, brings us to “Survivor Winners at War”, where I have no doubt Kelley is brought back.  Popular winner from a popular season?  Yeah, she’s a shoe-in, probably taking Michele’s spot given how controversial the latter’s win was.  Shame, since it means we’re deprived of the Michele renaissance we got in our timeline, but these things happen.  No Jeremy on Winners at War also means we need a replacement for him.  As per usual with these blogs, I’m sticking with the safe choice of Mike Holloway from “Survivor Worlds Apart” getting the slot.  The man made it far in casting in our timeline, only getting cut due to spots just not being available.  One becomes available?  Production takes him in a heartbeat.  

I mentioned Kelley being a popular winner from a popular season, and surprise surprise, I meant it.  Cambodia is hardly reviled in our timeline, with only those who strongly favor character over strategy having much negative to say about it.  Kelley’s win doesn’t change the validity of that criticism, but I don’t see her hurting the legacy of the season any more than Jeremy’s win does in our timeline.  If anything, the season is an even bigger deal than in our timeline.  We’ll rightly laud Jeremy for playing a smart game, but in terms of the show, it wasn’t a particularly “flashy” win.  Kelley, in contrast, has the “Wentworth, will not count” as the iconic moment of the season.  Even in our timeline, I’d say it’s remembered as the highlight of the season.  As the crux of a winner’s story?  Yeah, it’s one for the history books.  There’s also just the fact that Kelley perhaps more than anyone else on the season, exemplifies the idea of the “second chance”.  She was tied for earliest boot on the season with Kimmi, and then she comes back and wins?  That’s an arc you can’t write, and it’s amazing to watch when it happens.  

As a final, random change this makes to the timeline, of all people, Drew Christy of “Survivor San Juan del Sur” is oddly given a bit more credit than in our timeline.  Don’t misunderstand, he’s still by and large the butt of the joke with just how much the edit dunks on him and his decisions throughout his boot episode.  “The Fall of Drew Christy” is easily one of the funniest things to come out of modern “Survivor”.  But now, with a Kelley win?  People look back on his out-of-nowhere quest to get rid of her, to the point of throwing a challenge just to eliminate her, and think “Yeah, this guy’s an idiot in his execution, but maybe he was on to something with the general idea.”  Man, that’s a weird timeline to think about.  

Speaking of weird timelines, thanks for following this one!  Always appreciate people taking the time to peruse my weird ramblings.  To help ensure I have more of them, let me know down in the comments what you’d like me to examine next!  The general guidelines for what sorts of submissions will be considered are listed below.  

1. One Change Only: This can’t be a whole bunch of things or multiple things going another way to alter the course of a season.  This must be one singular event that alters the season in some way.  Cascade effects, where one change naturally leads to another, are ok, but they have to be natural and logical.  As an example, Shii-Ann not flipping and Chuay Gahn losing the final 10 immunity challenge on “Survivor Thailand” would definitely change things, but those are two independent changes that need to happen, and therefore not appropriate for this blog.  I should also mention that the change has to be an EVENT, not a play style.  Yes, “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” probably goes much differently if Russell Hantz (“Survivor Samoa”) isn’t an asshole to everyone, but apart from that never happening, it’s a change in overall play style, not a single moment.  It’s also, as I say, implausible, which leads to my next ground rule…

2. The Change Must Be Realistic: An unlikely change is ok, but it has to be something that COULD have happened, or it’s not worth writing about.  Yes, Fang winning the first immunity challenge on “Survivor Gabon” would drastically change the season.  Would it ever happen?  No.  So there’s no point in writing about it.  

3. The Change Must Have An Impact: By this, I mean the change has to actually alter the season in some significant way.  Simply changing up the boot order is not enough.  Someone new has to win, the perception of the season has to change, or both.  As an example, I originally planned to do a blog on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”, with a timeline where Candice didn’t flip at the final 9.  I thought this could lead to a Heroes victory.  Then I remembered that Russell Hantz plays his idol in that same episode, meaning the flip most likely doesn’t matter, and apart from a slight boot order change, the season as a whole remains untouched.  Uninteresting, and therefore not worth talking about.  

In addition to these hard-and-fast guidelines, there are also what I call “Flexible Guidelines”.  As the name would imply, these can be bent with a compelling arguments, but they are things that should be borne in mind when suggesting new situations to examine:

4. US Seasons Only: This is nothing against international seasons of “Survivor”.  From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, they can be quite good.  The trouble is, as a citizen on the US, the US version of “Survivor” is the one I’m most familiar with, know the most about, and have seen the most of.  I haven’t even seen a full international season of “Survivor”, just the occasional clip.  Nothing knocking them, of course.  I just haven’t gotten around to viewing them.  So, while I won’t outright ban the suggesting of changes from non-US seasons of “Survivor”, bear in mind that I’m unlikely to pick them due to a lack of knowledge and lack of time to catch up on the seasons.  

5. I Will Not Do Brandon Flipping At The Africa Final 9: A flip by Brandon Quinton at the Final 9 of “Survivor Africa”, voting out Lex instead of Kelly, would indeed fit all the criteria mentioned above.  I’m refusing this particular scenario, not because it isn’t interesting or worth talking about, but because it was already covered by Mario Lanza in his book “When it Was Worth Playing For”.  He covered it so well and so thoroughly that I don’t think I would have anything to add.  I’m willing to consider this scenario if someone can give me a compelling reason that Mario is wrong, or there’s some aspect he didn’t consider, but until that time, this scenario is out.  Other “Survivor Africa” scenarios are ok, though.

6. Try Not To Repeat Seasons: This is by far the most flexible of the flexible guidelines, particularly as many seasons have multiple inflection points with a fascinating change to dissect.  However, to prevent a lot of repetition, I try and prioritize scenarios from a season I haven’t done a “What-If?” on yet, over ones that I’ve already covered one scenario on.  You can feel free to submit scenarios for seasons I’ve already looked at, but bear in mind that I’m unlikely to cover them until I’m out of ideas for “What-Ifs?” on seasons I haven’t done yet.  For reference, at the time of this writing, I have done scenarios from the following seasons: Africa, Marquesas, Pearl Islands, All-Stars, Palau, Guatemala, Exile Island, Micronesia, Gabon, Samoa, Heroes vs. Villains, Redemption Island, One World, Philippines, Blood vs. Water, Cambodia, Kaoh Rong, Game Changers, Ghost Island, Island of the Idols, Winners at War.

As always, thank you so much for following my mad ramblings, and I look forward to hearing what you want to read next in the comments!

-Matt

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 43” Episode 5: Fatherly Love

The “Mom” archetype.  One of the most talked about in “Survivor” canon.  Yet its gender-flipped counterpart, the “Dad” archetype, very rarely gets play.  Oh sure, we’ve had some “Dads” on “Survivor”.  While not technically that archetype, I’d say Bob Crowley of “Survivor Gabon” gave off big “Dad” energy.  The moment in which I most like Tyson was him playing with his daughter on “Winners at War”.  And Jeremy Collins made his kids a central part of his strategy on “Survivor Cambodia”.  But apart from Jeremy, and Rocksroy on “Survivor 42”, no one has really made the “Dad” archetype the center of their strategy.  Tonight we perhaps see why, as our most prominent Dads of the season either screw up their own games because of their kids, or betray their kids, leading to their games getting screwed up.  

Getting back from Tribal, one would expect there to be drama, and there is.  Surprisingly, though, it is not from Geo seeming to be left out of the vote.  Indeed, Geo informs us that he was fully aware Lindsay was going, but threw a vote on Cassidy since he was the person Lindsay was voting for him.  It’s not explicitly said, but presumably Geo is worried about a Shot in the Dark coming back on him.  Of course, the obvious counter-argument is that if Lindsay played her Shot in the Dark, she wouldn’t have a vote, but on the other hand, Geo could be worried about his name on a re-vote.  Point being, I don’t fault his logic.  

That said, his logic is based on the faulty premise that he is in with the majority, with Cassidy on the outs.  Despite Cassidy voting with you last episode.  Cassidy and Karla take time to mock Geo privately for this delusion, but I’m sure that won’t mean anything for the episode down the road.  

Over at Dumbass Tribe, Jeanine and Elie are up to their old tricks again.  They’ve searched what they believe to be every significant nook and cranny on the island.  Except, you know, the giant, significant tree.  After giving a description of how the tree should be edited, which the editors comply with a la Russell Swan on “Survivor Philippines” (arguably another contender for the central “Dad” archetype in their game), Jeanine gets to searching.  In fairness to all the people on the Dumbass Tribe, I would say their Beware Advantage is the most well-hidden.  Vesi had it easiest, with the advantage just lying out on a low branch, not even attempting to blend in.  Coco’s was also technically in the open, but on a higher branch, and closer to the color of the tree in question.  Dumbass’ was stuck down in a nook between two branches, and blended quite well.  And, to add insult to injury, was covered in ants, which Jeanine had to bat off before running to Elie to open the advantage.  

Jeanine barely hesitates in opening the advantage, given what she believes the tribe to be.  Gabler is perceived as such an annoyance that Jeanine does not believe her vote will be necessary to oust him.  Of course there is the little matter of his idol, but she and Elie are still drinking the “Gabler doesn’t think it works.” Kool-Aid.  Finding out about the bead issue (and we actually get a close up of most of the beads this time, and they are the most cool-looking of the bag beads, save for Owen’s which is kind of “blah”), Jeanine and Elie decide they don’t want Owen to know what’s up.  True, he’s nominally on their side, but there’s something about him they just don’t trust.  

Cue Owen immediately walking up on the pair.  The Irony Gods must be rolling on the floor.  

No, Jeanine and Elie are in luck.  Owen did not actually HEAR them say they don’t trust him, though they are forced to reveal the existence of Jeanine’s Beware Advantage, and how it works.  Owen DOES contemplate simply refusing to give up his bead, but given that he’s playing both sides, he gives it up in the end.  To his benefit, I would say.  Making a stink about the bead think would tip one’s hand too much if you know why, and thus probably more trouble than it’s worth.  An idol is powerful, true, but only if used right, and there’s no guarantee Jeanine will be able to do that.  

Elie informs Sami of the situation.  He has to give up his bead in order to maintain his bluff against the women, but is clearly happy that Jeanine may be without a vote.  This seems all the more likely when Gabler, the one person who hasn’t been told about the rules for the Beware Advantage, buys Jeanine’s bracelet cover story, but is reluctant to part with that specific bead, saying he is saving it for his daughter.  Ouch.  Right in the family feels.  How’s Jeanine going to overcome this one?  

Pretty easily, apparently.  With the mere offer of trading back the beads Gabler had previously bequeathed her, Gabler gives up the bead she most wants.  If I’m Gabler’s daughter, I’m pissed right now.  Me personally?  I’m more pissed at the editors.  There must have been some great social manipulation on the part of Jeanine if Gabler really had his heart set on that particular bead, unless the edit played it up.  Thus, either the edit hyperbolized things to a degree even I can’t take, or we missed out on seeing some great gameplay from Jeanine.  Whichever is the truth, I’m pissed.  

When I first saw Gabler refuse and give the daughter excuse, I thought perhaps Sami had got to Gabler beforehand, warned him of the danger, and told him not to give up his bead under any circumstances.  Then Gabler gave it away, and that theory went out the window.  This is confirmed when Sami fills Gabler in on what just happened.  To his credit, Gabler is a fantastic sport about the whole thing, congratulating Jeanine in confessional, even though he admits this makes the game harder for him.  

Off to our challenge, which if the lack of Caps Lock was any indicator, is nothing to write home about.  Pretty standard obstacle course with little we haven’t seen before.  I’ll give credit that it’s bringing back some elements that have been long-absent, though.  Particularly the “Carry a bucket of water to dump in another bucket over a tricky balance course” element.  That’s been around pretty much since the show began, but it’s been gone for a while, so I’m cool with it coming back here.  

I’ll also give credit that this obstacle course actually made me like the “Ski-Ball” ending.  Yes, really.  I’ve hated it since its inception on “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, but this one I don’t hate.  Why?  Simple: They took away the notches at the end.  Apart from just making this look less like a carnival game, this also means the shots take more skill, since you need to finesse your throws just so to make sure they don’t go too far and roll off the back.  This also means there’s the devastating potential to undo your progress by knocking the balls off the platform in the throwing process.  Not that this could happen to anyone, could it?  

Sure enough, it does.  As our tribes race for immunity and tarps of varying sizes, depending on first or second place finishing (lest you think a challenge a quarter of the way through the episode meant a double Tribal), things stay fairly even.  Dumbass is slightly behind, understandable given they’ve had the most strategy talk this episode, but no one’s out of it, and everyone ends up on the (difficult) ball-throwing portion.  Vesi unsurprisingly does the best.  I say “unsurprising” because they got zero strategic content pre-challenge, so it was all but a given they would be immune.  Better that they get first place outright, even if I do hate that it pokes a hole in my “No addition by subtraction.” theory.  Coco seems to have a slight lead throughout, but fumbles when Ryan tries to use the two balls he’s landed as a stop, thereby upsetting all of them, and allowing Sami to have his victory.  

With no double-Tribal in the offing this episode, we see the REAL reason the challenge is so early: ADVANTAGES!  Yes, it’s time once again for Vesi to select one person from each tribe to go on a quest.  They evidently decide to go via Phoneme Alliteration, as Geo, Jeanine, and Jesse are all selected to go.  Can’t fault any of the choices from the outside, really.  

Now, you might think Ryan just made a bad judgment call in the challenge, particularly as we saw both Cassidy and Geo suggest Ryan bounce off the two balls up top, leading to the loss.  But no!  Ryan wants you to know that he INTENDED to lose that challenge!  Oh, he didn’t come in planning to throw it, but he wants Cassidy out, and so he’s ok with losing.  And I buy this line of “I meant to do that” was much as I did when Phillip Sheppard said the same thing on “Survivor Caramoan”.  That is to say, NOT AT ALL!  Hell, I’d be more inclined to believe PHILLIP in this case, since Phillip at least did so after the tribe swap, and thus might have legit reason to want someone out.  Throwing a challenge to get out CASSIDY?  Look, she’s a good strategist to watch out for, but she’s not challenge-throw worthy.  Or is this the edit telling us that Cassidy is the next Erika Casupanan (“Survivor 41”)?  Either way, not buying this.  I think Ryan just goofed.  

Even if he were inclined to blame his tribemates, Ryan would not do so.  Why?  Because he’s just that nice!  So nice is Ryan that when discussing what lie to tell Cassidy with Karla and James, Ryan volunteers himself, basically saying they should act pissed at him for losing the challenge.  Credit where credit is due: It takes a lot of guts to volunteer yourself as what you believe to be the decoy.  It can certainly be the smart move.  Note that volunteering someone else as the decoy was a contributing factor to Andrew Savage’s loss on “Survivor Cambodia”.  So, if Ryan truly believes the vote to be Cassidy, I can’t fault him too much for the overall move.  Some of the details, however, go a bit far.  In particular Ryan asking people not to strategize with him AT ALL seems an unnecessary risk, but at least it makes sense.  Worse is Ryan telling Cassidy to vote him if she has to.  Look, there’s being a good sport, and then there’s being an UNBELIEVABLY good sport!  Ryan is hamming it up a bit much here and, like Geo earlier, is roundly mocked for it.  

As to our adventurers, they’re dropped off at a platform to row a boat in rough seas to a sand spit.  Look, I know we said we wanted variety in the journeys, and this is better than nothing, but we meant more the MECHANISM for getting an advantage on the journeys, or even whether there’s any advantage at all!  Changing up the method of getting there is nice, but is the least of our concerns.  

One constant is being told to get to know one another.  Which they would probably do, if Geo didn’t dominate the conversation.  Geo hams it up that he was on the outs at the last vote, and swears he’s going to risk for whatever is there.  Basically trying to do what Noelle did when she went on the journey a few episodes ago.  Geo, however, believes himself to be lying, which raises suspicion on both Jeanine’s and Jesse’s parts.  Well, ok, Jesse says he thinks Geo is telling the truth, but this may not stop him from going for an advantage.  I think the key Geo is missing is offering some alliance down the road in return, as Noelle did.  Gives people some incentive besides pity to not risk their vote.  

The only person I could fault for risking here is Jeanine.  After all that paranoia about losing your vote, and ALREADY having an idol, you’re going to risk again?  Jesse, however, believes he’s good with his group, and so has little reason not to risk for himself, and Geo believes the same.  In reality, Geo is on the outs, but as there are no numbers for him to get back in power, he needs some sort of leverage, so I can’t fault his decision here.  I will fault Jesse’s logic of “what would my kids want?”, but admittedly this is results-oriented talk.  

Sure enough, all agree to risk, and head back to their camps.  The one true flaw in this episode is that unlike the last time we had multiple people risk, we see each tribe do theirs one at a time, meaning the third tribe shown contains the individual whose risk paid off.  We start on Vesi.  One flaw of keeping the mechanism the same on each journey is it means that a lie can be easily seen through, making a lie harder.  Jesse is completely honest with his tribe, opens it in front of them, and finds out that he predictably lost his vote.  Jeanine on Dumbass is next, though she sneaks past her sleeping tribe to open it in private… Before coming back and pretending to open it in front of them, revealing her lost vote in the process.  What was the point of sneaking away then?  Sami calls this a bad move for Jeanine in confessional, and we move on.  

As expected, Geo got the advantage, another “Knowledge is Power”.  This lends credence to the idea that the specific advantage is based on how many people risk for it, since this is inarguably the most powerful of the three (some would say broken, but I disagree), but of course we don’t have definitive proof.  Geo is the only one who initially lies to his group, but after he and Karla go for a walk, he comes clean to her.  Ok, show, is Geo’s number one Karla or Ryan?  You’ve gone back and forth on this a number of times, and we kind of need a definitive answer!  It’s important for us to understand the strategy dynamics!  

Unfortunately for Geo, Karla is not truly on his side, no matter what he thinks.  She spills the beans to Cassidy and James.  We don’t actually see her SAY what Geo got, but we can presume she did.  Still, Cassidy is not please.  She, after all, is the TRUE decoy vote of the night, and wants to switch the vote to Ryan just to be safe.  While I would point out that Geo can’t actually DO anything to save himself with that advantage, unless he steals Karla’s idol that no one but her knows about, it’s hard to blame Cassidy for being paranoid as the decoy.  Blame they do, however, as Karla and James talk about Cassidy going “Full Lindsay” in insisting on getting her way and being paranoid.  As such, they talk about bringing the vote back on to her.  

Put bluntly, this would be a dumb move.  Random moments aside, Geo and Ryan seem to be a tight two, and if you want to maintain your power on this tribe, they need to be broken up tonight.  As to which of the two should go, it’s more of a toss-up.  Ryan is better in challenges, and should you all make the merge, is a more visible threat, and thus a better shield.  Geo, meanwhile, seems to have more of a relationship with the majority, and does have an advantage that could be used to the tribe’s benefit.  On the whole, though, I say voting out Geo is the smarter move of the two.  You don’t know when the merge is coming, so keeping Ryan around works out just in case the merge is far away.  And even if it’s close, hey, he’s a shield!  The big factor for me, though, is how Geo will use his advantage.  As Karla points out, this is a powerful advantage, and one that could be used against her to blow up her game.  Now, it could be argued that she has some influence over Geo, and has hidden her idol well.  I would counter that, unless Cassidy goes tonight, Geo will realize he’s not in the majority, and will thus be less inclined to what others have to say about where and when his advantage is used.  After tonight, I don’t see Geo using his advantage for anyone but Geo.  As well he shouldn’t, of course, but it means there’s basically no reason to keep him around anymore.  

There are two main topics at our much more somber Tribal tonight, with momentum being the first.  Cassidy irritates the statistician in me by saying she believes in momentum.  Look, if you know anything about statistics, “Streaks” are a myth.  A statistical probability that people read far too much into, and believe in some mystical force that isn’t there.  The only thing that MAY have an effect is a belief that you are or aren’t in a streak affecting your performance, which is all psychology, all in your head.  Just keep a positive mindset and it won’t fall out that way, apart from random chance.  

This is basically the attitude that Ryan adopts, and is basically the topic for the rest of Tribal.  Ryan is a nice guy.  Just so nice.  Trying to play as fair as possible, and at peace with wherever he goes out.  Everyone just talks about how nice Ryan is; how much they can’t believe it.  Some even speculate that they don’t believe it.  It speaks to Ryan’s charm that I actually kind of believe the guy.  Anyone going from Coco would be a loss at this point, as I like them all, but Ryan would be a particularly hard one.  We may not have much of his backstory since the first episode, but the dude is just so inherently likeable.  

For once, the tribe plays optimally, and Geo goes home in a blindside.  In keeping with the other theme this episode, dude is a good sport about it in his final exit interview.  Despite it being the smart move, I am sorry to see Geo go.  It may have been earned strategically, but the dude seemed like a nice guy, and was certainly putting all his effort in the game, which is always nice to see.  He may have earned his exit, but he will be missed.  On the plus side, we finally have a man voted off this season after four straight women.  Something different!  Yay!

Remember all that speculation that the merge was a while away?  Yeah, no, it’s next episode.  With 13 people still left.  Look, I know the double-elimination first episode (whether by immunity or medevac) was getting predictable, but I meant change up WHEN said double-elimination happens, not remove it entirely!  13 people left is just too many.  Then again, I think 11 people left is too many, so what do I know?

Dumbass tribe having a plurality at the merge?  Did not see that coming.  Will be interesting to see how that plays out next week.  

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

“Survivor” Retrospectives: Cambodia

Well, that break went on far longer than intended. But no matter! With no new season on the horizon, I’d say it’s a fine time to resurrect an old series. A look back at the past, if you will. Yes, it’s time once again for the return on “‘Survivor’ Retrospectives”!

Given that it’s been so long, I’d say a refresher on the concept is in order. In this series, I go back through all the major elements of a season (the casts, the challenges, the twists, etc.), both recapping them objectively, as well as giving my subjective opinion on each. Each category is then given a score out of 10 for how well it holds up on its own. The exception is the “Overall” category, in which the marks from the previous categories are combined with the mark from the “Overall” category (which considers both the themes and aesthetics of the season, as well as how all the elements of the season came together), leading to a score out of 40. Naturally, this means there will be SPOILERS for the season. I will be writing as though everyone reading knows the outcome of the season, as well as the major players and events of the season. Thus, if you have not watched the season in question, as indicated by the title, read on beyond this paragraph only if you are prepared for said spoilers. However, if you wish to know my general, spoiler-free opinion on the season, scroll down to the bottom of the page. There, I have a section labeled “Abstract”, which will give you just that.

With those warnings out of the way, let us considered the case of Cambodia. The season that really felt like it began the 30’s, for good and for ill. Does it become the standard-bearer for the sins of later seasons, or does it have merit on its own? Read on and find out!

CAST

As the subtitle “Second Chances” would imply, Cambodia is an all-returnee season. This makes judging the cast a lot harder. Usually, when looking at a cast, I look at the big names to come out of a season. The flaw with a returnee season, unlike an all-newbie season, is that people can be big names both going into and coming out of a season, yet not have done much on the season as a whole. Consider the case of Rupert on “Survivor All-Stars”. The guy was a big name coming into the season, and still a big name coming out of the season, but did he really do anything during “Survivor All-Stars” to earn it? Not so much. Really, all he did was avoid tarnishing his legacy. As such, in this section, I’m only going to be discussing members of the cast who actively maintained or improved their overall perception amongst the fandom.

With that in mind, no one had a higher rise this season that Kelley Wentworth. Originally of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, Kelley was that one person who gets on a returnee season that you think “Huh?” For reasons I’ll get into in the twist section, Kelley didn’t have that obstacle, but as a fifth boot who was nearly invisible during her first run on the show, she had arguably the lowest floor in terms of perception. Even so, Kelley can be said to have dominated the fandom in this season. She showed herself to be a sound strategic player, and a scrappy fighter, as she was rarely in the majority on the season. She also gave off a number of good sound-bytes, making her one of the rare people named “Kelly” who is not, as I once said, “as bland as beige wallpaper”. Perhaps it’s the odd spelling that does it? In any case, I can’t go into too much detail about why Kelley is so beloved without delving into the twists of the season, though her snark in confessionals definitely helped. For now, suffice to say that Kelley proved why she was considered a threat her first time around, and became a beloved fan darling for all the right reasons.

If you’re looking for someone who was popular before coming on the season, but increased it during the season, look no further than Joe “Joey Amazing” Anglim. Hailing from “Survivor Worlds Apart”, the season immediately before Cambodia, Joe was seen as something of the nice, good-looking challenge threat with not much else to note about him. Basically a newer version of Ozzy from “Survivor Cook Islands”. Cambodia did little to change that, but it did take the comparisons to a whole new level. Joe was pretty good in challenges? Now he’s immune for a month before you even have the chance to vote him off. Joe seemed comfortable in the outdoors? Now he’s so handy that he’s being referred to as “MacGyver”. He had a determination and competitive drive? Now he’s collapsing out of exhaustion during a challenge. You get the idea. This is a tried-and-true character archetype that people eat up, and Joe was no exception. I can definitely see why, and I’d argue he did more to earn it this season than on “Survivor Worlds Apart”, with just how over the top it was. That said, I do think the love for Joe is a bit overdone. There’s nothing wrong with him, of course. He’s a perfectly inoffensive guy, and quite likable, even on screen. When I first started watching the show, Joe is the sort of guy I would have gravitated toward, rooted for, and been heartbroken by his inevitable defeat. But as I’ve grown as a fan, I’ve fallen out of love with this sort of character. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with them, but they just don’t have a lot of depth to them. They’re good at survival, and that’s about it. Perhaps, then, the bet way to describe Joe is that he’s one-dimensional, but a likable one-dimensional.

Now, if Kelley and Joe are the two biggest characters to come out of the season, surely they’re the ones the season focussed on story-wise, right? Wrong! That honor would go to Spencer Bledsoe of “Survivor Cagayan”. Coming into the game, Spencer was the person I expected to do well above all others. He was perceived as an underdog, but a likable one, with a good strategic mind to boot. Add onto that him being “robbed” due to playing with Kass (who’s also on this season, but sadly doesn’t make much impact despite a valiant attempt to change up her game), and he seemed to be in the same position Cochran was in on “Survivor Caramoan”: perfectly set up to go far. And go far he did, making the final three, though not winning due to one mistake at the finish line, wherein he got a mite aggressive when campaigning against Kelley to try and avoid being voted off at the final four. This turned off what few jurors might have voted for him, leading to a perfect victory for our eventual winner, Jeremy. We’ll get to him in the next paragraph. Getting back to Spencer, though, Spencer was set up early on with the arc of needing to be more “emotional”. Understandable, considering he was a primary target of the “gamebot” criticism, but I don’t think the show pulled it off as well as they wanted to. We’re TOLD that Spencer has grown in various ways, such as professing his love for his girlfriend, or opening up with his tribemates, but since a lot of that deals with matters outside the game, it comes across as the producers shoehorning in an arc to try and get the audience to like someone. That said, I do think Spencer has an arc, and a good one at that. It’s just not the one the show pushed. Spencer may not have grown as much emotionally (at least on screen), but his arc in terms of strategy is an interesting contrast to his arc in “Survivor Cagayan”. On his first season, Spencer was plagued with perpetual bad luck. Every plan he put together pretty much fell through, and he never really found his footing. Doing well despite this made everyone praise his potential. While Spencer’s second go-around did continue his bad luck trend early on, particularly with his tribe swaps, Spencer seemed to have a better footing on where he was in the game, and more in control of his destiny. Further, come the merge, Spencer seemed to be the man of the hour. His name was rarely brought up, and he was almost always the swing vote in determining who went home. A picture-perfect strategic game, right? Possibly, but in spite of that, Spencer still lost in the end, with little to no “bad luck” to blame this time around. We may not have seen Spencer’s emotional growth on screen, but we did see him come to terms with the fact that playing well and having good luck can still result in a loss. A fascinating arc. Shame the show didn’t do more with it.

But now, onto Jeremy, the winner of the season. Similar to Spencer, Jeremy is not as big of a character, but big on the strategy Jeremy this season would pioneer what he called his “meat shield” strategy, which meant keeping around people who were perceived as bigger threats than him, to avoid getting booted post-merge. This is why Joe stuck around past his first immunity loss. Jeremy had a bit of charm that had shown through during confessionals, but the bulk of his screentime this season was devoted to strategy. And again, to his credit, that strategy worked. Jeremy was the first man to win an all-returnee season, and arguably played a perfect game (he did receive votes against him at the final six, but they were negated with an idol. Whether or not this disqualifies his “perfect game” status is up for debate, and I’m not sure there’s a wrong answer). It even got rehashed on the later “Winners at War”, though we’re nowhere near there yet. For my part, Jeremy is a fine addition to the season. Extra strategizing is always welcome, though I did tire of hearing of it after a while. Still, Jeremy played well and is a likable enough winner to be welcome on the season. Also worth mentioning here is Jeremy’s right-hand man for much of the season. Stephen Fishbach, originally of “Survivor Tocantins”, was brought back after a six-year hiatus. That said, it’s interesting to look back on Stephen’s first appearance to his second, as they make an odd contrast. On his first season, Stephen was paranoid about being cast as the “wimpy guy” who couldn’t make it in the outdoors, yet was portrayed as competent in all areas of the game, and a strategic force on the season. While his second appearance did keep some of that strategic competence, it was too focussed on the aforementioned Joe, who became a proverbial white whale for Stephen. As such, Stephen came across as paranoid and obsessed, somewhat dampening his strategic prowess, and not helped by his getting what I call “the goober edit”. Had his tribe gone to Tribal Council first, he likely goes home, due to everyone being suspicious of him, and his not being that helpful around camp. Note the scene, with goofy music, of him trying to break a tree branch, and losing. On top of that, Stephen’s general failure at challenges, coupled with the coining of “#severegastrointestinaldistress”, and it’s clear that Stephen was not meant to be taken seriously. Even so, he managed to have his moments of brilliance, and a lot of emotional insight that dwarfed what we were told Spencer had. Not the same Stephen we got the first time around, but still a fun character and occasionally good strategist.

Every major alliance needs a rival, and the head against Jeremy would be Ciera Eastin of “Survivor Blood vs. Water”. While Ciera is usually referred to as “The Woman who Voted out her Mom”, this to me is really where Ciera came into her own. She showed some good strategic chops, but now had the chance to flex them. She led the counter-alliance, referred to as the “Witch’s Coven” by Jeremy’s alliance, and actually hung on for a few votes through a combination of cunning and hidden immunity idols. Her defeat was inevitable, just due to her numbers disadvantage, but she did her best to shake up the game, making the post-merge all the more exciting. That said, she did coin the phrase “Big Moves”, which would come back to bite the show down the line, but we won’t hold that against her. That’s the show’s fault, not her’s. For what she was, Ciera was a good spoiler: Not going to win, but keeps the game from becoming so smooth that it’s boring.

Now we move on to the characters who were big at the time, but are now kind of lost to history. Really, though, there’s only one name in Cambodia that qualifies, and that name is Jeff Varner. Being from the earliest days of the show (though Kelly Wiglesworth of “Survivor Borneo” was also cast), Varner was built up big time. He had a big game personality, lots of preparation, one of the more aggressive campaigns to get on the show, and a vendetta against peanut butter to help make him memorable. Once on the show, he controlled the earliest votes, only to mess up a twist that shouldn’t really have screwed him, but ended up doing so anyway. He made a mess of his standing in a swapped tribe (the exact circumstances will be gone over in the “Twist” section), and had an early exit as a result. Varner certainly made the pre-merge exciting, and put him back on the radar for modern season. So, why was someone so influential to the early game forgotten? “Survivor Game Changers”. Yeah, wait a few seasons, but Varner will basically be writing himself out of “Survivor” history. For the moment, though, he’s a short but enjoyable part of the season, keeping up the unpredictability that will make this season so good overall.

That covers everyone that gets remembered today, but I feel like it does a disservice to the cast. Yes, there were few standouts, but most everybody brought something to the table. Usually it’s what we expected, and thus their legacy was maintained. Abi-Maria Gomes (“Survivor Philippines”) created conflict despite swearing not to do so. Keith Nale (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”) brought back the humor, and I would argue did it better, now that it wasn’t the only entertainment game in town. Andrew Savage (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) finally proved that no, he’s not good at “Survivor”, but can at least make the jury. Really, even if they weren’t the most memorable, everyone brought something to the cast. Or, I should say, almost everyone. Who in their right mind thought that Monica Padilla (“Survivor Samoa”) would be a good addition to the cast? She brought NOTHING! She appeared in the background a bit, was a focus in her boot episode, then NOTHING! Just a waste of a space that could have been filled with the more interesting T-Bird (“Survivor Africa”). The only argument I ever heard for bringing her back, apart from her looks, was that “She put the fear of God into Russell Hantz on her first season, ruining his game.” To be fair, she did do that. What I don’t agree with is that this makes her some sort of strategic mastermind. Bear in mind, RUPERT of all people also managed to put the fear of God into Russell Hantz on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”. Heck, Rupert did it BETTER, as his interaction with Russell actually saved him for a couple of votes. Monica? Voted out the same day. Why was she impressive again?

My score for this section may seem a bit weird, and that’s because this case is inexorably tied with a twist of the season. I’ll get to it shortly, but for now, be satisfied with the idea that the show did something with this cast that gave us, the fans, more buy-in than with previous casts, even if the majority just maintained their respective legacies this season.

Score: 9 out of 10

CHALLENGES

Every challenge in Cambodia is a repeat of an old challenge. Every. Single. One. But, since this is a returnee season, that’s to be expected. They even make a big deal out of it, with Probst noting which players left had done each challenge before, and their overall performance in said challenge. Now, this got a bit old by the end, and I would argue it led to self-defeating scenarios in some challenges (people putting themselves in a position they weren’t the best at to “redeem themselves”), but overall it was a fun touch that didn’t take up too much time overall. And as for the challenges they chose to redo? For the most part, good ones; big and memorable. They didn’t show favoritism for modern “Survivor” either, as they pulled from seasons like “Survivor Borneo” and “Survivor Africa”, which we hadn’t seen in a while. Not every challenge was a hit, of course. They used “Simmotion” from “Survivor Tocantins” for the final immunity challenge, which I maintain is among the weaker final immunity challenges due to the lack of epicness. Still, apart from one or two missteps, the challenges this season were a solid addition to the overall product, and even at their worst, tend to just be a neutral component.

Score: 9 out of 10.

TWISTS

Cambodia holds the distinction of being one of few seasons whose twists actually began in the previous season. As the title “Second Chances” indicates, the season was made up of people who had only played once before, and never won. What split it apart from returnee seasons before and after, however, was that the producers did not entirely pick the contestants. After narrowing the field to 32 potential returnees (16 men and 16 women), those watching the show were allowed to go online and vote in 10 men and 10 women to get their second chance. The results were revealed live at the end of “Survivor Worlds Apart”, also known as “The Best Thing About ‘Survivor Worlds Apart’”. Aside from the requirement that you select 10 people to return no matter what had some logistical issues (a player who gets people to vote specifically for them does not receive sole benefit of convincing people to vote for them), I’d say this is still a major hit of a twist, and the reason why the cast as a whole is stronger than it looks on paper. With pretty much any returnee season, there’s always going to be controversy in the casting choices. “Why did you ever put this person on?”; that sort of thing. You’ll also have players who don’t bring as much as they during their first go-around, and thus lose a big part of their legacy and memorability as a result. The same is true for this season, but even those early boots, you were still happy they were on and much less likely to question the choices. Why? Because, if you were a fan YOU PICKED THEM! You had a say in who got on, which created a buy-in to the cast no season has had before or since. Even if someone failed to live up to expectations, you viewed them charitably because they were, in a sense, your cast. You had ownership like you never had before, thus effectively snuffing out most criticism of the casting decisions before it even had a chance to develop. This is why Kelley doesn’t come off as a weird choice for the season, particularly given her aggressive social media campaign to return. Now, there is an asterisk to this aspect of the season, but as it deals with how the season can be seen overall, I’ll be saving it for the “Overall” section. Suffice to say that by giving the fans more say on this season than on any other, the show started itself off on the right foot.

Continuing this trend, Cambodia’s first twist was a blend of old and new. After being divided into the Bayon and Ta Keo tribes, all players did the “scramble for supplies” start, a tribute to “Survivor Borneo”. However, a new hiccup came in the form of a race to a second boat, which the tribe must do together, with the reward of extra rice hanging in the balance. While not the most exciting aspect of the season, it was a good look to start the season out on: Paying homage to the past while simultaneously not just repeating everything that had been done before. Another old twist with a new spin was the hidden immunity idols. There were two new quirks to them, one good and one bad, or at least underused. Hidden immunity idols would now not look the same, just with different coloring based on tribe camps. They were new different shapes. The theory was that this made it harder to tell a fake idol from a real one. In actuality, it was pointless. While the idols no longer looked exactly the same, they still looked production-made, and very clearly not something made by one of the players. I don’t know, I was expecting them to go all-out in making the idols different. Maybe Ta Keo is your traditional idol, but then Bayon’s is a tin can with a hole in it. Harder to identify, and makes for potential hilarity when you try and convince someone it really IS an idol, and not just trash. That said, the twist itself wasn’t BAD, just kind of pointless. More impactful, however, was the hiding of idols at challenges. A clue was hidden at camp that, if found, told you where in the challenge to look for the idol. You could grab it, but had to risk being seen by your teammates. A dynamic new twist that adds drama to an already drama-filled component of the show? Sign me up! Watching someone go for one of these idols is like watching a really good spy movie, or at worst, an average spy movie. Admittedly, this twist works better during the tribal phase rather than the individual phase, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Kelley was the first recipient of this twist, getting the Ta Keo idol at the first immunity challenge. This plus her usage helps explain why she became such a big character of this and future seasons. Not that she had much of a chance to strategize with her idol at first, since Ta Keo had to go directly from the immunity challenge to Tribal Council, with no talking. Bad flashbacks to the Michelle Yi boot on “Survivor Fiji” come up, and I must admit this was an ill-conceived twist. Thankfully it didn’t hurt anything, but it didn’t help either.

Tribal Council itself was good in terms of a twist outcome, though. Roughly speaking, Ta Keo was divided between “Old School” players and “New School” players, vying for control with Varner and Peih-Gee (“Survivor China”) in the middle. I say “roughly” because although most early players fell into “Old School”, and later players into “New School, there were exceptions. Vytas, despite being firmly from the later seasons of the show, fell into the “Old School” alliance due to his connection with Terry Deitz (“Survivor Exile Island”), who was an old school player who played with Aras, Vytas’ brother. In a blindside, Vytas himself was voted out first, and Jeff and Peih-Gee sided with the new-schoolers to vote him out. This could have made for boring tv, if it was just “New School” steamrolling “Old School”, but thankfully, this was not to be. Varner, along with everyone except Spencer and the as-yet unmentioned Shirin Oskooi from “Survivor Worlds Apart” flipped to vote out Shirin. While the second could hardly count as a “blindside”, it did show that alliances were not going to be as firm this season, helping lead to a constantly-shifting season, leading to some great moments down the road.

Episode 3 brings us our tribe swap, though not in the way expected. Instead of dividing into two new tribes, with nine members each, the show decided to create a new third tribe, Angkor, with all three tribes getting six members each. A twist that worked out well in the end, I would argue, but that badly needed the tweaks it got in later seasons. It’s good for keeping people on their toes, and helps subdivide the cast to prevent Pagongings, but MAN did the Angkor tribe get screwed in this deal. Later subdivisions like this would see the third tribe get some advantage, or at least some supplies to start them over. Angkor? Squat. Naturally, going up against two tribes that didn’t need to expend extra energy building their shelters, and already had supplies set up, Angkor was going to lose. A lot. And they did. A fun twist, but not the fairest, and in need to some tweaking.

Now, Angkor had a 4-2 majority favoring original Ta Keo, while the other two tribes had a 4-2 majority favoring the original Bayon. Had Angkor lost, and just gotten rid of the minority 2 on their tribe, there would have been boredom to be found. The weakest tribe loses constantly, and Pagongs the minority. Simple and dull. Thankfully, this did not happen, largely due to the presence of Abi-Maria on Angkor making it impossible for the original Ta Keo to stick together. Savage and Tasha were able to exploit Abi-Maria’s divisiveness, and vote out first Peih-Gee (with whom Abi-Maria had argued early in the game), then Jeff Varner (who was weak in challenges). Disappointing boots at the time, particularly as Varner was the driving force behind a lot of the early-game excitement, but again, good at keeping things shook up, and the audience on their toes. Say what you will about this season, but don’t say it had one dominant alliance steamroll over everybody the entire time.

Before we get to our next big shakeup in episode five, we should get to two minor twists that happened in between. In episode 3, Jeremy found the clue to the idol, and got it during the challenge. Fine work for him, though less exciting since we had already seen Kelley do the same thing in episode 1. Episode 4, meanwhile, featured what Probst termed a “Hero Challenge”, which had just one player from each team compete for the entire team. Not the worst idea, but it lost the epic scale that most team challenges give us, and is a stupid thing to go in for from a strategy perspective. In the end, apart from a heart warming scene of Savage handing Angkor one of the few victories (though only for reward), this twist brought little to the game, and I’m not upset about its exclusion from future seasons.

On to episode 5, and Angkor gets an honest-to-goodness challenge victory! And it’s even an immunity challenge! Thanks in large part to Stephen’s “skills” at target shooting, his tribe, Bayon, ends up going to Tribal Council. There, they continue the trend of not letting the bold majority maintain control. Monica goes home, the only original Bayon member to not make the merge. Again, while maybe not the most sound strategic decision, it is good to see that the season remains unpredictable, and solid majorities don’t stay solid for long.

Episode 6, unfortunately, starts off on a sour note. Terry gets a visit from Probst informing him that his son, Danny, has been hospitalized, and Terry needs to leave the game to be with his son. Terry understandably agrees, and gets a tearful goodbye with his fellow Ta Keo players. It doesn’t impact much in terms of the game, since Terry was likely to be voted out should Ta Keo have ever lost, but it was still a depressing and unfortunate way for a decent player to go out. Dude should have had the honor of playing his full game without outside life getting in the way, PLUS having to go through the trauma of being far from home when your child is in serious danger. Certainly memorable, but something all involved would have preferred not to happen. Sort of like Penner’s medivac on “Survivor Micronesia”.

Terry’s exit sets the stage for a reunification back into two tribes. New Bayon is stacked with the challenge beasts, and so Ta Keo goes to Tribal Council. Shockingly, given the opportunity to vote Spencer out, Kass does not do so. Instead, allying with Spencer, Abi-Maria, and Ciera, she conspires to vote out her other original-season player Woo. Once again, the season does a good job with playing with strategic expectations, and keeping us guessing at every Tribal Council. Granted, this does label Kass as “Chaos Kass” once again, and gets her voted out at the next Tribal Council, so possibly not the smartest move Kass could have made. Still, hindsight is 20/20, and it did help keep the season exciting, if nothing else. Plus, Kass does get to make the jury, though I’m not exactly happy as to why. The merge comes in the next episode, with 13 people left. Good for helping ensure fan favorites make the jury, but bad in terms of comprehension. For all that I say Kass’ actions got her the boot, it’s really that she was the easiest person to come to a consensus on. Probably the least interesting strategy we’d seen so far this season, and hard to follow due to the sheer number of players left. Yeah, I get why production merged this early, but it was still a stupid decision.

Speaking of stupid decisions, it’s time to talk about hidden immunity idols. Now that challenges were individual, they couldn’t be hidden at challenges anymore, since it would be too easy to get them with everyone focussed on their own work. Instead, you now found clues that had them hidden in obscure places in or around camp. Not bad, but what we’d seen before, and the difficulty in obtaining the idol varied. Kelley, for instance, would have to crawl under the shelter in order to get her idol, while Jeremy got his second idol just by walking away from camp at night, with little to no risk. The variation in quality just makes the whole thing unfair, and it’s all inherently less interesting to watch than what came before.

Fortunately, the unpredictability that has characterized the season so far continues. After Kass’ boot, Kelley remains on the outs, but uses this and her idol to negate a record-setting (for the time) number of votes, leading to the elimination of Savage. From here up until pretty much the finale, it’s just a series of blindsides, with the groups swinging between “The Witch’s Coven” and other two and threesomes to form what Stephen termed “Voting Blocs”. Again, good for unpredictability, but loses points for overuse of the term “Voting Blocs”. It wasn’t even that original idea. You could argue they were seen as early as “Survivor The Amazon”, or possibly even “Survivor Marquesas”, depending on how liberal you wanted to be. It was a fun watch, but it wasn’t as innovative as the show made it out to be.

That about covers the player-implemented twists up until the finale, but the producer-implemented ones kept coming every couple of episodes. First, players were given the option to step out of an immunity challenge to race for a “secret advantage”. No one knew what it was, and players were given very little time to make the decision. Spencer and Stephen both swam for it, with Stephen ultimately getting the “Steal-A-Vote” advantage, at the time unseen. Powerful, earned in a unique and exciting way, and the potential to flip the game? Yeah, despite what we see in later season, I’d call this one a winner. It even has a funny conclusion, with Stephen stealing Joe’s vote, leading to Joe technically voting for himself, only to himself go home as a result of a split vote. To follow this twist (the vote steal, not the boot of Stephen) up, production offered to build everyone a better shelter (the weather was causing people to basically shut down), if a majority would sit out of an immunity challenge. A decent prisoner’s dilemma, but I would argue not executed well. No real drama came of it, because people had too long to think. This might have worked if we had seen the negotiations, but we didn’t. Most everyone sat out, and Joe won again. Even when he did lose, Jeremy’s aforementioned “meat-shield” strategy kept him safe for a bit. On the whole, while I’m glad the cast was saved from further strife, this was just unnecessary.

And so we come to the finale, a big blowout at first that leads to a predictable conclusion with no surprises. The final six vote came down to a 3-3 split, with both Kelley and Jeremy playing their remaining idols, leading to a 0-0 vote. A revote resulted in a tie again, which would normally mean rocks, but this time would have only one person eligible. As a result, we got to see an actual negotiation for the boot go down, leading to Kimmi’s ejection. A boot so complex, Probst had to chart it out during the reunion show. A little hokey, and I know a lot of people hate on it, but I think it continues the trend of unpredictability that has so far been this season’s greatest strength. Sadly, it’s also the END of that trend, as the rest of the finale goes predictably. While the majority changed at about every Tribal Council, Jeremy didn’t face real opposition until about this point. Fortunately, with Spencer as the omnipresent strategist, and Kelley as the underdog that just won’t die, there was real question about whether Jeremy could win in the end against them. This notion was killed prior to Final Tribal Council, with Kelley eliminated and Spencer being so mean to her before leaving in front of the jury that all chances of his victory were shot. Add onto that Jeremy’s gender reveal of his unborn child at Final Tribal Council, and the vote was unsurprisingly 10-0-0 in favor of Jeremy. A well-deserved victory, but a foreseeable one for at least the last half of the finale.

Despite my complaints, on the whole I would say that this season actually did pretty well in terms of twists. While there were a fair number of misses, they tended to be minor things, or things that only look worse in hindsight. In general, this season had new, innovative twists that largely kept things up in the air, while still being recognizably “Survivor”. In a season that largely focusses on strategy, there’s little more you could ask for.

Score: 9 out of 10.

OVERALL

Aesthetically, Cambodia was and still is a breath of fresh air for the show. Bear in mind that for the previous 12 seasons, the show had been to precisely three countries: Samoa, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Admittedly, two different areas of the Philippines, but the fact remains that from a visual and cultural standpoint, the show was getting stale. Not a lot new to draw on, making a lot of the seasons blend together in terms of colors and visuals. This would get more pronounced when, shortly after this season, the show made what seems to be a permanent move to Fiji. As such, Cambodia visually feels like the last “Hurrah” of creativity. Stunning vistas, unusual wildlife, and a varied and bright color pallet really help this season stand out on a purely visual level.

That said, Cambodia is a season that suffers pretty badly on rewatch, though not always fairly. Some criticisms simply come from trends started by Cambodia, which I’ll get to later. For now, though, one aspect of Cambodia that I will say doesn’t work overall is engagement. I’m not talking here about keeping interest in the season (we’ll get to that), but to the buy-in of the characters I mentioned earlier. I stand behind the statement that voting in this cast gave those of us voting a lot of buy-in, that let us forgive the weaker aspects the cast may have had. The flaw in this, however, is that it REQUIRES the viewer to be an active participant in the casting process. If you’re someone getting into “Survivor” after this season, or just someone who didn’t vote for whatever reason, the cast seems a LOT weaker. Without that buy-in, a lot of the early boots are forgettable, and even some of the later boots don’t stand out, and you just wonder why they were even shown. This means, in a sense, that this season suffers on rewatch, and as that’s one of my main criteria for overall enjoyment of the season, Cambodia suffers in the rankings for it.

Before we go on, one more word of warning: I can’t talk about Cambodia without talking about the seasons that came after it, as trends there have had a direct effect on the perception of Cambodia as a whole. Thus, I’m going to be breaking my cardinal rule, and talking about the seasons that came after it, to help explain the overall perception of Cambodia. I’m going to talk in very general terms, but I cannot guarantee no spoilers. Therefore, if you have not watched any of the seasons post-Cambodia, I highly encourage you to stop reading here, or else scroll down to the “Abstract” section.

For better or for worse, Cambodia is seen seen as the start of the 30’s of “Survivor”. Technically “Survivor Worlds Apart” holds that distinction, but in terms of buildup and legendary feel, Cambodia really does feel like the start of something new. Thus, it gets to be the standard-bearer for all that happens in the 30’s. And, to put it mildly, the 30’s are not looked on positively by the fanbase as a whole. An emphasis on strategy over character. Strategic game over social game (at least a perceived one; wait until the retrospectives on “Survivor Ghost Island” and “Survivor Island of the Idols” for my thoughts on that). Twists being thrown out with no rhyme or reason. Time taken away from what the viewers want to focus on what production wants. Overall, a perceived decline in the quality of the show, and as such, Cambodia gets a lot of flak for it. And I cannot deny, Cambodia did start some trends that are a negative part of the show. Cambodia, for instance, coined the term “Big Moves”, which has since been used as justification to shift more emphasis to strategic play rather than social play. This was annoying even on Cambodia, and a trend in the wrong direction. As Probst himself used to say, “Survivor” is a social game. Therefore, that is where the emphasis should be. I’ve also mentioned my annoyance at things like “voting blocs”, and having too many people stay too late in the game. Again, these are problems in later seasons, and I can’t deny that Cambodia both started them and suffered for them. Perhaps most disappointingly, Cambodia started the trend of “invisible” players making the finals. To a greater or lesser extent, “invisible” players, or at least players we didn’t get much depth on, had been a part of “Survivor” since the beginning, usually more so in seasons with more players. However, these players usually left in the pre-merge, or the VERY early merge at the latest. With Cambodia? A third of the players in the finale (Kimmi and Keith), were shown as having no chance to win going in, despite reportedly playing good games that didn’t get shown, thus weakening the mystery of who would win. Sadly, given Cambodia’s overall success, production took the lesson that viewers wouldn’t care if a member in the finale had basically no screentime, and thus we saw it more and more, to the detriment of good gameplay. All these things, it’s fair to blame Cambodia for starting.

I think it’s important, however, to remember that Cambodia was actually quite well-received when it came out. Most reviews I saw were positive, and the few that weren’t were more along the lines of “Not my cup of tea” than “The season that ruined ‘Survivor’”. My guess is that production saw these same reviews, said “We want more seasons like this”, but took the wrong lessons from Cambodia. As I hope I’ve emphasized by now, what makes Cambodia great is the unpredictability brought about as a result of the PLAYERS. Production, however, saw that they’d tried new twists, concluded that this was what the viewers liked (along with, again, “Big Moves” and not needing every player in the finale to have a story), and thus threw more and more of them into the game until it became a bloated scavenger hunt instead of an intricate social game. This is something I cannot argue with viewers hating.

What I CAN argue, however, is that Cambodia is not at fault for the decisions of production. Just because production took the wrong lessons from Cambodia does not make Cambodia, in and of itself, bad. Yes, it probably did lead to the inundation of twists we’re now stuck with, but if you look at the numbers, Cambodia didn’t do that much-in game from a production standpoint. We had the two-tribe to three-tribe shakeup. A bit unfair, but new and exciting. We had the steal-a-vote advantage. Led to some good comedy, and didn’t overstay its welcome. And we had them give the players a new shelter after some social dilemmas. Could have been better, but doesn’t intrude on the game too much. We had idols hidden at challenges. Clever and innovative, without adding any new advantages to the game. Yes, despite evidence to the contrary, Cambodia only had ONE new advantage (two if you count the Angkor idol) into the game. hardly the oversaturation we see today. And remember, these twists were popular for a reason. These twists WORKED. Most of them get hate today, not for their content, but for their overabundance. Cambodia does not have that problem. It should not be tarred with the same brush as later seasons just because of dumb production decisions that may have been influenced by it.

Finally, however, there is one criticism Cambodia has had since its airing that cannot be denied. Love it or hate it, this season is very much a “strategy” season rather than a “character” season. I wouldn’t say the season has NO character (I mean, Keith Nale is on it, and he’s pretty much nothing but a character), but the fact remains, as evidenced by the forced Spencer arc mentioned earlier, that this season favors strategy above all else. Personally, as someone who enjoys talking about and dissecting the strategy, I found it engaging and innovative. However, my preferences are by no means universal, and I cannot deny that if you’re someone who prefers seasons with big characters above all else, you will not find much to enjoy in Cambodia. I still think the hate is overrated (just because something isn’t your cup of tea doesn’t make it “bad” overall), but the lack of universal appeal does make Cambodia a rare case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

SCORE: 34 out of 40.

ABSTRACT

Cambodia is very much a love-it-or-hate-it season. The emphasis on the strategic is pronounced, and while there’s not no character, fans who primarily want big characters will not find what they are looking for this season. That said, this season is wroth a watch for any fan of strategy, though as so much of this season is seeped in the lore of previous seasons, I would not recommend watching this season early in your “Survivor” viewing career.

-Matt

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Winners at War” Episode 12: Little Ozlettes

Congratulations to user bwburke94 for correctly identifying last episode’s blog title as coming courtesy of Devon Pinto of “Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new show topper. As befits a “Legends” season such as this, we have referenced an element of seasons past, but done it to a greater extreme than we have in the past. I’m talking, of course, about the area of romance. We’ve seen the loving relationship between Boston Rob and Amber develop of the course of “Survivor All-Stars”. We’ve seen the multiple PDA’s of Amanda and Ozzy on “Survivor Micronesia”. We’ve seen countless contestants, as Malcolm Freberg so eloquently put it on “Survivor Philippines”, “Go booty blind.” But now, we have a love story to trump them all. I’m talking, of course, about the romance blooming between Ben and Tony. Look at them, ladies and gentleman! That is a full-on bridal carry we’re seeing from the happy couple! If that isn’t the epitome of love, I don’t know what is!

Don’t believe me? Despite being blindsided at the last vote, Ben takes everything in stride. He compliments Tony on a blindside well put-together, and asks for an explanation. While Ben does later admit to not trusting Tony, this is actually about as good a reaction overall, and I need to give the guy credit for it. Lord knows Jeremy won’t. The man once again goes on about how Ben was once his ride-or-die, but is now not even talking to him. Tony also gets in on the action, saying that Ben took the blindside poorly. Is there just something we’re not seeing here? From what I’m getting, it looks like Ben is a pretty textbook example of how to handle a blindside.

Contrast with Sarah, who clearly shows us how NOT to handle a blindside. Sarah tells us that before talking to Tony, she told herself to calm down and not fly of the handle. This is immediately contrasted with her constant swearing, along with her and Tony talking over each other heatedly. While neither burns the bridge completely, as both want to continue working with the other, neither fully trusts the other at this point. This sends Tony in particular into a panic, forcing him to come clean to Ben about his idol to build trust. Ben admits that he doesn’t fully return Tony’s trust, but isn’t ready to throw him out just yet. Jeremy needs to go first.

Speaking of Jeremy, we get to see more of Ben’s supposed “hatred” of him the following morning. Jeremy asks Ben how he slept. Ben responds “Good”, and goes to have a wash in the ocean. Jeremy complains to Kim, along with pretty much anyone within earshot, about how this means that Ben can’t stand him, let alone hold a polite conversation! The evidence is there to see! He… answered your question then went off to do something that’s a part of many people’s morning routines… Ok, Jeremy, I’m really not getting the “Ben hates you.” vibe you’re saying is there. Maybe it’s just because of how obvious his animosity was towards Adam back when Adam was still in the game, but it really seems like Ben is at worst indifferent to Jeremy. Jeremy tries to set Kim on the anti-Ben path, but Kim has other ideas. Kim is still not happy to have Tony in the game, especially given the connection between him and Sarah that is becoming more obvious by the day. As such, she wants him gone, and so starts talking up the idea to some people.

More on that later, though, as we have to go over to the Edge of Extinction! Yes, why delve deeper into the tribe dynamics of the players still in the game, particularly when they aren’t named Tony, when we could talk about the people who managed to get themselves voted out! Hell, we don’t even spend any time on the “toughness” of Edge of Extinction, as we’re too busy earning fire tokens. In a callback to the log-moving challenge which Ethan makes blatant, everyone must move a pile of coconuts from the back of the island to their shelter, one coconut at a time. Not a bad challenge to call back to, but this one is a definite downgrade. While I get making the challenge easier by removing the vertical element, since it cause medical to come out for Ethan, making it a race is a move I can’t get behind. When you had the focus be on endurance, you could follow individual stories, and get involved in the individual struggles as each player worked to accomplish the goal. By making it a race, the interest now comes in who’s ahead and behind, something hard to follow in a marathon, particularly one without clearly defined paths to follow. As such, we’re mostly told who is and isn’t doing well, with some individual stories sprinkled in there. Adam, of course, acknowledges that he is not cut out for this challenge, though the show feels the need to rub salt in the wound by cutting back to him having trouble over and over. One confessional would have been enough. Boston Rob gets an early lead, but manages to take a bad fall and damage his elbow, causing no small amount of bleeding. Still, the man finishes the challenge, even if he doesn’t place. According to him and Amber, this is to show that he “never gives up”. Because that was ever in doubt? Natalie and Sophie finish first and second, respectively. Unsurprising for Natalie at this point, but good for Sophie. Yes, she had a few challenge wins under her belt from “Survivor South Pacific”, and yes, she was probably better fed than most anyone left, but even so, a second place finish is quite impressive, especially over some of the athletes on the Edge of Extinction. Yul comes in third, while Tyson and Parvati take a combined fourth place. The only real “race” is between Danni and Wendell for sixth, which Wendell takes. All winners earn two fire tokens, which is good for them, but I feel that better scenes could have been had back at the camp.

Or perhaps not, as what we’re treated to at the Koru camp is Tony’s advertised “Spy Nest”. It’s underwhelming to say the least. Even if you’re not a big fan of the Spy Shack or the Spy Bunker, you can at least admire the effort that went into making them. The “Spy Nest” is… Tony climbing a tree. A decent feat of strength, to be sure, but not on the same level as the previously mentioned spy hideouts. To add insult to injury, the only person we see him encounter is Sarah, who knows that he’s there, and tells him to get down. He does, but the two still have an argument on the beach regarding the previous vote. Nick overhears this, and takes it as his cue to start whittling down the threats, and make an end-game alliance for himself. Said end-game alliance turns out to be himself, Michele, and Denise, a sort of “level playing field” as Michele calls it. Got to admit, the alliance isn’t a bad idea of any of them. Since the alliance is fundamentally anti-Tony, it gives Nick and Michele something to boast about in the endgame, while giving Denise a chance to coast, and hope her ouster of Sandra is enough to net her the win. They bring in Kim and Ben as a fourth and fifth, mostly because of also being anti-Tony. This ramps up the strategy discussion, as pretty much everyone but Jeremy and Sarah (and Tony, of course) is now on board to get rid of Tony. Nick in particular is an impressive swing. I’d have said Sarah before Tony, given who he’s blindsided and not blindsided so far. But hey, kudos to Nick for not being too tied down in this game.

This interesting strategy is then interrupted by an idol hunt. Again. Maybe the people who complain about idols have a point. At first it just seems like a Tony and Ben hunt, but then most everyone else joins in. I must admit, while this episode does not have the same humor as the last one, Nick returning to a significant knot in a tree and saying “It’ll be here one of these days.” got a chuckle out of me. We do take time out of the hunt to clarify Ben’s position on Tony. While Ben does open up a bit more to Tony, saying that Kim his after him, he doesn’t give away the whole alliance, showing that he’s willing to work with Tony, but doesn’t fully trust him. This is further proven by Ben trying to hide his idol find from Tony, which doesn’t work. Ben comes clean, and the pair celebrate, the actual reason behind the aforementioned “bridal carry”. So help me, I already used the “chocolate and peanut butter” quote for a previous blog, and the “Ozlettes” confessional is one of my favorites! I just had to use it!

Oh, right, I suppose I should explain how the chocolate and peanut butter thing plays in. Our immunity hallenge today is “When it Rains, it Pours” from “Survivor Africa”. you may remember this as the challenge where people have to stand with their hand above their head, and attached to a bucket. Falling or dropping the hand leads to a soaking, with the last person standing winning immunity, and in this case, fire tokens. Also, the last man and woman standing each win immunity Because that makes so much sense this late in the game, and in now way detracts from the victory. Still, this challenge is a classic we hadn’t seen in a while, and definitely deserving of being on an all-winners season. Shame none of the people who’d played this challenge before could play, but oh well.

Ah, but this challenge is tougher, for you see, now you cannot support yourself with your other hand! OOOH! Ok, to be fair, this definitely DOES make the challenge tougher, I just don’t think it’s quite the game changer Probst does.

Of course, this challenge is best known as one that regularly offers food temptations. Ben requests chocolate and peanut butter, though he does not go full Jenna Morasca and Heidi Strobel and offer to strip for it. Indeed, Ben misses out, with Kim and Michele stepping down. This hands Denise immunity as Sarah had previously dropped. As for the men, the temptation is there for both Nick and Tony, the two men left. Tony, however, is determined to continue his win streak, and Nick’s drop out is bought at the price of one fire token. A move he will later regret, but it’s too late to take back. This, once again, means our first episode half is almost entirely focussed on Tony, and once again, is mostly pointless. Now to be fair, this episode does do a much better job than the last one, as there ARE plot points already established that don’t specifically revolve around Tony. Jeremy and Ben’s feud, along with the formation of the Nick-Michele-Denise alliance are both such points, and both help buoy this episode up. Plus, I can’t fault the show for focussing on Tony, since he is such a big character.

Really, my issue with the Tony focus this episode is less because it makes for a bad episode or because it’s undeserved, but really because it’s a disservice to everyone else left. Look, Tony is a big character, even an enjoyable one, but to focus on him to the exclusion of others is really a detriment. As “Survivor Samoa” demonstrated, it takes more than one player to make for a good season. And while the other players have their moments in their own right, it feels at times like there’s Tony, and then there’s everyone else. Part of that is just sheer energy level. It’s hard to compete with Tony in that department. The issue is not with showing Tony. The issue is with showing him to the exclusion of everyone else. This is a LEGENDS season. These are all great players. We should be getting ALL their highlights. Despite my earlier comparison to “Survivor Samoa”, I think “Survivor Ghost Island” might be the more apt comparison here. You see, “Survivor Samoa” had a weak cast overall, so it made sense to focus more on Russell Hantz than anyone else. “Survivor Ghost Island” had an interesting cast throughout, but instead mostly focussed on Wendell and Domenick to the exclusion of all others. Again, this is a LEGENDS season. These people must be giving you some good bits. You can still show the highlights of Tony, but give us more from the others so it doesn’t just feel like “The Tony Show” all the time. Some people aren’t that big on Tony, or at least want some variety in the show. Not to mention, if you keep teasing the “Tony’s antics catch up with him plot” only for that not to happen, there’s a feeling of letdown. Further, this limits your storyline to one of two outcomes: Either Tony wins, in which case the focus on him makes sense, but makes your conclusion way too obvious (“Survivor Ghost Island” at least had the benefit of some mystery of who would win out between Domenick and Wendell), or Tony loses, and this plotline is being dragged out at the expense of the other players.

Ok, ok, rant over. There’s actually good stuff in this episode, so let’s talk about it. With Tony immune Nick and Kim admit that their plan to get him out is now “on the back burner.” As such, they must decide on a new target. Sarah would be the obvious choice, but Kim has a bond with Sarah, and so doesn’t want her to go. Thus, we default to Jeremy, who seems to be the consensus boot. Only Michele expresses any disappointment at needing to vote him out, and as she herself admits, there’s not a lot she can do. We need misdirection, though, and in comes Tony to provide. Ben opens up to Tony a bit more, and admits that Nick was in on the plan to get him out. He also says that Kim is still rallying the troops. Tony does the logical thing and checks in with Nick, who gives the worst performance of the episode, feigning a memory lapse as to why he didn’t talk to Tony. He lets his alliance know about Ben’s slip, but the damage is done. Tony wants Kim out, which he pitches to Jeremy, naturally, but also Ben and Sarah. This… is actually a really smart move on Tony’s part. While Ben is a part of Kim’s alliance, he also has somewhat of a relationship with Tony. And even if he doesn’t want to work with Tony down the road, voting out Kim would effectively give him her place in the alliance, and keep around another player (Jeremy) who can compete with Tony in challenges. If you’re Sarah, well, Tony’s your ally, and thus voting out the player continually targeting him is a good move. Unlike last episode, where there’s room for debate about whether this was a smart or a dumb on Tony’s part, this is clearly a smart. About the only person who might be upset at the ouster of Kim would be Denise, who has a history of not caring if her allies get the axe. Thus, no bridges burnt, unlike last episode.

That said, there’s only four, and Nick’s not budging on voting for Jeremy. Jeremy, for his part, tries to talk Ben around, but to no avail. Salvation seems to come in the form of Michele’s 50/50 advantage, which she gives to Jeremy. A bit of a risk, since she might need it next episode, but again, Michele doesn’t have much incentive to keep Kim around, and if it buys her another close ally (albeit one without any real power) so much the better. Whether or not Jeremy will play it is our mystery as we head off to Tribal Council. Once again, it’s a whisperfest, though one done better than the previous couple we’ve had. There are two key reasons why. One is Probst’s horse-race-like commentary as people start getting up, which was brief, but hilarious. More importantly, we actually get subtitles this time around, thus making the whispering easy to follow. We’re left in the dark on some specifics, to keep up the mystery, but we get a general sense of the movement. Tony is a bit too blaze in talking to Jeremy about doing something, which makes Kim paranoid and start double-checking with everybody. Soon Jeremy and Tony are doing the same, which leads to paranoia about a Sarah vote, and Sarah begging for an idol play. This also brings into focus that Nick and Ben are our swing votes tonight, which will help make the result clearer in a bit. Not the most exciting Tribal Council ever, but a fun, clear journey for once, and brought to a fantastic bookend with Denise shutting everyone up, in a tone that clearly says “I’m about order, and I’ve had enough of this mess.” That said I do have to dock Denise points since it does seem to piss off Jeremy.

In a contrast to our last standoff, no one actually plays an advantage. Tony announces his idol (I’d say Tony did a dumb by revealing that he has an idol, but from what I can gather from the conversations we heard, it was already public knowledge), and intends to play it for Sarah, but Sarah talks him down. Jeremy nearly plays the 50/50 advantage, even getting egged on by Tony, but decides not to. Since we saw even Michele vote for him, I figure this dooms him. Jeremy must have known something we didn’t, though, as he only receives three votes, Kim going home with five. It’s not entirely clear how it happened, but given that Nick and Ben were presented as the swing votes, I’d say they flipped to the side they were more confidant in. Tony may be chaotic, but he is good at projecting the image of confidence, and sometimes on “Survivor”, that’s enough. Kim may not have been the biggest character this season, but she was one of the titans in terms of gameplay from her first season, and that ouster deserves respect. She may never have had a foothold in this game, but like Aubry on “Survivor Game Changers” it’s impressive that she made it this far at all. She splits her three fire tokens between Denise, Sarah, and Michele. Classy.

This season is getting better, though I’m still not satisfied. We’re seeing more of the other players, but overall this still feels like “The Tony Show”. Don’t get me wrong, “The Tony Show” is definitely entertaining, but I came to see “Survivor Winners at War”. I would like to see more people than just Tony. As such, it’s time for another…

TOP 10!

Yes, I normally do “Top 5 and Bottom 5”, but this list does not lend itself to looking at the negatives well. You see, we’ve had a couple of memorable exits this season. From Adam’s “Always” to Sophie’s crotch idol, these people have had exits that stick with us. Granted, Kim’s is not winning any awards, but the next two episodes are extra long, and I’ve been mulling this subject over for a few weeks, so let’s talk about the best exits the show has ever seen.

A couple of ground-rules before we start. One exit per season. I don’t want this list to half come from the current season. “Exit” in this case will refer to anything that happens between Probst saying “I’ll read the votes” and Probst’s final words of wisdom (or fire token willing, if need be). Anything else in that area (idol plays, exit confessionals, Probst’s words of wisdom) deserve lists of their own, and thus will not be considered. Also not considered will be the context of the vote out itself. This is purely the reaction to the votes being read, and the torch snuffing. Only proper vote outs will count. No impromptu Tribal Councils, quits, or Advantagegeddons will be considered. Finally, the reaction can come from anybody, not just the person being voted out. Other than that, anything goes, including placement of the player voted out. No separate lists for first and last vote outs or anything. Let’s get things started with…

10. “No.” (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”)-First entry on the list, and already I’m cheating. Yes, technically idol plays are not considered here, and most of what makes the elimination of Scot Pollard interesting is centered around an immunity idol. That said, the idol was never actually played, and the interaction that makes this so memorable did happen in the time frame specified. With Scot and Jason being such cocky villains, seeing them taken down a peg is just so satisfying. Their looks of dejection just make this a very satisfying exit to watch. Plus, there is hilarity in seeing Probst dwarfed by a contestant. I keep it this low since it more a reaction to a lack of an idol play than a vote, but still a fun moment nonetheless.

9. “I’ve been Bamboozled!” (“Survivor All-Stars”)-From the beginning of “Survivor All-Stars”, it was clear that Richard Hatch had zero cares. He knew he wasn’t going to win, and so was just there to screw with everybody. And what better way to cap it off than with an obviously-faked over the top surprise reaction to a vote he knew was coming? The man even did a little dance on his way out of Tribal Council. Always good for bonus points. It goes a little over-the-top for my taste, but still enjoyable nonetheless.

8. “ONE MINUTE!” (“Survivor Exile Island”)-I was tempted to put the ouster of Dan from this season in this spot, but that one really requires the context of the whole episode to have meaning. Instead, we turn to Shane. Not exactly the most “stable” of contestants, you knew when Shane’s time came, it wasn’t going to go quietly. Sure enough, Shane gave us his characteristic outburst upon leaving, turning back from Probst to rub it in everyone’s faces about how he was going to be eating an ice cream bar soon. Delightfully childish, though admittedly somewhat subdued by Shane’s standards. I expected him to mock the votes as well, and this comparatively underwhelming performance prevents the admittedly memorable final line pre-torch-snuff from landing higher on the list.

7. “DAYUM!” (“Survivor China”)-In most of these cases, the longer the reaction, the better. It’s not enough in most cases to give a pre-snuff speech. You need to talk through the votes as well, or at least have a conversation. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a word, and less is more. Chicken’s “DAYUM” is one well-remembered throughout the “Survivor” fandom, and iconic enough on it’s own to need no further embellishment. Simple and clean is the way that this reaction is.

6. “At least you made the jury.” (“Survivor Cambodia”)-I’m no fan of Abi-Maria’s, but when her snark is directed at a full-of-himself Andrew Savage, I’m much more ok with her. While this is technically related to an idol play, Savage still reacted to the votes with despair, and took his eviction of very few votes with his usual grace and maturity. And by that, I mean he had a bit of a silent tantrum, even flipping off the remaining players as he left. Not very classy, but satisfying to see Savage brought so low after being so high-and-mighty most of the game. If an exit can make me like Abi-Maria, then you know it’s a good one.

5. “Two ‘B’s’ Guys” (“Survivor Thailand”)-Ah, now we get into people commenting on the votes as well as the result. Admittedly, a lot of the impact of the boot of Robb Zbacnik comes from the character development he had gotten over the course of the show. Even without it, though, there’s humor to be found in his need to call out every spelling mistake made with his name. Every. Single. Time. Apparently, the name “Robb” with two “B’s” was just too much for the Sook Jai tribe. Robb, if your reading this, take comfort in that I remembered the second “b” in your name.

4. “Sheep to the Slaughter” (“Survivor Game Changers”)-Tony is known for never shutting up. Sandra is known for never taking an insult lying down. Put these two together, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a memorable exit. Tony’s declaration of the idiocy of his tribemates is nothing new, but Sandra’s need to taunt him as he exits elevates this to a knew level. To use the old cliche, they argue like a married couple. Plus, this was the birth of “Queen stays Queen”, and it deserves respect for that.

3. “Who flipped?” (“Survivor Cagayan”)-Ah yes. Perhaps the most iconic post-vote conversation to come out of the latter half of “Survivor”. You knew Sarah’s boot was going to be on the list somewhere. Tony’s over-the-top reaction to the outcome and imitation of Spencer made this one memorable on its own, but it had so many other great moments. Sarah’s simple inquiry as to who flipped, leading to the slow realization that Kass was here for the Chaos. Spencer’s iconic “0 chance of winning the game.” remark. Kass’ flippant “There’s a lot of game left.” response. All iconic, and all worthy of a spot on this list. The only reason it isn’t higher is because it kind of leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, given the vitriol occasionally directed at Kass.

2. Penner’s Dance (“Survivor Philippines”)-Forgive me for stating the blindingly obvious, but Jonathan Penner does not take anything seriously, least of all his third exit from “Survivor”. Not content with merely mocking Probst, Penner decided to mock the music as well. Dancing his way out of Tribal Council ia always a plus, but he (badly) tried to whistle the usual music that plays over an exit. Then, just when you think he’s gone. He comes back again. And again! Hilarity! It even left Probst at a loss for words; that’s bonus points! So, what keeps it from the top spot? The way it was shot. I know shooting in the dark is hard, but it’s REALLY hard to see Penner’s dance once he gets on the trail out of Tribal Council. I only really saw the full thing in edited pictures with the exposure changed. That made it funny, but shouldn’t be necessary for full enjoyment. That said, there was also his refusal of a hug from Abi-Maria which gets my respect. And yes, this entry is why Sarah Dawson’s kiss didn’t make the list. Had I allowed multiple entries from the same season, it would have been on here for sure.

1. “Scumbags” (“Survivor Guatemala”)-Maybe it’s just my love for “Survivor Guatemala” bleeding through, but this to me is the quintessential “Pissed Off” exit. No rage. Nor breaking of things. No gnashing of teeth. Just quiet, cold fury. You don’t need to see Judd’s rage. you can feel it through your tv screen. All all delivered in the trademark Judd style. Admittedly, no “man” in there, but you can’t have everything. Still iconic nonetheless.

And with that said, it is time to end off this blog. But it is not the end for you! Once again, I’m looking to see who can figure who said the quote this blog draws its title from and the season! Simply comment the name of the person who said this quote, and on what season! First person to do so gets their username listed at the top of the blog. As a reminder, U.S. seasons only, so don’t overtax yourself, and I’ll see you next week!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

“Survivor” What-Ifs?: Pearl Islands

Well, with the off season soon to turn “On” again, the writing bug has bitten once more, and I’d like to get one more of these out before we talk about Season 40… I mean Season 39! Yes, yes, there is still one season to go before the fabled “all-winners”, but for now, I’d like to focus on something a bit earlier in the timeline. As early as we’ve had in these blogs so far. Yes, it’s time for us to go back in time, to the days of “Survivor Pearl Islands”.

Before we start, though, a couple of quick notes. As you probably know by now, this blog will contain SPOILERS for how the season turns out. If for some reason you haven’t seen “Survivor Pearl Islands”, stop reading this blog right now and go watch it. Really. It’s that good. But do return when you’re done. Or, you know, just don’t care about spoilers.

Still with us? Good. Now, normally I’d dive right into the scenario, but I should mention that this scenario is not entirely my idea. While I did modify it for a situation I see as being more realistic, this scenario is technically the brainchild of user XX_TR15T1NHO_XX on Reddit. Thank you for your contribution. It is much appreciated.

THE IMPACT: Unsurprisingly, what we’re changing here is the most controversial part of “Survivor Pearl Islands”: The Outcast Twist. What might be surprising is that what I’m changing is that it still happens. Yes, though I’m sure many wonder what a season without the Outcasts at all would have been like, I don’t see the producers NOT doing this twist. Even if it probably ended up being a bad idea, it was also an obvious idea that needed to be done at some point, at it fit the “pirate” theme about as well as anything, so it definitely stays in. What I think could change is the outcome of the challenge. Don’t misunderstand me. Morgan still loses. With how beat down they were that day, I doubt they could have won a staring contest. Drake, on the other hand? Drake had a decent shot. Bear in mind, the Outcasts had a number of advantages in the challenge, even if it was presented as fair. Their set of cells were used for the challenge demonstration, leaving their ground softer. They had the bright idea to use their ribbons on the arms as rope, which made for better rope than the materials everyone else had. Most important, and I still don’t know how they were allowed this, they got to use all six of their tribe in building the pole, which is no small difference in what ends up being a pole-building race. And yet, despite all of these advantages, Drake was not far behind in that challenge. So, I think it’s within the bounds of reason to say that one small change could lead to Drake being the initial victor, with only Morgan losing a member in favor of the Outcasts.

So Drake pulls out a win somehow. Any little thing could have given them the edge. Maybe production takes away one or more of the Outcast’s advantages. Maybe Drake’s cells get used for the demo. Regardless of how it happens, Drake now wins the challenge, with Morgan coming in second. This, of course, means we have one less Tribal Council, and Shawn Cohen doesn’t get voted out this episode. But pretty much everything else still happens the way it does. Osten still quits, Savage still rants against the Outcasts, and I even think they hold the Outcast Tribal Council until the next episode. We might see some of it this episode, but the cliffhanger of “Who gets to come back?” would be too great for the show to pass up. Since we’re in the next episode, we move on to the next section.

THE FALLOUT: Normally, when changing a season this far back, I’d only use vague generalities for this section. However, “Survivor Pearl Islands” comes in the pre-hidden-immunity-idol days, thus making specific prediction easier. True, individual immunity is still a factor, but a slightly more predictable one, so I’ll try my hand at how the season would generally go down, blow-by-blow.

First off, the Outcasts. With only one person to vote back on, they naturally vote back on Burton. It’s not even a contest. Some people may not have wanted Lill around to “ruin their vacation”, but the overwhelming sentiment of the Outcasts was to have one of their tribe win it all, and it was pretty much universally agreed that Burton was their best option.

So Burton comes back, and here we have the first major change beyond just one person coming back: Burton is now on Morgan pre-merge. Remember, the only reason Burton ended up on Drake in our timeline was because Lill was with him, and pulled a Morgan buff. With only Morgan losing, Burton now has no choice but to go to Morgan. And with that, any delusions about Drake having power come the merge go out the window. On the surface, losing Osten for Burton looks like it gives Drake a 6-4 edge. But don’t forget, the only reason Drake ended up winning out in our timeline was because Burton had to play nice with Drake since he ended up back on that tribe. And Lill had an axe to grind with Savage, and Burton was loyal to Lill, so Drake it was. In this timeline, Burton has neither incentive, so you can bet that he’s declaring himself Morgan Strong. Not only does this give Morgan a solid five, Burton can now spill the inner workings of Drake to them, giving them even more of an edge.

Further working against Drake is that they were a fractious bunch. It’s hard to remember, given how effectively they dominated overall, but the Drakes did not particularly like each other. Shawn and Jonny Fairplay both played nice when they needed to, but really didn’t want the Rupert-Sandra-Christa threesome around. Combine that with a solid Morgan five with no clear cracks, and I’m guessing both of them flip to give Morgan a 7-3 majority.

So, with that settled, Rupert goes home, right? I don’t think so. In this alliance, Savage is still calling the shots, and he and Rupert had a working relationship. Note that even in our timeline, his alliance alone didn’t choose to target Rupert. True, he had immunity, but we don’t see them discussing it even before he has immunity. No, I think Savage sets up a “Take out the weak” mentality, and so Sandra and Christa are the primary targets. Of the two, though it pains me to say it, I think Sandra goes out, depriving us of a season of Sandra. I’m sure many of you are saying “Blasphemy!”, right now, but I think Sandra probably would have been the target. Savage wanted out the “Wimpy little non-leaders” as he said in “Survivor Cambodia”, and remember, he holds a grudge. Remember Sandra taking the Morgan’s tarp after an early reward challenge? Remember how aggravated al the Morgans were with her? I don’t think Savage would have forgotten that, and I think he would have thrown his weight around to ensure that she left, with Fairplay, Shawn, and Burton going along because they have no choice. Sandra’s a great social player, but as we saw on “Survivor Game Changers”, sometimes the numbers are just insurmountable.

So, Morgan’s up 7-2 now. This means that Morgan does that Pagonging we’d expect, right? Well, yes and no. Things are obviously better for Morgan in this timeline, but I don’t think things are as straightforward as one might think. Again, Savage was big on that “keep the strong” thing, but Savage also holds grudges. And apart from Sandra and Jonny Fairplay, who did Savage hate the most? Why, the person who came back from the Outcasts of course! Even in this timeline, he still declares they “Do not deserve to be here”, and with a now comfortable majority (Rupert also holds a grudge, so I doubt he’s willing to work with Fairplay or Shawn ever again), I think he turns on Burton. Since the next immunity was basically just a popularity contest, someone like Ryan O. or Tijuana probably wins. With Burton vulnerable, Savage strikes, and Burton becomes the first member of the jury. Hell, I think Savage probably pulls in Rupert and Christa, both to get on good terms with a potential ally, and to make sure Burton’s boot is unanimous.

The next vote afterward is pretty straightforward. Savage, still bitter about Fairplay’s comments at the last reward steal, votes out Fairplay. Yes, this means no “Dead Grandma” lie. We’ll come back to that in the next section. But it’s the vote afterward where things get really interesting. You see, the most popular theory I’ve seen online for if the Outcasts don’t happen is “Morgan dominates, and Savage wins, because Savage was the leader of the Morgans.” Personally, this never rang true for me. Oh, I’m definitely sure Morgan would dominate, and Savage would definitely do better than in our timeline. But for me, Savage’s view of the game is too simplistic, and his moralizing wouldn’t have rung true with everybody. The other Morgans respected him, sure, but as the game got nearer to the end, I think greed would have overcome the Morgans, especially with vengeful Drakes like Fairplay and Shawn whispering in their ear. And here’s where I think things split. Ryan O. was probably going to stick with Savage. The “shields” strategy works in his favor. But Tijuana and Darrah? At some point, they were going to split. Darrah was most on the outs of the remaining Morgans, as the alternate target to Lill at her boot. Tijuana, while generally loyal, was smart enough not to throw her game away for Savage, and would have felt she had the social bonds to survive. Shawn is still probably the next to go, but I think here Tijuana and Darrah approach Rupert and Christa about developing a foursome to take out Savage, which I think they go for. Rupert probably gets a confessional about being conflicted about voting out his “buddy”, but given that he still believes in (loyal) Drakes, with some prompting from Christa, he probably goes for it. Thus, Savage goes out at the final six. A better showing than before, but still not a win.

From there, I think Tijuana and Darrah slip back with Ryan O. for the remainder of the season. Now the precedent for voting out the physical powerhouses has been set, and Rupert is now the biggest fish in that pond. There’s no way he wins that final five immunity challenge, since it favored the skinny, so he’s out. Tempting though it would be for Ryan O. to leave here, I think there was still enough “Morgan Loyalty” (or at least fear of reprisal from the jury) to get Christa out. Ryan O. can’t make it past the Final Three, though. Darrah was a challenge beast by this point, and that Final Immunity Challenge did not favor strength, so I’d say Darrah wins, and votes out Ryan O.

Thus, we have a final two of Tijuana and Darrah, with a jury of Burton, Fairplay, Shawn, Savage, Rupert, Christa, and Ryan O. Quite a difference from our own timeline. It’s tough to say who wins in this scenario. I think Tijuana has the better social game of the two, but also burned Savage and Ryan O. harder due to being closer to them. Since they’re only two votes on the jury, though, I’m inclined to end off this section by declaring Tijuana the winner in this timeline.

THE LEGACY: It feels wrong to say, but while by no means a “bad” season, this version of “Survivor Pearl Islands” does not gain the legendary status of the one in our timeline. True, it does have some things going for it that our timeline doesn’t. Savage probably takes Rupert’s place as the “beloved, burned leader” archetype. The zeitgeist that is Rupert is probably even bigger than in our timeline, as while he no longer has an arch-nemesis in Fairplay, he lasts longer and has the arc of bringing back a losing tribe from the brink post-merge. Tijuana is probably a MUCH bigger deal, and gets lauded as having one of the best social games the how had seen up to that point. But the trouble is that the post-merge loses a lot of its momentum in this timeline. True, the Savage Vote is probably the equivalent of the Rupert Vote in our timeline, but the Savage Vote comes two episodes further down the season than the Rupert Vote in our timeline, so you’ve got a lot of season to slog through before things get exciting. There’s some intrigue with “How long can Rupert hang on?”, but it just doesn’t have the excitement that the post-merge in our timeline had. Then there are the moments that just don’t have any equivalent in this timeline. The family visit passes without incident, denying us the “Dead Grandma” lie. With no Rupert vote, there’s no sabotaging the fish. And, perhaps worst of all, we get no “I sear on my two kids I’m gonna screw you and Burton.” The post-merge is intriguing, strategically, and I think this season becomes beloved among hard-core game fans. But, for the everyday viewer, it’s just not as exciting.

So, how does this change our returnee prospects? Well, despite having less of an impact overall, I think “Survivor Pearl Islands” actually initially gets more returnees than in our timeline. Rupert still gets asked back for “Survivor All-Stars”, but I think Tijuana ends up taking Alicia Calaway’s spot. After all, Alicia was seen as kind of a “huh?” choice at the time, and if you’ve got a relatively popular black female winner knocking on your doorstep, you take her on. I do think that Tijuana fades into the background, as while she’s well-liked at the time, she just isn’t as memorable as Sandra is in ours. I’m tempted to bring Savage back for “Survivor All-Stars” as well, but I just don’t see who he can replace. He most closely fits Colby’s archetype, but there’s no way Colby of all people doesn’t come back for “Survivor All-Stars”. “Survivor Micronesia” probably stays the same as well. True, Fairplay doesn’t have the “Dead Grandma” lie to give him infamy, but if they brought back Boston Rob for the potential shown pre-merge, I think they do the same for Fairplay. But, of course, Savage is our big hero of the season, so you know he’s coming back at some point. “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” is his time. Savage, in this timeline, as seen as the robbed, heroic leader of the Morgans, so on a season with a tribe called “Heroes”, there’s no way he doesn’t return. He probably takes Rupert’s spot, but if Rupert stays in the public consciousness enough, I could see Savage overruling Tom Westman as well. Assuming Fairplay still quits “Survivor Micronesia”, we probably don’t have a representative for the “Villains” side, so Natalie Bolton probably comes in in place of Sandra. Even as someone who really likes Sandra, it would be nice to see Natalie Bolton back.

Speaking of Sandra, does she go quietly into that good night of “Survivor” obscurity? If you’re asking that question, clearly you don’t know Sandra. Even if she lost out on a lot of her iconic moments by missing the jury, Sandra had enough arguments pre-merge that I think she gets the nod for “Survivor Cambodia”. Whether she passes the vote I’m not sure, but I think she’s on the ballot, and I could see people like Ryan O. and Darrah being up there as well. I don’t see anyone here getting the nod for “Survivor Caramoan”, since they were just too far in the past at this point. For what it’s worth, Rupert probably still comes back for “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, since that reason didn’t care as much about how iconic you were on your season “Survivor Game Changers” will be our last major discussion for returnees (I don’t think anyone here qualifies for “Edge of Extinction” territory, nor would I wish anyone on that season), as I think Savage, being even more of a zeitgeist than before, probably comes back one more time. If Sandra or someone else does well on “Survivor Cambodia”, they probably come back as well. Let’s say Savage takes JT’s spot, and Sandra keeps the spot she has in our timeline.

Oy, my head hurts from all the different threads to follow in this timeline, but I hope you enjoyed it. “Survivor Pearl Islands” is still a great season, and even in this timeline, I doubt it’s vilified, but rather just seen as kind of ok. You’d have to work hard to make this season bad, but evidently, it’s easy to make it less memorable.

This will probably be the last of these blogs pre-season 39, but even so, more will come at some point in the future, as I’ve discovered a love for this format. As such, the suggestions for future scenarios remains open! A quick reminder of the rules below:

1. One Change Only: This can’t be a whole bunch of things or multiple things going another way to alter the course of a season. This must be one singular event that alters the season in some way. Cascade effects, where one change naturally leads to another, are ok, but they have to be natural and logical. As an example, Shii-Ann not flipping and Chuay Gahn losing the final 10 immunity challenge on “Survivor Thailand” would definitely change things, but those are two independent changes that need to happen, and therefore not for this blog. I should also mention that the change has to be an EVENT, not a play style. Yes, “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” probably goes much differently if Russell Hantz (“Survivor Samoa”) isn’t an asshole to everyone, but apart from that never happening, it’s a change in overall play style, not a single moment. It’s also, as I say, implausible, which leads to my next ground rule…

2. The Change Must Be Realistic: An unlikely change is ok, but it has to be something that COULD have happened, or it’s not worth writing about. Yes, Fang winning the first challenge on “Survivor Gabon” would drastically change the season. Would it ever happen? No. So there’s no point in talking about it.
3. The Change Must Have An Impact: By this, I mean the change has to actually alter the season in some significant way. Simply changing up the boot order is not enough. Someone new has to win, the perception of the season has to change, or both. As an example, I originally planned to do a blog on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”, with a timeline where Candice didn’t flip at the final 9. I thought this could lead to a Heroes Victory. Then I remembered that Russell Hantz plays his idol for himself in that same episode, meaning the flip doesn’t matter, and apart from a slight boot order change, the season as a whole remains untouched. Uninteresting, and therefore not worth talking about.

And there you have it. Hope, once again, that you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, and see you in my next blog, whatever it may be!

-Matt

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Edge of Extinction” “Finale”: Rise of the Quotation Marks

Well, “Survivor”, credit where credit is due: You did it. You managed to give us another first. Many would have thought it impossible after 38 seasons of the show, but they managed it. Yes, I can definitely say without a doubt, this season…

IS THE WORST THING THIS SHOW HAS EVER DONE IN THE ENTIRETY OF ITS EXISTENCE! Look, I’ve tried to be as fair as possible to this season. I tried not to go in hating it on the twist alone. I gave it credit where it earned it. Hell, I would even say some of the merge episodes were pretty good. Not legendary, mind you, but entertaining and worthy of the “Survivor” brand. But that ending. Good Lord, that ending! I had prepared myself for this possibility. I thought I was ok with it, but the more and more I think about it, the more and more it just pisses me off. Yes, “Survivor Fiji” can now rest easy. It has stopped being the general punching bag of bad “Survivor” seasons for me. Be prepared for a number of “Survivor Edge of Extinction” jokes in the future. What could make a season so bad that even the presence of my beloved Aubry cannot earn it any credit?

Well, before we find out, we have to delay talking about this awful “finale” with another round of…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

I’ll keep this one brief, but I feel it’s important to touch on. For all that I give Rick credit for what he was able to do, and how he’s able to win over the jury, I wasn’t impressed with his performance at the previous Tribal Council. The whole “righteous indignation” thing worked at the Ron boot, because Rick had actually been tricked in what could be interpreted as a mean-spirited way. This time, however? He’s just mocking their inability to vote him out. Kind of giving back the whole “mean-spirited” thing, and losing the high ground, Rick.

Moving on to our episode proper, you’d think we’d start out at the fallout of the previous Tribal Council. HA HA! You fool! That’s for seasons that DON’T have 8/9ths of the contestants left in the final episode! Because heaven forbid a great character become an early martyr! Yes, we’re going straight to our “Edge of Extinction” challenge, which is your standard ropes course with a table maze at the end, though with a few cool elements. One is the maze itself, which is distinguishable by having the holes for the balls in separate spots, at the midpoint and the end, rather than side-by-side. The big draw, here, is the bridge to the table maze. Rather than your standard plank puzzle bridge, players use the ropes they’ve been navigating through to build the bridge, which is a new idea that works on “Survivor”, and is pretty challenging. Shame it has to be wasted on as overall lackluster a challenge as this.

Now, with 16 people competing in arguably their most important challenge of their game, we of course need some idea of who’s in it to win it. The smart thing to do would have been to build story arcs for those on the Edge of Extinction, like you would do in a NORMAL season, and then let this challenge be the culmination of said story arcs. This being “Survivor Edge of Extinction” they instead do the dumb thing of giving us little to nothing of most of our players, and instead just have the frontrunners get out early in the challenge. Thus, we quickly learn that only Aurora, Eric, Joey Amazing, and Chris are really in contention. Aubry, despite my hopes and predictions, chokes. Even worse, she chokes on the part of the challenge SHE HAD PRACTICED! No, it does not diminish my love for her, and no, it does not contribute to my newfound hatred for this season. Even if Aubry’s loss could be counted as a “sin”, believe me, it would be the LEAST of the sins here.

Out of these four, Chris is our winner. I suppose of those four, he had the closest thing to a story arc, though I lump his “I didn’t get my perfect game.” storyline with Andrew Savage’s “I’m missing my perfect supermodel wife from my life where everything except ‘Survivor’ is perfect!” storyline: It exists, but is pointless and whiny, serving only to turn me against the character. We get our teary farewell confessionals from our remaining contestants who are now, mercifully out of the game. I suppose it’s decently emotional, but more due to the mirror neurons firing than due to the confessionals themselves actually being emotional.

This leads to our first forced Probst segment, where he talks to Joe about losing the game again. After getting an assurance from Joe that Joe thinks he himself can win, Probst nearly has a heart attack when Joe is noncommittal about returning. Trying to salvage the situation, Probst goes for what I describe as “comedy” only in the loosest sense of the term, going on about Joe’s hair being his weakness. Probst, might I suggest you look up the story of “Samson and Delilah”? You might learn a few things about suggest haircuts.

Getting back to camp, Chris now has the daunting task of integrating himself into a group that has every reason to want him gone, and half of whom he hasn’t even played with prior to this day. To his credit, I think he plays it off as best he can here. He talks about the harshness of Edge of Extinction, and how exhausted he is from playing on it. However, he also highlights the insights he has to the jury, and how he’s willing to talk about them with anyone. This simultaneously diminishes Chris’ threat level, while also giving him a bargaining chip in any conversation. His salesman’s skills mean that to the untrained eye, this comes off as genuine. Fortunately for us, Victoria is highly intelligent, as well as having a good bullshit detector. She notes that OF COURSE this is what Chris is going to say, and affirms that he and Rick are targets A and B.

Chris, of course, still needs allies, and so speaks with Rick, the one person who might have his back. Indeed, Rick notes the irony of the situation: How he had helped vote Chris out, only to be voted out himself, and now the two need to work together if they hope to survive. Rick admits to some mistrust, but the guy with no allies to speak of takes what he can get.

Obstacle course number one is nothing to speak of, though I’ll give credit that the circular puzzle is better this time, in and of that you can’t simply look at the logo to get the design. You’d have to examine the immunity idol, which is harder to see at a distance and less frequently examined closely. Julie ends up the victor, which would be uneventful were it not for the way she wins. Oh, I’m not talking about her mistake in building the border first rather than building vertically to help prevent puzzle collapse. No, Chris, recognizing his own inevitable loss of the challenge, stops what he’s doing to help Julie. This, understandably, gets the attention of Rick, who was decently close in the challenge, and is naturally unhappy about a supposed ally helping to ensure his defeat. This is played up as a big deal, and I think it SHOULD have been a big deal, but for two guys with few alliance prospects, I doubt they can let this come between them.

Julie also wins steak dinner, with the choice to bring two people along with her. Hoo boy, does Julie drop the ball here. Chris is her first choice, and I get where she’s coming from in the “he hasn’t had anything to eat since he got voted out” thing, plus the whole “helped her win the challenge” thing, but Julie, it’s the end of the game. Time to be cutthroat. Need I remind you that you are STRENGTHENING ARGUABLY THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE THREAT LEFT IN THE GAME WHO YOU AREN’T EVEN ALLIED WITH? Sigh. At least her second pick, Lauren, makes a little more sense, since they did work together and all before, but despite this, it still alienates her allies. Specifically Victoria, which even RICK calls out as a dumb move on her part. Need I remind you that the only times Victoria HASN’T voted correctly has been when she’s helping out with a split vote? She seems like a person you don’t want to piss off.

Over dinner, our castaways discuss their vote-out options. Rick is of course the primary target, and Chris proves his loyalty by covering for Rick’s idol, which Rick had revealed to him in their previous talk. This then leads to who the backup should be, with the idea floated out that Victoria be the next one to go. Makes sense. She seems popular, and I think has been a low-key major decision maker this entire time. Rick is, of course, planning to use his idol tonight, though whether he’ll go against Chris or not is up in the air. After all, if he were to sway Gavin and Victoria to his side, he’d be able to at least tie, and then rely on everyone else’s self-preservation instinct to break that tie. Despite saving Chris being the clear obvious choice, this is actually some interesting misdirection.

Too bad it goes nowhere! We find out that, like Rick, Chris was given an idol good for the next Tribal Council, but only if half is temporarily given to another player. Chris, recognizing the need to build trust, gives it to Rick, who now trusts Chris 100%, and cements the loss of Victoria. I’ll explain why that’s a shame in a bit, but first, let’s talk about the substitute intrigue for a bit. Rick is hardly the only person Chris has been talking to, and Lauren, at least, is willing to give him the time of day. Chris knows from Kelley that she has an idol, but has been keeping it under wraps for her. Chris tells her that what the jury is looking for is for idols to be played, and played correctly. A plausible lie told in a convincing way. So, now the question is: Will Lauren play her idol for Chris?

Yes. The answer is yes. After a throughly “nothing” Tribal Council, we find that both Lauren and Rick blow their idols. Rick needed to, but as Lauren laments, she wasted hers, with Victoria going out 2 to nothing, against the one vote Chris would have had. Victoria is a major loss for the season, in more ways than one. This gets into the first two problems this season has: who gets booted, and how they’re presented. There were some great new characters and strategists this season, and Victoria, for me, was definitely one of them. More so the latter than the former, but still intriguing, particularly given her young age. Thus, losing her loses the person I was most rooting for at this point, and while it’s a smart move to take out the smart people at this point in the game, it’s not as fun from an audience perspective. More to the point, however, is that while all these things about Victoria are true, you need to look REALLY deep to find them. For all that Victoria was a major force this season, post Aubry-boot she was pretty much nonexistent. Probst even commented at the Reunion show (which is spared quotation marks due to actually being decent this season) that Victoria played a good under-the-radar game that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Nice sentiment, Probst, but here’s an idea: If you want people to get credit for their work, THEN ACTUALLY SHOW THEIR WORK! My God, the wasted potential here is staggering. Victoria, you deserved a much better season than the one we got.

On a positive note, I will say I admire Eric’s decision to NOT clean himself up at Ponderosa. Helps him stand out, and is a nice, respectful touch.

So, this means we get a segment with Probst detailing Victoria’s game, and hopes for the future, right? Silly viewer! Those are for who PRODUCTION cares about, not who you care about!

Getting back to camp, Rick of course foolishly sets out to look for an idol. I say “foolishly” because of course, after the backlash that the fire-making final four twist from “Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers” received, they have moved back when regular idols work to the final six, leaving only Chris’ as a legitimate idol left. Then you remember that this is “Survivor Edge of Extinction” where everything you love goes to die! Instead, Rick finds yet ANOTHER idol, thus guaranteeing himself the final four. If, at this point, you think there’s an overabundance of idols for so late in the game, you’re right! Look, I give the producers more slack on the “Advantagegeddon” even on “Survivor Game Changers” than most. While I agree that season overall was too twist-heavy, that particular event I say was more due to the contestants then having balls of steel to hold their idols and advantages so long. But putting in new idols when there’s only one legitimate vote left in the game? That’s just too much. I will never be a fan of the fire-making final four happening automatically, but if you give us one vote with no possible idols, it becomes much more tolerable.

Not content with having TWO hidden immunity idols in the game, Rick now decides he needs FAKE idols in the game as well. He hides a pair of them (with notes from his previous idols for legitimacy), which Lauren and Julie, having learned from their previous efforts of NOT following Rick, find. Rick proves just how much of the high ground he’s taking by laughing obnoxiously behind their backs as they make these efforts. Our hero, everybody.

Our second immunity challenge is your standard ropes obstacle course with little fanfare, though putting it over water was a nice touch. Rick wins, rendering his idol DOUBLY pointless, but making for an interesting situation back at camp. You see, everyone BUT Gavin thinks they’re safe. Preying on this, Rick suggest that he’ll play his idol on Gavin if Gavin votes with them. Gavin, not being a moron, jumps at the chance. But who should they target. The debate, by default, is between Julie and Lauren. Lauren’s played a more dominant game in their eyes, while Julie might have more friends on the jury. The answer, however, is quite obvious to me. Julie must go. Yes, Lauren has a stronger game overall, but it’s not one necessarily respected by the jury. Who the jury wants to win is the biggest factor at this point, making Julie a threat. Moreover, Lauren, being original Manu, is more likely to help one or both of you out at the final four, whereas Julie is not likely to at all. Better to get rid of her.

Our second Tribal Council is just as “nothing” as the first, save for that for once people make the stupid decision. After Lauren and Julie get needlessly humiliated with the fake idols (not that I don’t think Rick shouldn’t have made them, as they did help throw the scent off of him, but the laughter was needless), Lauren gets sent home. Again, I’m sorry to see her go. While not the same level as Victoria, she had a determination I liked, and again, was probably the best non-Rick strategist left in the game. Losing her loses a lot of investment in the season, and another good player to boot.

Our final immunity challenge is the now standard “Stack blocks to make a phrase” challenge, though this one does up the game a bit by having contestants walk along an arced board while still holding the platform steady. Much as I despise this challenge for being repetitive at this point, that is a pretty clever way to shake things up. Gavin and Rick make basically no headway, so our battle comes down to Julie and Chris. Julie is overall faster, but also messes up, handing Chris an easy victory. Meaning yes, someone who was voted out of the game just over a week in, and who will have played less than two weeks total, just made the finals. I’m sure this will in no way backfire on the show whatsoever!

Chris, of course, now has to choose who will be going to fire making. He tries to play things cool with Rick, but Rick pretty quickly picks up on the fact that Chris doesn’t want him in the finals, and so goes to make fire. The debate for Chris really comes down to who he thinks can beat Rick in fire making, and he tells as much to Julie and Gavin. He coaches each of them on fire making, but no real conclusion is reached as we head off to Tribal Council.

Soon enough, we see exactly WHY no conclusion was reached: because Chris chose to take a third option. A stupid option, to be sure, but an option nonetheless. You see, Chris has decided to go full Domenick Abbate (“Survivor Ghost Island”), and give up immunity to Julie, allowing him to battle Rick for the right to remain in the game. For some reason, despite giving up immunity, Chris is allowed to choose who goes to fire making. Granted, I don’t think Julie would have chosen differently, but still, you’d think it’d be her choice, given that she now has immunity. Look, I can see the logic here. Like Domenick, Chris doesn’t want to lose votes to another worthy competitor, and so moves to eliminate that chance, at great risk to himself. It is this last part that I take issue with. No matter how much of a jury threat someone is, IT IS NEVER WORTH RISKING YOUR OWN SPOT IN THE GAME FOR THEM! This was Chris’ worst move of the night, and he’s lucky it didn’t backfire on him. Rick goes home, and again, I’m disappointed. A Rick win would have been predictable from the edit, and certainly would have had an asterisk next to it for the whole “Edge of Extinction” twist, but we at least got to see his gameplay, and he would have been an entertaining winner, if nothing else. Instead, we’re left with decent enough players and nice people, but whose stories were weak (Julie, Chris) or nonexistent (Gavin). Joy.

Between segments, we get another Probst interlude, as Rick is popular enough to warrant an interview. It’s less cringe-worthy than Joe’s segment, as really all Probst tries to do is to get Rick to follow in the footsteps of John Cochran (“Survivor South Pacific”), and come work for CBS. Pointless, but nothing annoying about it.

To their credit, all our contestants actually give themselves pretty good arguments about why they should win on this particular day 39. Julie cites her willingness to change up the game, Gavin leans on his social bonds, and Chris notes the effort it took to return from Edge of Extinction. For all my complaints, this is one part the episode actually does well. For a moment, it seems like everyone has a shot.

That is, until we get to Final Tribal Council. Then, Julie at least is shut out. Frankly, of the finalists, she’s probably the one I most wanted to win, due to her arguably actually having an arc. The trouble is, said arc involves Julie acting on her emotions, and while an emotional argument can be powerful, Julie doesn’t demonstrate good control over them, thus making her gameplay come off as erratic and reactionary, rather than controlled and calculated. She’s out, but Chris does himself few favors as well. When Gavin makes a point about his own game at the expense of Chris’, Chris interrupts him to rebut the argument. The jury gets on his case for this, though, citing it as disrespectful. And yet, Chris keeps doing it. True, he does get in good arguments about his social manipulation in the time he had, using Lauren playing her idol as an example of this. Still, that doesn’t mean his interactions with the other finalists come off well. The only person who comes off decently here is Gavin, who manages to articulate his social game nicely, and provide some good, concrete examples. Like with previous uses of this jury format, we do lose those great, defining moments a jury question can provide. The overall Final Tribal Council is sound.

The conclusion, however, is not, and now it is time. We must discuss the sin that ruins the season retroactively. The sin that makes this the worst season of “Survivor” there ever was, purely by default. Our winner, as one might expect, is Chris Underwood.

Where to start with the problems this causes? Well, for one thing, CHRIS WAS VOTED OUT OF THE GAME ON DAY 8! Yes, our winner is a man who so badly bungled a situation, that he was voted out pre-merge. Also bear in mind that he was a physical challenge beast on a tribe that desperately needed challenge strength. For him to be voted out in spite of this speaks volumes about just how badly he bungled his situation. Not only did he bungle his situation, but this also means Chris didn’t need to work nearly as hard as everyone else. While Gavin, Julie, and the other finalists (yes, even Rick to some degree), all had to put themselves at risk, and navigating the social quagmire that is betraying people but still having them like you, all Chris had to do was sit, wait, win one crucial challenge, and not be an asshole. It’s not NOTHING, but compared to what everyone else had to go through, it seems like a lot less, and ought to have disqualified him outright from his victory. This, of course, begs the question of how I would have felt about a Rick victory. I can’t say I would have been fully on board with it, but I wouldn’t have felt like disqualifying Rick quite as much as I do Chris. Rick did get voted out of the game, but unlike Chris, it was less due to his game play, and more due to having the bad luck to end up on a tribe with few options. Rick’s loss was largely due to luck, Chris’ to skill. See the difference? Plus, Rick was in the game the majority of the time, and had to navigate difficult situations, while Chris faced few, if any. Did Chris do nothing? Of course not! His gameplay this episode was masterful, and he’s definitely charming enough to earn a few votes. But think about how this would have looked in previous seasons. Let’s take the case of Hunter Ellis from “Survivor Marquesas”, and man who fills the same roll as Chris, and was voted out at the same point in the game. People loved Hunter at the time, and were shocked at his vote out. Many even advocate for his return. But would you really still love him if, having made no enemies, he was just randomly put back in the game at the end? No. No you wouldn’t. You’d feel production was giving him a leg up because heaven forbid we produce an unsatisfying winner! Ironically, by doing all this, I say production made what could have been a future satisfying winner unsatisfying. I’m glad Chris got the chance to show what he could do, and as I say, he did it well, and there’s nothing offensive about him as a person. But we should have gotten to see these things on a “Second Chances” type season, rather than shoehorning Chris in in the last episode.

But, to be fair, pretty much all of what I’ve vilified is stuff that’s out of Chris’ control. He didn’t ask to be put on an Edge of Extinction season, and made the best of what he had. Besides, however unfair it might be, any twist in the game is legitimate, and you can only play the hand you’re dealt, right? That is correct, and so all of the above, I’m willing to at least consider a counter-argument to. However, even if you were to take away all these problems, one major one still reigns. One question that has no satisfying answer, and is what, by default, makes this the worst season the show has ever put out:

What was the point of having all the episodes this season?

Here’s what I mean: “Survivor”, at its core, is about the journey to the finals. How do our finalists get there, and how do they beat out the other finalists? Some seasons do this better than others. Some seasons make the outcome super obvious. Some seasons subtly manipulate the audience, leading us on a good mystery hunt. Regardless, though, however dominant or just pain good at the game a player is, they still have to go through it. They still have to jump through to hoops so that we can see the progress of their journey. But Chris’ journey largely played out of Edge of Extinction, where even if we DID get footage of it, screen time needed to be divided between everyone else there. Thus, Chris got lost in the shuffle, and we the audience feel like we only really got to know him in this last episode. Again, he played well in that episode, but it still begs the question: If all we needed was this episode, why did we watch all the others?

There was really no season recap this time, nor was there Probst talking about why each remaining player could win. Frankly, I’m happy the latter is gone, since it was kind of forced anyway, but the former can be necessary. After all, more people tend to tune in to the finale of a show, rather than a random episode in the middle. Thus, the recap is needed to understand the journey that brought us to this point. Even the most boring seasons like “Survivor Fiji”, or the most predictable seasons like “Survivor Redemption Island”, there was at least a reason why we needed that journey. Even if we already knew or didn’t care about the outcome, we still needed the guidance of the rest of the season to understand that outcome. Here, someone tuning in for just this episode, even without a season recap, would lose nothing. They could watch it, and get just as much out of it as someone who had followed the entire season. And if 12/13 episodes of your season don’t need to be watched, what was the point of having the season at all?

Now, I hear the counterargument to this already: “Chris did have a story. It was just all on Edge of Extinction. And weren’t you, Matt, one of the ones praising the show for not spending so much time on Edge of Extinction?” You’re right about that, but it doesn’t change the fact that it retroactively makes the season pointless. Of course, we wouldn’t want the show to devote more time to the Edge of Extinction than to people still in the game, but then, if one of those people wins, it feels hollow. The only solution I can really think of to satisfy both worlds would be to have made the segments of “Edge of Extinction” its own show. Have it air right after “Survivor”, and be all about the social dynamics of the Edge of Extinction, with the finale being a kind of crossover between those two shows. Then we might have had time to develop everyone as needed to make a satisfying finale. Now, this would never happen. While “Survivor” has an impressive longevity, it must be said that the heyday of the show is passed, and so CBS is not logically going to devote an entire timeslot to a companion show no one is guaranteed to watch. However, if we’re trying to find a way for this twist to work, this is the only way I can think of. As it stands, this twist is a terrible idea that moves “Survivor” to a point where it isn’t recognizable as “Survivor” any more. Because it is such a different animal, and renders the vast majority of the season as being pointless, there is no logical place for this season to go other than the very bottom of the rankings.

Probably the biggest disappointment of all here, though, is that the season did not have to be this way. Not even close. It’s not like something like the aforementioned “Survivor Fiji”, where the cast mean the season was doomed before they even started filming. This cast had potential. As I said, there were a lot of intriguing new players this time around. But with so much time devoted to returning players, advantages, and the Edge of Extinction itself, they just get shunted aside. Thus, we cannot bond with them, or the season. Really, ALL the players on this season deserved a better season than what they got, and shame on CBS for taking something good and doing everything in their power to ruin it.

Ok, ok, let’s talk about something that actually goes WELL this season: The Reunion show. Still too little time devoted to it, but we talk with most of the important people, get a comment on most everyone, and most importantly, fewer pointless Probst segments. No audience interviews, no kid guessing the obvious winner. Hell, the only former player we see is a brief glimpse of Cochran, and then it’s at a relevant time to mention him. Yeah, I really don’t have any complaints about this particular reunion show, again apart from the length.

As to the upcoming season, it can only be an improvement. If you’re going to bring back returning players with new players, I think keeping the new players out of the competition is the way to do it. They can add flavor to the season this way, but also are less likely to dominate screen time as a result. It’s not a guarantee, so I’m holding my judgment until the season proper, and I am concerned about the lack of new player confessionals in the preview. Plus, getting advice from old players might encourage new players to ape their style, rather than going their own way. Still, there’s potential for good here, and those giant heads are just the kind of cheesy I can get behind, so I’ll give this season a fair shake. Now, onto discussing how my pre-season opinions matched up to reality, starting with:

Dan-Right on personality, wrong on time in the game. He made himself more necessary than I thought he would, and was smarter than I gave him credit for. That said, I count this one as a loss for me.

Reem-Overall right, though she was definitely feistier than I gave her credit for.

Rick-Pretty much right here, though I didn’t call his ending up on Edge of Extinction.

Wendy-Again, pretty well nailed the personality, though she was out earlier than I expected.

Lauren-Despite my saying she had more game than she gets credit for, I still say her personality was on point. Name one thing about her that wasn’t related to Kelley Wentworth. I’ll wait. Oh, and she lasted longer than I would have thought.

Keith-I’m seeing a trend here. Keith is yet another one where I called his personality, but was vastly wrong on his time in the game.

Chris-Wrong. Out earlier than I expected, but also had more game than I expected as well.

Victoria-She made it longer than I guessed, but I’d say I was right overall.

Ron-Wrong. Much more socially aware, and as a result longer-lived, than I ever anticipated.

Julia-Probably the only one on this list where I hit the nail on the head for both personality and time in the game.

Eric-Pretty much right, though I think I gave him too much credit in the “smarts” department.

Aurora-She made herself overall more low-key, at least pre-merge, and so lasted longer than I expert suspected she would. Good for her.

Julie-Wrong. Much less domineering, and much longer-lived than I gave her credit for.

Gavin-A little bit longer-lived than I expected, but Gavin fell pretty close to what I thought otherwise.

Kelley-Right, though as returnees are easier to predict, having seen their previous gameplay, I only consider this a half-win at best.

Joe-Right on vote-out time, wrong on his coming back to win the whole thing.

Aubry-Wrong. I’m not sure how much time is needed for people to think of her more as “Survivor Game Changers” Aubry rather than “Survivor Kaoh Rong” Aubry, but clearly, it’s not enough.

David-Wrong. Dude managed to hang in there better than I expected. How is it people remember Aubry’s (earlier) performance better than David’s?

This would normally be the point where I end the blog. However, loathe though I am to admit it, and however little this season deserves it, it’s time for another:

TOP 5 AND BOTTOM 5

Let’s talk about moves. They need to be made on “Survivor”. Even choosing to not make a move is, in and of itself, making a move. As such, one can usually point to a winner’s moves to explain how they won the game. We’ll be talking about the best actions winners have taken, while also acknowledging those moves that SHOULD have ruined winners games, but they were able to come back from. A couple of ground rules: The move has to be from the season the winner won on. I could vilify Cochran’s flip on “Survivor South Pacific”, but that has no bearing on his win on “Survivor Caramoan”. Second ground rule: It has to be one specific move. Something a winner did overall, such as their social game, isn’t the subject of this list. That said, let’s start with the best of the best, with…

TOP 5

5. Boran Throws the Challenge (“Survivor Africa”): Technically cheating a bit here, since this was a move by a tribe, not just by the winner. However, Ethan seemed to be the one spearheading this move, and it’s my list, so I’ll count it. It was definitely a risk, and I’m normally the first to come out against throwing a challenge, but it cannot be denied that this worked out well for Ethan. It kept his allies on Samburu safe, built trust with T-Bird and Frank, and pretty much decimated any hope of the old Samburu coming back together as a unified whole. Maybe not Ethan’s move alone, but definitely one that helps ensure his victory.

4. Tom Mind-Screws Ian (“Survivor Palau”): At this point in the game, Tom’s only competition was Ian. True, he probably wins the game no matter who he’s against, but it’s much more up in the air against Ian than anyone else. When the plan to oust Ian at the final four goes awry, Tom now has little choice but to duke it out against a younger competitor at an endurance challenge. No mean feat to win. So Tom, to ensure his victory, preys on Ian’s guilt, and gets in his head to the point where Ian gives up, handing Tom victory on that season, and a spot on this list. Again, I keep him low because I think he had it won regardless, but it was a good bit of insurance, just in case.

3. “Please, take this risk.” (“Survivor Vanuatu”): This, frankly, is the reason why Chris Daugherty is a winner. The man had tried and failed multiple times to break up the women, usually at the expense of Eliza. It was only when he had the brainwave to USE Eliza, rather than target her, that finally got him success, and overcome a 6-1 deficit to win. Admittedly, the idea was Scout’s, which is why Chris doesn’t land higher on this list, but without Chris’ salesmanship, it wouldn’t have worked, so he deserves some credit. Also, this means that Chris from this season now hold the distinction of being the second person to win who shares a first name with a previous winner (Natalie White of “Survivor Samoa” and Natalie Anderson of “Survivor San Juan del Sur” being the first pair to do so).

2. “Coach is gunning for you.” (“Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”): Aw yeah, now we get to talk about the awesomeness that is Sandra! For those who say her game was all about doing nothing, this is my counter-argument. She and Courtney Yates, her only ally, were dead in the water. But one simple conversation with Russell Hantz, and suddenly that paranoia makes neither of them a major target. As Sandra doesn’t even make the merge without this move, it’s safe to say it won her the game, as well as a spot on this list.

1. The Buddy System (“Survivor Redemption Island”): Look, I never said this season had no redeeming features. I just said they were drowned in a sea of mediocrity. That said, it cannot be denied that Boston Rob had a good strategy here. By isolating everyone so that his sycophants would never think of flipping, he managed to maintain his iron grip on the tribe, even when up against players better than what he had in the pre-merge. It made the season boring and predictable, but it cannot be denied it was good strategy.

Honorable Mention: J.T.’s Crocodile Tears (“Survivor Tocantins”): You may remember that J.T. gave quite the performance at the “Survivor Tocantins” final tribal council. Acting indignant and hurt at Stephen’s supposed “betrayal”. I even saw some tears there. There’s a reason J.T. was the second shut-out victory in the history of the show, but I keep this off the list proper because I can guarantee that J.T. wins the game even without this. Stephen was respected by the jury, but wasn’t worshipped like J.T. was, so all J.T. did was humiliate Stephen still further. Unnecessary, J.T. “Survivor Cambodia” would do that well enough.

BOTTOM 5

5. Jenna’s Emotional Breakdown (“Survivor The Amazon”): I’ll admit, I’m a bit reluctant to mark someone down for showing emotion on “Survivor”. That said, the fact remains that Jenna’s breakdown at the final five did her no favors. When it’s kind of a coin toss between you and your ally as to who goes home, telling people you’re ready to go is not a good look. I keep it this low on the list because I don’t think Jenna made this as a “move” per se, but not having as good control on the emotions is a mark against a potential winner, as we saw with Julie this season.

4. Sandra Throws Out the Fish (“Survivor Pearl Islands”): Yes, for all that we must praise Sandra for her awesomeness, we must also point out where she messed up. Sabotaging the tribe, especially in the early seasons of the show, was often a death sentence. Moreover, Sandra was doing this out of petty revenge for the betrayal of Rupert, rather than any strategic reasoning. It would be one thing if Sandra had intentionally tried to cover her tracks, but she just got lucky that Christa took the fall. If she hadn’t, Sandra might well have been gone out of sheer frustration from the tribe. Sandra is still awesome, but she’s lucky this move didn’t backfire on her.

3. Final 6 Rock Draw (“Survivor Blood vs. Water”): I keep this one from higher on the list because I see little Tyson could have done in this situation to prevent this, save keep a tighter grip on Ciera. That said, not having your allies in check is a sin even Tyson is not exempt from. This move really could have cost him the game had he drawn the wrong rock. True, the risk was greater for the other alliance (two members drawing rocks as opposed to one), but still, if Tyson draws the wrong rock, that season is never the same. Too much of a risk, so it earns a spot on this list.

2. Mike and the Auction (“Survivor Worlds Apart”): While Tyson’s move had the CHANCE of him going home, I’m AMAZED this didn’t send Mike home. For starters, the idea itself is bad. Going back on a deal YOU YOURSELF suggested makes you look like a dick, especially since it involves messages from home, which are always emotionally charged. No advantage is worth that in a social game like “Survivor”. But then Mike doubles down on the idiocy by then following through on the deal, meaning he gets no upside. People hate you for trying to backstab them publicly, and you don’t even get the advantage you were going for in the first place. It’s only through the grace of immunity that Mike won. This really should have cost him the game.

1. Chris Trusts Wardog (“Survivor Edge of Extinction”): This one’s a no-brainer. The only thing worse than a winner making a move that could POTENTIALLY get them voted off is them making a move that ACTUALLY votes them off. A person who wins despite their mistake costing them their spot in the game is the type of winner I just can’t get behind, if I haven’t already made that clear.

Honorable Mention: MAD (“Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X”): I keep this one off the list proper because the idea was good. Take someone you want as an ally, and share secrets so you both have an incentive to stay aligned. This is what Adam did with Taylor regarding their various advantages (a reward steal for Adam, plus hidden food for Taylor). The flaw here is that Taylor is not exactly playing what we might call a “strategic” game, and thus has no incentive to worry about messing up his own game. Thus, he outs Adam’s deception, and Adam comes off looking the worse for it. I even wrote at the time that Adam had torpedoed his own chances of winning with this move, so it must be talked about here.

At long last, we come to the end of this season, and good riddance. I’ll say it before, and I’ll say it again: everyone involved deserved a better season. We had a cast that, while not the stuff of legend, was definitely solid and could have developed good future returnees. However, a combination of too much focus on the returnees, too many advantages, time taken away for the Edge of Extinction, and a winner who only really showed up in the last episode, means this season doesn’t really even count as “Survivor”. If it must, though, it’s the very bottom of the “Survivor” pile. At least we get a nice long break before the next season. That’ll give us time to get invested again.

But what of this blog during the off-season? Don’t worry, content will still come, but don’t expect the return of “Survivor Retrospectives” yet. Don’t worry, I still intend to finish, but they take a lot of work, and I’m just burnt out on them at the moment. That said, I’ve had a couple of ideas for new blog topics, including one feature I hope to make a regular thing, that I’ll be rolling out over the summer, and I hope you enjoy them.

Let’s end this on a high note. One positive I can say for the season: NO PLAYERS BREAKING INTO MY HOUSE! Yes, the tradition of “Idol Speculation” is finally broken, and no players have busted down my wall insisting on an audience, and closing me a lot in repairs. At last, I can go one season without calling a contractor…

CRASH!

RICK: DUN-DUN-DA-DA-DAH! DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN!

MATT: GAAAAAAAAAAH!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor MGX” Episode 9: Will Can’t Have Alcohol

Guys, I have an announcement: Will can’t drink alcohol. No beer, no wine, no spirits, no mixed drinks. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Poor sap has to make do with only soda. And what a sad existence that must be. But let’s focus on the main point here, and that is that Will Wahl is not legally allowed to drink. The man must be abstinent while his tribemates are in the throws of Dionysian bliss. He cannot have a single drop of that sainted liquid that makes one drunk. There will be no imbibing of intoxicating beverages by the young man with the uncannily deep voice. And, just in case I haven’t made it clear, Will cannot drink alcohol.

Ah, what a traditional way to start a blog, talking about the main focus of the episode. Now we move onto the strategy talk, as the usual fallout from Tribal Council ensues, along with the time-honored tradition of calling the people who flipped on you “idiots”. Our culprit tonight is perennial idiot Jay, who brings up the point that Zeke, Adam, and Hannah are now on the bottom of the Gen-X alliance. I’m willing to admit that this point is fair, but on the whole, I can’t condone Jay’s assessment. After all, where would the threesome be if they had stuck with him True, they’d be the bottom of a seven-person alliance rather than a nine-person alliance, which is seemingly better, but I’d argue (and I’d say the later parts of the episode back me up) that the nine-person alliance is more fractious than seven-person alliance in this case, and, as Hannah will bring up later, that threesome have more power in the latter alliance, despite the increased number. Here’s my problem: I can, to a certain degree, excuse people saying “Well, why ISN’T my alliance the obviously right move to make?” before the votes are cast. But hindsight is 20/20, and for Jay to not even RECOGNIZE why his alliance might not be attractive to Hannah, Zeke, and Adam is preposterous.

Chris also takes the time to brag about how his position is improving. Which is true. Good assessment, Chris. Yeah, really not much more to say about it than that.

But enough about that, this is shiny, happy “Survivor” time, as Adam for once manages to not completely screw up consoling someone after the vote, talking with Taylor about why it was the correct move for him to go against Taylor. Namely, Adam points out that Taylor and Jay were gunning for HIM, a point that even Taylor can’t deny, so we quickly move on to talking about the dirt that Taylor and Adam have on each other. Adam knows about Taylor’s food stash, Taylor knows about Adam’s reward steal. This helps to justify Adam’s revealing of information last episode, a move panned by everyone but myself, it seems. Basically, Adam and Taylor are in a “Nuclear Option” situation. Both have information that could, if not destroy each other, then at least cripple each other’s games pretty hard. That is a way to build trust, albeit tenuous trust. And, given how the Cold War went in general, you could argue that the analogy makes for bad strategy, but I still see the point in it. Granted, Adam really needs to give up on this whole “Make Taylor and Jay trust me.” thing, since that ship has clearly sailed, but here, at least, he has one good attempt at it. I’ll give him credit, though: I really like his “If you wanted me to stick with you, why’d you try and vote me out?” confessional.

Taylor consoles himself with food, and his attitude is really starting to annoy me. What Taylor is doing here is effectively sabotage, not really any different from what Scot and Jason did on “Survivor Kaoh Rong”, but at least they were TRYING to piss people off. Taylor really doesn’t seem to understand why it’s wrong, though he does at least admit that he’s doing it more to give himself an advantage than anything. I just keep thinking back to the likes of Julie McGee
from “Survivor San Juan del Sur”. She similarly stole food, and the castigation of her in response was a factor in her eventual quit. Taylor? True, he does get voted out for his trouble, but the man ultimately gets off pretty lightly for what I’d consider a serious offense. Stealing is one thing, but stealing from literal starving people is another thing entirely.

In keeping with our new upbeat attitude, we get our second instance of HANNAH attempting to console someone on the losing side of the vote. Having learned from her mistakes with Adam and Zeke, Hannah actually does a good job of talking to Jay about her decision. She’s friendly, but not condescending, and explains how her feeling of greater power by working with the old Takali led to her flip, and Jay, who really has very little choice at this point, seems to still be on good terms with her. Despite what episode 3 of this season might have indicated, Adam really needs to take lessons from her.

We head on to our reward challenge, and, in what may be an “Idol Speculation” first, I really feel no need to describe it step by step. It’s your average generic obstacle course, and ultimately in this case, the individual steps don’t matter. It’s boring, it’s a team challenge post merge, it’s for burgers and drinks at a spa, and Will still isn’t allowed to drink alcohol. That’s about all that really matters.

Oh, and Probst is making a big deal about the fact that teams will be decided by a schoolyard pick. This is often the case on “Survivor”, but rarely do they actually bother to show it. The only times they DO show it are when it has a major impact on the episode, like when the contestants of “Survivor Kaoh Rong” called out how it would fall down alliance lines, and skipped it entirely. Naturally, with something so impactful on the episode, we’re going to watch the pick go one by one, and see where it all goes wrong for one team.

Or, you know, we could cut right to the fact that the purple team is pretty much all old Takali, while the orange team is all old Vanua, with Taylor and Jessica being the only respective switches, that’s cool too. But surely if they brought up the schoolyard pick, then it must have major repercussions throughout the episode. I mean, the orange team picked by Hannah ultimately loses, so that must do something. Look, she’s even getting a confessional about it! It must lead to something this episode! SPOILER ALERT: This is the last time we hear about the schoolyard pick having any impact.

We get our requisite enjoyment of the reward, with Taylor bragging about his eating habits as a garnish. Then we return to a classic “Survivor” staple: the drunken idiot. Newer fans of the show may not be aware of this, as the tradition has dropped off in recent years, but “Survivor” used to have a mean tendency to give people just enough alcohol and just barely not enough food to have someone make a complete drunken ass of themselves. Think of Tom Westman’s performance during the merge on “Survivor Palau”, or basically any time “Big Tom” Buchanan (“Survivor Africa”) was allowed anywhere near alcohol. Unlike Will. Who can’t have it. Having no one named “Tom” on this season to take the fall, we settle for Bret, who seems to determined to prove all stereotypes about Bostonians true. He even sort of KNOWS he’s being set up, admitting beforehand that he should probably limit himself, though Chris informs us that this went out the window very quickly. Granted, Bret gets off easy, with the extent of his drunken exploits being a bombastic cannonball into the pool.

All is not calm, though, as Sunday comes out of the woodwork to deliver some intrigue. I said back in episode 3 (there’s that episode again) that I thought there was more to Sunday than the show was giving us, given a good remark of hers at Tribal Council. Then she quieted down until recently, and I wrote it off as my reading too much into it. But evidently I was correct the first time, as there’s some gamer left in Sunday yet. A fairly bad gamer, to be sure, but a gamer nonetheless, and that always leads to some fun with regards to strategy. Basically, the wounds from the vote where Jessica was saved haven’t fully healed, and while the pair are civil to each other, Sunday admits that Jessica probably needs to go sooner rather than later, especially as the old Takali a a fractured bunch. I would complain about this coming right out of nowhere, but in this case, I’ll give it a pass. This conflict would only really have arose starting in episode 5, at which point we had the switch, so there was really no need for Sunday to comment on her suspicion of Jessica until now. What I WILL complain about is the poor strategy behind it. I get not trusting Jessica, I really do, but holding the old Takali together is really in Sunday’s best interests in particular. At the moment, the old Vanua are chomping at the bit to get rid of each other. Like or dislike each other, if the old Takali can stick together for the next few votes, they’ve got this in the bag. Keep that majority, and ride it to the end. Granted, that’s not so good if you’re on the bottom of the old Takali, but if anything, Sunday is is the best position of the old Takali. She’s well liked, and so has a chance of winning no matter WHO she’s up against, and while she seems to be firmly in the Chris and Bret camp at this point, she could still potentially swing over to the Jessica, David, and Ken camp. Or, she could let all but one old Vanua go, and then use that old Vanua member along with Chris and Bret to gain a majority and a guaranteed finals spot, where again, she would have a decent chance at winning. Certainly there’s something to be said for making a big move and bolstering your resume, but as this season has demonstrated, one must wait for the proper timing. For Sunday, this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, to use an old cliche.

But I want to like Sunday! QUICK! Cut to even worse gameplay! Oh, good, Adam is trying to ease tensions with his enemies again, that should be worse. Sure enough, Adam proves to us yet again that he can’t have more than one good soothing moment per episode, and ends up talking with Jay out in the water. Still bitter about the Mari vote, Adam gives him a “How’s it feel to be on the bottom?” talk, and while I do think Jay exaggerates QUITE how much of an asshole Adam is being here, I can’t deny that it’s not really Adam’s smartest play, and he does come off as kind of an ass in this case. Admittedly, Adam is at least not playing both sides of the fence, or at least is being more subtle about it, but the damage on him just keeps getting worse. Again, while making enemies of eventual jurors is a categorically bad thing, in the case of people like Jay and Taylor, it was inevitable due to the Figgy vote. But when Jay goes to complain about Adam to the group, thereby taking the talk away from Will’s sobriety for a minute, Hannah and Zeke join in on what an asshole Adam can be. When your CLOSEST ALLIES don’t like you, your chances of winning are shot. I still personally like Adam. As someone who’s got a naturally loud voice, I can relate to the whole “shouting in confessionals” thing, and I like how focussed he is on pure strategy. Mind you, the latter point is part of his downfall, but I’ll be talking about that when we get to Tribal Council. My point is that I’ve accepted the fact that Adam will not be winning this season. He may make it to the end, but I don’t see him really acquiring the votes necessary to win it all. Enjoyable to watch, but not good for winning.

After a really pretty sunrise, we see that Sunday’s quest is not done, as she goes to Jay about the possibility of using him, Will, and Taylor to blindside Jessica, which Jay agrees to, as he doesn’t have many options at this point. What is interesting to note here, though, is that this is further proof that Hannah, Zeke, and Adam going with the old Takali was the right move. Unlike Jay, Taylor, Will, and Michelle, who were a tight, nigh-unbreakable foursome, the old Takali, while in greater numbers, have difficulty working together. Push comes to shove, they’ll join for a vote, but those old divisions are there, and working in the favor of Adam, Zeke, and Hannah. It’d be one thing if the old Takali was a solid six who COULD be broken up by a good strategist, but this isn’t the doing of Adam, Hannah, or Zeke. The old Takali are doing this to themselves, with little to no outside prompting. Again, more evidence that Jay really is wrong in saying that the move last episode was a bad one.

Our immunity challenge is only slightly more remarkable than the reward challenge. A returning challenge from “Survivor South Pacific”, our tribe members hold a large wooden bow with a ball on top of it, while standing on a balance beam. At specific intervals, contestants will move down to a narrower section of the beam. If they fall off or the ball drops, they’re out. Last one standing wins. Pretty standard difficult endurance challenge. While it is a reused one, it isn’t overdone, and as it’s been five years since we’ve seen it, I’m willing to give it a pass in that regard. What DOES bug me are the bows. Could we put in at least a LITTLE work to make them look authentic. I know we’re kind of in the era of “Plastic ‘Survivor’”, but a little more effort would be appreciated.

Speaking of things from over five years ago, we bring back a twist no seen since “Survivor Redemption Island”, presumably put on hold to distance the show as much as possible from that God-awful season. If people want to, they can opt out of the challenge and eat grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, potato chips, and imbibe some soda and beer. Except for Will. He can’t have the beer. Just thought I’d clarify it.

Once again skipping over the important decision-making part of the challenge, we cut right to finding out that only Zeke and alcohol-free Will opted out, which makes sense, especially when you consider that you’ve got surfer dudes in the challenge, as our little puritan Will points out. I’m actually surprised MORE people didn’t drop out, though I applaud them their dedication to the game.

Normally I’d just skip right to the outcome of the challenge, but I do want to draw attention to one early drop out. Bret is out pretty early on, which is no surprise for a top-heavy guy, but the look of betrayal he gives the food and drink is just priceless. You know he just wanted to drive in the “Drunken Bostonian” stereotype a LITTLE BIT MORE, and instead has to settle for Will getting drunk. Oh, wait, I forgot, Will can’t drink alcohol. I guess Probst mentioning it IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING CHALLENGE wasn’t enough of a reminder.

Ken ends up winning the challenge, which surprised me somewhat. This is a challenge that doesn’t favor the top-heavy, and as a man’s center of gravity is higher than a woman’s, I’d have expected one of the ladies to take it. Probably Jessica, given her performance in the previous immunity challenge. Granted, Ken is not the most top-heavy looking guy, but the center of gravity thing is still a problem. Frankly, all this means is that the immunity necklace will not impact the ultimate vote.

With talk of potential immunity idols JUST NOW coming up in our majority alliance, they agree to split the vote between Jay and Taylor. Frankly, it’s the smart move. There’s always a chance at a fracture, and splitting the vote makes it easier for the alliance to fracture, but even if two people defected to Jay’s side, making the vote 5-3-4, they’d still be down in numbers come next episode. Ultimately, the idol is a greater threat. Sunday is the only one not on board, due to wanting to use Jay, but she pulls on her big girl panties with Bret and agrees to go along with the smart move. At this point, really the only indicator that either Taylor or Jay ISN’T going home is the fact that David stated that either Taylor or Jay was going home. Usually, that means you’re safe.

As Sunday’s plan never really got off the ground, Jay and Taylor go in for one last smorgasbord before Tribal Council, where Taylor brings up that Nuclear Option he’d been talking about all episode. With Adam’s name being about as low as “General Grievous” with the pair, they agree to bring it up at Tribal Council, as a last-ditch effort to save themselves. Why they don’t bring it up BEFORE Tribal Council, when they’d be more likely to get the plan changed, is a mystery to me. I know we’ve seen plans change last minute at Tribal Council more and more over the recent seasons, but the tried and true method of getting one’s plan in place beforehand is still better.

I could take this time to talk about the good strategic double-talk, including subtle bringing up of the old Takali fractures by the old Takali, but I think our nuclear war takes precedence. While I’ve still little respect for Taylor, if you ARE going to invoke a Nuclear Option at Tribal Council, this is the way to do it. Rather than just spill the beans on Adam and hope for the best, Taylor first confesses his own food-stealing sins to the group (lumping Adam in with him in the process) so that Adam has no ammunition against him, and then tells the group about Adam’s reward steal. Taylor here is banking on the recency effect. True, he did something bad, and I’d argue something objectively worse, but by bringing up Adam second, the focus is more likely to be on Adam rather than him. Taylor also has the advantage of playing offense here. Taylor knows what he’s going to say, while Adam has to react, making his argument much less coherent. Adam, in contrast, comes off as desperately trying to salvage his reputation, admitting to most everything, but denying that he actually ate any of the food Taylor left. To make matters worse, Adam must once again do all this at full volume, making his desperation all the more apparent. All the while, Hannah tries to hide in her shirt from the awkwardness. The particular moment that highlights what makes this discussion so fascinating is Adam’s making the fair point that stealing a reward, particular the loved ones visit (which has been the crux of Taylor’s argument) ultimately doesn’t matter much in the game. Taylor points out that it affects people’s emotions, which are part of the game. Basically, Taylor is making an emotional argument. Objectively, what he did was worse, actively sabotaging a vital part of camp life, while Adam is potentially taking away something nice from something else. Adam, meanwhile, if focussing on the logic of it. In the end, his advantage isn’t much of an advantage, unless used properly, whereas Taylor has already committed an egregious offense. It’s two opposing styles of playing the game, and it’s quite dramatic to see them come to a head.

It also does a good job at highlighting what Adam’s problem in the game is. Adam is a strategist. A pretty good one too, apart from having all the subtlety of a foghorn, by which I of course mean no subtlety at all. But he’s a PURE strategist. And while “Survivor” is a strategy game, Adam seems to completely ignore the emotional aspect of the game, which is his downfall. At the end, if you can’t get people, even your own allies, to like you, you’ve got no chance at winning the game. You need both strategic intelligence and emotional intelligence. Adam has one, but not the other. Fun to watch, but ultimately a losing strategy.

Of course, the same argument could be made in reverse about Taylor, that he plays on all emotion, no logic. And that would be fair. But Taylor’s gone now, so I feel like that point is obvious.

So, what wins out in a battle of emotion vs. logic? Well, as should happen in a game of strategy, logic wins out. Taylor is sent home, which I think is the right move. True, Adam has been pretty well branded as untrustworthy by most everyone left, but he’s also been branded an asshole, making him less likely to get a counter alliance together. Therefore, he can be picked off at any time, or taken to the end as a goat. Conversely, Taylor is a likable challenge threat who could easily slip past the radar and make it to the end, even winning. Plus, I would like to remind you, the man actively sabotaged the tribe. He’s EARNED his exit. And no, I’m not sorry to see him go. Everything out of his mouth was just completely inane, and his “holier than thou” attitude that made him the stereotypical “Millennial” this season wanted just became SO ANNOYING! One could argue that he was good as someone to nag Adam, but given Adam’s current standing in the game, I’d argue that we have plenty of that. Like I said, ultimately the smart move. Our old Takali plus Adam, Zeke, and Hannah alliance has a good thing going. It may need to be shaken up, but it’s too soon.

This was a different episode for this season, and I mean that in a good way. For the first time, by NOT focussing on the “Millennials vs. Gen-X” thing, we got some intriguing debates with the emotion vs. logic thing, and we got to see both sides fracturing, with some good setups for episodes to come. Add onto that an explosive Tribal Council, and the running gag about Will not being allowed to engage in underage drinking, and you’ve got yourself one hell of an episode. So much so that it deserves a…

TOP 5 AND BOTTOM 5

The merge episode is one of the more distinctive parts of the show, and a list of the best and the worst definitely bears talking about. We’re an episode late, I know, but somehow it feels like the right time to get to it. Really not much more to explain than that, so, too the list!

TOP 5

5. “Survivor MGX”: A bit of an obvious choice, given how I praised the last episode, but I think it does stand out as one of the greats over time. Granted, my personal “short list” I drew up wasn’t so short, but this merge just has a lot more little intriguing connections that bolstered it up above some of the other choices. Really, the main thing that hurts it is that this is season 33, and so we’ve seen a lot of these plotlines done before, but this season did it well enough that it earned at least a number 5 spot.

4. “Survivor Cook Islands”: Two things set this merge above others: strategy and misdirection. When people think of the good parts of this season, they mainly think of Ozzy’s challenge dominance and Yul’s strategy. Both are prominently displayed in this merge, particularly Yul’s strategy. This is where we get him persuading Jonathan Penner to flip back over, and it’s just as good as you remember it. And while it was clear from the beginning that the Aitu Four would make a comeback here, the episode actually did a really good job of keeping us in the dark as to who would flip. We got Yul working Penner, but we also got Ozzy and Nate (yes, I’m sure there was a “Nate” on the season) bonding, and a potential flip there. Go back and give it a watch. I guarantee it’s a better episode than you remember.

3. “Survivor South Pacific”: Again, while a bit obvious, we had a really good resolution to a storyline here. Cochran overcoming the bullying of the old Savaii and changing up the entire game was really well built up here, and thanks to the narration of Coach, was really well put-together. Plus, we basically got our setup for the rest of the game, which made things exceptionally interesting.

2. “Survivor The Australian Outback”: Merges with food temptation are always fun, plus we had Jeff Varner get voted out over peanut butter, which is hilarious (except to him, of course). But it’s that dramatic ending that really makes the difference. One vote, from the first episode mind you, deciding the outcome of the course of the game is quite a big finish. Though, it’s not quite as big as our number one spot.

1. “Survivor Borneo”: This is one episode where I can’t disagree with the early season purists. Holding the record for most individuals to receive votes at a single Tribal Council, this could be argued as the true birth of “Survivor” strategy, given that a popular but threatening survivalist ultimately got the axe. Even as someone who was used to threats going at the merge, this still shocked even me. Seeing Gretchen go was just that powerful. And the mystery of strategy vs. emotions, much like with this current episode, made for compelling storytelling that has yet to be beaten.

Honorable Mention: “Survivor All-Stars”: Much like the season as a whole, this merge is a mix of entertaining and painful. We got heated personal discussions, and ultimately the less-likable characters (and Rupert) winning out. What gives it an honorable mention? That look on Lex’s face when Kathy keeps her immunity. That look alone deserves mention. I’m surprised there isn’t a meme of it.

BOTTOM 5

5. “Survivor Tocantins”: Rarely is there a “bad” merge on “Survivor”, and even calling the Tocantins merge “bad” is a bit of disrespect. “Underwhelming” might be a better word. We got some obvious strategizing, and good setup for later on, but no real fireworks to stand out. Plus, due to Joe’s medical evacuation, we were robbed of even having a dramatic vote to tend the episode. That alone is what sinks this merge to the “Bottom 5” list.

4. “Survivor Nicaragua”: If the merge on “Survivor Tocantins” has the sin of being underwhelming, then this one has the sin of being incomprehensible. Alina? The person we’ve seen next to none of is the one who goes home? That’s just not the stuff of legend, and really not what a merge should be.

3. “Survivor Cambodia”: Perhaps a more personal choice, but the sudden attack on Kass this episode was a real turn-off. I won’t say she did NOTHING to deserve the boot (she did piss off majority leader Andrew Savage at the previous Tribal Council after all), but like with “Survivor All-Stars”, the personal attacks, in this case between Kass and Tasha, really just brought the whole thing down. With too many people to be truly comprehensible, and no hilarious Lex-face to compensate, this one just doesn’t stand up in the end.

2. “Survivor Thailand”: While I often complain of the merge happening too early in more recent seasons, I will concede that the merge can happen too late as well. Such is the case here. With the old Chuay Gahn up 5-3, this just became a predictable Pagonging, brought down further by the slimy Brian Heidik winning the reward challenge, and us having to, unfortunately, learn more about his personal life. Gag.

1. “Survivor Guatemala”: Yes, even one of my personal favorite seasons, and one that I feel gets a bad reputation, does have the worst merge. The one real criticism I’ve seen levied against this season, apart from being forgettable, was that the cast was largely made up of assholes. I personally take this as mostly people being butthurt about Stephenie LaGrossa, who was America’s sweetheart after “Survivor Palau” showing her more strategic side, and people being unhappy that she wasn’t as pure and wholesome as they thought. In this episode, though, I can kind of see their point. The majority tribe at the merge usually has some power of the minority, but the second iteration of Nakum REALLY came down hard on the second iteration of Yaxha here. It didn’t help that the (admittedly intriguing) twist of opting out of the challenge for food was introduced her. While a good twist in general, this one served to highlight the tribe division, making non-assholes seem like assholes, and the assholes seem like bigger assholes. Not even a really cool immunity challenge can redeem an episode where most everyone is unlikeable and the bad guys win.

Honorable Mention: “Survivor Worlds Apart”: Really, there’s not a whole lot to hate about this merge. By and large, it’s just kind of standard. In fact, it almost didn’t make either list. Then I remembered that THIS was the season that gave us “Merica” for the merge tribe name. Still don’t know what they were thinking.

Bad merges aside, this episode of the current season was still really good. Those plotlines we saw starting in this episode seem to be growing, so hopefully intrigue will be the order of the day!

Will still can’t drink alcohol.

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Finale: The Best of the Worst

Welp, I said before this episode aired that, if neither Spencer nor Keith won, that this would become my favorite season of all time. I don’t want to spoil too much in the opening paragraph, so I’ll simply say that neither of those people won. This means that my final verdict on this season is: It’s my second-favorite all the time.

Is the utterly hypocritical? Absolutely. But I do have reasoning for it, which I will explain. I’ll just be explaining it towards the end of the blog. I have to keep some secrets, you know. For now, I’ll just be getting to starting talking about the actual episode.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an episode of “Survivor Cambodia”, if we didn’t begin with:

MATT’S MESS-UP!

An apt way to end this season, but the mess-up, for once, is relatively minor. It seems that, despite losing out on the “Second Chance” vote, Max Dawson (“Survivor Worlds Apart”) DID manage to show up. how else do you explain Jeremy inexplicably talking about the personality of Scorpios when dissing Abi-Maria. Then again, perhaps I’m just upset that said dig seems a bit lame. I suppose nothing can really top Malcolm Freberg’s “Mack Truck” dis on “Survivor Philippines”, though, so no surprises there.

We begin the episode proper with Keith being incredulous. His natural state, I assure you. Basically, Keith can’t understand why they would vote out Abi-Maria when she was easy to beat. Keith goes on about wanting to have her in the end more than, say, Spencer or Jeremy. This only confirms for Spencer that he made the right move in targeting Abi-Maria, but I would point out to him that this also means that HE can’t use her as a goat at the end. Really, this is less a case of Keith confirming Spencer’s point, and more a case of Keith just being really bad at articulating his point.

But enough of that! We have to talk about Kimmi! Yes, after 36 days, she’s finally getting up and doing something! And no, this is not like the “Women’s Alliance” from a few episodes ago, where it seems like it’s going to be this big game-changer but then just kind of fizzles out and dies, this actually goes somewhere! Welcome to the game!

To be fair, I get where Kimmi’s game has been. I said last blog that a big part of this season has been making your big move, but also knowing when to make it. Kimmi has sat quietly, flown under the radar, and waited for the perfect time to make her move. Granted, she’s had a few OTHER perfect times to make her move, but this is a good one as well. Really, my problem with this development is not from a strategy perspective, but a viewer perspective. While Kimmi has definitely played a smart game up until this point, it’s a boring one. Seeing her only really participating in a big way NOW makes it seem like she’s been lazing about for most of this game. It’s sort of the same problem that Natalie White had on “Survivor Samoa”. Contrary to what Russell Hantz would have you believe, Natalie WAS playing a good game. It’s just that said game involved very little actual movement. For Natalie, the best strategy was to sit and wait, let Russell dig himself a hole, and build bonds with the jury and play off their sympathies. Brilliant strategy, but boring to watch. Kimmi’s kind of in the same boat here.

We’re here to talk about GOOD seasons, though, so lets get back to Kimmi. Her move is actually pretty solid. She plays off the fact that her current alliance (Jeremy, Spencer, and Tasha) will split the votes between Kelley and Keith. This means that, by defecting to Kelley and Keith to vote out either Spencer or Jeremy, they can win. It’s actually quite brilliant. It gives Kimmi a move to call her own, and eliminates amongst the biggest threats of the game. I just wish Kimmi had made similar moves earlier.

Challenge Time? Come a bit early, hasn’t it? Well, as a function of having so many people left at the end, and fearing a fan riot if a Final Four were at Final Tribal Council, “Survivor” has to move up its vote-out schedule. Basically, from now until day 39, we’ll be having an immunity challenge and a Tribal Council. I’m actually kind of mixed on this. It definitely is better than having a Final Four finish, and I’m happy that we don’t have to sit through any “Challenge Advantage” challenges again. The drawback, for me, is that we don’t get to see any strategizing pre-immunity challenge. We may see a BIT here and there after Tribal Council, but for the most part it immediately goes to the challenge. Feels a bit rushed, you know. Ideally, I feel like the solution would have been to have a double-elimination earlier in the season, and just have the final episode start at Final Five.

Onto the challenge itself. Taken from “Survivor Redemption Island”, this challenge has people running up steps to put in further puzzle steps, and then solving a pretty cool 3-D slide puzzle at the top. First puzzle solved wins immunity. Certainly a difficult challenge, but toned down from how it was originally. On its first go, EVERY step was a puzzle step. Now, there are basically sections of puzzle steps. This makes it seem like the challenge has no teeth, but on the other hand, given that Boston Rob collapsed after running this particular challenge, that’s probably for the best.

Probst goes on to talk about how they’re no longer doing challenges that any of the contestants have previously played before, which is code for “We picked ending challenges from seasons that had no contestants make it this far.”, but I like the spin he puts on it. Basically, those remaining have, to one degree or another, redeemed their past failures. Now they get to write a new legacy. It’s appropriately epic, but with just the right amount of cheese to prevent it being too grandiose. However, I will slightly question Probst’s “Never played this before.” claim, specifically with this challenge. While it’s true that, strictly speaking, no one HAS played this challenge who’s left on this season, Spencer did play a very similar challenge at the final five of “Survivor Cagayan”, and won it as well. Not exactly the same thing, but it seems like Spencer may have a leg up on the others.

Sure enough, Spencer wins. Now let’s see Kimmi’s plan put into action. She goes off to talk with Keith, wisely reinforcing what he has to do with this particular plan for it to succeed to make sure he doesn’t slip up. Unfortunately for Kimmi, the word “Subtle” does not describe her. Spencer and Tasha both wisely notice that she’s going off and speaking with people she shouldn’t really be going off and speaking with if she were going to stay true to their alliance. Figuring out that she plans to exploit the split vote, Spencer and Tasha swear NOT to split the vote.

When the foursome actually meet up, Kimmi actually pretty casually brings up the split vote idea, with guys going for Kelley and girls going for Keith. The minute Kimmi leaves, though, Tasha and Spencer start shaking their heads. Jeremy, however, is more trusting of Kimmi, particularly after he confronts her and she does a pretty convincing job of acting offended and upset at the accusation. This might seem like stupidity on Jeremy’s part, but it makes sense if you think about it. Throughout the entire game, with all of the crazy switch-ups, Kimmi and Jeremy are the only two people consistently on the same tribe. With all that loyalty built, plus paranoia about another idol, it makes sense why Jeremy would be overly trusting of Kimmi.

You know how I said the Jeff Varner boot was one of the most exciting Tribal Councils ever, and that nothing this season could possibly top it. Meet the topper. This Tribal Council was nothing short of FANTASTIC! We got really subtle gameplay from a lot of people, particularly Kelley and Keith, at least for the first part. But, as if subtle jabbing wasn’t enough, Spencer just goes and blows the whole thing open, stating out loud that Kimmi has turned against the alliance. Kimmi once again does a good job acting indignant, but Spencer doesn’t buy it. We go up to vote with many excellent sound-bytes, and everything blown wide open.

As everyone goes up to vote, I do have to say that while Spencer’s can opening was a lot of fun to watch, I’m not sure it was the best move for him. Jumping ahead a bit, Kelley, the intended target of the night, plays her idol, presumably in direct response to Spencer’s line of questioning. Had Spencer NOT done that, and just let Jeremy play HIS idol, Kelley, the biggest threat left, goes home. Bam. Done. Much better outcome. No complains, though. It did make for an exciting Tribal Council.

As I mentioned, the line of questioning leads Kelley to play her idol, which makes Jeremy wisely uncomfortable, and he plays his idol. Since neither Jeremy nor Kelley is an idiot, both read the situation correctly, and nullified three votes against them apiece. This means that, for the first time in “Survivor” history, we have a Tribal Council with no votes cast. Man, I know I hate it when people go overboard about what a “Survivor” first is, but this season really deserves that title. The resolution to this, as you might expect, is that everyone goes to vote again, but Jeremy and Kelley are now also immune. Everyone gets the chance to plead their case, and Spencer tries valiantly to sway Kimmi back to his side, trying to counter her complaints about how he replaced her in the alliance. This is somewhat undone, though, by Keith playing the part of Hayden Moss (“Survivor Blood vs. Water”), and silently insisting behind everyone backs that this is not the case. As one would logically guess, this leads to another 3-3 deadlock, this time between Kimmi and Tasha. Keith once again channels his inner “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, this time going with Gervase Peterson, as he encourages them to go to rocks. Probst then gives Jeremy, Tasha, Kelley, and Keith the chance to come to a unanimous consensus. Usually these don’t come to a consensus, but this time there’s a catch that may change things. With three people (Spencer, Kelley, and Jeremy) having immunity, and the people voted for (Tasha and Kimmi) automatically being immune in a rock-drawing situation, Keith would, by default, be voted out, as the only one not immune. It seems like this would be crazy, but for the moment, Keith seems up for it, noting that he’s had a good run, and Kimmi’s in it for the kids. This is the point where Keith needs to be voted out immediately. If you vote out Kimmi, it makes the rest of you look like jerks, and him the noble hero who tried to keep a single mom in the game. Keith just became MUCH more dangerous, and really needs to go. However, self-preservation kicks in, and Kimmi leaves anyway. Frankly, I’m not sorry to see her go. She was getting better as the season progressed, but compared to those left, she wasn’t all that exciting a character. Still, as she said she had a pretty good run, and it was nice to see her back.

After the requisite post-Tribal scene of Kelley and Keith discussing how screwed they are, we head to our second immunity challenge, basically a ropes obstacle course used on “Survivor South Pacific”, complete with a rotation puzzle. A bit generic, as challenges go, but a nice and exciting nonetheless. I lambasted it when it first appeared, but that’s because it was the final immunity challenge, which I feel should always be endurance. Here? I think it works quite well!

Then again, perhaps I’m riding the high from how much Kelley Wentworth owns this challenge, using more brains than anything. Certain obstacles are tougher than others, so Kelley goes to the toughest first. This means she takes it on with the most energy, and gets it out of the way, while everyone else avoids it. I expected Jeremy and Keith to own this challenge, since it does seem similar to fireman skills, and they both do pretty well. By all saving the hard obstacle for the end, though, they make a bottleneck, which slows them down enough for Kelley to take victory. Good for her. Also, I find it hilarious that Spencer, the puzzle guy, couldn’t get a single piece in, even after looking off of Kelley’s puzzle.

The logical choice now would seem to be Keith, and a brief pow-wow between Jeremy, Spencer, and Tasha seems to confirm this. Of course, Kelley being Kelley, she’s not going down without a fight, and her solution is… a fake idol. Ok, not a horrible plan, since inducing paranoia at this few numbers is always good if you’re on the bottom, and overplaying could backfire. Again, though, this plan also has a chance of backfiring, and doesn’t give you a lot of options. If I’m Kelley, I make an open play against Spencer. For Jeremy and Tasha, he’s a huge threat to win who has no idols. He seems to be ideally placed. Better to unite for one vote and take him out now, than Keith who is less likely to win.

It turns out Kelley makes a damn good fake idol, and this also means that all idols looking different come into play for the FIRST TIME this season. Man, for how much they built that twist up, it really took its sweet time being relevant. Now, her idol’s not Bob Crowley (“Survivor Gabon”) levels of good, but few are. Certainly it induces the paranoia she needs. In a hilarious scene, Jeremy tries to subtly get Keith’s attention to mouth who they want to vote for, being unable to talk since Tasha is napping right next to them. Keith, being Keith, fails to notice, even going so far as to look the other way. After about a solid minute of hilarious miming, Jeremy is able to mouth “Spencer” to Keith, implying that Jeremy would like to vote out Spencer. Keith relays this information to Kelley, and the pair agree to vote for Spencer. After all, either he or Jeremy need to go, and if Jeremy’s willing to play, why not go with it? From Jeremy’s end, he now has the best of all possible worlds. He makes Spencer a target rather than himself, and can basically choose how the vote goes tonight. Speaking of which, the misdirection in this episode is excellent! I didn’t bring it up last vote, but I REALLY wasn’t sure how it would shake out, and this one is no different. Jeremy is definitely a good strategist, and has been playing beyond my expectations this season, but he’s not the best. He’s prone to being overly paranoid and making mistakes, so I could see him flipping to vote out Spencer. His idea move, of course, would be to stick with his alliance. If Keith plays no idol, he goes, but if he does, then a major threat is gone, and Jeremy doesn’t look like a traitor. Pretty sweet deal for Jeremy.

It’s pretty hard to top that first Tribal Council there, but this one gives it a good try Keith once again demonstrates some subtle gameplay I wouldn’t have expected from him, and Kelley also gets in a few good hints. A fun watch, but it feels kind of standard after the last Tribal Council. In the end, Jeremy once again plays it smart, and Keith leaves. Man, I’ve really got to stop doubting Jeremy. Just when it seems like he’s going to make a big blunder, he does the smart thing. As to Keith’s leaving, you’re doubtless SHOCKED to learn that I’m not at all sorry to see him go. The man brought very little strategically or entertainment wise, though I will say I found him less insufferable this season. Probably it’s because this cast was so good that there was stuff to watch other than Keith, so when he DID occasionally show up, it was fine. In contrast, on “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, there wasn’t much BUT Keith to watch, so his antics got old really fast. So yeah, glad to see him gone.

We head on over to our final immunity challenge, which means the drawback of not getting to see the “Fallen Comrades” bit. I know they haven’t done it in forever, and it’s a relic of a bygone age at this point, but I enjoyed it, and it would have fit this season, especially with how well people knew each other this time around. Sad to say, but our Final Immunity Challenge is really nothing to look at this time around. It’s “Simmotion” from “Survivor Tocantins”, basically catching balls as they go through a maze. It’s a clever little challenge, and it IS an endurance challenge, which is good for the final challenge, but it just doesn’t feel grand. For my money, I would have gone with doing “Hand on a Hard Idol” from “Survivor Borneo”. It just would have felt right. I may have given the show crap early on for how much it seemed to be trying to be “Survivor Borneo”, but the occasional throwback to the original season is nothing to sneeze at. Ah well.

You’d expect Jeremy, the strength guy, to be out quickly in this challenge, but he wins it pretty handilly, and talks about how he won it for Val and his kids. This seems like a pretty nice scene, and it is, with a lot of genuine emotion. you’ll be a lot more cynical, though, when you realize Jeremy is going to KEEP invoking the wife and kids. With the EXACT SAME PHRASING each time! At LEAST change up the word choice, man!

After Spencer, Tasha, and Jeremy celebrate, Spencer goes to give Kelley the “sorry you lost” speech, but mentions in passing that he thinks he has a good shot to win in the end. With nothing left to lose, Kelley brings this information to Jeremy, who says he might be ok with it going to a fire-making challenge. No, Jeremy, no. Look, I get that I’ve said that you’re not the greatest strategist the world has ever seen, but this would be REALLY bad strategy. Like, Mike Holloway (“Survivor Worlds Apart”) bad. And you’d never do something that stupid. Yes, sad to say this is the one Tribal Council this episode without any tension in it.

Not to say that we get a bad Tribal Council! It once again pales in comparison to our opening Tribal Council, but that’s a tough act to follow. As it stands, we get a great open debate between Spencer and Kelley about who should go, one that I’d say actually doesn’t do Spencer a whole lot of good. He basically threatens Jeremy, saying that if he gets voted out, he’s campaigning against Jeremy in the end. Not that this argument is bad, but Spencer is so forceful, so determined with it that it makes him scary. Kelley is more subdued, but Spencer’s doing a better case agains himself than she is. True, she’s still the bigger threat. As Spencer himself says, it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but he just makes himself seem so put out that it could make someone like Jeremy want to vote for him just on principle. Also, when Probst asks Jeremy if he’s ready to do various things, Jeremy says “yes” in exactly the same tone of voice each time. Hilarious.

As always this season, though, Jeremy plays with his head, and sends Kelley home. Definitely the right move, as she was the biggest threat left in the game, but I am sorry to see her go. Unlike most people named “Kelly” on “Survivor”, Kelley was a great strategist who brought interesting new dynamics and fun confessionals to the game, and played excellently. It’s a shame she wasn’t rewarded this time around, but hopefully she gets a third chance at some point. She really deserves it in my book.

Day 39 begins with a bright orange sunrise and a bright orange bird. Pretty sweet, but I still miss the cute baby monkey. We get our usual final day feast, as well as the “Scale and Mirror” twist from “Survivor Cagayan”, though this one causes less drama. We also get our usual “How far we’ve come” confessionals from our finalists. Tasha gets teary-eyed, but doesn’t really say anything memorable, Spencer talks about how his game has evolved, and Jeremy, yet again, talks about his wife and kids, as well as his emotional journey. From what little we’ve seen, and predicting what arguments people have for the win, Tasha is unlikely to win, but it should be a close battle between Spencer and Jeremy. What’s interesting to me is that it’s really framed as a battle of logic versus emotion between the two. Spencer, as you’d expect, plays the logical “I improved my game.” card, while Jeremy goes for his emotional journey. Granted, that’s not an entirely apt comparison, since Spencer claims his game evolution was an emotional one, but it is an odd switch-up.

We’ve got a 10 person jury this time around, and while most of them are interesting in terms of questions, for the sake of time, I’m only going to hit the highlights. Savage berates both Jeremy and Spencer for being arrogant, at which point I can’t help but roll my eyes at the idea of SAVAGE of all people giving others crap about being arrogant. He asks both of them to justify their actions. Spencer pretty much apologizes, but Jeremy says that that’s how he was feeling at the time, and that while it may have been immature, it was genuine. Seems to me like Spencer answered the question better, but I get the feeling Savage will vote for Jeremy anyway. Savage is big on “honor”, and Jeremy played the game in a more Savage-like way, and so would be seen as more honorable. Ciara spouts more crap about how this season is “Unlike any other season.”, which I’m frankly sick of at this point, but I bring it up because here we see a textbook example of how to answer a jury question on “Survivor”. Jeremy responds that the caliber of player is what made this season different, citing Ciera and her desire to play as an example. Bam! Answers the question in a clever way that makes everyone feel good about themselves, and praises the question-asker when it was not explicitly asked for! That’s how you answer a jury question! Kelly makes a callback to her season by asking everyone to pick a number for the win, and for once, people make logical choices. Jeremy says “two”, whereupon Tasha says “three” and Spencer “four”. Stephen, in a funny parallel to “Survivor Tocantins”, basically asks Jeremy “Is it true that you’re the greatest human being who’s ever lived?” Abi-Maria brings up a bunch of notes that she doesn’t use. Kimmi refers to Spencer as a “bully” for how he treated Kelley at the previous Tribal Council. Kass calls out Spencer’s “Zero chance of winning the game.” remark from “Survivor Cagayan”, and even though his response to that is the most genuine we’ll see from him tonight, I feel like Kass still probably won’t vote for him. Actually, this is shaping up to be a pretty even vote tonight. Thus far, I feel like we’ve got a 4-4-1 split, with Kass, Savage, Stephen, and Abi-Maria voting for Jeremy, Ciera, Kelly, Joe, and Keith voting for Spencer, and Kimmi voting for Tasha. This makes a certain amount of sense. Tasha doesn’t have much of a resume, but played a good enough social game to earn a vote or two. Spencer’s answers have been the most articulate, but you can tell there’s a lot of BS in them. Those who can’t see through the BS vote for him. Jeremy’s answers, by contrast, aren’t as good, but come across as more genuine.

And so, it all comes down to Kelley, who decides the entire vote. Just maybe not in the way you’d expect.

Kelley asks a pretty open-ended question, which you’ think wouldn’t amount to anything. But then, Jeremy pulls out the bombshell, the ace in the hole for him. He goes on about Val and his unborn child, whom he reveals to everyone is a boy. And the jury just collapses. Everyone is blown away by this revelation, and you can tell Jeremy just won himself a lot of votes. how many votes? Well, put it this way: No name is shown on any card for this final vote. Every time they do this, it means the vote was a landslide victory, a complete shutout. Since there’s no way Jeremy ISN’T getting votes, guess who wins?

Yep, we have our third “perfect game” in “Survivor” history, with Jeremy getting all votes at the Final Tribal Council, and receiving no votes during his time in the game, though with the asterisk that three votes for him technically exist, and were just nullified. Before I rant about this, let me say that Jeremy is a deserving winner. He played a much better game, flying below the radar, and made every move pretty much right. That said, I feel that his victory is tainted by the use of underhanded tactics. The trouble is Jeremy using his wife to gain sympathy votes in the end feels a lot to me like the “Dead Grandma” lie of “Survivor Pearl Islands”. While Val actually IS pregnant, and I do think Jeremy’s emotion is genuine, it doesn’t feel fair for everyone else that Jeremy used that tactic. It feels underhanded and personal, way below the belt for this game. And yeah, I know, fairness isn’t a part of “Survivor”, but it just rubs me the wrong way that Jeremy effectively USED his wife like a tool to win “Survivor”. On top of that, while I’m definitely cool with Jeremy winning, it feels like a travesty that neither Spencer nor Tasha got any votes. They played good games. They deserve some acknowledgment of it.

Is this what brings down the season, preventing it from being number one? Well, partly, but I feel like it’s symptomatic with the larger issue I have with the season: its directionality. Early on, it was clear this season would be one of the greats, but the question was just how great. As this season progressed with consistently good episodes, I knew it had to make the top 3 or so, and I began to toy with the idea of it being my new favorite season. As we saw episodes that should have been bad, but were still good, I became convinced that putting it anywhere less than 2 would be an insult. But there again, did it make number one. I tried to compare it to “Survivor Micronesia”, my overall favorite season, but the trouble was they were good in different ways. “Survivor Cambodia” was overall more consistent in its awesomeness than “Survivor Micronesia” (note again the making of boring episodes interesting), and had a somewhat better cast. However, it never reached some of the heights of ridiculousness that “Survivor Micronesia” reached, though Erik Reichenbach voting himself out is a pretty high bar to set. What really got me thinking, though, was the overall trends of the season. “Survivor Micronesia” started out as an excellent season, but progressed to phenomenal as time went on. Basically, it got better the longer it ran. In contrast, I feel that “Survivor Cambodia”, while excellent throughout, didn’t reach the same heights later as it did earlier. The episodes were still spectacular, but just not quite as spectacular as some of the early season stuff we saw. If you’ve got the choice between a better beginning or a better ending for a season of “Survivor”, I say the ending should be better, so that’s a point in the “Survivor Micronesia” column. To solve my dilemma, I decided to wait and see how the finale for “Survivor Cambodia” turned out before making my judgement, and I deem it not quite as good. This episode could actually be a microcosm of the season: all good, but the stuff early on was just more amazing than the stuff later. Not the episodes fault, since things do have to be shown in order, but with Jeremy’ semi-underhanded way of winning, and especially in such a landslide, it just makes this season not quite number one with me. Perhaps, if the vote had been close, kept the tension right up until the end, it might have been different, but the landslide victory, coupled with a stronger beginning than ending, just keep “Survivor Cambodia” out of the number one spot.

That said, however, this is still one of the greatest seasons of all time! We had an excellent cast who really brought their “A” game, spectacular twists that all really worked, and a great locale. If you love this season above all others, I really can’t fault you in any way. This one was a home run for the show, and I’m proud to have blogged it for you.

The reunion show, as per usual, won’t be talked about. It’s a pretty nice one, but nothing stands out. That said, I am not all that optimistic about “Survivor Kaoh Rong” from the preview. As many have gather, this is another “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty” season, doubtless trying to capitalize on the popularity of “Survivor Cagayan”. My stance on reusing twists is well known by now, so I wasn’t going to like the preview from the beginning, but what’s worse, the “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty” aspect WASN’T what made “Survivor Cagayan” work. Rather, it was a spectacular cast who all came to play. If you want to recapture the “Survivor Cagayan” magic, focus on getting a great cast, not reusing twists. To further the “copying” idea, they’ve even got an NBA player on the season! The emphasis on the harshness of the season and the medical evacuations also leads me to have little faith in the season. After all, if that’s your main selling point, there must not be a lot to work with. That said, I DID like a couple members of the cast that they showcased, and that makes me believe this next season might not be a total loss. The two who particularly stood out to me were Debbie, the lady with a bunch of jobs, who seems like she’ll be a fun character, and the older guy I am henceforth dubbing “Yau-Man 2.0” (“Survivor Fiji”).

But, as per the ending of any season, I have to do a:

TOP 5 AND BOTTOM 5!

There’s not a lot that stood out about this finale that I haven’t covered in a previous list, but I have gushed about the merged tribe flag from this season, so that’s what we get to talk about. Let’s dive right in!

TOP 5

5. Enil Edam (“Survivor Caramoan”): I almost put this flag on the “Bottom 5” list, because Erik’s drawing style really doesn’t lend itself the caricatures he was trying to do of everyone who made the merge. But the center of the flag, ooh man, that give me shivers! A perfectly painted sunset with the season’s helicopter overhead. That is awesome, and puts it in the top list.

4. Barramundi (“Survivor The Australian Outback”): I normally don’t like a cartoony style for a flag, but this one made it work. It fit the more casual feel of the season, and the image of a giant fish eating the tribe name is just too good to ignore.

3. Alinta (“Survivor Vanuatu”): This season was subtitled “Islands of Fire”, so of COURSE your flag has to have a volcano on it! The drawing itself is very well done, but what puts this one so high is the lettering. Most merge tribe flags have big, block lettering on them, but Scout managed to give the lettering a distinctive style that really makes this flag stand out above others.

2. Orkun (“Survivor Cambodia”): I’ve gushed about the beauty of this flag before, so I feel no need to do so here. To look at it is to marvel at the beauty of the color and the design, and while the tribe name itself is a bit hard to make out, you can’t help but love it.
1. Gitanos (“Survivor Exile Island”): Having a professional artist to do your flag for you really helps you out. Not only was this one beautifully and uniquely constructed, but Bruce was able to pretty well reconstruct a lot of the motifs from the season, and it really helped. This flag stands out even amongst other well-painted flags.

Honorable Mention: Hae Da Fung (“Survivor China”): Another cool looking flag, with a great yin-yang symbol featuring the old tribe colors and mascots. Lettering’s really unique as well. It would definitely have been on the list proper, had it not been for the fact that said cool yin-yang symbol wasn’t the work of the contestants. Production put it on there, which in my book, disqualifies it from consideration.

BOTTOM 5

5. Moto Maji (“Survivor Africa”): I’m doing a bit of a disservice here, since this flag isn’t all that bad. A nice, big symbol over a pretty standard rendering of the tribe name. What bothers me is that the tribe name was supposed to be Swahili for “Water” and “Fire”, and they tried to reflect that in their flag. I saw WATER in the symbol… but no FIRE! FAIL!

4. #Huyopa (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”): A pretty standard rendering of the tribe name, group initials, and nothing else, but what sets this one apart is adding in the hashtag directly to the name. Granted, I ranted about this in my “Worst Merge Tribe Names” list, but it still bothers me, and bothers the flag by extension.

3. Chuay Jai (“Survivor Thailand”): This one really just lands on the list for a lack of effort. It’s a poorly drawn “Survivor” logo that’s hard to make out, with, once again, everyone initials. Nothing to see here! Move along!

2. Te Tuna (“Survivor South Pacific”): I’ll admit, perhaps I’m being harsh. After all, this one did TRY and add some variety to the flag, but it has not central grounding image, and what’s there is pretty poorly drawn. I feel bad criticizing people’s drawing skills, since my own aren’t so hot, but this flag just looks childish to me.

1. Aitutonga (“Survivor Cook Islands”): Really a placeholder for all “Name and initials” flags, but this one always stood out to me by… not standing out to me. I know it makes no sense, but of the boring flags “Survivor” has had, this one seems to most boring to me, and therefore should be put out to exemplify all of its kind.

Honorable Mention: Balboa (“Survivor Pearl Islands”): The flag itself was fine, but I put it on here because I feel like there’s some wasted potential. You have a black flag on a pirate-themed season, and you DON’T have a skull and crossbones?

Still with me, dear reader? Good. We’re in the home stretch. I just need to critique my early opinions of the contestants, and sign off!

Vytas: Wrong. While I still say he’s a good player, I evidently wasn’t the only one who spotted it, and he got voted out much earlier than I expected.

Shirin: Wrong. While the quirky, crazy energy was still there, it got to people more than I would have guessed, and led to a much earlier exit than I predicted.

Peih-Gee: Wrong. She didn’t change nearly as much as I though, and as such went out much earlier than I expected.

Jeff Varner: He was out early, which I didn’t see, but I’ll give myself some credit that I think I predicted how he would play down pat.

Monica: Technically, she WAS the first one out when her tribe first went to Tribal Council, so I’m counting this one correct. Waste of a space.

Terry: Well, the man did learn from his mistakes (at least to some degree), and might have gone farther had it not been for his family emergency. I’ll give myself this one.

Woo: He played pretty much how I expect, but went out a bit earlier.

Kass: Wrong. I’m impressed at how she improved her game, and while she didn’t last as long as her first outing, she still made it pretty far.

Savage: While the man lasted longer than I thought, I’m saying I was right on this one. He acted in pretty much the same way I thought he would, and I still didn’t enjoy it.

Kelly: Wrong. I once again nail personality and gameplay, but flub time in the game.

Ciera: Wrong. She hung in there far better than I thought she would.

Stephen: Thankfully wrong. It seemed like he might be out early like I thought, but he managed to turn his game around, at least for a while.

Joe: Pretty much right. Didn’t really learn from last season, and out almost as soon as he became vulnerable. Hung on a bit longer than I expected, though.

Abi-Maria: Completely right. She learned nothing, and got dragged along for it.

Kimmi: Wrong. While I was correct in that Kimmi hadn’t learned as much about the game as she thought, she was able to overcome that and last longer.

Keith: Wrong. While his gameplay didn’t change, it still took him pretty far.

Kelley: Right. She played aggressively and lasted a while, like I thought.

Tasha: Though she didn’t win, she came close, and played pretty similarly to how I thought she would. I’ll give myself this one.

Spencer: Right. He played pretty similarly and lasted about as long as I expected. He might even have overcame himself to win, were it not for Jeremy’s pregnancy ploy.

Jeremy: Wrong. Not as wrong as some others, but I didn’t give the guy enough credit on his strategy or his odds.

And there you have it! Great season, great cast, hopefully the next one can prove me wrong. Normally I’d take a hiatus here until the cast for next season is announced, but I do actually have one bit of off-season content I’d like to do while the iron is hot. Be on the lookout for the next few weeks for “Matt’s 2nd Second Chance Fantasy Roster”!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 12: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast, OutFox’d

The only way this blog can really start off is with an apology. As you might expect, it’s for the unexpected lateness of this blog. As my frequent readers will know, I pride myself on my punctuality with these posts, so this one being later than usual is somewhat starting. Sad to say, I’m feeling a bit under the weather, and so don’t think I can really do the blog in full at my usual time. I’ll admit, it’s pretty pathetic to say “I’m feeling too ill to do a blog.”, but it does take a lot of brainpower, and I just don’t have that right now. I’ll write as much as I can before I have to crash, and I’ll be sure to make a note of where I have to break for the evening, to give you an idea of where my thoughts may be slightly skewed. I also need to apologize for something else that’s quickly become a staple of the blog this season:

MATT’S MESS-UP!

A couple of pretty obvious ones this time. When describing the puzzle of last episode, I mentioned that it was tricky because one had to spell the word “Nutrition” backwards. I was wrong. You had to spell “Nourishment” backwards, which I would say is even harder and more obscure than “Nutrition”, so kudos there. just a slip of synapses, I guess. My other fault is in how fast I went through the last Tribal Council. Not to say that I really skipped over the strategic points, but I failed to acknowledge the awesomeness that was the shot of Spencer’s silhouette when voting. That shot sent chills down my spine. They need to do shots like that more often.

Certainly Orkun wishes they had some shots as they return from Tribal Council. There’s been very little celebrating at the expense of others this season (one of the reasons I think it’s a cut above most other seasons), but here things go a bit in that direction. Nothing overly much, but the return to camp seems more jovial than usual. Though that may be because, as Kelley correctly points out, they now all have a decent shot at winning immunity.

Not all is at peace, though. Tasha got a mystery vote last night, and it’s quickly figured out that it was Keith. Speculation from the outside was that Keith knew about the vote, but didn’t want to vote out his friend St. Joe, and so threw a vote Tasha’s way. At worst, just a sentimental move, but at best, a pretty subtle way to win over jury votes. I’ll admit, even I bought into this. I’m not the biggest Keith fan in the world, but I’d say he’s capable of at least THAT much strategic thought. I mean, he’s not Ralph Kaiser (“Survivor Redemption Island”) or anything. Yep, I was all prepared to give Keith credit here. Too bad he completely throws that out the window, wondering why he wasn’t let into the loop. He doesn’t seem too hurt about it, but it’s a shame to see that no, Keith really is that out of it.

Though, perhaps Keith’s lack of hurt is because Tasha is siphoning it all. Tasha is EXTREMELY upset that Keith voted for her, to the point of wanting to vote Keith out next. I can’t criticize this move too much, since it DOES fit in with the women’s alliance, which I said before is probably the better way for Tasha to go at this point. However, Tasha, despite arguably being better at challenges than anyone left (as far as track record goes), Keith is nowhere near as big of a threat as Jeremy or Spencer are, by virtue of not being able to really put a coherent strategy together. I’m not saying Tasha should take a throwaway vote lying down, but this seems a bit extreme. This is what I mean when I say she’s kind of Andrew Savage (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) lite. She doesn’t go in for personal attacks against people who DARE to move against her, but she’s not very quiet about it. Better to play things subtly and close to the chest in these scenarios, rather than go on the warpath against your betrayer. Take a lesson from the book of Natalie Anderson (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”), and wait for the proper time for your revenge, rather than seek it immediately.

Speaking of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, all three people voted on from that season are still around! Remember that? Jeremy, Kelley, and Keith sure do! In fact, they’re shouting it in front of everybody! If that doesn’t pile on the “Royally Screwed” for one of the three (presumably Keith), I don’t know what does. Still, even if it amounts to nothing (which is what will happen), it does bring up a good point. I’m normally not one for talking about preseason talk from the contestants outside of my “Cast Assessment” blogs, but it bears mentioning here. One of the big themes a lot of people talked about preseason was “Splitting up the ‘Survivor Cagayan’ group.” After all, while fractious, they did have four people, more than any other season, and could form a secret voting block. However, in targeting the “Cagayan 4”, people may have neglected the “San Juan del Sur 3” Almost as many people, and with less bad blood between them than those from “Survivor Cagayan”. Given Jeremy’s “Anti-Girl Alliance” talk, I doubt that’s what’s actually happening, but it’s something to consider.

After more of the aforementioned “Anti-Girl Alliance” talk between Jeremy and Spencer, we head to our reward challenge, courtesy of “Survivor San Juan del Sur”. Everyone has to unwind some rope from a frame, being tied to the end of said rope. Once they believe they’ve unwound enough rope, they must construct and cross a bridge before using beanbags to knock blocks off of a table. The first person to clear their table wins a trip to the temple where we had our show opener, as well as a blessing from the monks, and a feast. Pretty sweet reward, all things considered, and not a half-bad challenge to boot. Sure, I think the block-knocking thing is pretty lame, and I do wish the bridge was a puzzle bridge rather than sticking generic sticks in generic slots, but I like the mental element with unspooling the rope. Not to say that it’s a particularly hard thing to do (unless you’re Abi-Maria), but there’s an element of timing to it. You want to leave as quickly as you can, so as to get a lead on your opponents, but not so early that you don’t have enough rope, and lose time needing to unspool more. It’s an interesting element, and one that saves this challenge for me.

Keith won the challenge on “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, and history repeats here as he wins it again. Unlike some, however, I don’t think this is a result of Keith’s impressive physical strength. Keith’s pretty decent in that area, to be sure, and he was one of the frontrunners, but it’s not as though he had a commanding lead the entire time. Keith was just the only one who made absolutely sure he had enough rope before heading out. Still impressive, just in a different way than you might think.

Keith gets to take two people with him on his reward, and he picks Kelley and Spencer, which I really can’t argue with. Keith’s not really in a position to curry favor with one alliance or another, so might as well take a key player in both and remove suspicion of alliance forming. Not that this strategy works, but the theory behind it is good. Keith’s justification, however, is that Kelley took him on reward last time, so he’s returning the favor (fair), and that, somehow, Spencer’s loved one gave him less that Jeremy’s or Tasha’s, which I would say isn’t fair. I’m not a huge fan of putting value judgements on how important a loved one is, nor am I a fan of it here, though I cut Keith a bit of slack since unlike some, I don’t think it comes from a place of malice. Kelley passes it off as an example of “Keith Logic”, and frankly I’m surprised that doesn’t become a hashtag.

Despite Keith picking people you’d think would get rid of alliance-forming suspicion, their names still get thrown around back at camp, mostly because Tasha is still on the warpath. The fair point is also brought up that with St. Joe out of the mix, Keith is now a threat to win challenges. Tasha’s the ringleader, of course, and Kimmi and Abi-Maria are definitely on board, Abi-Maria relishing in the villainousness of it all. Jeremy’s definitely open to the idea, but everyone can tell he’s a little reluctant. Jeremy thinks, not unfairly, that Keith may be a number in his corner, and he’s still scared of a women’s alliance. Not an unreasonable fear, especially since I’d say Keith might be a good asset for Jeremy, but Jeremy goes a bit far in saying that he wishes he HADN’T voted St. Joe out last time. I get that the women’s alliance is a threat, but that’s too big a sacrifice to cripple a potential counter-alliance. Tasha, for her part, is bound and determined that Keith go, saying that it’s her time to make a move, and that if Jeremy won’t go, she’ll find others to go with instead. You know, I’m starting to see a pattern developing on this season. Everyone wants to make “their move”, something they can point to and say that they and only they engineered. Granted, that’s true on every season, but it seems really pronounced here. This fixed focus on one’s move, though, is also setting up the downfall of a lot of people. People need to make moves for themselves, sure, but they need to wait for the right time for it to happen organically. Those who try and force a move on a situation where it’s not needed often meet their downfall as a result, or have their time game significantly shorted because of it, Stephen’s feud against St. Joe being a prime example. Granted, time’s running out to make a move, and while Tasha doesn’t exactly have NO resume, she doesn’t really have anything that stands out (unless you count voting Kass out).

At first, it looks like we won’t get any strategy on this reward, but just a lot of nice, non-gameplay scenes. True, Spencer’s talk about how far he’s come is a bit forced, but it’s a lot of fun just to watch the ceremony, and hear Keith make “Indiana Jones” quips. But eventually, the game must come again. Sure enough, the three discuss a final three possibility, which again, isn’t terrible. Keith probably can’t win in that scenario, but then again, I have a hard time imagining a scenario this season in which Keith CAN win, so I suppose it’s as good as any. I don’t see Spencer or Kelley wanting to go up against the other, since I’d say those two have the strongest resumes out of anyone there, but on the other hand, they talk about adding Abi-Maria as the fourth, and since she’s the only person less likely to win than Keith, it’s possible either Spencer or Kelley plans to betray the other. One could argue that Spencer’s choice means very little, since he’s in a similar situation if he goes with Jeremy, Tasha, and Kimmi, with Jeremy being someone Spencer probably doesn’t want to face, but each could betray the other and take Tasha and Kimmi to the end, except that I’d say Tasha and Kimmi overall have better resumes than either Keith or Abi-Maria, so there’s still some incentive for the reward final three scenario. The three debate who to get out first, Jeremy being their primary target, but all agree that that’s what will be expected, in terms of idol playing. Guess Jeremy wasn’t so good at hiding that idol after all. The three correctly surmise that, after Jeremy, Tasha is the biggest threat, and so agree to go for her first. Not a bad move, except for the fact that after getting rid of Tasha, Jeremy still has a Tribal Council in which he can play his idol, and now he’s tipped off to the fact that you’re against him. Better to take the risk and blindside him now, I say. Can’t fault their logic, though. Much though I hate to make positive comparisons to “Survivor Fiji”, it’s very reminiscent of the brilliant move of getting out Edgardo of the four horsemen, since no one would see it coming.

Remember all that single-mindedness I was talking about from Tasha earlier? Yeah, that’s out the window. Tasha realizes that Abi-Maria might not be the strongest ally, and so perhaps it’s in their best interest to get her out, since she’s a potential swing vote. I’m all for flexibility in the game, and I’m certainly grateful that Tasha’s confessionals aren’t going to be super repetitive this episode, but her choices make no sense. She swings from the second worst person to vote out to the worst person to vote out, targeting people who really shouldn’t be targets. I’ll go into her logic later, as it DOES have consistence, but suffice to say, it’s not what I would call a good strategy to win the game. It makes for exciting tv, and I’m happy to see it, but in addition to voting out goats, Tasha is now destroying the possibility of a women’s alliance, which, need I reiterate, is her best option.

We WOULD head over to the immunity challenge, but I’m tired, and need to head over to bed. Here endeth the part of the blog written immediately after the episode. See you guys tomorrow (or today, as the case may be).

So, as I was saying, we head off to our promised immunity challenge. It’s a pretty standard water obstacle course, with people running across various platforms and beams to retrieve something (in this case a key), out in the water, then swim back and solve a puzzle, with the first puzzle solved winning immunity. The idea of a water obstacle course is pretty old by “Survivor” standards. Elements of it can be traced all the way back to “Survivor Borneo”. Personally, though, I consider “Survivor Vanuatu” the birthplace of this particular variation on the challenge, since that was the season to have climbing over local boats as the obstacle. This seems strange, as no one from “Survivor Vanuatu” was on this season, or even eligible to be on this season. So, how does this relate to “Second Chances”? the answer comes in the puzzle. During the first episode of “Survivor Worlds Apart”, each tribe had a choice to solve one of three puzzles. The one with the fewest pieces, basically a tangram puzzle that would make a square when solved, was not chosen. It gets reused here, giving IT its second chance, as Probst puts it. Cheesy? Yes, absolutely, but cheesy in that good, “Survivor” kind of way. If you’re going to bring back something that never got used or finished (like the blindfolded ball-rolling challenge on “Survivor Samoa” that got finished only on “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”), it’s best to do it on one of these all-star type seasons. It just feels right that “Survivor” history should be rounded out with “Survivor” alums.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that this isn’t going to be much of a contest for immunity, at least for the most. Jeremy and Spencer are far and away the heads of the pack, and really the only ones in the running for immunity. Spencer is slightly faster than Jeremy, but also a bit more reckless, and so takes a couple of pretty hard falls that are painful just to watch. Jeremy, in contrast, takes things very steadily, and never slips up once. As a result, he gets back to his puzzle station with a slight lead over Spencer, not that it matters. Jeremy’s a great guy in many ways, but he’s never shown himself as a puzzle champ. Spencer, while maybe not a puzzle CHAMP, is still pretty damn good at the things, and solves his puzzle in about 15 seconds, according to Probst. I still like this challenge, but I’ll admit a lot of the tension was gone from it. Part of that was due to just how far ahead Jeremy and Spencer were, but I also suspect that the producers were counting on the puzzle to make things exciting. When Spencer just whizzes through it, it loses a little something. Props to Spencer, as it’s not an easy puzzle, but it kind of leaves the challenge feeling a back lacking. Maybe if they’d had to run the course multiple times and retrieves multiple keys, it might have been something greater. Then again, given what we’re about to discuss, it’s probably for the best that they DIDN’T do that.

Everybody was behind Jeremy and Spencer to some degree, but Tasha was WAY behind. If this strikes you as odd, since she’s usually something of a force in challenges, well, you’d be correct. My read on the situation is that after 35 days out there, Tasha is tired, and not the best swimmer even at full strength, and this challenge required a lot of swimming. When she had FINALLY retrieved her key, and started backstroking back, she didn’t have the energy to keep her head fully above the water. Heck, in the show itself, you could SEE water lapping into her open mouth. It’s not the sort of thing that bothers me, but even I’LL admit that I’m inhumanly comfortable with feeling like I’m drowning. Tasha, for all her strengths, is only human, and so quite logically panics. For the second episode in a row, props must be given to the “Survivor” medical team, specifically their diving team. 31 seasons in, and we’ve never actually had to see the diving team rescue somebody, or even glimpsed them in the background of a challenge. They must have been there, since they got out to Tasha very quickly, but you never see them. The hid well, and performed their job to perfection. Once Tasha is out of the water, though, the tension leaves. Unlike Joe’s medical issues last episode, where it wasn’t 100% certain what was going on, leaving the possibility of an evacuation open. In Tasha’s case, it was very clear that she was just weakened and panicked. Once she was up on a platform, out of the water, it was pretty clear that she was out of danger, leaving Probst’s serious line of questioning a bit pointless. Everyone rallies around Tasha, and Probst sends them back to camp, leaving Keith to quip about how good it is that they’re sending Tasha home that night, since she’s so weak.

Back at camp, Tasha tries to walk it off, and gets some encouragement from Jeremy. Her absence allows Spencer, Keith, and Kelley to come together again, though, and try and bring Abi-Maria on board with them. As Spencer puts it, he’d be confident in this alliance if their fourth member was someone stable. Their fourth member is Abi-Maria. Enough said. Abi-Maria, for her part, does seem interested in this alliance, particularly since she and Kelley have been tight for a lot of the time in this game, but she herself talks about how she’s the swing vote, and might do something different just to shake things up.

Let us not forget that Abi-Maria is delusional, though. Just when it seems she might be the swing vote, we find out that the swing vote is actually Spencer, a role he should be used to by now. Tasha reasons to him that this season “Deserves a strong final 3” as a thank-you to the fans, as a reasoning why he should stick with the himself-Jeremy-Tasha final three. Now, as a viewer, I very much like this idea. A final three where most everyone has an equal or close-to-equal chance of winning is much more exciting to watch than someone going to the end with a goat or two. That said, speaking as someone who likes this show for the strategy more than anything, this is a STUPID IDEA! Spencer, you’re in one of the best positions to win the game! Don’t potentially jeopardize it for the sake of us! I get that this season honors the fans almost as much as it does the returnees, but that’s no reason to sacrifice your game for us!

Fortunately, as we head off to Tribal Council, I doubt that’ll happen, and I’m now pretty sure that Tasha is going. It just makes more sense strategically, and Spencer is nothing if not strategic. Admittedly, Abi-Maria’s comment about her being in power might be setting up some hubris for her exit, but the storyline of Tasha wanting to make a move and having it backfire on her has pervaded the episode. It makes more sense from both a strategic standpoint and an editing standpoint.

Gone are the early days of this season, when every Tribal Council was exciting. Again, I have to say, this was not the WORST Tribal Council ever, but it just doesn’t stand out. There is a bit where it seems like Keith might make another “Stick to the plan.” gaffe by saying “I think my ‘We’ is gonna win out.”, but this just gets everyone talking about their various “We’s”, and the five-year-old part of me is laughing his butt off. It’s entertaining, but it’s about the only strong part of Tribal Council, and when it’s based on juvenile penis humor, that’s not a good thing. If only we had an unpredictable vote to get to…

Say what you will about this season, but it’s very good at hiding who’s actually going home. I should have followed the hubris, as Abi-Maria leaves the game. She oddly DOES follow through with her threat of breaking away, and votes for Keith. Not the MOST illogical vote, since his name was tossed around earlier in the episode, but it seems weird to me that she’d break away from Kelley like that. The two seemed to be pretty well in cahoots. I’ve made it pretty clear that getting rid of Abi-Maria was a dumb move, so kudos to Tasha for convincing people that it was a good move to make. That woman can SELL a poor argument. As to whether I’m sorry to see Abi-Maria go, the answer is NOT AT ALL! Granted, she was the center of drama early on, but a decent amount of that drama was cringe-inducing. Even if you liked it, she quieted down after the merge, with the exception of dubbing Stephen “Poop-pants” for very little reason, so really, not much of a loss. Exciting for the viewers, but a dumb move for pretty much everyone involved.

This episode is a tough nut to crack. I can hardly call it a BAD episode, since we did get a decent amount of strategic talk and an unpredictable sendoff. Yet I still feel lukewarm about it. I guess because a lot of episodes this season have been MAJORLY exciting, one that’s only just standard exciting at best seems like a bit of a letdown. I will say, while this is still an excellent season, I feel like it might have peaked too early. Again, not that the episodes haven’t been good in their own right, just that all the most amazing stuff happened early on in the season. It can still make a comeback, especially since the finale looks exciting. A six-person final episode. Never seen that before. Presumably they’ll add in an extra Tribal Council, or just have a double Tribal Council, to get us down to a final three. But who can win in any final three scenario? time for my ordering of people from easiest win to toughest win. Usually I go from “guaranteed win if they make the end” to “no chance at winning”, but with Abi-Maria gone, I’d say everyone has some chance of winning. A slim chance, maybe, but a chance. And who’s the top of the heap?

KELLEY: Should she get to the end, I’m pretty sure she wins. It’s a tough call between her and the person I’d say is second most likely to win, but I think Kelley has the edge in this case. Of all the people left, her game has been the most up-front, and she’s got a great underdog story. She was in the minority a lot of the time, yet lasted a good long while. She never made the merge on her original season, yet she beat out people who did. Maybe I’m just biased since she’s a Kelley who’s not, as I once put it, “Bland as beige wallpaper”, but I feel like she could be a good winner, and has a great shot at it if she gets to the end. Her getting to the end is the biggest obstacle, but if she gets there, watch out!

SPENCER: If this list factored in who is most LIKELY to get to the end, Spencer is on top, no question. He’s got connections with everybody, is constantly the swing vote for alliances, there’s really no reason why he can’t make the end. And, unless he’s up against Kelley, he probably wins. He’s also got something of an underdog story with the “No firm alliance” thing and early votes against him. I give Kelley the edge because I feel like Spencer’s game is more subtle. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it means there’s less he can point to that was exclusively his move. Against anyone else, he’s fine. Against Kelley, it might cost him.

JEREMY: While his win is maybe not as assured as either Spencers or Kelleys in the final three, Jeremy still has a decent shot. He led a lot of big votes, can point to his “human shields” strategy as a way he improved his game, and has a decent sob story for the end. It’s probably best for him if he DOESN’T take Spencer or Kelley to the end, but even then, he still has a slim chance.

TASHA: I feel bad putting Tasha this low, since I don’t think she’s played a bad game (vindictiveness against Kass aside). The trouble is that, while Tasha has done an excellent job of making herself a part of every conversation, she, like Spencer, really has no moves she can point to as her own, and that may cost her. Not that her resume is bad, just that it’s a lot weaker that most everybody else’s.

KEITH: Like the order of the top two people, the order of the bottom two people are kind of a toss-up. Neither of them can really say they’ve done much of ANYTHING in this game, and so probably will have a hard time winning. I give Keith the edge because, unlike some people I could name, I could see him playing the “I was playing stupid.” card and actually have it be believed. Plus, he has a couple challenge wins to his name, which may count for something.

KIMMI: Kimmi has played a pretty fantastic social game overall, but like Tasha and Spencer, I think it may be too subtle to give her an easy win. I doubt she’s out of the running entirely, but she’s a long-shot. She really has no moves to her name, and can only hope for a bitter jury to give the win to her over someone else. I almost put her above Keith, since I really don’t see either of them winning. I only put her lower because of the edit. With how little screen time she’s gotten overall this season, she’s not winning it. Shame, because I do like her.

Well, the finale’s being built up big, and it’s not too late for the end game to be as exciting as the early game. Here’s hoping!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.

Idol Speculation: “Survivor Cambodia” Episode 11: Gender Identity

If any of my readers are wondering why I, and many others on the internet, are calling this one of the best seasons of all time, you need look no further than this episode. Oh, it is by no means a great episode. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a bad episode. Lackluster challenges, little to no strategizing, and a predictable boot. By all rights, this should be a terrible episode, the worst a season can produce. And yes, I’d say this was the weakest episode of this season as a whole thus far. And yet… I can’t hate it. For whatever reason, this season has succeeded at injecting such tension, such drama, that even the most predictable of episodes becomes exciting. How you may ask? An Oedipus Complex. Oh, sorry, that’s me pulling from a “Cards Against Humanity” Deck. The answer probably lies somewhere in the episode. Let’s look at it, shall we?

Our episode kicks off the morning after the regrettable Stephen Fishbach ouster, which Spencer takes credit for, though the way I saw it, that was more Joe’s move. True, Spencer was the swing vote that allowed it to happen, but I prefer to give credit for a move to the person who came up with the ove rather than the person who executed it. In any case, Spencer seems to have recovered from his temporary head trauma that led him to believe that Stephen was a bigger threat than Joe, as he now makes good with Jeremy, and wants Joe out of this game again. Jeremy is naturally a little suspicious, but since he has few options at this point, he accepts Spencer back into the fold.

It may be a case of too little, too late, however, as Kimmi has her own plans. Now, before I get into what bugs me about this, I’m going to give Kimmi the praise she deserves. She’s a lot more adaptable than I thought she was. Not long after I got done criticizing her for learning how to play the game better than on “Survivor The Australian Outback”, but still stuck in that early era of gameplay, she finally ramps it up here, and joins the rest of us. It’s a great evolution to see, and makes me feel bad for that criticism of her. But with that said, there is something that is equally true and must now be said: Kimmi’s strategy is irksome. Oh, not because it’s a bad strategy; far from it! Kimmi’s trying to form a women’s alliance so that, once obvious target Joe is gone, the women can just pick off the men all the way to the final four. For Kimmi, this is a great strategy. It’s a move she can claim as her own, pretty much guarantees her final three (since both Kelley and Tasha are bigger threats than she is at that point), and even gives her a decent shot at winning. At least she’d get a better one than up against, say, Jeremy and Spencer. No, my problem with Kimmi’s move is the hypocrisy of it all. Remember back to the days of Bayon? WHO was the one ranting about not letting a “women’s alliance” form? WHO was the one leading the anti-Monica charge? And don’t misunderstand, I have no love for Monica. I stand behind my assertion that she was a waste of a spot this season. But for KIMMI to be the one who suggests a women’s alliance? The hypocrisy of it all is just killing me.

With that nice little nugget of strategy tucked away (Kimmi having talked to Kelley, and Kelley having talked to the others), we head off to our reward challenge, which, as teased last episode, is the loved one’s challenge. Probst tries to fake out the contestants that they’re not getting a personal loved ones visit this time, but no one really buys it. I’ll be talking about the challenge itself in a bit, but let’s focus on the positives first. This is a really nice set of loved ones here. A few here and there are just kind of standard, but most of them have some factor that makes them stand out, and I mean that in a good way. We start out with Jeremy, whose wife Val is able to come out and see him, marking the first instance ever in which the loved one who shows up for a challenge was previously a contestant on the show. Recall that Jeremy had been a bit broken up about leaving his wife while she was pregnant. For him, this is probably the best day out there. He even gets to learn the sex of the baby. They’re having a boy, and if they happen to be reading this blog, I wish them a hearty congratulations, and ask that they leave a comment so that I can have some vindication in my sad, pathetic life. Jeremy for some reason doesn’t want his fellow tribe members to know that he knows the sex of the baby for some reason. Guess it’s that whole “Not wanting to seem too emotional” thing from earlier in the season. Tasha’s cousin shows up, though Tasha says they’re more like sisters than cousins. Frankly, this is one of the less memorable reunions of the episode, but it’s decent nice to see. Spencer’s girlfriend comes out, and he’s able to get over HIS inability to express emotion by saying “I Love You”. While I still think this conflict for Spencer is a bit contrived, it’s a nice scene to have. You really feel for Spencer’s reunion here, and you also feel jealous, if you’re me, since Spencer seems to have done very well in the girlfriend department. Abi-Maria and her mother reunite next, and like on “Survivor Philippines”, demonstrates to us that even the most despicable human beings have someone out there who loves them. I also like the little detail about how they speak Brazilian Portuguese to each other. It’s a little thing, but it adds a unique touch, and it’s kind of a fun little surprise to see what they’re actually saying. Keith gets to reunite with his wife, and this is another one that falls a little flat for me. Again, it’s a nice enough reunion, but there’s nothing special about it, and Keith’s quip afterwards really doesn’t do it for me. Fortunately, we have Kelley reuniting with her dad Dale after this, which is much more interesting. Dale becomes the second contestant to ever reappear as a loved one, and we get to hear his thoughts on the hardness of staying behind while your loved one goes play “Survivor”, and his happiness that Kelley managed to do better this time. Maybe not the most emotional reunion, but still fun to see. I’ve got a lot for time for Dale Wentworth, more so than most. He was a bit clueless socially, but he had some good ideas, and was good for an entertaining quip or two. Here, we get to see his arc come full circle, as he got his daughter voted out of the game, but now she’s surpassed him. It’s nice to see. While Joe may be boring in most respects, the one time he showed more than just bland niceness was when he was bitter about not even being allowed to make the loved ones challenge, since he wanted his dad to share the experience. This time, Joe gets his wish, and his dad comes out of the jungle just like he’d imagined. Once again, it’s nice to see the story come full circle. Finally, Kimmi’s dad comes out to greet her, and sadly, we end on a low note. The only real significant thing about that visit was when Probst played up how Kimmi had waited “the longest” for her loved one, referencing the fact that, with Kelly out of the game, Kimmi is the contestant from the oldest season left. It’s true, but it feels very contrived. Probably should have saved Jeremy or Joe for last, in my opinion.

As to the challenge itself, as I hinted, it’s pretty blah. Each contestant digs up a sting with three bags of puzzle pieces attached, then spin around a pole to get at a fourth bag. Now dizzy, they have to cross a balance beam and untie a fifth bag, before getting out the puzzle pieces to solve a word puzzle. This one’s a combination challenge, taking elements from “Survivor One World” and “Survivor Cagayan”. Like many post-merge challenges, it lacks in scale. Parts of it are entertaining. The dizzy balance beam portion is decently difficult, and the puzzle is, in many ways, insidious. Unlike most puzzles, which have words that commonly relate to “Survivor”, this one spells out “Nutritious”, and for this particular puzzle, you need to remember to spell it backward to be right, which is no small feet on little food, water, or sleep. Sadly, though, the challenge just isn’t that exciting over all. At least it’s not a team reward challenge.

Most everyone makes it to the puzzle and gets confused (no surprise there), but it’s ultimately Kelley who wins. She gets a barbecue feast with her dad back at camp, along with three other people, meaning for once it’s not an individual reward challenge where you offend more than half the tribe. Kelley, being the smart, strategic woman she is, picks… Keith. Ok, didn’t see that coming. I guess there might be a bit of a “Survivor San Juan del Sur” bond there, but other than that, I see no logic in this choice. A women’s alliance is a good strategy for Kelley, but it’s tenuous at the moment. This alliance is the perfect time to solidify that bond. Admittedly, you probably don’t want to take ALL the women on reward, since that might look suspicious to the men, but KEITH? What’s the excuse for taking him. You probably don’t want to take Joe, since he’s your prime target, and you don’t want him getting food, but with both Spencer and particularly Jeremy, you can make the “They needed it most” argument for taking them, thereby deflecting flak from yourself. Kelley’s next two picks are logical, though, as she takes Abi-Maria and Kimmi with her. One could argue that, since Kelley is closely bonded with Abi-Maria, that it’s better to take Tasha than her, but given how vindictive Abi-Maria can be, I can’t argue with that call too much. What I CAN argue against is her choice when Probst lets her take one more person along. Now there’s really no excuse for not taking Tasha. Leaving her out will make her less likely to join the women’s alliance, and since you’ll have taken at least one guy by this point, there’ll be less suspicion. But no, Kelley makes probably the WORST choice in this scenario, and takes Joe. Rather than take the person you want to bond with the most, you take the person you want to target, and you feed them. I fail to see the logic here.

Everyone goes off to enjoy their reward in front of the other three, and it’s very nice. Joe and his dad have a bonding moment in front of the Orkun flag, and while it’s definitely a very genuine moment, and I should be invested, I can’t help but instead focus on Joe’s Dad’s hair. At last, the origin of the man-bun is revealed! Ok, technically his dad has a ponytail, but considering how similar their hair is overall, I’m considering it a proto-man bun. Joe’s is just a slightly more evolved version.

Despite Jeremy, Tasha, and Spencer having the fact that they didn’t get a loved one’s visit rubbed in their faces, they’re not overly bitter. Spencer makes one comment, and even that’s a qualified comment. The three do agree, though, that they’d make a nice final three. Tasha rightly states that she’s in a good position now, as, so long as Joe goes, she can choose whether to side with Jeremy, Spencer, and Keith, or with Kelley, Kimmi, and Abi-Maria. I’ll also give Tasha credit for not being bitter over the whole “Not allowed to bond on reward” thing. I expected her to consider that having “crossed her”, which she, as you will recall, does not take well. She plays very well here, and throughout the whole episode overall, save for one small moment that I’ll touch on in a bit.
Only the halfway point of the episode, and already we get to the immunity challenge. This is the final immunity challenge from “Survivor Samoa” where everyone holds a small wooden statue over their heads on an increasingly long pole. Last person with their statue aloft wins. Not to say that this challenge isn’t difficult, but it’s yet ANOTHER endurance immunity challenge, and I’m getting sick of them. It’s also not exactly one of the most memorable or dramatic looking endurance challenges ever. I know that, by design, endurance challenges are not going to be the coolest looking, but consider, say, “Hand on a Hard Idol”, the classic final immunity challenge. Overall, not much is happening, just people standing there, but MAN do they make it look awesome to stand there. The pose is epic, the landscape dramatic! THAT’S what you can do with an endurance challenge.

But let’s add some ketchup to that awful sandwich, shall we? How about we make this a gender-segregated immunity challenge? Yep, this is one of those where the last man and woman standing each get immunity. Normally, this isn’t too bad a twist, especially in larger merges, since it gives a somewhat fairer shot at immunity. Plus here, it might break up the monotony of St. Joe winning everything. But the problem is that this twist works best right after the merge, just to add shake-up upon shake-up. This late, it feels tacked-on and not right. Having double immunity right after the merge adds a sense of grandeur to it. Doing it randomly, having not done it at any challenge before, just doesn’t make sense to me.

Well, better find something to like about the challenge. Um… the little wooden statue looks pretty cool?

Everyone lasts a decently long while, but the women start dropping like flies, leaving Kelley with immunity. Jeremy and Spencer drop out shortly after, leaving it be, once again, a showdown between Keith and Joe. Oh boy, we all know where this is going. We’ve been teased with a medical emergency, and Probst has been going on and on this challenge about not letting the statue fall on your head. Keith’s the one who’ll be feeling this challenge the most, due to his older years, so doubtless he’s the one to make this mistake, and probably get evacuated from the game.

All this is a very logical assessment, and I’m willing to bet most people who watched this episode expected that to happen. For them, I just have one question: why is Joe lying on the ground, unconscious?

Yep, the show got me. I’d been all prepared to snark cynically about how Keith’s evacuation was telegraphed, but instead, he wins. Joe ends up collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, something no one would have expected from him. This surprise really amps up the drama of what otherwise would be a fairly run-of-the-mill medical emergency, at least by “Survivor” standards. It doesn’t help that Joe doesn’t immediately respond to the medical team, bringing to mind the near death of Russell Swan on “Survivor Samoa”. It really hits you hard, and it feels, in a sense, like the show blindsided you.

Thankfully, it turns out Joe just needed a moment, and is going to be ok, which I’m grateful for. While I’m not the biggest Joe fan in the world, I hate to see people get evacuated for medical reasons, especially when they’re really playing hard. Further, St. Joe really needs to be voted out for a satisfying conclusion, showing that, despite his improved gameplay, he really couldn’t win. Probst gives a big speech on playing hard that really goes nowhere, and we get sent back to camp.

As one might expect, St. Joe’s name gets tossed around a LOT following the challenge. Abi-Maria, of course, ruins any tender moments that we might have. At first, it seems like the misdirection is really going to fall flat, as St. Joe talks to Jeremy about voting out Abi-Maria. Now you may ask, “Who in their right mind would vote out Abi-Maria? She’s cannon fodder at the end!” And this is exactly St. Joe’s argument. No one will ever vote Abi-Maria out, so she takes up an end slot. It might be yours. Why let that happen? Well, St. Joe, I’ll tell you why. At this point in the game, with so few people left overall, the focus shifts from “How do I get to the end?” to “Who can I beat?” Your argument might have worked earlier, when there was more cannon fodder left in the game, but now? No sane person would vote Abi-Maria out, at least on that evidence. This is REALLY bad misdirection, and had this been all we got, I might have found it in me to dislike this episode.

Thankfully, Tasha’s one stupid move of the night gets us much better misdirection. Hoping to build trust with the guys, she spills the beans about the women’s alliance. This, correctly, gets the guys paranoid about said women’s alliance, and suddenly voting out Abi-Maria seems much more attractive. After all, one less woman in the game weakens the women’s alliance. Now, I get where Tasha came from in the decision to tell the guys. She wants to build trust with a final three alliance, and she doesn’t want to look like a double-crosser, should one of the disgruntled women try and shake things up. But in doing so, Tasha pretty much throws all her eggs into the guys basket, since this makes it harder for the women’s alliance to get together, thus eliminating her best asset at this point in the game. Not only is this bad in general, but I’d say she’s throwing her eggs in the wrong basket. She has a MUCH better shot at winning the game against the women than against Spencer and Jeremy. It does give us better misdirection, though, which I appreciate. For all this episode’s faults, I can say I genuinely don’t know who’s going at Tribal Council.

Given this episode’s Tribal Council, that’s a good thing. It’s not the worst, but it’s just sort of generic posturing, nothing really special. The votes are cast, and predictably, St. Joe gets crucified, I mean voted out. Can’t say I’m sorry to see him go. Joe is a nice guy and all, but if there was one flaw in the past couple episodes, it’s that most strategy centered around him to the point of exclusion of all others, either by targeting him, or using him to target someone else. With him gone, we can now move forward with new and exciting storylines. If he wasn’t going to win, leaving sooner is better. Plus, while seeing someone immunity their way to the end would have been neat, it does not a legendary winner make, in my opinion.

Was the the right decision? Of course. The women’s alliance is a threat, to be sure, but Joe winning overall is a much bigger threat. It works well for both the women and the men. Plus, Jeremy’s immunity idol and the possibility of having Tasha on board means that this move is less risky overall. Good on you all for not making the same mistake twice!

This episode still confuses me. It has a lot of elements to dislike, that I listed earlier, but the exciting bits were just SO exciting, and I had such a fun time, that I can’t in good conscience dislike this episode. The preview for next week looked boring, maybe I can rag on that.

You know something I love, though? The “Lore” reward challenge from last week. I’m still riding a high from that. Thus, it’s time for a new segment I call…

MATT’S MARK-UP!

Yeah, the title’s a work in progress. Point is, I wanted to do a “Top 5 and Bottom 5” of lore challenges last week, but the blog was too long as is. This one isn’t though, so I’ll do it now. trouble is, by the strictest definition, there are only seven such challenges in the entirety of “Survivor” History. Rather than do a “Top 3 and Bottom 3” like I’ve done in the past, I thought it better to just rank all seven from the least good to the most good, since none of them are “bad” per se. I’ll be using a strict definition here, so the challenge must be one where Probst tells a story (or lists off facts about the locale), and then people must go and answer questions about that story, either by free recall, or picking the correct response. The lore challenge from “Survivor Cook Islands” doesn’t count because the lore barely factored into the challenge, and was just “Put the answers in the right spot”, rather than having to figure out the answer. Limits set, let’s get too it!

7. “Survivor Guatemala”: It pains me to put this one as the lowest, since “Survivor Guatemala” is one of my favorite seasons, and this challenge from this season is part of the reason I became a “Survivor” fan in the first place. That said, this one is the least remarkable of them all. It’s very by-the-numbers, and the flags grabbed to signify a correct answer just don’t stand out very much. Making the stuff to grab color coded to person (rather than question) was a nice touch, but this one is just too unremarkable to put anywhere else.

6. “Survivor Africa”: Sunset is a very picturesque time to run a challenge, but as we’ll discuss later, it’s not sunset. This was still a pretty cool challenge, with the breaking of ostrich eggs to get the ribbons being a cool part. Setting the whole thing in an abandoned boma was also a nice touch. However, while the ribbons falling off the staffs made for a nice bit of tension in the challenge, it ultimately came to nothing, and just seemed like a design flaw in the challenge. Plus, I can live without hearing about the circumcision practices of the Masai, thank you very much.

5. “Survivor Vanuatu”: The tale of Roy Mata is probably my favorite of all the lore stories ever given on the show. It was engaging, relatively easy to follow, and actually played a part in the end of the season, which was a cool touch. Collecting pig tusks was different in a good way in determining who won, though I take issue with the fact that you couldn’t really tell which tusk was from which question. Makes it harder to play along. It was also nice to see Eliza, someone who hadn’t won immunity to that point, win. But this one took place in broad daylight (unlike the rest of the ones further up the list), and the course felt really small and contained, which detracted somewhat from the tension.

4. “Survivor Marquesas”: I want to put this one higher, I really do. Kathy’s warrior whoop after winning is one of my favorite moments of the season, and holding it at night with everyone having a torch was a very atmospheric touch. Sadly, though, the story isn’t memorable, and the totems everyone needed, while easy to see, were a bit generic and couldn’t really be distinguished from one another. As such, here must this season lie.

3. “Survivor The Australian Outback”: Shackling the contestants was a nice touch, and added an element of strategy as to which lock you went for first. Locks as the thing needed to be turned in was a bit generic, but it made the challenge feel like more of a cohesive whole. It also helps that they could get easily lost, adding some drama and a somewhat come-from-behind victory. Really, it’s hard to say what this challenge DOESN’T have going for it. Really, what’s keeping it down is that the two above it have similar to what this one has, but more.

2. “Survivor Borneo”” This particular lore challenge is well-remembered by most, and for good reason. While it does take place at sunset, rather than night, it’s incredibly appropriate. Creepy masks all over the place, a story that for once directly relates to the contestants, it does a good job of scaring you. Giving each contestant a camera to record answers on was a pretty nice touch as well. The crowning moment, though, is Rudy’s repeated “I don’t know.” to pretty much every question. I’d ask what could possibly beat this out, but by process of elimination, you know what it is.

1. “Survivor Cambodia”: How could I not give it to this season? This iteration of the challenge throws everything at you. Three possible answers instead of two. People making stupid mistakes. People being tricked into giving the wrong answer. An atmospheric night shoot. A FREAKING IDOL CLUE HIDDEN AT THE CHALLENGE! All that effort deserves to be rewarded, which is why this most recent lore challenge is the best ever.

Feel free to disagree in the comments, but I’m riding high on this season. Not feeling too optimistic about next episode, but let’s hope this season proves me wrong again!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.