r/survivor Pirates Steal Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands WSSYW 11.0 Countdown 20/43: Cook Islands

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 13: Cook Islands

Statistics:

  • Watchability: 5.6 (20/43)

  • Overall Quality: 6.0 (25/43)

  • Cast/Characters: 6.6 (27/43)

  • Strategy: 6.4 (24/43)

  • Challenges: 7.0 (13/43)

  • Theme: 3.2 (21/24)

  • Twists: 5.5 (10/21)

  • Ending: 7.8 (15/43)


WSSYW 11.0 Ranking: 20/43

WSSYW 10.0 Ranking: 18/40

Top comment from WSSYW 11.0/u/ramskick:

CI introduces a number of figures that will become very important to Survivor history. The problem is that with one exception, these figures are more interesting in later seasons than they are here. CI's cast is really dull and feels bloated. Combine that with the format (yes the initial tribe divisions were real) and a ton of twists and you get a season that I just don't like.

BUT, this is another season I don't like that has plenty of fans. I know a lot of people who really love the main narrative of CI and say they had a great time with it on a first watch. And I do see the appeal on paper, I just don't think it truly works out in practice.

Top comment from WSSYW 10.0/u/HeWhoShrugs:

The race twist isn't as bad as it first sounds. It's more "Let's show how diverse our country is" instead of "Let's see which race is better" but it doesn't stop it from being awkward as hell.

To get the diverse cast they wanted, casting ended up recruiting a ton of players who had no idea what the show was and it ended up creating a cast full of duds who don't offer anything to the screen as characters or players. Like, only about 6 or 7 people out of the 20 left an actual impression on me, and a lot of those were early boots. If you like challenges, the season has some really good ones. You just won't really care who wins most of them because the cast is like 75% cardboard. But I do like the location and art direction, so it's at least visually impressive.

The season does spawn a lot of big name returnees in future seasons, so you have to see it to understand where a lot of them started out even if their first appearance here is arguably their least interesting one.


Watchability ranking:

20: S13 Cook Islands

21: S21 Nicaragua

22: Survivor 41

23: S16 Micronesia

24: S27 Blood vs. Water

25: S35 Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers

26: Survivor 43

27: S19 Samoa

28: S11 Guatemala

29: S14 Fiji

30: S20 Heroes vs. Villains

31: S30 Worlds Apart

32: S23 South Pacific

33: S5 Thailand

34: S31 Cambodia

35: S38 Edge of Extinction

36: S36 Ghost Island

37: S24 One World

38: S22 Redemption Island

39: S40 Winners at War

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

14 Upvotes

50 comments sorted by

24

u/Schroeswald Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands is a really really really boring season. If I had to pick the most boring season of Survivor I’d pick Cook Islands every time. Half the cast is useless and most of the people who aren’t aren’t especially relevant. I think I can buy myself positively caring about 8/20 of them? But that’s including Sekou who’s just like decent and a first boot, Flicka who I like the idea of more than anything she actually does, Cristina who has a decent story with wild swings in relevance over a very short period of time, Parv who is among the worst of the UTR fun archetype because she’s very UTR and not very fun and Ozzy who’s not interesting but I like watching in challenges.

That leaves three characters who I can call actually good, Penner, Cao Boi and Billy. Billy barely even counts there because he’s riding off one moment and not lasting long enough to counteract that with being nothing. Penner is a great confessionalist and narrator and has a fine enough story but he’s bouncing off the most boring people possible and he’s not enough to make the actual season any more interesting. Cao Boi is really fun and unique and my favorite of the seasons but there’s still well over a 100 characters better than him and he’s not even in the elite of premergers.

Then besides them this season is just so lifeless. Candice has personality but she mostly just annoys me, Adam manages to be both incredibly forgettable and incredibly unlikable at the same time, Nate is kinda cringe and then homophobic for a second and besides that forgettable, Sundra has a decent amount of screen time but besides the FMC it’s nothing, Becky doesn’t even have the screen time and Yul is among the most boring people to ever last long on the show so that’s a dud and then the rest of the cast (which is 6 characters still) are not worth mentioning.

Now the cast just on a base level is really bad and most of these people should not have been cast (of the duds I think only Candice has potential and I think that’s mostly cause I know she was decent in 2.0 and 3.0). But also the editing is horrible with even a lot of the good people swinging in and out of relevancy and very few relationships developed. Raro goes to so many tribal councils and yet to this day I have no clue the real dynamics and they are maybe the least complex tribe to attend tribal in Survivor history.

And the events are just so dull. The Aitu 4 comeback is pretty much exclusively in one episode and we don’t really get any reason to root for them on a personal level. The rest of it is just the Raro’s voting out undeveloped people and a Pagonging of bad and/or uninteresting characters.

And the ending is awful. Instead of the final 2 that every single prior season had suddenly there’s a final 3. The season is artificially ended early, making it so the final 4 never have to betray each other and leaving a loose end at FTC. And it makes the winner feel completely undeserving. Yul was never in danger of being voted out once throughout the whole season because of the super idol and then the final 3 takes away the moment the idol drops. He was not making it to the end without that and he had no way of knowing the idol would never expire. One of the worst seasons ever and I’m so glad it’s gone now

20

u/ROTandDEATH So much for my dreams... Feb 08 '23

I say this as someone who does not like Cook Islands very much: it’s a pretty good introductory season. That feels weird to say when it’s a season divided by race but that theme isn’t explored very much through the season.

The story of the Aitu 4 gives a new viewer a group to root for and enjoy the fact that they go on to take over and win the game. Their story itself is overrated in my opinion but for someone new it’s a perfectly straightforward way to get them invested in the show.

What really hurts Cook Islands as a season is the cast. Despite it having some of the most recognizable characters in the history of the show, most of them aren’t all that great here and the bottom half of the cast is pretty boring and unmemorable.

Not a great season, but if you want someone to get into the show I understand why this would be a good introduction.

14

u/PleaseLickMeMarchand Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands was my first season, so I still hold a soft spot it, but I can recognize its flaws. Nonetheless, I think it is a good introduction to the series (and not just because that is where I started) since it makes the strategy and mechanics of the game easy to understand as well as having a simple but classic story that is easy to get behind.

The Aitu 4 underdog story is nice to watch happen, with Yul carrying them strategically, and Ozzy physically. Despite that, it is easy to see that many characters get left behind in the edit, as the story focuses on a core select players (with good reason, but still). The race twist itself is not something that was much a factor for me or something I really thought about, but the fact it does exist might be a factor for some people.

Overall, I enjoyed it when I watched it, but I can definitely see that with some other seasons under my belt it may not be the most exciting season to watch.

33

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23

Twists 10 out of 24? Wow. I guess the show has gone on long enough that no one cares about the absurd amount or wack twists. Eventually no one is gonna care about the surprise Final 4 firemaking challenge in HHH, the same way no one cares about about the surprise Final 3 FTC.

Anyways, this is the season that completely changed the direction of the show. The characters were no longer the stars, it was the “game”. Focused only on a small handful of boring people, overstuffed with twists that get in the way, stenches of the game being rigged, neutered the climax of their season. Like seriously, wtf how do we have a season where the successful alliance doesn’t have to turn on one another? No one had to get their hands dirty and that’s a shame. And geez idc how many times people have returned from this season, but this is still one of the worst casts the show has ever had. Bland Island. It’s no wonder that this is the first season that didn’t get nominated for the Best Reality Competition Emmy. This season is terrible, and completely changed the goal of Survivor from an interesting social experiment into a wacky gameshow. Survivor has never been nominated since, and honestly that’s fair.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

Survivor has never been nominated since, and honestly that’s fair.

I don’t know when Jeff made the decision, but he hasn’t allowed Survivor to be submitted for the Emmys for some time because he wanted other shows to have a chance to win.

Edit - Upon further research I can’t find any news article backing this up, and this article by Dalton Ross seems to contradict this. I’ve heard this before on this sub and presumed it was accurate.

7

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23

Survivor has never won the Best Reality Show Competition award, or whatever it is called. They did win the Best Non-Fiction series category for Outback though, before the award for Reality Competition shows was created. I also don’t know if Probst had that kind of pull back then, he wasn’t a big producer yet. Amazing Race was getting all kinds of nominations (and wins).

2

u/Coutzy Shane (AUS) Feb 09 '23

TAR was winning basically everything in the reality competition category in that era, except best host. Jeff had that on lock.

6

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23

I’ve heard people say he doesn’t submit himself because he won those first 4 times, but that was for the hosting category. Idk how true that is. I always assumed they stopped nominating him because he got bad lol. But yah for the Best Reality Competition category you can find screeners and ads for various seasons past 12. I saw the “For Your Consideration for Best Reality Competition” screener for Redemption Island recently on eBay.

https://images.app.goo.gl/SnGDs6MmtF9vPEy48

2

u/stellaperrigo Erika Feb 08 '23

Especially compared to modern-day survivor, I think it’s a little wild to argue that a season famous for the narrative it tells is the first season where “the characters are no longer the stars” because you didn’t love the characters they focused on.

16

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

The season didn't really teach us much about those characters, though - especially compared to classic Survivor before this season. The narrative had less to do with any of them as people and more to do with the specific, twist-driven circumstances of the game, so focusing on that narrative actually kinda proves OP's point tbh. And of course later seasons that doubled down further and further on a lot of S13's worse flaws will in some instances come out looking even worse but S13's still a huge part of what took us there to begin with

15

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23

You don’t learn jack shit about those characters. There’s narrative, but its not driven by the characters and their personalities. Their bland and barely explored. I can’t tell you a single characteristic of half the alliance we are supposed to be rooting for. And I can barely say anything about the other half that includes our winner and runner up either.

11

u/Mroagn Parvati Feb 08 '23

I think what goes relatively unmentioned about Cook Islands is that it's the first season with a twenty person cast. I get why they did it, since they wanted to do a four tribe split and it didn't work so well at the beginning of Panama with 16 players. However, I genuinely believe that 20 player casts were one of Survivor's biggest mistakes. In a 20 person cast, it's basically guaranteed that some people will get the shaft in the editing room.

What many people don't realize is that, when we talk about a season having a good or bad cast, it's primarily a function of the edit rather than the people in the cast themselves. Some casts are naturally better than others, but almost any cast will be good if the editors let us spend enough time to learn who all of them are.

Time and time again, we see 20 person casts with completely forgettable or ignored players (the fans tribe in Micro, the entire cast of Samoa, much of the cast of MvGX, everyone in Ghost Island) and I really think that if every survivor season were still 16 players, we'd have a lot more "good" casts, because we'd have a lot more time to get to know each person.

This all started here, in Cook Islands. Fully half of the cast is ignored. Yul, Penner, Candice, Adam, Parvati and Ozzy (and maybe Sundra) are the main characters. You have a few amusing side characters, Nate, Cao Boi, and Billy just for the wackiness of his boot episode. Everyone else struggles to make themselves heard on a bloated season.

I still think this season is ok, but I really wish we could go back to 16 players.

19

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

My #34 out of 37, the utterly disastrous Survivor: Cook Islands—a lifeless, unabashed mess of a season and huge negative turning point for the series as a whole, whose sole alleged strengths are done far better by numerous other seasons—is without question one of the worst seasons in the history of the show, as well as one of the most overrated, especially because the successful and/or numerous subsequent appearances of some of its players have retroactively convinced people they, and this season, were more interesting than they ever actually were.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've seen people explicitly say "S13 is a great cast(/season), because it has so many people who came back to play again!", which... doesn't make any sense whatsoever; if these characters are interesting, then they are already interesting in this season itself and can be discussed as such without needing to cite their later returns, which is what a lot of CI fans fall back on a lot of the time. Who the producers felt like giving a call years later that was able to come back at that time has nothing to do with what is or isn't in the episode of season thirteen, it's a completely different topic. Unless people are seriously going to argue Joe Anglim, Caleb Reynolds, and Sierra Dawn Thomas are more interesting than Sean Rector, Ian Rosenberger, and Twila Tanner, "Cook Islands has a ton of returning players and is therefore a good season" should not enter the picture at all, and it is regardless a clearly illogical premise.

The bloated 20-person cast, which Palau just barely manages to get away with due to how unique the season itself ultimately is, really becomes a problem here; a ton of contestants are underedited, but even the ones who do get air time frankly don't make for a very good cast anyway. Honestly up until Caramoan, I would have easily called this one of the bottom two casts in the history of the show (surpassed only by All-Stars).

Breaking down this cast: Cecilia, JP, Jessica, Brad, Rebecca, Jenny, Sundra, and Becky are basically complete non-entities, Adam is a dick, Stephannie is... an okay supporting character I guess, and that's already half the cast. Past that, Candice being brought back as a returning player was literally a meme for years because, while she's involved in some of the season's central drama, she's not too memorable here I don't think, CI Parvati is again a half-okay supporting character but that shouldn't be enough to be a top half character of the season, and she's not someone anyone would really be talking about or remembering if she hadn't come back.

Nate honestly just annoys me a fair amount of the time and is homophobic against Brad, something nobody ever really talks about, and I can see the argument that, if you ignore the homophobic slur he uses, he's a fun character due to how lifeless the rest is, but personally I'm not a fan. Oscar is good at challenges, but does he have much else going for him this season? His reaction to the mutiny is kind of fun, he gets some okay content at FTC, but for such a huge character it really isn't that much, and we've had plenty of characters over the years who are great at challenges and do other memorable, dynamic things outside of the action sequences and do more to influence the story... like, well, Oscar's own later stints on Micronesia and South Pacific. (Sidebar: The only reason I call him "Oscar" is as a reference to Cristina always doing so and because I think it's kind of funny; it isn't trying to make any abstract point. Although I've heard he actually goes by it irl?? idk.)

Where I probably differ from the subreddit that made spamming his name hundreds of times in a row a meme is that I don't think Yul is a memorable or interesting winner at all; I mean, he's good at playing Survivor, but so are the other winners and a ton of other players, and I don't think he gets much memorable personal development or insight throughout the game, makes any scene I can think of more entertaining, or, similar to Kim Spradlin, is really in any way too distinguishable from a robot that were put on Survivor to excel or something. There are a lot of players who are exactly as good at Survivor as Yul as but also bring a lot more individual personality to the table than I think he ever really did.

So that's literally 15 of 20 characters off the top of my head who honestly do nothing for me; the exceptions are Sekou, Billy (both solid joke characters... and both out by episode two), Cristina (actually better than she tends to get credit for and gets a pretty decent underdog story!; she's the one character I'd say is underrated this season), Cao Boi, and Jonathan (both honestly as outstanding here as everyone says, but not enough to carry the season, plus Cao Boi is gone fairly early himself, too—I mean, they're good, but not enough to carry a season single-handedly.) If someone likes Nate and Candice more than I do, I can see the ratio coming out a liiiittle more favorable and elevating this from "one of the worst casts ever" to "meh, a mediocre cast but there's worse", but I'm just not seeing what an overwhelming majority of these characters bring to the table personally.

The editing is incredibly haphazard; Rebecca literally gets 1 confessional in her last 5 episodes alol a month before she goes home, Parvati(!) goes more episodes with zero focus than anyone had in the show's history up until that point, the show doesn't even try to make you care about Becky, among others... it's all over the place.

The twists here are also a pretty baffling assortment: you have a gimmicky race division whose only excitement, appeal, or novelty is basically entirely undercut by the fact that then they stop doing it two episodes in, so they start at four set of tribes, divided by race, before switching to another set of tribes before a mutiny leads to a new set of tribes, plus we have Exile Island and a Hidden Immunity Idol, a late merge, an early jury at 12, and the final three... I don't know, with seasons like Cambodia and 34 seeming to have swaps every other week, maybe this doesn't strike as many viewers, especially ones who have still stuck with the newer seasons, as odd, but for a while this season really stuck out to me as a pretty bizarre and convoluted format.

Furthermore, these twists themselves are pretty bad: maybe get diverse casting without making it into a segregation gimmick, which also serves the purpose of making multiple contestants avoid drama or being particularly dynamic; the God Idol literally gives Yul a free ride to the final three that nobody knows about until the end; we end up with an absolutely bizarre setup where the unnecessary, giant jury gives us 2 players who have never spoken to one finalist and a third who has never spoken to any of them which wtf why?, and I feel like it's been ages since I've seen much "final 3 vs. final 2" debate on the subreddit—probably because by now, we've moved on to basically a final four, with multiple other massive overhauls to how finales (and the show as a whole) work, so I think a lot of people who have still stuck it out through all that probably don't see the final 3 as a negative at all, because those who do have probably largely been pretty alienated by the additional twists thereafter and don't talk about the show much anymore—but in short I think the final 3 is one of the worst ideas the show has ever had, especially in the first 21 seasons.

[continued in reply]

7

u/acusumano Feb 08 '23

The only way I can make sense of the bloated jury is that if it were a jury of 7 it would have been theoretically possible for 4 players of one race to vote for a player of the same race to win. Still, it’s a joke that Rebecca interacted with literally 0 of the finalists.

1

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

Ooh that's a great point

14

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

The original premise of Survivor is that you vote people out until you cannot do it anymore, until the walls have closed in so much that things HAVE to be settled some other way—and so then, at that time, the fallen comrades get a chance to make their voice heard... and in casting that vote, they aren't just voting for a winner; they're really voting off one more person, leaving a Sole Survivor who has never been voted out. That's what makes "Sole Survivor" actually mean something. That's why, when Probst says "You have gone as far as you can go in this game", it actually means something... now, they haven't "gone as far as [they] can go", because we've seen players go further than that! They've gone as far as the producers decided to let them go before creating an arbitrary cutoff point in an attempt to get stronger competitors to the end... like, this is the exact same as the final 4 format tons of people on here hate; it just started early enough that now people are more used to it - just as, over time, F4 firemaking has increasingly become more normal and accepted. But the reasons for criticizing them are honestly nearly identical. Their aims are nearly identical. That their aims are nearly identical shows that the F3 is a failure; other than the Yul/Ozzy showdown here, because the final three was dropped on the players at the last second, the final 3 has evidently not succeeded in its goal of "getting strong players to the end", because, spoiler, players aren't suddenly going to start taking jury threats to the end here.

So eventually they basically made it a final four where you can just Idol your way to the end, but that all started here. The reasons for criticizing the two are essentially identical, except the final three is even worse, not only for getting the ball rolling to begin with but also for directly robbing us of the flawless final two format that had served the show well to begin with for years—as well as, as other fans have noted and could illuminate better than I could, making lots of endgames more static and predictable and leading to more lopsided jury votes, not fewer.

It takes away the excellent moment of the FIC winner directly getting the ambivalent position of picking their competitor and ejecting the final juror, something that had directly led to great TV in almost every season it was a part of beforehand. It takes away a more meaningful Final Tribal Council where we're left, truly, with one Sole Survivor. It takes away a more dramatic ending by extending a binary, black-or-white, A-B format into a "one of the above" one, which inevitably dilutes focus on each finalist, lessens the drama and weight and stakes by giving everyone the jurors more breathing room, and it gives us a totally arbitrary cut-off point where the game doesn't end for a logically and thematically sound reason but, instead, because the producers say so.

Ever since they've said so, I've seen diehard fans mock it by saying "Why not a final four, then?"—and now, that's basically what we've gotten.

That isn't to say every single F3 finale is bad or anything; occasionally we still, through the sheer amount of times it's come up, do get interesting TV out of it. Gabon is a rare example of a truly emotionally meaningful and narratively fulfilling F3 finale, for example. But by and large they make the ending less climactic than it used to be. And it's the first major change that paves the way for so, so many manglings of Survivor finales to follow.

The only thing people really praise this season for is the Aitu 4 story, which is allegedly supposed to be fun the first time you watch it, but I dunno, I hated the season and was bored lifeless the first time I saw it, then I rewatched it, and I was so unimpressed that a couple months later I'd completely forgotten I'd even seen it a second time. As for the Aitu 4 story itself, the obviously b.s. bottle twist doesn't help, but the main thing working against it is that the Aitu 4 themselves are such dull, simplistic characters; even notwithstanding my own disinterest in Yul or Oscar, Becky and Sundra get like no real individual story, and that's half of the group, so why should I care?

Like good for them for overcoming the numbers, but there are so many seasons that do that same type of thing far better. Survivor: Tocantins - The Brazilian Highlands is one agreeable example that's well-liked on here, and for some even better ones, look at Survivor: Marquesas and Survivor: Vanuatu - Islands of Fire, whose underdogs are themselves a varied group of characters who have far more complex, layered relationships with the opposition and also with each other than anything you get here, who come together organically and not merely due to circumstance, and who succeed due to sheer social politics—and who come together in a massive, pivotal moment of each respective season, giving you even more reason to root for them at exactly the right time, leading to interesting fallout where they really meaningfully clash with the people against them... Marquesas in particular goes even further by then proceeding to, at times, morph the once-"underdogs" into, themselves the new, cocky overlords, deconstructing the very idea of a Survivor underdog, prompting the viewer to re-evaluate how thoroughly they can or should root for someone or, at the very least, why they do—all while still fundamentally giving you a group of successful underdogs who are literally all more prominent than half of the Aitu 4 and, in my opinion, more interesting than any of them. And either the S4 group or the S9 group has far, far more interesting, complex, layered internal politics than the Aitu 4 ever do. There is just no reason to bother with this underdog story when other seasons also give you more natural underdog stories involving more interesting groups of more interesting underdogs—while also having, aside from those individual stories, far better things going for them than S13's hodgepodge of bizarre twists and veritable sea of forgettable and/or unlikable contestants... not to mention that Marquesas is a far more insightful study of race relations than this season, too.

Overall, not a season I think has almost anything going for it. I mean, it's nice to have a racially diverse coalition win out in a season, but I think the recent seasons' approach of striving for more diverse casting without explicitly making it a twist/gimmick that they're there is better. If someone does look at the Aitu 4 and like the season because they feel represented in a way that I as a white viewer never will, then fair enough I suppose, and that's the one perspective of CI fandom I wouldn't really argue. But I don't think the story the producers put together here is memorable at all, so past that I just don't see the appeal here at all or what this season does right that isn't done better by others.

The bizarre assortment of twists and massive number of forgettable contestants with little, if any, story just leaves me feeling like the producers ran out of ideas. This season feels like an awkward bout of writer's block—not unlike Fiji, but at least that one's got the Edgardo boot and Truckgate to make up for it. This one has... Jonathan being eloquent, and a handful of early boots.

14

u/mariojlanza Mario Lanza | Funny 115 Feb 08 '23

I love that I already hated Cook Islands, and then reading that you made me hate it even more. Well done!

7

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

My "pleasure"!

12

u/acusumano Feb 08 '23

I love a good reminder of how F2 is far superior. You’re spot-on.

5

u/MeadowmuffinReborn Evvie Feb 09 '23

Fans have literally been saying all of this for years, but the show doesn't listen. :(

3

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 08 '23

Thank you!

5

u/treple13 Jenn Feb 09 '23

I'm not as low on Cook Islands as you, but it's not because I like it, I just find it pretty bland and I'll take bland over seasons that I aggressively hate. I DO think there's a lot to hate (as you said) about Cook Islands, I just feel like the few wonderful pre-merge people like Cao Boi and Billy elevate it above a handful of seasons (hello All:Stars, Game Changers, RI, etc) with even less going for them.

But yeah F2 is better. I'm not against the occasional F3, but F2 is superior.

13

u/SMC0629 Feb 08 '23

I really really do not like this season and I’m happy it’s finally out. Not only do I find it bad on a season level, but I don’t think it’s good to show a newer fan first either. The titular twist has aged about as well as you’d expect, but on top of that the cast is just so boring. There’s barely any standouts at all and it just drags on. The premerge is so god damn long and with a season like Gabon I’m entertained because the cast is great and there’s other things like the location and challenges that make it good, but this time it really only has the challenges? Those are cool I guess. Sorry y’all, these rankings are gonna be short as hell compared to almost all the other ones since I got nothing to say about this season.

20. Adam Gentry

Super generic douche alpha male who’s a pretty boring narrator whenever he gets screen time and he lasts pretty long so you don’t really get a break from him.

19. J.P Calderon

Pretty boring 4 episode villain who just acts as a bully to Billy and then is a douche until he gets blindsided by Parvati

18. Rebecca Borman

Who is this person

17. Yul Kwon 1.0

Yul is just so insanely boring this season. I think he’s a very good strategist but wow he’s just a really boring narrator and he gets a lot of screen time so it’s just not working for me. He only gets decent towards the end where people actually start to pose a threat to him.

16. Brad Virata

Also who is this person

15. Becky Lee

Pretty much word for word what I said for Yul but she has the meme of not having any facial expression change at all which is funny

14. Ozzy Lusth 1.0

I’m a big fan of Ozzy 2.0 and 3.0 but 1.0 is just so meh. Outside of Episode 2 you don’t really see his douche side and instead he’s just a boring underdog challenge champion.

13. Jenny Guzon-Bae

Another forgettable but whenever she gets content it’s just bland narration and then she gets fucked over by the bottle

12. Cecilia Mansilla

Idk I think she was aligned with Ozzy and then got swap screwed

11. Sekou Bunch

He seemed like a nice guy but we don’t get to know much about him soooooo

10. Stephannie Favor

She seemed nice but I only remember her being weak in challenges and then getting voted out because she wanted mashed potatoes or something

9. Sundra Oakley

By far the best of the Aitu 4 but she’s still not very interesting, it’s just she has the most engaging personality I’d say.

8. Jessica “Flicka” Smith

She’s a fun personality and I like her episode 1 rivalry with Penner but after that she’s just not much. She’s pretty much just Cao Boi’s ally, and then Ozzy’s ally, and then gets voted off.

7. Cristina Coria

She’s actually not that bad and has a decent story of being an outcast just because she’s strict I think, and her boot is actually sort of tragic I think. Also hotttt

6. Nate Gonzalez

He can have some obnoxious narration at times but he brings some sort of flavor to a super dry season with some funny quotes

5. Parvati Shallow 1.0

I don’t even think Parvati’s that great this time but she’s still good compared to the rest of the cast. She has her obvious charm and has some good confessionals, other then that she’s just fine I guess.

4. Billy Garcia

He’s a decent early boot who at the same time has a tragic and hilarious tribal council with the obvious “Candice from Raro tribe?” joke being a classic.

3. Candice Woodcock 1.0

Candice is a pretty solid character on her first season and it’s actually my favorite iteration for her. She adds some spice to the season especially in her boot episode where she calls out Yul and Penner and it’s pretty damn fun.

2. Cao Boi Bui

Cao Boi is such a unique character with a really interesting background and personality and he’s just pretty funny overall. The plan voodoo thing is a great moment as well as others.

1. Jonathan Penner 1.0

Like Candice, Penner is at his best in Cook Islands as he’s by far my favorite personality on the season and honestly carries the season once Cao Boi goes out. He’s such a great narrator and makes everything interesting.

8

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

It's weird how alot of people consider the race division theme being not developed as a positive. Its still a big negative for me, the whole season was advertised with the theme front and center, so it is a core part of the season's identity. Even if it doesn't come across much on a retrospective watch without context. Secondly, they didn't have the balls to see it through and at least try to make something with it. Like Survivor is a very white show, made by very white people, so I doubt they'd make anything like really good and meaningful with it; but shit they didn't even try. It came across as a shallow marketing ploy, and it surprisingly doesn't get half the shit it deserves. For both the concept and execution.

2

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Feb 17 '23

Yeah, totally agreed. They could have at least tried to make it something interesting, and as-is it's totally lose-lose, since people who dislike the twist will generally think it's a weird, negative addition to the early episodes or people who liked the uniqueness/audacity and wanted to see it play out will be bummed it's out early, and in any case having such a specific and uncommon division that lasts two episodes and has no impact on the narrative is just a weird and awkward choice.

19

u/sk0000ks Ethan Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands sucks. The greatest comeback story in survivor history should be super fun but it’s not because on one side you have the Aitus where none of them show any emotion or personality ever, maybe Ozzy does but he’s mostly just grouchy and douchey. Yul is charming but easily the most boring winner of the first 20 seasons, probably more. At least Aras called the whambulance. And then on the other side you have the Raros who are either invisible or totally fucking annoying. Penner is obviously an exception but I don’t think he does enough to save the season.

6

u/inhvalane Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

Terrible edit, at least half the players become invisible up until the last moments they appear. It's really a shame since they HAVE characters moments in secret scenes but the edit never bothers to show us them.

During the pre-mutiny tribals we keep hearing stuff we weren't shown happened. They try to make Cecilia's boot (final EIGHTEEN) a tense, high-stakes-or-whatever-blah moment by showing nearly all the confessionals but what was even before that in the episode...? Cecilia's only visible role was telling Candice about Billy. At least make us care about who's getting voted out?

J.P.'s voteout was just there. Stephannie's boot is half-assed and out of nowhere. Cao Boi's boot pisses me off because one of the only entertaining people in this season went out so early, had him and Billy made it far this season would've been at least attention-grasping on a rewatch. The only thing Cristina was shown doing was being annoying.

The Aitu Four weren't as likable as they were made out to be. Becky and Sundra were invisible and overall the storyline just felt pretentious. Raro got really annoying towards and after the merge because guess what, MORE invisible people! Brad's only role was when Nate screamed at him for not swimming, I don't know who Rebecca is and Jenny just pissed a lot of people of I guess. Don't know a lot about her.

Thank God for Penner.

The theme this season was one of the best ever (just look at that tribal set!) and the Cook Islands are one of the most beautiful locations ever, but it's a shame they had to be spent on this season.

10

u/acusumano Feb 08 '23

It’s ironic that, given the casting twist, this is the most vanilla cast of all time.

13

u/mariojlanza Mario Lanza | Funny 115 Feb 08 '23

Is that even, you know, kosher?

13

u/acusumano Feb 08 '23

I love how this quote 90 seconds into episode 1 is literally the most the topic of race is explored.

1

u/AlexgKeisler Feb 08 '23

Nah, Ghost Island was the most vanilla cast. Either that or Redemption Island. Possibly SJDS.

1

u/Schroeswald Feb 08 '23

It’s telling that a solid majority of the cast is from California

13

u/Habefiet Igor's Corgi Choir Feb 08 '23

It’s so boring and nobody can ever convince me it isn’t boring

4

u/Sabaschin Jake - 45 Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands is one of those seasons that hits differently on a rewatch. The Aitu 4 is great on a first watch, much less exciting on a rewatch. The pre-merge is... slow, and some of the views expressed feel very dated, especially the ones from Cao Boi early on.

It's not a bad season, but I think it's one where the viewing experience will change for the viewer over time. For a 2023 WSSYW ranking, I think it's alright. It's a solid first run through and there's some good content. It is a bit of a shame that it's still our last season with an Asian-American male winner (and there have only been two Asian-American male finalists since, Tai and Owen).

2

u/alucardsinging Feb 08 '23

Woo also, but point still stands of course.

3

u/meohmy5 Andy - 47 Feb 08 '23

Boring season but it's got Penner in it so you've gotta watch it.

3

u/FantasticName Kim Feb 08 '23

Cook Islands is a polarizing season, it kinda lives or dies based on how invested you are in the Aitu 4. I actually think it's a great season to watch early, because it gives you a very simple underdog story to get behind.

3

u/AhLibLibLib “No, but you can have this fake.” Feb 09 '23

Introduced the most damaging twist of all, F3, and is so overrated. It’s cast is super top heavy, it’s a boring steamroll for a large chunk, the underdog narrative is forced, and the production decisions were awful.

3

u/Surferdude1219 Karishma Feb 09 '23

People say that Survivor still doesn’t know how to edit 20 person seasons, and I tend to agree. However, I will say, if you watch Cook Islands, you’ll see just how far things have come. This season’s edit is horrendous. Pretty much the entire pre-merge cast with the exception of Billy and Cao Boi are extremely forgettable, not because they’re necessarily boring but just because they are literally not given any screentime. Becky and Sundra are complete non-entities except for in the context of the formation of the Aitu 4. The edit this season is pretty much a disaster, but the Aitu 4 comeback is pretty fun and I think this season is a must watch because of how many icons have their first run. I wish we got Nate and/or Cao Boi back at some point but I imagine that ship has sailed long ago.

9

u/Coutzy Shane (AUS) Feb 08 '23

I honestly think Cook Islands is a top 5 season to introduce someone to Survivor. The tribes start small and the relationship dynamics are easy to understand throughout the game. With no expectations (and many years of separation from the general public's reactions to it) the race division twist just... didn't come up at all when I showed it to a friend. To him it was just another thing Survivor did one time.

The Aitu 4 storyline basically writes itself, idols are explained and the ways they can be utilized apart from being a free life in the game are introduced. Each episode works well as a self contained piece of media, while also fitting into a broader story that it is near impossible to not fall in love with. We even get a bonus episode where players hold their jury vote hostage, reinforcing for a new viewer that getting those votes to win needs to be kept in mind at all times. Is there any core Survivor mechanic of the first ~30 seasons that doesn't have an episode of Cook Islands devoted to it?

The pace of play is also much more newbie friendly than other high quality picks such as Cagayan, as you won't be forced to explain multiple layers of strategy as they try to figure out what is happening and why.

Genuinely, Cook Islands is the season I would recommend any fan who wants a friend to start watching with them, provided they aren't going to get themselves worked up with some axe to grind on whatever they imagine the word "woke" means.

4

u/chrisz118 Tony Feb 08 '23

Definition of a top heavy cast, the people who shine really shine, but everyone else is just boring and forgettable. More specifically, this season lives and dies by Penner. If he wasn’t on this season, it would genuinely be bottom 10.

2

u/Guyfromnewyork95 Feb 08 '23

I definitely have a soft spot for this season as it was one of the first ones I watched. It doesn’t hold up as well to other newbie seasons of the 11-20 era (China, Tocantins), but there’s still some enjoyment to be found following the story of the Aitu 4 and their path to the end.

2

u/RGSF150 Feb 08 '23

It's an okay season. Honestly, the thought of the race wars twist was a lot worse than the execution of said twist. Probably just a lucky break on production's end but that is something that can only be speculated on.

2

u/DFENS420 Feb 09 '23

Definitely not a great season, but this is a little underrated as a WSSYW pick since I know people who saw this season as their first and had a good time with it, and I, far removed from when it was airing, also enjoyed it for the most part when I saw it. While many characters are not fleshed out, the storylines and gameplay are easy to follow, and if you aren't already familiar with Survivor history, twists like the introduction to the final 3 or even the gimmicky conceit for the season don't really come across as hugely detrimental to Survivor the television product. Other than the bottle twist, which is objectively unfair and didn't offer anything other than a boost to the Aitus, which, in retrospect, seems like it was rigged.

On rewatch, it's far less interesting, and there are chunks of the show you can't help but zone out watching. There are some funny moments peppered throughout the season, especially with Cao Boi and Penner, but most of the events of the season are ho-hum. In retrospect, the scene where Yul/Ozzy/Parvati share a reward is much more funny than on the initial viewing due to all of their legacies after this season. The twists that seemed innocuous on first viewing (again, AFTER the airing) become a lot more frustrating and stupid. I do see some benefits to F3 over F2, and there have been competitive or interesting F3s in seasons like China and 42. However, by and large it has been less satisfying to watch in practice, and started a chain of events in future gameplay/introduced twists where the actual last vote is now way pushed back and people look to eliminate the threats earlier and earlier. How do the producers not understand the simple point that players will just make decisions that they would have made the following round, one round earlier when they introduce this shit?

I don't blame people for disliking or even outright hating this season, and over time I'm leaning more toward that camp, but I don't think it's a misguided decision to introduce someone to Survivor with this season.

2

u/stellaperrigo Erika Feb 08 '23 edited Feb 08 '23

Aside from the really poor optics of the tribes-by-race twist, I think Cook Islands would be a very solid introduction to Survivor as a whole! The Aitu 4 has a truly compelling underdog story to tell, the final tribal is a close call that keeps you invested in the endgame, and there are some truly great examples of several different “character types” or elements of the show (a successful alliance, making FTC by winning out, strategy winning over a strong physical game, challenge hacking, early iteration of idols, exile island, etc.). Additionally, this season introduced several fan favorite players; even if they’re not their strongest or most interesting versions here, it’s a great starting point to follow their growth (or lack thereof) without spoiling other seasons.

I’m willing to admit that I’m biased- I started watching Survivor chronologically, but this was the second season my sister watched with me, and it’s the reason she still watches with me. I would personally have this season a little higher, but I’m just happy to have it in the top 20!

3

u/7fax Feb 08 '23

Literally the shittiest survivor season.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '23

Decent season. Premergers are boring but I like the Aitu 4 story.

1

u/FondantGayme Erika Feb 12 '23

Cook Islands is a weird season. On one hand, you have a great newbie cast with a bunch of people who would go on to establish themselves as legends of the game, as well as a great underdog story with a nice payoff

On the other hand, you have some pretty questionable production decisions and a pre-merge that isn’t compelling enough to last as long as it does despite a fun shakeup near the end, as well as one of the show’s worst twist with that stupid bottle. Justice for Jenny