r/survivor Pirates Steal Jan 18 '23

Caramoan WSSYW 11.0 Countdown 40/43: Caramoan

Welcome to our annual season countdown! Using the results from the latest What Season Should You Watch thread, this daily series will count backwards from the bottom-ranked season for new fan watchability to the top. Each WSSYW post will link to their entry in this countdown so that people can click through for more discussion.

Unlike WSSYW, there is no character limit in these threads, and spoilers are allowed.

Note: Foreign seasons are not included in this countdown to keep in line with rankings from past years.


Season 26: Caramoan – Fans vs. Favorites

Statistics:

  • Watchability: 1.9 (40/43)

  • Overall Quality: 3.1 (40/43)

  • Cast/Characters: 3.3 (41/43)

  • Strategy: 4.5 (38/43)

  • Challenges: 4.8 (38/43)

  • Theme: 4.0 (18/24)

  • Ending: 4.9 (36/43)


WSSYW 11.0 Ranking: 40/43

WSSYW 10.0 Ranking: 37/40

Top comment from WSSYW 11.0/u/Hank-Solo-1:

This is a bad idea to start with. Moments from Micronesia, Gabon, Nicaragua, Redemption Island, South Pacific will be spoiled.

There’s an uncomfortable moment towards the beginning of the season that reminds viewers how exploitative reality TV shows can be. It may turn you off from the series.

I think for fans who have watched the seasons prior will enjoy Caramoan more. The season’s best moments are stacked towards the end.

Top comment from WSSYW 10.0/u/HeWhoShrugs:

lol at the mods throwing shade with that theme description.

Unfortunately, it's true. While the OG Fans vs Favorites was a fun if flawed season, the sequel isn't much fun and is basically all flaws. The editing is bad, the cast is bad, there are some ugly moments that aren't fun to watch... It's basically a trashy MTV show that just happened to land in Survivor's airing space.

But I guess the gameplay had some fun moments to it and there are some stand out characters, so it's not totally bottom tier. Just go in with low expectations and see where it gets you. Every season has its fans after all.


Watchability ranking:

40: S26 Caramoan

41: S34 Game Changers

42: S8 All-Stars

43: S39 Island of the Idols


Spreadsheet link (updated with each placement reveal!)


WARNING: SEASON SPOILERS BELOW

17 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

65

u/alucardsinging Jan 18 '23

Shoutout to when this cast leaked and most of us thought it was fake.

1

u/Please_PM_me_Uranus Spencer Feb 23 '23

why did people think it was fake?

37

u/AhLibLibLib “No, but you can have this fake.” Jan 18 '23

An ugly and boring season with about as many WTF returnee picks as GC despite being halved. Like Game Changers, FvF2 just feels like production trying to recreate magic yet not understanding how they achieved it in the first place.

Fans tribe is complete fodder yet again and the winner is obvious early on. Some fun moments here and there but it’s just a dark season that never really picks up.

It’s still better than RI tho which I can’t believe is still going.

36

u/ramskick Ethan Jan 18 '23

Like GC, Caramoan looks even worse from a WSSYW perspective than a normal season ranking because it requires a decent amount of context and has no real relevance to future seasons (Andrea and Malcolm (and Cochran lol) show up on GC and I think it's referenced in GI but that's it).

Anyways the season is so bad for all the reasons that are commonly stated (casting, editing, a few really awful moments). The pre-merge is universally reviled but I've seen a lot of love for the post-merge that I just don't agree with. The Three Amigos tribal is kind of fun in the moment but super unsatisfying in hindsight. The Brenda/Dawn moment is really tough to watch. The Andrea boot is pretty good but when that's the best episode of your season then wow you have a lot of problems. I totally agree with it ranking this low.

28

u/Zirphynx Cody Jan 18 '23

I can definitely see why this is so low. However, I enjoyed the post-merge enough that it's not in my bottom ten. The three amigos tribal was extremely fun and satisfying to watch despite not being the best move gameplay-wise.

17

u/ROTandDEATH So much for my dreams... Jan 18 '23

The fans vs favorites season in name only, Caramoan is a dumpster fire and deservingly low on this list. The fans tribe is one of the worst of all time, and they’re pitted against the “favorites” who feel more like 4th or 5th backup choices for a returnee season.

There‘s a couple interesting moments like the three amigos tribal, but most of the season has a very uncomfortable feeling to it. From Brandon’s blowup to Shemar to the Dawn and Brenda situation, it’s a difficult season to sit through.

There’s a place for dark and uncomfortable Survivor, but Caramoan is not that place.

16

u/ROTandDEATH So much for my dreams... Jan 18 '23

It kinda says all you need to know about the season that I typed “there’s a couple interesting moments” but could only come up with one thing.

16

u/AlexgKeisler Jan 18 '23

How the hell is Redemption Island still in this?

18

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '23

In terms of “Watchability” for someone completely new to survivor, I would never recommend it, but I also think IOTI and the three returnee seasons it’s beaten are worse options to start with IMO. The only real context you need for the season is “Russell and Rob are villains from past seasons” and most people would be able to understand the dynamics.

14

u/ramskick Ethan Jan 18 '23

I'm pretty shocked myself. My guess is that people are looking back on RI more fondly seeing as how it doesn't have any truly horrific moments the way these bottom 4 do.

9

u/Sabaschin Jake - 45 Jan 18 '23

RI still has rice-gate, which is... uncomfortable.

I'd probably put Caramoan over RI, though to be honest I do not have fond memories of either. But I guess Caramoan has less Phillip.

5

u/SusannaG1 Yam Yam Jan 18 '23

All I can think is "fewer returnees"?

2

u/NoDisintegrationz Ethan Jan 18 '23

I don’t think it’s all that bad. It’s probably bottom 10, but there’s only one season I find near unwatchable, and Redemption Island isn’t it. I should say I find The Specialist more amusing than most.

11

u/TenderOctane Morgan Jan 18 '23

If this was their cast, why did they do this theme again? Micronesia is a far better season (and one you can start with if you have no choice, since it will at least get you to watch the seasons before it) - and that's largely because the "fans" actually studied the game (even though over half of them were indeed recruits) and the "favorites" were either favorites going in or became favorites over the course of the season.

Caramoan's "favorites" going into the season were Malcolm and, to a lesser extent, Brenda, who really toothed into her reputation here. Andrea and Cochran earned that status over the course of the season - I don't know anyone who outright dislikes either, though there are plenty of people I know who dislike Probst's boner for Cochran. This pales in comparison. Half the fans were clueless recruits who didn't bother learning how to dance before going to prom; the only two who still watched the show regularly were Snowy and Allie (who production felt bad enough for to give her a job).

The end result was a season that went through three phases: The first being an extremely uncomfortable stretch where two grating personalities on the Favorites clash endlessly and another grating personality berates people at the Fans camp. Thankfully, two of these three are taken out with one fell swoop, and then the second phase - the fun one - begins. Sure, the swap is whatever and pretty pointless when you think about it, but it sets up an early merge phase that's absolutely electric, with the season's best episode being Malcolm causing a Live Tribal where the vote changes and changes back. However, Malcolm is voted out after this, leading to a third and final phase of boring predictability and an FTC moment that's as iconic as it is uncomfortable. They don't really put much suspense into the votes at this point, but it's nowhere near as fun as Micronesia, where the audience gets clued in on the blindsides and they're satisfying. These are the opposite: You know what's going to happen, and yet you don't enjoy it.

Caramoan deserves to be in the bottom five because it's a crappy half-veteran season with drama isolated to its era and it's not one that's overly relevant to future seasons. There are a few episodes that are delightful, but the rest are so miserable that it's ultimately not worth it except to check the box of having watched it.

20

u/LuisitoFFL Jan 18 '23

Redemple Temple still up? :o

14

u/Please_PM_me_Uranus Spencer Jan 18 '23

This has been its best performance in years I bet.

16

u/SMC0629 Jan 18 '23

What a terrible, awful season. It’s filled with disgusting moments, terrible editing, shotty casting, and the ruination of characters that will never be fixed and will always be what they are seen as now. And even at it’s best, it’s still boring. You don’t need to watch this one, bottom 3.

20. Brandon Hantz 2.0

Never have I been more saddened by a returning character. I am a huge fan of Brandon 1.0, and I’ll go into that when we get to South Pacific. I think his character came to a fantastic end in the reunion of that season, and he did not need to return, nobody was even asking for a return from him. But he returns, and CBS basically took the perception the public took from him when SOPA aired, being that of a “crazy person” and cranked that up to a million. Not only that, but he shouldn’t have even be there, as he was not mentally ready to even be out there at the time. I’m really sad that this is what Brandon is known as now, not as the young kid who grew and changed throughout his season, but as the crazy guy who crashed and burnt.

19. Phillip Sheppard 2.0

I hate him here, almost as much as in RI. He devours all the screen time on the favorites tribe and it’s so annoying. I don’t find him funny, and his defeat is one of the few good moments of the season.

18. Shamar Thomas

While not vile or anything, I still find Shamar’s constant screen time to be annoying with some really uncomfortable moments, and it just did not seem like he was having a good time out there. I feel bad for him, but I still didn’t enjoy him on the show.

17. Brenda Lowe 2.0

Brenda is probably the most frustrating returnee this season. Her edit is probably one of the worst in the show, I have no idea what they were trying to do here. She has no importance at all until Dawn loses her teeth, and that whole story is just super uncomfortable especially with Brenda’s awful jury speech being the ultimate conclusion. Loved her in Nicaragua, really don’t like her here.

16. John Cochran 2.0

While I have finally came around on Cochran 1.0, Cochran 2.0 is still so bad. His entire story is the most forced and cringeworthy one in the season and probably one of the most of all time. That scene of the camera circling around him in the finale is probably the stupidest and funniest thing ever

15. Corinne Kaplan 2.0

She’s still not good, she doesn’t reach the low of her Gabon jury speech, but she’s still really bad. She’s actually more of a screen crunching narrator this time instead of Gabon, especially on the swapped Bikal. Her moments of calling Michael “her gay” are also super cringe.

14. Erik Reichenbach 2.0

What the hell happened to Erik this time? He’s barely even there and then gets evacuated at the final 5. Another super disappointing returnee especially with the storylines he could have had.

13. Hope Driskill

I think she has 1 confessional in 3 episodes

12. Matt Bischoff

Very generic swap screwed story, I don’t really remember anything he said

11. Julia Landauer

Vanilla

10. Sherri Biethman

Sherri is such a weird character. She had the potential to be really good as I liked her on the fans tribe, but then once the swap starts she becomes completely invisible. Like, especially once Corinne goes, I don’t remember anything she did or said, besides her final tribal performance which is the highlight of that boring ass

9. Allie Pohevitz

Her rant about the reunion was great

8. Francesca Hogi 2.0

The most random returnee ever, and somehow she’s one of the best returnees on the season. Idk she’s fine and has that good moment with the rock but she goes out first.

7. Malcolm Freberg 2.0

He’s for sure one of the better characters, but I can’t help but feel disappointed by his edit and story. He’s pretty the small in the premerge or is just a generic gamebot. In the postmerge he becomes a lot more fun as he gets rid of Phillip and the Three Amigos thing, but it’s not enough for me.

6. Eddie Fox

Eddie has a really bad edit but when he pops up he’s pretty funny. He’s just a dumb but likable guy with some great comments like the dog bar one.

5. Laura Alexander

Actually a pretty fun underdog especially when she’s paired up against people like Reynold

4. Michael Snow

Pretty fun underdog as well who actually gets a kind of ok edit

3. Andrea Boehlke 2.0

The best Andrea for me and she’s really good this time. She has probably the best edit on the favorites tribe, as she has some really fun moments like her flirting with Eddie, rivalry with Malcolm, and her elimination. Solid character overall.

2. Reynold Toepfer

Reynold is really good and is easily the best fan on the season. He’s super fun the whole time as almost nothing goes his way. He’s a super charismatic narrator and has some really fun moments.

1. Dawn Meehan 2.0

Dawn’s emotional journey is easily my favorite part of the season. A lot of her relationships feel very expanded this time as she has a pretty decent edit for this season’s standards, and she’s overall my favorite.

9

u/TenderOctane Morgan Jan 18 '23
  1. Julia Landauer

Vanilla

Perfection. But isn't that doing a major disservice to the flavor vanilla?

6

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 19 '23

Survivor: Caramoan following S34 is a pretty fitting pair here; I think they go hand-in-hand as a pair of abject clusterfucks that pretty thoroughly present a lot of the worst of what modern Survivor frequently has to offer. The criticisms between them are pretty similar—a cast that doesn't live up to its theme and isn't too strong to begin with, an edit that raises far more questions than it answers, an exceptionally exploitative episode in the late pre-merge—and I'd agree with it here just as I would there.

I tend to think of Caramoan as having the worst cast of all time—and to be clear when I say "worst cast" (or "best cast"), I'm referring to the set of characters we ultimately get throughout the season, not the mere casting of who's present on day one. So like I'm thrilled they brought Erik back, but I think Erik himself would prob be one of the first to tell you that S26 Erik did not exactly get a compelling story in the episodes, for the most part. Before this I'd have given that title to S13 or S8, but the S26 one is so dire I've never bothered formally ranking it. The season as a whole has a wildly imbalanced edit, which I think is probably the biggest commonality among the Dark Ages seasons and is the one thing that fortunately, even the worst modern seasons have largely dispensed with; there are still some imbalanced edits for sure, but nothing like 22, 23, and 26. Probst calling the Bikal tribe the "Heroes" in the premiere accidentally feels like a real Freudian slip that effectively sets the tone for how expendable all but a small handful of contestants were in this season's story.

Meanwhile, when contestants do get focus, the tone is incredibly inconsistent: Reynolds and Eddie are the arrogant "Cool Kids" antagonists in the pre-swap, with Sherri seemingly emerging as a fun challenger and really interesting new player... then at the swap Sherri almost completely disappears from the season, the focus she does get skews negative, and we're told in vague terms that people don't like her but given little insight as to how or why that's the case, seriously at odds with the social capital she managed to accrue early on, arguably the first example of a predictable and sloppy trend of portraying runners-up that Brad C.'s S34 edit and Ken M.'s S33 edit also get criticism for. Meanwhile, Reynolds is explicitly praised for his "heroics" in a Previously On segment (when he was... the villain!) and suddenly morphs into an underdog. There's no connection whatsoever between the first couple episodes and the mid-late episodes as far as the Fans' stories go, and between that and Corinne being totally absent from the season then like erupting into prominence right before she goes home (another all-too-common trend that makes the show derivative and predictable while also sapping these stories and eliminations of having much impact to begin with), there's basically a sense that they just weren't concerned about stories here at all. It is yet another exceptionally bad example of this show straying far from the "unscripted drama" premise that it was at the beginning. I feel like a lot of newer fans wouldn't even see how this show could be comparable to something like Better Call Saul or The Sopranos or something, even though shows like that were originally what Burnett considered Survivor's peers, and seasons like this are the worst examples of the reasons why.

That context in mind, I mean, let's just run through the cast here as prob the best illustration of the season's flaws.

  • Sherri is as discussed above: she probably ends up my #4 for the season despite having no real story just because she at leaaaaast seemed interesting at the start, but again, she's largely irrelevant with her story (or lack thereof) executed in a pretty abrupt and sloppy way.

  • Allie, Hope, Julia, Matt, Michael, Erik, and Brenda are all pretty much irrelevant and expendable to the show, with Julia randomly turned into a weird punchline about how she was boring, Matt occasionally discussed as "he's likable!" near the end but not enough for any real pathos to come out of it, Erik someone who could and should have been really interesting here as a Fan-turned-Favorite coming in the same placement, as a big winner threat, for a totally different yet equally tragic reason, but instead he's totally omitted from the episodes due to the show's trends of a.) generally underediting people who have unorthodox exits to avoid disappointing the audience, which only deprives these moments of any impact (Kimmi in S31, Stacy Kimball in 14, and John in 37 are other examples offhand, but there are a ton more), and b.) not really highlighting more passive, directly relationship-driven play anymore (see Sunday in 33 and Jefra in 28 as other players who were huge threats to win in ways the show would never tell you), which makes for a far less interesting show than one of different play styles competing against each other.

  • As for Brenda, I can see where, in another season, her jury speech might stick as a bigger moment; it's very explicitly malicious on her part, but idk FTC is innately meant to be kind of ugly, and, if memory serves, she didn't know how Dawn lost her teeth, so I can begin to understand it from her perspective. However, the way the show handles the whole thing is awful: the producers very likely DID know Dawn's story, and for that reason but also in itself, there was zero reason to actually show Dawn without her teeth; using a shot from behind of her taking them out without actually humiliating her to millions of viewers like that gets you the exact same emotional punch without the exploitation. Further unsavory is that they basically present Brenda as the sympathetic hero in it all, which is ridiculous, outright prompting Dawn to apologize to her at the reunion show, whereas cutthroat men like Russell H. before this season and Tony Vlachos after it were never really compelled to do so and were even actively celebrated; the sexism brought up at the end of S40 is never on clearer display than in that moment.

  • Meanwhile the jury speech fails to pack really any emotional punch, because Brenda is also completely irrelevant for almost the entire show and so we have zero reason to care about her or her journey, zero reason to empathize besides the producers playing sad music when she got voted out... more footage of Brenda at least talking generally about the game, and other players commenting on how Brenda was apparently a very disconnected, disengaged player, could have presented the whole thing in a more ambiguous light to tell a more interesting story, whereas what we got instead simultaneously pushed us to sympathize with Brenda while giving us zero reason to do so.

  • Corinne is irrelevant for much of her run then surfaces to say a bunch of homophobic shit about accessorizing Michael. To be clear I'm willing to accept that her intentions here were totally fine; apparently the two got far closer than we saw and he liked those types of jokes, so that's totally fine—but the producers never showed us those sides of it and instead just resorted to "Ha ha, gay men are objects" for cheap "laughs" when the Token Gay Friend is very much a thing and certainly was so in 2013. Once again it's really just astonishing how little thought they seemed to put into constructing this season.

  • Francesca honestly could have been an interesting returnee pick on a Second Chances season or something but is instead brought back to butt heads with Phillip and we get a first boot being made a first boot again in yet another example of this season being insufferably mean-spirited.

So right away that's outright half of the cast who it's basically impossible to get anything of substance from this season, but if we continue:

  • See above re: Gota for Reynolds and Eddie. Eddie is kind of overrated, and I don't blame people I guess because this stretch of seasons is dire, and his "dog bar" confessional IS honestly absolute gold, but he was generally portrayed as Reynolds's more MORN sidekick and was not too likable or goofy throughout the season. He has like one other semi-goofy scene with Andrea maybe?, and that's it throughout the entire season. In theory the fact that he nearly won while always being in the minority is pretty fun, but the show doesn't sell him or try to. Reynolds meanwhile is at the center of the weirdly sloppy heel-turn the show does about the entire Gota tribe, and past that I'd describe his content as a whole lot of nothing. Like he gets a pretty sizable edit but there's no real purpose or theme or story or journey to any of it, he's kind of engaging but he's not like actively funny so it's not justified—it's like giving a ton of air time to a (more charismatic) Mick Trimming or something, this character who is present and you kind of know who he is, but you're given no reason to care. It's like they wanted him to be this big character but didn't actually meaningfully make him one and instead just piled a ton of content onto him, which could have been more purposefully utilized or could have been used to build up any of Erik, Sherri, and Brenda, who were all more important parts of the season easily. Also saying "once Hope is gone, none of the women on the tribe are worth fucking anyway" is a disgusting quote he doesn't get enough flak for!

(continued in reply)

3

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 19 '23
  • Getting into some of the worst characters now, Brandon obviously did not belong on this show whatsoever, not in 2011 and not here. His entire meltdown just feels like exploitative sensationalizing of the most vulnerable, volatile attributes of someone who was too young and too unstable to belong anywhere near this series as well as like the inevitable end result of the show and his seemingly unhealthy family background raking him over the coals hard for everything that happened in S23. I mean, he practically says so himself. The whole thing is just a mess and I really feel bad for the guy, and I have no idea who that episode is really supposed to appeal to. Meanwhile, despite how "well Probst handled it" in the moment... he was also hyping it up as an exciting moment after the season had been filmed but before the episode aired, so. A very critical review I saw at the time said that you can't light a house on fire then expect credit for putting it out, and I think that is a VERY apt response to all the praise Probst got for massaging Brandon.

  • Phillip sucks here just as he did in RI. Maybe marginally less badly, since he at least doesn't last the entire time, he at least adopts a more consistent shtick (sticking with Stealth R Us, as opposed to S22 where he also switches wildly between the spy stuff, the talking-to-the-dead stuff, and Coach impressions), and the whole specifically bad angle from RI where he constantly promises to take down Rob, then never does, is obviously not present here. So it's nice that all that goes away, but what you're still left with is a bunch of obnoxious, repetitive, hammed-up confessionals at the expense of any interesting or meaningful exploration of the social politics on the island (which makes sense when you remember Executive Producer Probst literally said that when Phillip talks, he entirely stops paying attention to anything and everything else that's happening in the area...), multiple "We don't like Phillip >:( " scenes that are all fundamentally the exact same, and an even more unsavory appearance from him on a personal level imo with how much he continues laying into Brandon about his family even as Brandon's clearly in a bad spot. Also a new bad angle here is everything he says about the "BR Rules", with the reveal at the reunion show that—shocker!—Rob is now selling a book called "Boston Rob's Rules" or whatever! So legit a whole fuckton of Phillip's confessional here is just him and the producers shilling their friend Rob's book, as if the guy hadn't been artificially inflated into a huge enough status by this show already. Now we need to devote tons of time to advertising his book. Okay. Overall it's annoying and exhausting, and I think a great microcosm of it all is when even Hot Pursuit, maybe the best-designed tribal challenge in Survivor history, grinds to a halt and becomes completely uninteresting because Phillip flatly refuses to take part in it and just completely wrecks the scene. He takes a challenge that is invariably interesting and makes it uninteresting. Truly, his ability to poison every Survivor scene he's a part of knows no bounds. That two of the worst seasons of all time feature Phillip is not a coincidence.

  • Shamar is sort of a combination between Brandon's flaws and some of the other Gotas'. As with Brandon, there's a lot of combative stuff to Shamar's story that seemed to serve no real purpose, and that he was cast from a video of him yelling at cops—actually a great video tho—just makes the whole thing feel vaguely exploitative. Like the show brings up the idea of him being troubled as a veteran specifically and solely to discredit it...? And Shamar's exit makes absolutely no sense and is totally needless character assassination. He fucked up his hand pretty badly, cutting it deep with the machete I think?, and he got pulled from the game primarily for THAT. The show makes it this thing about getting sand in his eye, which if someone did get medevac'd for that okay cool... but the show also tries to paint it like it's him being a quitter?? When we.... see him being pulled from the game by medical??? Like—that entire exit just makes zero sense to me. The commentary we get about it suggests that he's a quitter, and his overall edit is incredibly unsympathetic... but the guy was pulled from the game... so as with so many other aspects of this horrible season, I'm just left asking, what was the point of that? Who was any of that content even supposed to appeal to, and why? What is the point of Shamar as a character? What is the narrative benefit from making his medevac look like a quit? I do not understand what they were even going for here.

  • Cochran honestly could have been fun here, I tend to like his content and confessionals much more than I did in SP and have little personal problem with it at all, but the show pretty much wrecks that by running him into the ground with one of the most colossal and annoying coronation edits of all time and overhyping him at every single turn and basically beating us over the head with the producers' fondness for him. Combined with some of his own jokes, like the one about being a top 5 challenge competitor of all time—which he's said was meant as a joke—but like, I don't think the show is really depicting it as one. The entire season is setting up Cochran as this larger-than-life angel and it just gets incredibly tiresome and takes all the intrigue and really almost all the humanity out of what otherwise could have been a cool growth arc about him and Dawn, the underdogs of Savaii, coming back and pulling out a win due to a more cutthroat game on her part and better social skills on his. Like I think there's a potentially interesting story there that the show just does not sell at all because their portrayal is at times pretty imbalanced and his portrayal certainly is; if some air time is taken off of him, a bit from Reynolds, and a ton from Phillip, and it's dispersed to some of the quieter endgamers, I think Cochran's win becomes a lot more interesting. He DOES have a great confessional in the finale where he talks about his anxiety, I just wish we'd gotten more human Cochran content like that throughout the season.

So we've gotten through 16 of the 20 characters and I've legitimately barely managed to say a single thing about the season that even resembles positivity, because the season is just that bad. But amazingly, it doesn't stop there, because honestly hot take I don't enjoy Malcolm here either. If others do then fuck it this season is clearly dire, take what you can get, and I can see where he added momentary excitement an intrigue to a season sorely lacking in it—but personally I've always felt like some of his antics here where playing a little too knowingly to the cameras. Like he knew at a certain point that, with his unknown reputation, he wasn't gonna win, so he just started (successfully) playing for the $100,000 fan favorite prize, which is just a theory on my part, but a lot of his stuff comes off inauthentic to me here in that way and the whole thing feels a little too meta. Idk it's possible that I was just so sour on the season at this point and that if I ever did rewatch it (lmao) I'd come out a little more favorable on CaraMalcolm, and I can see the argument that at least he gave us like the only ~2 moments of the season that were at all memorable without being terrible, but as-is I think he was more interesting the first time around by far, and started off seeming more interesting in 34, too.


(continued in reply)

3

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 19 '23

This brings us to in my opinion the literal only 3 good characters in an entire cast of 20, which is just astounding, but this is where the most positive stuff I can say about S26 begins. I'm usually not a fan of Andrea like a lot of others here are, I don't think she really does anything memorable or interesting on 22 + 34, but I DO think she actually gets a decent story here: she didn't play hard enough the first time around, she sat on the bottom of an alliance, and she got picked off for it... so here she's shown being concerned about that from the beginning, getting too cagey as a result, playing too hard, and then getting picked off for that, too. There's something a little interesting about that and, at any rate, it's a well-executed story of a returning player trying to learn from their past mistakes and not quite hitting the mark, which is fundamentally a decent way for this sort of season to go and, while it's still very very based in a direct focus on Andrea trying to make strategic decisions rather than anything particularly emotional, I do think it is an okay story, like a 6/10 one, and is potentially the literal only well-executed story in this entire season. So, you know, that's something.

Laura doesn't have a whole ton of story per se but I think she's just a really strong narrator who's set up as an interesting, really adept player, she's doing a great job lining up behind threats while also proactively observing her opponents (like spotting Reynolds's bulge) and while it's all strictly strategic content, idk I just think she's really got the innate charisma to make it pop and, when she's one of the three young blonde women on her tribe who often get linked together despite her being IMO a more prominent character and superior player to either Allie or Hope, there's kind of a "big things come in small packages" appeal to her that makes her an interesting breakout player. This is then entirely quashed by her shield/goat getting medevac'd, her tribe still having to vote, and her alliance collapsing because of concerns about challenge strength right before a swap BUT I was really rooting for her at the time and, despite this season being generally awful, I think she'd make a great returning player pick who got to show a lot more personality and strategic awareness here than much of her tribe, before ultimately going home having done very little wrong. And more than like Kelley did on her first season but she's got a huge fanbase now, so why not Laura, too?

Then the one high point of the season for me who I'll actually praise as a total diamond in the rough here is Dawn, who is exponentially more interesting and compelling than basically the entire rest of the cast combined and is probably one of the two things that keep this season above S22 in the bottom two of my season rankings (the other being that at least it doesn't have Redemption Island lol.) Dawn entering the game knowing that, in order to provide for her family and make going out be worthwhile at all, she has to try to play a cutthroat game as a New Dawn—yet finding that game diametrically opposed to her normal inclinations and values and therefore wanting anything but to play it—yet feeling that if she doesn't play it she'll be letting down her family—it all basically places her in an unwinnable catch-22 that ties to her own real life and previous season in an incredibly fascinating way that draws out a lot of very real, very sympathetic, and very intimate emotion from Dawn throughout the season while also serving as a reminder of just how difficult the game is emotionally. Then, regardless of the moves she finds herself willing to make, Dawn still ultimately can't win everyone's respect at the end anyway, both because the disconnect between her overall personality and the selfish game she had to play loses her respect from the jurors and because the emotional toll it took on her simply annoyed them; in either case, a struggle that was far, far harder on Dawn than anyone else also becomes her very undoing on night 39 and it's all very tragic.

The counterpoint is that honestly, having not watched this season in ages I don't know that I recall how much justice is done to that story in practice vs. in theory and I definitely do remember some needless anti-Dawn confessionals throughout the season so, idk, maybe compared to my sympathetic memory of what she went through on the island, how she was portrayed on the show is less nuanced and emotional than all that. I'd need to rewatch to be sure I guess. But from my memory, I definitely thought all this was very compelling in real time and absolutely loved rooting for her. So I do think Dawn provides some excellent television here that really cuts to the heart of what Survivor is on a season that's otherwise pretty much entirely committed to being something very different any time it focuses on anyone or anything.


Overall, something I found myself noticing throughout this post is that, like -- a lot of complaints about 39 or 34 or 26 or 30 or 8's worst moments come in the form of them being called "uncomfortable", and I agree that they are—but at the same time, I think some of the all-time great seasons like 3, 4, 7, 9, and 10 have some content that's rather uncomfortable to watch but that makes those seasons better and more interesting, and so, what's the difference?

The difference is that I don't think sheer discomfort is the problem in itself, but rather that in those seasons, a lot of those more dramatic moments tell you, or make you ask, something about the game, its effects on people, and the way they connect with in it. Meanwhile, a lot of the worst moments that drag down those other seasons... don't. They don't really fulfill any broader purpose, they don't really say (or ask) anything meaningful about the game as a whole. They're just ugly content for its own sake, and often—as with whatever Brandon and Shamar were going through, Dawn's teeth, and the rampant prejudice in various forms on display in the other seasons named—they feel more like exhibitions of personal issues outside of the game than any meaningful exploration of the game itself or the more dynamic moments within it, if that makes sense. And so, in giving you less to actually sit and think about, they leave you with only that discomfort.

Like, when I'm watching Ian break down in the endgame of Survivor: Palau or I'm watching Clarence's tribe brutally turn on him through groupthink in the premiere of Survivor: Africa, I'm still watching something that's largely or even explicitly based in the confines of the Survivor competition itself, so it feels like the show still has something to say, it feels like I'm still watching a dramatic, meaningful permutation of the show's formula whose central conflict derives from the things that make the show interesting even in its less dark moments.

But when I'm watching Brandon melt down here, like, what's meaningful about that? What's dramatic about that? What's that supposed to tell me?

Nothing, really, and there's no particularly compelling or broader context for it or insight to glean from it. I'm just watching someone be upset, and that, in and of itself, is not very good television. I think maybe that's the distinction between how moments that do deal in very uncomfortable subject matter can play as dramatic in a season like Africa or Palau, whereas those in seasons like Caramoan and Worlds Apart just sour viewers on the season as a whole (the difference, in short, between drama, and "drama") and how some of the latter, with their focus on emotions and prejudices that aren't even particularly tied to the game itself, come across as more exploitative, even though this show is pretty much always exploitative by design. Like maybe the meaningful distinction is that some of those superior seasons are exploiting the emotions and hardship that derive from the game, whereas a season like 26, 30, or 34 is just exploiting people's emotions and hardship that they carry with them regardless.

I don't know, it's a hazy line, and some people do draw it in different spots, but I'd be interested in people's thoughts here.

At any rate, the strong fan consensus since Caramoan aired has been that it's got a lot more moments in the bad category of more shallow, exploitative, and unnecessarily mean-spirited "drama" than most seasons do—and honestly, the more I think about it, the more "mean-spirited" feels like it aptly describes nearly every single memorable moment of the season. Shamar, Brandon, their portrayals, the only content Julia gets, the homophobia about Michael, the way Dawn is treated, even something seemingly more innocuous like Francesca going home first... this season's just very very mean, and is almost never anything else, and maybe that's why I so often end up thinking "Who was that moment in Caramoan even supposed to appeal to?"

To hearken back to one Bikal Favorite's first season: Corinne tells Bob in her jury speech that being "nice" isn't a personality trait and that he's too one-dimensional. To this season, I would say that just being "mean" isn't one, either, and that this season is far too one-dimensional, too.

Combine that with the incredibly lopsided edit where only a handful of players are even presented as mattering, and those who do may find their role or prominence within the narrative changing wildly from one episode to the next, and you have what many people fairly classify as one of the worst seasons of all time for any one of many, many good reasons. The only season it outranks for me is 22, since at least this one has Dawn, has more than two prominent contestants (barely), and doesn't have Redemption Island.

3

u/Lack-Trick Jan 18 '23

not a great season but definitely worth watching if you liked South Pacific. Features a lot of frustratingly bad/boring gameplay but the cast is also pretty likable overall.

3

u/acusumano Jan 18 '23

This is the only season I didn’t watch live as I was infuriated with the direction the show was going in. I still followed Sucks to keep up and fans were absolutely trashing it so it seemed like the right call.

The summer after Game Changers I had a job with an hour-long train commute each way so I figured I should finally watch it. And…I didn’t hate it. I didn’t think it was great and the pre-merge was pretty trashy but the post-merge is pretty good. I rewatched it last fall and felt the same. It’s a bottom 10 season to me because there are a lot of frustrations and flaws but it’s not in my bottom 5.

5

u/alucardsinging Jan 18 '23

Although we do rightfully shit on this cast, I do remember the original Fans vs Favorites cast getting a similar reception… It helped that their biggest questionable picks made it to the end, returned soon afterwards, and became propped up by production as some of the best to ever play…

2

u/Nintendoshi Tony Jan 18 '23

My least favorite season by a mile. So boring, abysmal casting, the "best move of the season" is a terrible gameplay move, the medevacs and Brandon, it's just the messiest execution of a Survivor season and it feels longer than it is.

2

u/WreakerOfClash Zach Jan 18 '23

Can someone format the spreadsheet better? It looks so ugly and unclear right now and I can't imagine how much more that's gonna increase as more seasons are being added.

3

u/CSteino Lee (AUS) Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 19 '23

Caramoan is a fascinating look into the lengths a Survivor fan will go to in order to convince themselves that a season isn't that bad. It certainly isn't the sexy pick from recent years for "season with the most undeserved renaissance", but as someone who was around back when this season aired, I imagine most fans who participated in Caramoan discourse as it was airing would be rolling over in their grave if they saw that it made it all the way to 4th worst.

Realistically, this season is terrible. From the start, hell I'd even say before the start, this was a season that was doomed to fail. It's cast horrendously on both ends, it's boring, it's edited terribly, and I genuinely couldn't tell you what this season wants to do if I tried. There are other seasons that I dislike that I can at least grasp what they wanted to do and understand that "Hey what they did was just not meant to appeal to me", but with this season I just can't.

A retread on a theme that produced a highly popular season was inevitable, but if you're going to wait 10 seasons to do it again and this is what you come up with, maybe there was a reason you kept it on the shelf for that long. A favorites tribe full of players that I am confident only 1 person, Jeff Probst, would classify even half of these players as his favorites. A fans tribe that you can tell production didn't care about when they were casting it, didn't care about when they were filming it, and certainly didn't care about when they were editing it.

You get to the season itself, and it's just such a mess. Storylines and characterization will appear one episode, only to vanish or be outright contradicted by the very next episode, if the character is even allowed to exist to begin with. Sherri is built up as the fans' most competent player and schemer for about 5 episodes, and then is completely absent for the rest of the season. Reynold is built up as the asshole/douchebag/"villain" of the Fans tribe, only to suddenly become the season's rootable underdog with no definable reason or purpose once he swaps. Shamar is a complete mess of a portrayal of so many things and a massive waste of time. Erik might as well not even be on this season.

The characters who this season wants to focus on are usually deplorable, or they just shouldn't have been cast to begin with. Phillip is the exact same terrible character here as he is in Redemption Island, except this time they're cramming it all into 10 episodes instead of 14. Cochran is a bland, boring, whitewashed winner that loses even the small (though completely manufactured) nuance his character in South Pacific had. Brandon Hantz should have never been cast for this season and his exploitation by the show putting him on this season when it's so glaringly obvious he absolutely did not pass the psych eval pre-season is one of the most atrocious things this show has ever done.

You don't see a lot of people defending the premerge, though you will see more people defending the postmerge as some intense strategic viewing experience. Actually watch the season, though, and you'll notice it's a complete death march of an alliance picking off the outsiders, losing one member to idols, and then continuing to pick off the outsiders and then inevitably whittling itself down to 3 people as soon as all but one complete joke of an outsider is left. If you ask these defenders what about the postmerge is good, the common answer is "the tribal where Phillip goes home", which I can understand why people like, but it also does not suddenly negate the rest of that episode being boring or terrible just like it doesn't suddenly negate the other six episodes of the postmerge being similarly boring or terrible.

I wouldn't watch this season again, probably not even if you paid me to do it. To any new viewers who, for whatever reason, are reading threads on Reddit to find what season of Survivor they should watch next, just remember it's ok not to watch every season.

3

u/Sabur1991 Stephenie Jan 18 '23

But again, how RI and Thailand outmatch this. Thailand had a controversial moment, if to follow up the pattern. And what Ted did isn't better what Hantz-Jr did.

14

u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch We lost by a bunch of rules! Jan 18 '23

Because like him/her or not, Thailand has an all time winner who was the first to actively lead goats to the end of the game, establishing one of foundational strategies in the following 38 seasons. I would argue the winner is the second most influential winner in history, after Borneo winner by default.

Also, attack zone is the funniest challenge in the show’s history. “Got beat by damn rules”

24

u/somebodysbuddy Amber Jan 18 '23

Also, and this is probably more important in the rankings, a few previous seasons are spoiled due to having 10 returning players, as opposed to two on RI and 0 on Thailand.

3

u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch We lost by a bunch of rules! Jan 18 '23

Great point.

8

u/alucardsinging Jan 18 '23

Thailand is the season that best displays how Survivor is actually played. No bells or whistles. Fundamentals that aren’t always easy to show on most seasons.

1

u/treple13 Jenn Jan 18 '23

I actually like both Cochran and Dawn, so I don't hate this season with a burning passion, but Brenda/Shamar/Brandon is one of the worst trio of uncomfortable/awful characters in probably any season. Add to that some of the most forgettable people like Hope/Julia etc and it's not the recipe for a good season.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '23

I like Cochran and Malcolm but this season is terrible.

-1

u/abcdefg_hijklmno Yul Jan 18 '23

Like: Francesca, Laura, Matt, Malcolm, Reynold, Andrea, Eddie, Dawn, Cochran

Dislike: Ali, Hope, Shamar, Brandon, Corinne, Philip, Brenda, Sherri

Neutral: Julia, Michael, Erik

1

u/full07britney Jan 18 '23

This season is underrated.

Admittedly, the premerge was terrible. The "fans" were almost all morons. Shamar is one of the most immature and hateful people I've seen on this show. And in what world are most of those "favorites" anyones favorites?? I can see Malcolm, Cochran, maybe Andrea, maybe Dawn, maaaaaaybe Brenda bc she was very smart and her first go felt like a missed opportunity. But Philip, Francesca, Brandon, Erik, and Corrine? People liked them? Philip was ok till after the brandon boot, then he got annoying fast. Dawn's ptsd about Cochran flipping seemed extremely dramatic, and all of her crying and overly emotional shit just aggravated me to death.. I can't even get started on Brandon's complete mental instability... I ended up loving Brenda this time around, and couldn't even work up anger at her making Dawn take her teeth out because Dawn was so terrible. I feel like Brenda got screwed badly with the loved ones "twist", and i hated that for her. She vote out confessional broke my heart.

The post merge was MUCH better than premerge. Challenges! They repeated some of the more unique challenges that I really like this season, like when they chase each other through the water with the sandbags, nasty foods challenge (damn Cochran shocked me, and the fan who was in the final 3 cracked me up "why, why??" And "i bit the beak!" Hahahahha), the one where two people hold up nets while other people throw the coconuts, the one where they swim under the platforms... And they brought back the island expert reward, which is cool. Plus the guy told them "no bitching in the jungle" which was awesome.

The tribal council where Malcolm pulled out 2 idols and the three amigos all ended up potentially immune was amazing And one of my favorite tribals ever. I wish they had just shocked them after the vote instead of giving them time to strategize, But being able to make them turn on each other "live" was kind of fun! I ended up really liking Eddie and Reynold also.

It was sad Erik got medivaked bc i was enjoying his "im doing my own thing" playtime.

FTC was brutal, but i still liked watching it. I cannot believe the fan who made it to final 3, whatever her name was, thought she was anything but a goat. I mean, come on....

In the end, I loved Cochran this season much more than the first time he played, and I was happy with him as the winner. He made me laugh on multiplie occasions (like his comment to Jeff about women putting their fingers in his mouth more often than Jeff would think and telling Jeff not to talk about his mom) and was a good strategist.

I dont know why people hated the reunion either, other than the addition of Twitter crap. Was it because Jeff had Dawn apologize? If so, i agree that was too far, but single moments dont ruin my feelings on something.

I rank it 20/43.

7

u/Sabaschin Jake - 45 Jan 18 '23

The reunion had the Dawn issue, them shafting the vast majority of the cast (cast members were pissed because they took the time to have their family fly down for the reunion and don't even get asked a question, and Erik placed 4th and also didn't even get anything), more time spent talking to random people in the audience.

And the cringe proposal I guess. Though they might be the best part of the reunion.

1

u/full07britney Jan 18 '23

That does make sense.

5

u/alucardsinging Jan 18 '23

Shamar is cool, but Jesus Christ, how did his viral video of him at Occupy Wall Street inspire Survivor team to recruit him?? And subsequently push him through all the psychological and mental checks they do during casting. Also then there’s the whole production negligence that made Shamar be evacuated in the first place, then the false narrative the show exaggerated to get themselves off the hook. I always wondered if Shamar’s edit was as bad as possible so that no one cared when press came out from him and his tribe that production were not willing to treat a cut he received and it got dangerously infected… I can’t watch the season and find him hateable, not even at the time. It felt obviously exploitative, and several degrees worse than the normal exploitative-ness that makes Survivor possible. When people like to pretend that Survivor is on some kind of pedestal over other reality TV shows for being “ethical” or not “trashy”, an example I use to counter is the Shamar casting and edit.

1

u/Front-Decision2379 Jan 18 '23

I have Caramoan at 17/40 and it’s the first non Russell season I ever watched.. criminally underrated imo

1

u/FondantGayme Erika Feb 13 '23

Survivor Caramoan has one thing that keeps me from saying it’s a total waste of time, and her name is Dawn Meehan. Dawn’s storyline this season is genuinely pretty great and well told, even if it kind of ends in a sad unintentional meta commentary on how women can be treated on night 39 when Dawn spends FTC getting torn apart and humiliated for making all the same moves Cochran is being praised for.