Not Angelina, anybody but her
I do like the rest of the list though. That might be a better season than WaW
Survivor: Winners at War
- Thread starter cmjh10
- Start date
Not Angelina, anybody but her
I do like the rest of the list though. That might be a better season than WaW
I agree with this and I think Sarah wins if she took out Tony too. Sarah was going to need to explain how she made bigger moves than Tony and I think that was going to be a tough task because the 2 of them basically were working in unison for the most part except for the Sophie and Ben votes and the jury generally felt that Tony was the one running the show.
Natalie's biggest mistake was not doing what Chris Underwood did and put herself against Tony in fire making. I'm still not sure if that would have been enough to beat Sarah but if you listen to what Rob said when he voted he apparently told her she would have to play a perfect game to get his vote and that included beating Tony in fire. She defended her move by saying she wanted to put an end to the alliance and she technically did but it would have been a bigger notch on the resume had she personally done it by beating Tony in fire instead of relying on immunity for 2 votes.
I've been watching some of the interviews on YouTube and Michele keeps saying this season vindicated her season win. I don't necessarily see it that way, she was your classic goat for 3rd place this season that I think everyone just kept her around because no one viewed her as much of a threat to win. She was always scrambling to find an alliance and besides the fact she made the final 3 and won a couple immunity challenges her resume was pretty lacking in all 3 categories I thought. As someone else mentioned before, sometimes some of the best players in the game get voted out before the final 3 because they are a good threat to win if they made it. If you go back and look at the season she won there really are no memorable players outside of Tai and Aubry in that season that I could point to and say if that person got another chance to play again they could go far. It's still quite an accomplishment to win Survivor but if you were to rank the best winners I still think she falls towards the bottom of the list.
Agree with pretty much everything you said.
For Michele to have won, I think she would have needed to somehow flip Ben or Denise and get Tony out at final 6 or 7. That would have been her signature move.
Survivor is not just get to the end, it's driving the ship and jury management.
My daughter and I came up with a theory which proved wrong because Natalie came out and said she though she could get the jury votes. Our original thought was natalie wanted the second place prize money and knew she could not win. So getting 150k instead of 50k was a smart move on her behalf. However, I watched a video of her saying she thought she could win.
I maintain that fire making is likely to favor males over females. So far in survivor there have been 7 instances of men vs. women fire making challenges. Men are 5-2, with the women wins being Stephanie in S10 and Carolyn in S30 (and Stephanie had ******* matches). Fire making isn't a huge test of physical strength or endurance, but it does require the use of skills which are more likely to be had by men than women.
I cannot understand for the life of me why survivor made this rule change, as it eliminates the vote and essentially creates a second immunity challenge.
I cannot understand for the life of me why survivor made this rule change, as it eliminates the vote and essentially creates a second immunity challenge.
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Season recap from a guy who's been writing about Survivor for all 40 seasons. Entertaining read...
https://ew.com/tv/recaps/survivor-season-40-episode-14/
https://ew.com/tv/recaps/survivor-season-40-episode-14/
Some of these seasons blend together a bit for me, but if I remember correctly my thoughts at the time were that none of the other three besides Ben deserved to win just for the laziness and stupidity of allowing Ben to continue to wander off and search for idols without anyone following him.
I must admit however Ben showed this season that he's really not a great Survivor player, so I won't argue that there were better players on his season than him.
I agree wholeheartedly about Michelle. I listen to the ringer survivor podcast and they're pretty pro Michelle and I don't really get it. I kinda think they feel bad for her because of the negative response people had to her about her winning the first time so they're going out of their way to be positive this time around.
She's just not a very good strategic player and she didn't deserve to get a single vote. Honestly, most of the good strategic players were out of the game before the merge, and the three best strategic players remaining were mostly working together, until Tony blindsided Sophie.
It still boggles the mind that neither Tony nor Sarah were ever targeted. My opinion of players like Ben, Denise, Nick, and Adam have gone way down. Denise made a big move pre-merge, then basically shut her game down.
On the flip side, Sophie, Tony and Sarah were really impressive this season.
The top five players this season in my opinion were Tony, Sarah, Sophie, Rob, and Parvati. Rob and Parvati were obviously voted out relatively early, but both players played pretty well. Neither one had a shot in hell of actually winning this thing from even before they stepped on the beach.
The five worst players were Danni, Adam, Ben, Nick, and Sandra. Danni got herself voted out, Adam, Ben, and Nick several times screwed up the most basic of survivor strategy, and Sandra got voted out with her own idol. Queen my ass, you stole Parvati's win in Heroe's vs Villains.
I think you are being a little harsh about Ben, I'd put him in the top 5-10 range this season because he still played a good enough game to get him to the top 5 with his only flaw being his social game wasn't that good. He aligned up with the right people and was on the right side of the votes most of the time but his biggest flaw was not knowing when to shup up during pre-tribal strategy or even at tribal and shutting himself off at times from being able to work with certain people such as Jeremy.
Rob had no chance of winning but him getting voted out when he did was squarely on him using the same intimidation tactics that he has always played and this was not the season nor cast you could just manipulate people to tell you everything and just do what you tell them to do. The episode he got voted out was a prime example how he basically pissed off everyone he was trying to work with by holding them in "time out" at camp so they couldn't talk to anyone at all. Parvarti was just too good of a player coming in, she never really got aligned with the right people to give her a fighting chance. She's one of my all-time favorites that have played though.
I have said before I never really liked Tony coming into this season as I always found him obnoxious and annoying but he grew on me this season and I feel he is the all time best player to play the game now. Sarah is right up there too in my books, had she beat Tony in fire making I think she wins the season too. They did a great job of keeping the targets off their back. I think Denise's biggest flaw was she made her big move early with Sandra then post merge picked the wrong alliance to side with as if she wanted a 2nd big blindside to add and give her a chance to make the final 3 she probably needed to work with Tony and Sarah then make he move around 6 or 5 left when they wouldn't expect someone in their own alliance to betray them. She made it a lot further than I thought she would though.
I'm to the point I hope we never see Rob, Sandra, Parvarti, Tyson, Natalie, and a few others that have played more than anyone in the history of the game has ever again. This should be their last hurrah to ride off into the sunset. They all have 1 win and multiple chances to win another, time to move on and create some new legends going forward.
I've thought and talked to some of my Survivor friends too. I think we all agree that's why Tony deserved to win and, in my opinion, played one of the best games out of all 40 seasons. Everyone KNEW he was a massive threat but because he had built individual bonds with everyone, not a single person ever wrote his name down. Plus, whenever anyone even mentioned his name - he rallied the troops and got them voted out. So it was near perfect play to befriend everyone, figure out who was gunning for him, shift the narrative from him to them, and then get them voted out quickly.
I know he won handily but I was surprised it wasn't unanimous (it should have been IMO).
I agree with this but some people will never get over their butthurt from other competitors besting them. Hurt feelings cloud their judgement on who played the best overall game.
That's my thoughts too. Might have been better players but he was tenacious and the other people lost for good reason. They didn't stop him from doing the only thing that could get him to the end.
Not the best player but no one can ever take away his HHH win.
His best read of the season was knowing if he goes to the final 3 he's just going to get raked over the coals and get no votes so why not help his number 1 in Sarah.
With the "zoom" format, we were basically seeing their reactions in live time. After the third vote her sister stopped smiling. Michelle held out one or two more, but both of them looked pretty pissed by the time the winner was announced...
Ya basically was told what she already knew was true. Nobody respected her.
That's exactly why you need Angelina. She's liked by few, polarizing, and rooted against as a villain. Listening to her long form interview, she's not so bad.
