For all that I said that “Survivor Africa” was considered the worst of “Classic ‘Survivor'”, on the whole it is still well remembered, if only for fitting in the aforementioned category. Particularly given it’s (relatively) recent DVD release, people have been remembering it much more fondly. No, the first season to truly divide people on whether it was good or not was “Survivor Marquesas”. Some people think it was an endearing, amazing season that deserves to also be ranked as “Classic ‘Survivor'”, some people think it’s a festering pool of awful. Where do I fall? Let’s do the analysis and find out.
Once again, I warn my readers that this retrospective will contain spoliers, but I will give an unspoilerish opinion on whether or not the season is good/should be watched in the “Abstract” section. Those wishing to read just that section should scroll directly to the bottom of the page to read it. Now, on with the review!
CAST
I hate to peak earl, but unfortunately this is where the season thrives or dies for most people. If you like the season, you see the few great players they had as dominating, and even some of the lesser players had their moments. If you hate the season, you see the good players as overrated, and the lesser players getting for too much screen time. Oddly, I sort of fall into both categories, as while I think the “great” players are overrated, I think some of the “lesser” players are underrated.
In order to explain, I’ll have to organize the “Cast” section a little differently, and talk about the distribution of people before I go on to who is remembered and if they deserve it or not. The thing about Marquesas is that it didn’t do as good a job at getting a variety of strategy types. Now, I don’t mean that they didn’t vary their people, locations, and lifestyles enough, that they were still up to par with the previous seasons. No, I mean that everyone on Marquesas was either a hardcore strategist, or else completely naive to the game. There really was no middle ground. At least with the first 3 seasons, they gave us SOME people who were both moral yet strategic. This season just felt like extremes of the tropes, on the whole, and could have made for a very boring season, just washing extremes battle with each other to see who would come out on top. It didn’t help that by the final 8, the strategic people were, by and large, eliminated, which could have made for a very boring season. What saves it, however, was that some of the people actually CHANGED their strategy in the middle, and became much more strategic than they were. This was EXCEDINGLY fascinating, and, in my opinion, saved the cast of the season from utter ruin.
Now onto the cast specifics. Far and away, the person most remembered out of Marquesas is “Boston” Rob Mariano, a construction worker who fancied himself a Godfather of “Survivor”. However, this fame largely came to being after “Survivor All-Stars”, not to mention the fact that he’s the castaway utilized the most by CBS, appearing on 4 separate seasons (meaning that for every 6 seasons you watch, you will see Boston Rob in one of them). He’s considered by many to be one of the greatest strategists the game has ever seen, and I freely admit that he’s not that bad. On the other hand, I’d expect he’d be pretty good AFTER 4 DAMN CHANCES AT THE TITLE! But of course, we’re not here to look at his future record, we’re here to look at what he did on Marquesas. So, he voted off alpha male Hunter Ellis to gain power for himself… Alright, decent strategic move. He made some wisecracks at the expense of his fellow tribemates… Ok. And that’s it. That’s all Boston Rob did in his tenure on Marquesas, getting eliminated shortly after the merge by a majority alliance from the former Rotu tribe for being a physical threat. He really did virtually nothing, aside from influencing one vote in the third episode. The rest was just him cracking jokes, waiting to be voted off. He tried to save himself, certainly, but he failed miserably. At this point, it should be no secret that I’m not a huge Boston Rob fan. I think he’s highly overrated, and annoying in large doses. My personal favorite contestant from Marquesas (not to mention another fan favorite) is Kathy Vavrick-O’Brien, the Real-Estate Agent from Vermont. The reason I like Kathy is very simple: she exemplifies what I love about the cast. Kathy, coming into the game, fell into the “naive” category I mentioned earlier, really having no idea how to play the game, just having a few basic survival skills, and being good in the challenges. In fact, to begin with she was so bad at the social game, the only reason she wasn’t eliminated was because Rotu went on a winning streak early on, and she found herself in the majority after the tribe swap. However, unlike past and future castaways, Kathy actually LEARNED as she went on, and changed her game to the point of becoming a strategical dominator for the season post merge. This is so impressive in my eyes, and for me, it makes Kathy one of the greats. Unlike Boston Rob, I can see why she was invited back for All-Stars, and I’m sad that she isn’t really talked about anymore, because I think she’s a great example of adaptability in the game. Now, I’ve said that I don’t think Boston Rob should have been invited back for All-Stars, but who do I think should have? Aside from Kathy, the answer would have to be Sean Rector, a very witty Harlem Schoolteacher nicknamed “Malcolm Farrakhan” by eventual winner Vecepia Towery. Like Boston Rob, he was strategic and funny. Unlike Boston Rob, however, he seemed human, likeable, and had less of an ego. His strategy was more subtle, and I found him much funnier than Boston Rob. So, yeah, Sean was pretty cool. Also remembered, though mainly because Probst likes her, is Gina Crews, who fell squarely on the “moral” side of the spectrum. The “Watermelon Queen” in real life, she was a tough woman (which this season had a lot of) who pretty much fell apart after Hunter’s exit, then seemed to regain her footing after the tribe switch, only to be voted outfor being in the minority on her tribe. Yeah, I’m not too fond of her. She’s likeable enough, I suppose, but she really didn’t impact the game that much, and just left me feeling neutral. The two utter notable names of the season are Neleh Dennis (the Mormon runner-up of the season) and Sarah Jones (Cleopatra). They are both, unfortunately, remembered for negative things. Neleh takes a lot of flak for being overly sweet and repeatedly saying “Oh, my heck.”, despite being a halfway decent strategist (though to be fair, some of the flak also comes from her insisting that she was moral when, in fact, she was not). Sarah, meanwhile, is remembered for being a prissy girl whose main assets were in silicone. As my earlier parenthesis might have reminded some, she’s best remembered for doing absolutely no work to row the raft into shore, but sat atop while her “servants” paddled in, which was describes as similar to Cleopatra arriving at her palace, appropriately played with Egyptian-themed music in the background. So yeah, of the people most remembered, there are only 2 that I really like, but I do think that one person off this season has been neglected in “Survivor” lore. That person is Tammy Leitner, a crime reporter from Arizona. Tammy is one of the few people this season who actually balanced morals and strategy. Ok, to be fair, she tended more towards the moral side of things, but she could be strategic when she wanted to, and had a “never say ‘die'” attitude that I find fascinating. Unfortunately, this is where the good ends. Vecepia is not really a good winner, called a “Bible-thumping Bitch” by both contestants and viewers alike, and the rest of the cast was just bland (aside, perhaps, from John Carroll, who had halfway decent strategy, but is unfortunately, only remembered for falling on a sea urchin, and needing Kathy to come pee on his hand). Maybe now you see the problem with Marquesas: it had to rely on a few really good characters, instead of a good cast overall. Still, the characters they relied on were (for the most part) good choices, particularly Kathy, and the cast is salvaged pretty well.
Score: 8 out of 10
CHALLENGES
For me, this is where Marquesas suffers the most. A lot of this had to do with the location, which I’ll talk more about in the “Overall” section, but suffice to say that “Generic South Pacific Island” is not as epic as the Australian Outback, or the African bush. It did mean a fair number of water challenges, which made for a nice change, but the scale of the challenges just seemed to go down. There were some good ones, to be sure, and it held true to some “Survivor” staples (blindfolded obstacle courses, the “Fallen Comrades” challenge, and probably one of the best gross food challenges ever), but a lot of them felt repeptitive. There was a lot of “build something” challenges, which are good in and of themselves, but when there are too many of them, they start to feel repetitive. This season also had a lot of “Sail the boat out to sea, grab some generic things, and race back with them” challenges, which got old really fast. Particularly after the merge, things just seemed to get mundane. I don’t mean they got modernized, of course, but the challenges started to feel very much like simple chores rather than complex obstacles. For instance, some indidvidual challenges in Marquesas included building and flying kites, breaking open coconuts to fill a tube, and building a fire to pop popcorn. Not exactly what I think of when I think “Survivor”. I admire that the producers were trying to go a different direction, but this feels like a step backward instead of a step forward.
Not much else to say. The challenges this season, on the whole, were just weak.
Score: 3 out of 10.
TWISTS
Marquesas was the last season before the producers began to get “twist happy”, and people do seem to respect it for this. However, while very few of the twists (made by the producers or the players) were great, there were very few God-awful ones as well, and the twists just come off as “ok”.
To begin with, this marked a new level of deprivation for the castaways. Previously, they’d been given a ration of some form of food (usually rice), but this time had very meagre supplies. On the one hand, this made the first few episodes rather hard to watch, as the tribes spent a lot of time complaining about the food situation. On the other hand, it was a nice challenge for the tribes, changed up the game somewhat, and came off ok once the tribes figured out how to get food. The next twist is what Boston Rob is remembered for: flipping the vote to alpha-male Hunter. This in and of itself is nothing new, we’d seen alpha males voted off early so others could sieze power, Joel Klug (“Survivor Borneo”) being the prime example of this. What separates Hunter’s vote out was that unlike other alpha male boots, Hunter was actually in control at some point (and not just under the illusion of control), and was also necesarry. The Maraamu Tribe had lost every single challenge up until that point, and so having physical strength would have been helpful. The only reason to vote off the alpha male at this point was to sieze power, and it shocked people, so I suppose that makes it a good twist. The producers swtiched up tribes again, though this time a bit differently. They had each castaway stand on a random wooden disk. On the bottom of these disks were new buffs, to designate new tribes. This is more random than the switch in “Survivor Africa”, and also kept the tribe numbers the same (Rotu at 8, Maraamu at 5), though this may have been due to the uneven number of castaways left. Still, I admire the producers for doing it that way (it seems fairer to me, somehow) and makes for a solid tribe switch. The next “twist” wouldn’t come until the final 9, but it was a doozy, and what most proponants of the season hold up as its crowning moment. At the final 9, the “Rotu 4 alliance”, consisting of John Carroll, Zoe Zanidakis, Tammy Leitner, and Robert DeCanio was in control, with Neleh Dennis and Paschal English believing themselves to be involved in the alliance. However, with the first instance of the “answer questions, then chop down people to reveal the pecking order” challenge, Neleh and Paschal realized they were on the bottom, and so changed things up, allying with Kathy, Sean, and Vecepia to eliminate the Rotu 4. This marked the first instance of a “Totem Pole” shakeup, where the people on the bottom of the alliance flip to further themselves (something that has been severly lacking in recent seasons). It’s not the most exciting flip, but it was unexpected, and a solid example overall. The next twist wouldn’t come until the Final 4, but it’s what everyone remembers about this season. At the Final 4, the target of the night (Vecepia) had won immunity, and the results of the vote were tied, with Kathy and Neleh each receiving 2 votes. Here, it was revealed the new method for breaking deadlock ties. Rather than the “Votes Cast Previously” method of seasons past, we now got into the “Purple Rock” method of breaking ties. To briefly explain how this works, in the event of a deadlock tie, the person with individual immunity is immune, and the people voted for become immune. The rest of the tribe pulls rocks, with the one who draws the purple rock being eliminated. If this seems like a stupid method (in that the people voted for become immune, when clearly they weren’t playing a good enough game), it is, and is done to discourage ties, which do not, evidently, make for good tv. The problem here, though, is that the method works for every number except 4, where you would have only 1 person draw rocks. To rectify this, Probst had the two peoplvoted for draw rocks, as well as Paschal. However, despite never having a vote cast against him, Paschal was the one eliminated, making for the first unisex final 3, and also sparked outrage from the fan community. This is why later season switched to the fire building tiebreaker at the final 4, and good riddance, I say. The final twist of the season was the first successful final immunity negotiation, where Vecepia agreed to jump off if Neleh would take her along. Neleh agreed, and kept to her word, which was actually kind of interesting to see.
Overall, this season had few earth-shattering twists (that didn’t spark outrage), but could still hold it’s own in the department.
Score: 7 out of 10.
OVERALL
Marquesas, unfortunately, does not have one strong element to help the others. Unlike previous locations, which had a strong theme, and were generally epic, Marquesas was just another island chain, with very little to separate itself from the group of other islands in the series. The cast, the strongest element, had enough forgetable/unlikeable people that it can’t hold the series together, and the challenges were repetitive and weak. The twists, however, might hold it up, depending on how you look at it. This is part of what divides people: Do twists, in and of themselves, make a good season. Probst doesn’t think they do, while Dalton Ross (one of the foremost “Survivor” experts, apart from myself) enjoys the season for it’s twists. For me, I like the twists a good deal, but my relative dislike of the cast just drags the season down for me. Still, it can be entertaining, sets itself apart in a few ways, and, if your patient, the season is fairly entertaining.
Also, just to end on a slightly humorous note: Rosie O’Donnel=bad choice to host the reunion show. Probst and Bryant Gumble brought a dignity to the proceedings, and seemed appropriate, but Rosie just made it a big joke.
Score: 23 out of 40
ABSTRACT
Marquesas is soley for the “Survivor” enthusiast. Hardly the most entertaining installment, it gave us very little in every category. However, there are a few moments of excitement that make this season an ok watch, and given how much a certain character comes back in later seasons, those looking to understand the progression of “Survivor” should definitely watch Marquesas.
idolspeculation 