pntjr

Greatest cast in Survivor history. While I think this season suffers a lot of the problems people have with modern survivor (the edge, twists and advantages taking up lots of screentime), this season was still able to defy the odds based off the cast alone. And like, Tony pulling it out in the end? Who the fuck would've thought? It has the greatest finale in Survivor history. I also think that this season will be great on a rewatch, once you know the old school massacre is coming.

The difference between this and game changers was that when all the legends went out pre-merge, we were stuck with Troyzan, Culpepper, and Sierra. Here, we still got Tony, Kim Fucking Spradlin, Jeremy, Sophie, even Sarah presents herself as a much more entertaining character here.

The gameplay was fun, and they were still able to include lots of fun character moments. A great tribute to the show as a whole.

I thought the pre-merge was pretty fine, but after the merge episode I needed to just drink a lot to make it through every week. Fucking horrible. Sucked the air out of the whole thing. The way they tried to play a game around it was pretty sickening to me. Tommy also is by far, the most boring winner Survivor has had.

Ahahahahahaha

Like: yes this ending was ass. But like on a rewatch, this season isn't that bad. Sure, it turns out nothing in the merge ended up mattering at all since Chris was just gonna come back in the end and sweep the game, but like it's funny how they all did this to themselves. I think the cast had a lot of strong (and entertaining) gamers in it, but it was funny to watch all the big threats get taken out in a row with David, Wentworth, Wardog, Mr Clark, so by the time Chris came back he just had to best Devens and the game was his.

Also, like this season has Reem Daly. You can't hate too much. I dug the David vs Wentworth feud, and Devens made that endgame super entertaining, especially because he didn't just Driebergen it to the end like we all feared. A fairly solid season with a really bad ending.

Really entertaining pre-merge characters getting booted. By the time we get to the merge, we think: Ok, there's no way it's this obvious that Dom and Wendell just ride this thing out to the end, right?

And then they do.

When Domenick's one true opposition is Chris Noble, and he gets taken out at the merge, we have a problem.The entire post-merge was such a snoozefest. MAKE A MOVE LAUREL!!!! PLEASE!!!! Wendell winning at the end made me happy though.

I really like this cast. And the gameplay is pretty good in the pre-merge, but then the postmerge Healer after Healer after Healer leaving got boring. Once they all left, I was excited to see how it would all shake out, but then Ben Bomb La La Laaaaa's his way to the end, and thus we have the introduction of the brand new firemaking twist. It's kinda bullshit that it was introduced as a twist. But whatever. Endgame flopped in my opinion, I don't want to call riggage but Idk I would've rather seen Chrissy, Devon, or Ryan pull it out. Even Dr. Mike would've been hilarious. Ben's story was just boring. Him at tribals was fun to watch, but he wasn't a very good player. Such a bummer.

This was such a misguided season, they wanted to do an all-returnee cast after the success of Cambodia, but they just couldn't pull together the legendary cast they wanted. Caleb? Culpepper? Sierra Dawn Thomas? ugh. And then just the fact that all the big names that we wanted to see besides like Cirie and Aubry went out pre-merge was just tragic.

I thought the pre-merge was pretty decent, sans Varnergate, and while Sarah played a really masterful game in the post-merge, it wasn't that fun to watch. I feel like she wasn't having enough fun with it, despite the fact that she was playing her ass off. This season has no story, no narrative throughline, besides Sarah saying "i'm playing like a criminal", but barely leaning in on it.

★★★★½

I went into this expecting a bad over-stylized white fratboy heist movie retread but i got something much sweeter.

Everything about this film centers on the facades that we put on every day in order to not just impress other people, but simply to be different. We're influenced so much by media and it freaking drowns us into us creating our own characters and telling our own stories that aren't necessarily true, but fit the narratives that we have in our brains to align with the facade.

This film is the most ANTI heist movie I've ever seen, as we not only watch the heist horrifyingly play out, but afterwords we REALLY see the effects of how it not only affected the criminals, but their victims and their families as well. It chokes their psyches. Really gave me Boogie Nights climax vibes. Sure, it is all straight white males performing this crime, but what it has to SAY about that is really interesting. They're fucking American Animals.

Great movie. Not Paddington 2 great, but still great.

Great season. Decent pre-merge, really exciting post-merge. The rock draw tribal was one of the best ever. Great gameplay across the board, and lots of people not afraid to make big movies, which I like. Would've preferred to see David win, but Adam's win was solid and worth it after his story at the reunion. Like, everyone in this season just came to play. It's just got players all across the board, the only thing you could criticize about this season is that it's very male dominated. But this is Survivor at its best.

Had an entertaining pre-merge and invented the pagonging, so I can't really take that away from it. Hatch was great. Not only a good first season, but overall just a great season.

I absolutely despise Australia. That season was painful to get through. The fact that there were only two castaways who I actually gave a rat's ass about Crazy Skupin and Jeff Varner, were gone on the 6th and 7th episode, and the rest of the show was completely boring. There's nothing in that season that I enjoyed besides those two characters. Everyone was plain annoying, and for a season with no strategy there has to be good characters, which Australia did not deliver on. Jerri was interesting to say the most but she was generally annoying. It's an extremely boring season overall lacking in gameplay, characters, and most importantly entertainment.

Brian Hedik played a really really good game. The dude was a sociopath. But this also was a “too little too late” situation, where it got good around final 5. Had a boring pagonging and an uninteresting premerge. Mr Freeze is in the house.

Rob Cesternino is great. I love RHAP, so maybe I'm biased but he played one of the best games ever. There was a ton of good characters.

Jonny Fairplay was great. His chaotic flip flopping and his dead grandmother lie really made this season. I disliked Lill, but besides that there wasn't much I didn't like about it. Great shit.

Dark and edgy. Boston Rob played an extremely entertaining game. It had a bad bootlist, but the way he played the game was so fun to watch. That Lex betrayal was amazing. What a great season. Dark and cutthroat gameplay.

Rory and his little crack was fucking hilarious. What a great arc. Chris and his underdog story was also pretty good. I wasn't a huge fan of the cast, but it was pretty good to watch Chris just betray all of the women when he was the last man standing.

The ulonging was surprisingly entertaining. It was almost like there was two seasons in one. Stephanie had a great underdog story. Fun season. Ian quitting at F3 was interesting, I thought it was a dumb move, but still was great to watch.

I liked a lot of people in this season. I wasn't a big Danni fan, and Stephanie pretty much DESTROYED her reputation, although led a solid alliance and played a pretty solid game. I liked Rafe, Judd, Cindy, Lydia, Bobby Jon, Gary, etc. Good season.

SHANE POWAHS. CASAYA. This was a good season. The pre-merge was alright, and the post merge was a boring pagonging, but after Bruce's medical evacuation it got good. At that point, it was too little too late. Still this had a really great cast.

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.

Extremely underrated. Had a SHITTY twist that fucked over A TON of people, but it was still great. The Downfall of The Four Horsemen (or the Three Horsemen + Dreamz) was hilarious. Earl played a criminally underrated game. Dreamz and the car deal was also wildly entertaining.

Todd Herzog played the greatest game of all time. He kept it pretty entertaining. There is something really special about this season that I can't describe. I don't know what it is. I really liked this though.

A fuck ton of blindsides. The way The Black Widow Brigade played was super fun and unpredictable. Every time I watched it I had no idea what was going to happen.

What a clusterfuck season. The people that you would expect to go out early made it all the way to the end. I really liked Kenny, he played a Fairplay-esque game that was great. Randy was hilarious. Great stuff.

BENJAMIN “COACH” WADE. WHAT A GOD. Another season that was pretty cutthroat, but it also had great casting. I liked pretty much everyone in the season, and it had a great winner. Loved Tyson, JT, Fishbach, Taj, Brendan, Sierra, Erinn.

I'M THE BEST. I'M RUSSELL HANTZ. While that was wildly entertaining, it got kinda boring after a while. Galu almost got no edit, which is a real tragedy because this could've been one of the best seasons ever if edited right.

BEST. PREMERGE. EVER. The BR vs. Russell rivalry was legendary, the downfall of JT Thomas was great, everything about this was fantastic. 10/10.