Similar to Panama, this season’s entertainment mainly came from Jeff’s ideas — the continued presence of Exile Island, the mutiny, and so on. While the action and intrigue picked up towards the end of the season as the contestants took greater risks, it was again too little too late to be a truly good season. Some good moments especially in the later tribal councils when the pot was stirred, but not many very memorable characters. On an interesting side note, this jury was basically singlehandedly all voted out by Yul, Ozzy played one of the cleanest & purest Survivor games I’ve seen, and somehow they still awarded Yul with the money.
Really really boring. Worst pre-merge ever, and once the Aitu 4 took over, the post merge was shit too. The only people I really liked this season were Nate, Parvati, and Penner. Yul was okay.
Review by Cory CopelandVIP 5BlockedParent2020-02-20T20:45:13Z
Casting, casting, casting. Casting saved Cook Islands. This season starts with the awful twist that dividing people by race (boy would this be trashed more in 2020 than it did in 2006...where it was still controversial). However, this season does see the introduction of Yul, Parvati, Penner, and Ozzy to the Survivor world . Also Cao Boi made for great tv while he was there. Maybe I am slightly biased because the aforementioned four have all become some of my favorites in other seasons as well, but still, it is hard to not really start liking this season once the mutiny happened, where it eventually led to one of the best final twos in the history of Survivor and quite the comical fire making competition. Yul displayed one of the most dominant and well rounded performances (likable, socially adept, strategic, physically competitive) that Survivor has ever seen (despite his inability to beat Ozzy in individual challenges). Meanwhile, Ozzy was arguably the purest contestant this season, yet one of the most impressive in challenges EVER. The two were aligned for the good majority of the game where they were in the minority, were winning challenges, AND were still in control despite being in the minorities until the home stretch. Either winning would have been an undoubted top two or three winner to date (maybe only Richard Hatch and/or Tom being a "better" overall winner). Definitely an important season to check out considering the long Survivor history that four of the castaways eventually end up having.
Rating: 9/10