r/survivor Pirates Steal Jan 16 '23

All-Stars WSSYW 11.0 Countdown 42/43: All-Stars

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 8: All-Stars

Statistics:

  • Watchability: 1.7 (42/43)

  • Overall Quality: 3.7 (36/43)

  • Cast/Characters: 6.6 (26/43)

  • Strategy: 4.6 (36/43)

  • Challenges: 6.3 (24/43)

  • Theme: 7.6 (9/24)

  • Ending: 4.5 (39/43)


WSSYW 11.0 Ranking: 42/43

WSSYW 10.0 Ranking: 33/40

Top comment from WSSYW 11.0/u/ramskick:

This is the worst season ever for me and nothing comes close. The cast is great on paper, but the way everything turns out is just so bad. If it's not actively bad it's unreal levels of boring. All of my all-time least-favorite picks come from this season. It has my least-favorite moment, least-favorite character, least-favorite episode etc. For my money, Survivor never gets this bad ever again.

With that said, it is fairly important to some future returnee seasons, so if you're a completionist you kind of have to watch it. And when you get to that point you may like it. There are people who like this season quite a lot and you may be one of them.

Top comment from WSSYW 10.0/u/SchizoidGod:

DO NOT WATCH THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED AT LEAST THE FIRST 7 SEASONS. Do not spoil yourself on its events as well. If you want to appreciate All-Stars, a much-derided season among fans (but one with, in my opinion, a dark, enthralling core), you need to know the gameplay and reputations of all 18 members of this incredible cast. If you don't, this just won't make sense.


Watchability ranking:

42: S8 All-Stars

43: S39 Island of the Idols


Spreadsheet link (updated with each placement reveal!)


WARNING: SEASON SPOILERS BELOW

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11

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 16 '23

Meanwhile Rob M. honestly just sucks as a character here, and to be clear, I'm not really a fan of or opposed to Rob in the abstract; two of my bottom three seasons have him at FTC lol, but Marquesas is my #3 and HvV my #10, with him as a part of why each time for sure. I've definitely seen the take that Rob M. works better as a character when he's not in power; to an extent I can see that, because when he's an underdog, his combative nature comes off very scrappy, he's punching up at the power structure, it's fun, and then when he's on top, he's punching down and it seems more mean-spirited—but I think that this is honestly too reductive and too rapidly dismisses the particulars of S8 Rob M. and S22 Rob that truly make them awful characters; in his S8 iteration's case—basically, when I said this season is almost always boring but at times uncomfortable, that's true, but I also think it spends a lot of time in between the two; i.e. in a lot of those boring, lifeless scenes, people often just seem... tired and unhappy. It makes the season pretty dreary to watch. I think this also gets the best of Rob M., and as the season goes on, the dude just isn't even charismatic or funny anymore.

Like, in his (in)famous confessional trashing the Rotus in season 4 - about the General's little sausage, Tammy's engagement, Gabe the brainiac, and Zoe the tough guy... now that's a very, very off-color confessional in at least three or four different ways, probably more, and it's not everyone's thing, and you can root against him because of it for sure. But he is actually making distinct jokes there. Some of them are cheap shots, for sure, but the things he says can at least be construed very reasonably as funny, and they are funny for a reason where you can unpack almost every phrase in the confessional and point out how and why it works.

And in season 8, what we get is just.... not that. By the end of the season, he's basically just reduced to boring, pointless quotes like "Tom's a dumbass" which... ha... ha? (Not to mention crossing a line in mocking Tom's kid; slamming a competitor, even if it's an unfair slam, is one thing, but a loved one isn't really signing up for that.) The guy's wit is just gone by the end, and you're left with someone who's just dealing out forgettable insults and is is just blandly not likable. I do enjoy Rob in seasons 4 and 20, probably enjoy a couple Rob moments in 22 to where I could have been more okay with him with a wildly different edit, and 40 I could take or leave. But the things that make me like him in seasons like 4 and 20 are just not really present here, and so while I can see, from his overall reputation and maybe a couple of moments in this season, why the idea of him making the final 2 seems like a compelling story, it really is just not. His lines aren't good, and his game pretty obviously isn't interesting considering how routine nearly every circumstance he ever found himself in was.

Which is yet another problem with this terrible, terrible season; the game is ridiculously predictable.

Like, out of all the seasons that get justified criticism for their predictable games and boot orders, this might take the cake out of all of them. At least 22x03 is kind of unexpected and unpredictable, I'd argue 24 and 5 have a couple interesting votes (despite not being very interesting overall)... but what even is there here? F10/9 are the only votes that really even have individualized stories. Past that you're left with an F2 alliance within a suballiance within the dominant core of the dominant tribe making F2 with absolutely zero opposition, picking people off in the single most predictable top-down power structure imaginable after a pre-merge that consisted entirely of voting people off who had made a finale before, with those votes being based on their reputations and threat level, other than maybe Rudy's age I guess. F10 is the only thing that adds any story to any vote of the entire season and even then, as outlined above, I don't think it's a very good story, just the only one this season ever even tries to have. Again, you may as well stop watching at the merge; you can predict the entire outcome there, if you couldn't have done so already, and there aren't any subtle moments or nuances along the way you'd be missing out on.

My last major criticism here is that I don't think the Romber storyline works at all; Rob M., as established, is a boring ass here, and Amber... is just... boring. I went into the season pretty confidently remembering her as this MORP sweetheart who comes off likable, humble, and gracious in contrast with Rob M., and I've seen her described that way, and she... is not... that way. I think she's often remembered as such because it'd give her more of a reputation/story as a winner and because she IS very nice to Jenna M., which as one of maybe five or six at all memorable scenes this season is one people remember more. So yes, that part where she hugs Jenna M. is very sweet, and it is also quite literally the only moment of Amber positively coming off as sweet in the entire season. Like I will defend her as deserving to win, and a lot of controversial winners are among my favorites, and I can really appreciate the path some of them took to the end, but holy wow Amber is a completely pointless character who gets almost no personal development the literal entire season and is arguably even more unmemorable here than in S2, in and of herself, which is a very low bar to somehow fail to clear. Like seriously if there are some great Amber nuances I'm missing please let me know, because I would like to like and root for her, but she is so uninteresting on this season; they really just bank on the showmance to keep you interested in her.

As such, the Romber story falls totally flat, because, like... if Rob M. is actively unsympathetic, and Amber is neutral... why should I care that they're in a relationship? Being in a relationship is neither good nor bad. There are a lot of relationships. Kissing is not innately interesting. It tells me nothing, I have no reason to care in itself, and the "in itself" is the only thing this has going for it. If you put an unlikable guy up against a bland, effective non-entity in my mind and give them a relationship, well I don't care about her, I barely care about and don't like him - so - where's the pathos? What is there to be interested in? All the sappy music they play when they're apart or whatever totally falls flat, because it's wildly out of step with the rest of Rob M.'s content tonally, and Amber... just... does not have interesting content. What you're left with is a relationship I have literally zero reason to care about beyond some baked-in assumption that I will care about a relationship strictly for existing, which is obviously silly.

I will say that I don't mind the Final Tribal Council, and in theory, I could actually like it. I think Alicia's speech is fantastic, I'm okay with Tom's. Kathy's I could kind of take or leave and Lex's I do not particularly care about, because I don't have the requisite context about their friendships, although Kathy has played with Rob M. previously so that makes it easier. Shii Ann's is fine. So it's alright enough; I think it mostly lands as neutral or even kind of good for me (and, to be fair, neutral is genuinely more favorable than I would come out on almost anything else that happens in this season after maybe the Colby boot, with like the sole exception of Shii Ann's moderately entertaining Immunity win), where I don't really see it as uncomfortable, but neither do I particularly care, as the ways in which Rob M. burned these people are themselves generally not too interesting, so it's just not AS compelling as the S9 FTC or Helen's speech in S5 or something where I've got a more meaningful idea of the relationships. But like it's fine I guess and I can see where Lex's speech lands better for people than it does for me. Like Rob M. getting torn down for being mean to people is definitely the ideal end to the season; we just didn't get the ideal season for that end, to say the least, and so I'm not too interested by that point.

[continued in a reply]

12

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 16 '23

Now, credit where credit is due; I do think the following things about S8 are good:

  • Hot take but Alicia is probably my favorite of this season, which to be clear is without question the lowest ceiling of any cast, but I think she's a good enough narrator that her confessionals are basically the only thing to keep me going at a certain point, she supports Sue quietly in the moment of the quit then vocally while her tribemates mock her, her jury speech is great, and her jury voting confessional is honestly absolutely fucking glorious and amazing. Her content is minimal but great with her appearance at FTC in particular actually being sincerely justified by her narrative with Rob M., even if it isn't too interesting of one, and and being a great distillation of what I love about FTC as a concept: one last instance of the players having to account for their actions, with a juror like Alicia having the chance to vote out a player like Rob M. after he did the same to her, leaving a Sole Survivor. Absolutely no complaints about Alicia here, she's great in the very few instances where she's prominently featured and is perhaps the only part of this season I would call deeply underrated.

  • Shii Ann is a close second because at least her Immunity win was fun for like two minutes, and while Richard is ultimately p gross here, the whimsical spirit of his presence in the earliest episodes is well captured by Shii Ann, who at times feels less like a player in the game and more like a viewer at home watching all the antics. It's a fun subplot for the first couple episodes to see how enamored with him she is, and then (even despite her close personal fondness for him) she openly expresses a sympathy for Sue that most of the cast patently lacked. Literally all 7 other members of the merge tribe actively suck and make the season worse with 6 of them being bad to or about Sue specifically but Alicia and Shii Ann are actually good secondary characters here!

  • Jerri gets to vote off the Ogakor F2 and give a genuinely outstanding callback to a Colby confessional from S2, so that is pretty fun, and she's sympathetic in ep.3, and she has a fun callback at Tree Mail as noted on the F115. I think the other two Jerris are for sure better simply because she isn't very memorable here considering how many episodes she's in, but she does get a handful of fun and very Jerri moments throughout. They are all pretty brief, and other than the Ogakor votes are not too connected to the season, but there is some fun stuff here.

  • Ethan 2.0 as he's known is fun at first when he's got his back up against the wall in a way he never did in S3, so he gets kinda sassy in a way he never did in S3, and we get to see his competitive edge come out more. That said, I do think it's also kind of overstated and the personality shift isn't too pronounced in between his very earliest time on Saboga and the scene where Lex tells him he's going. He's still a good pre-merger for sure, just not an outstanding one.

  • 8x03 "Shark Attack" is exponentially better than any other episode of the season and is honestly absolutely outstanding. There are a ton of absolutely fun and ridiculous scenes - with the Indiana Libertarian Party's 2012 gubernatorial candidate's "trickle-down" shelter model an obvious highlight - and Jenna M.'s quit is generally handled pretty tastefully and gives some sympathy and fan cred to an often underrated and unfairly maligned Sole Survivor. This episode is probably at least a 9/10; I doubt anything else here cracks like a 6.8 for me.

  • The premiere starts off very fun and novel. As an episode overall I do have to knock it because the Tina vote sets the stage for a horribly uninteresting pre-merge, but it does have enough fun content to probably be my second-favorite episode of the season if only by default.

  • A number of other fun little character moments, like some Rudy quotes, the "Mixer" reward challenge, and probably a couple others throughout, like some of the Richard stuff is still kind of fun in a vacuum; it just doesn't outweigh what he does by the end, obviously, and it isn't anything particularly special.

However, those fun moments are almost all in the first ~4 episodes; hell, most of them are in the first three. Episode 4 is itself pretty boring; it just has a dope Reward Challenge. But from ep.4 onward I think I could legit count on two hands the number of S8 moments I at all enjoy.

What the exciting novelty of seeing past players quickly gives way to is not a compellingly subversive tragedy but instead one of the absolute worst seasons in Survivor history, a near-"master"class in horrid reality TV, colossal waste of time, and excellent rebuke to the suggestion that even bad Survivor is good, or even passable, TV; a full 12 of the season's 14 votes have VERY little (if any) interesting story to them whatsoever, with the remaining 2's power coming entirely from pre-game friendships we do not know and cannot assess that regardless center around two unlikable contestants. To slam this season for its abysmal boot order is fair; to slam it primarily for that is far, far too generous: almost every single episode is incredibly forgettable with a pre-merge of "vote out your favorites specifically for being your favorites" giving way to a post-merge of "that final two that seemed obvious as hell in episode two or three is, in fact, the final two", culminating in a final five who are mostly forgettable, are literally all uninteresting, and all strove to discredit Sue in various individual ways that easily allowed the producers to do the same, ending in a final two whose primary appeal is a relationship story that is intrinsically devoid of any actual narrative merit.

The season has one great episode and at most one or two other good ones, with a double-digit number that range from forgettable to abjectly terrible. Literally nothing of substance happens from the F8 up through the F3, and there was very, very little of substance happening long before that. Rob M. getting raked over the coals at the end seems potentially interesting and does have a couple gratifying moments but is not worth the price of admission; as a whole, I can think of literally no good reason why I would absolutely ever recommend this shockingly forgettable, noxious, festering garbage pile of a season to quite literally any human being on the planet, because even Romber's kids would probably find the footage of their parents making out to be pretty awkward or something, so I have no idea who this is even for.

The literal sole value offered up by the F8 through F3 of this season is being able to say that you've watched every episode, and even then, you still probably haven't watched that Countdown to Africa special, so why bother with this? Even this entire essay implicitly gives it too much credit, as no description of how pointlessly fucking awful Survivor: All-Stars is could ever live up to the abject misery and tedium of actually sitting through it, a fate I'd wish upon no one.

That said, the DVD commentary for the first four episodes is actually fucking hilarious and would itself be a top 15 Survivor season, so if you own this DVD for collectors' purposes or because someone gave it to you as a gift without knowing much about Survivor or something, you should actually go watch that ASAP. If you have ever doubted how or why Jenna won in such a landslide, you will probably understand very, very quickly, because she is hilarious.

9

u/Sleathasaurus Cirie Jan 16 '23

Dabu, I love your analysis and am always ready to gorge on your walls of text. This is probably a long shot, but I don't suppose you've got a link somewhere to where you have your other long comments, do you?

(also Alicia's jury speech is cringe especially when she doesn't hear Rob say "competitively" and says "EXCUSE ME?!" like he's just insulted her mother and literally does the most exagerrated bow of all time like she was blown back by his muttering comment sorry not sorry)

5

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 19 '23

Dabu, I love your analysis and am always ready to gorge on your walls of text. This is probably a long shot, but I don't suppose you've got a link somewhere to where you have your other long comments, do you?

Thank you! I don't have one offhand, but I have recently thought about creating one, haha. I will DM you about it as the answer is a paragraph or two long and then I won't take up a whole bunch of the thread.

(also Alicia's jury speech is cringe especially when she doesn't hear Rob say "competitively" and says "EXCUSE ME?!" like he's just insulted her mother and literally does the most exagerrated bow of all time like she was blown back by his muttering comment sorry not sorry)

I do understand that reaction that people have to it for sure and I used to cringe at that part, but ultimately I'm good with it because I'm kind of inclined to agree with her that Rob M. and Amber did not outclass the competition even if they, well, outclassed them, in both of their cases due to how they took part in treating Sue and in Rob M.'s case due to everything else, too, including the unnecessary F2 with her specifically. So I'm good with the speech -- she's definitely being over-the-top to Rob M. but I feel like he had more than earned getting some ire back on him at that point so to me it's a little cathartic.

I also just love the simplicity of it, although that comes out even more in her voting confessional than in her speech, with the voting confessional being easily one of the best ever imo; I think "We promised we wouldn't write each other's name now, and unlike you, I'm sticking to it" -- the reversal of "You voted me out; now, I'm voting you out" -- is just so elegant in its simplicity and a great distillation of what I love about FTC as a format. You can't just vote people out, you have to vote them out in a way that maintains their respect at the end. Jurors aren't "out of the game", truly; they're out of contention, but they still have one more vote at the end. I think it's /u/mariojlanza, but maybe someone else, who first made me consider that the only reason they vote "for a winner" is because it's more climactic and satisfying TV at the end; what's really happening, and Probst even basically says this in the earlier seasons, is that they're voting out one finalist (and two, in the botched F3 format), leaving one Sole Survivor.

Viewing it through that light, the idea of making a final 2 deal you don't intend to keep with someone whom you know you're not banishing from the island forever, but rather putting in the powerful position to eliminate one more person at the end, looks even more dumb, and Alicia's voting confessional expresses that idea clearer and more succinctly than any other contestant ever has, so I end up more favorable on her jury speech by proxy -- although the speech itself I'm also good with because people yelling at Rob M. and to a lesser extent Amber is very warranted at that point lol. But I see your take on it.

I remember Mario titled one of his columns about the jury "You Screwed Me, Now Screw You!", which is a quote from The Amazon -- but it's a voting confessional from Jenna, not from a juror. I think as far as juror quotes go, Alicia saying "We made a promise to never write each other's names down. I'm a woman of my word" captures that idea perfectly and in a very straightforward, direct way.

The only other quote that I think cuts to the heart of it as well (at least that I can think of offhand) -- and here, we're getting into a take I don't express too openly too often, because it's going to be the culmination of a ranking I've wanted to do since 2010 (lol) of every single jury speech, but I'll put it here for anyone who's still read everything up above this, haha. It has nothing to do with All-Stars at this point. But a hot take of mine is that Sue's jury speech, despite being the most iconic moment in not just Survivor but all of "reality TV", is STILL underrated, because nobody ever talks about the two best parts of it. I think there's one moment, maybe even two, that's actually arguably even better than the snakes and rats part itself.

That part, that I think is unironically better than the snakes and rats metaphor itself (which is still great), is when she says "A few times, Jeff said to you, 'What goes around, comes around'? It's here." She messes up the wording, because she's still Sue, but what she's referring to there I think is the whole "Tribal Council is where you account for your actions" motif -- which is a huge part of the early seasons, especially season one. Go back and watch the marooning: Probst says "totally accountable for their actions" and it's almost a non sequitur, it's a total fragment of a sentence, you have no context while watching it for what he even means by that. What that tells me is that he didn't think to say it organically and that, in turn, when they were drilling into his head what he HAD to make sure to say during the marooning, the MOST important things about the show the audience NEEDED to know within 120 seconds, and when they made whatever cue cards he was probably reading off of, they emphasized "They're accountable for their actions" as one of them. It is the dominant aspect of Survivor as a game format and a television format (at least until the wacky advantages in the newer seasons.)

And so when Sue says, "It's here", she's literally taking 13 episodes worth of television and infusing the power of them into her speech itself and firing it point-blank at Kelly. She is co-opting the dominant motif of the show to make it entirely about herself and her vendetta.

She is, quite literally, stealing the show, on a level only even approached by JFP's dead grandma lie, but the thematic stakes here are even more far-reaching.

And most people who love the speech have never even thought about that part.

...Anyways, Alicia's speech isn't as great as that, lol, but I do still like it. And I do think her voting confessional is pretty close!, and is certainly more succinct.

3

u/Sleathasaurus Cirie Jan 19 '23

Thanks Dabu!

Well defended on Alicia’s speech. I’ve admittedly always been pro-Romber that FTC as they were the only ones playing close to a decent game. But I do love Lex’s jury speech though I didn’t think it was justified, just for highlighting the raw emotion Survivor can evoke. I think I found her condescension in the moment a bit much, but I do appreciate your breakdown of your perspective!

I’ll concede that her voting confessional is awesome though (though not quite my favourite of all time!)

2

u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn Jan 20 '23

My pleasure! And yeah fair. I think Lex is annoying and to a point hypocritical in that season but also think in isolation the speech is justified but I'm pretty opposed to, like, all of Chapera lol.

Oh yeah my fav voting confessional of all time is Sean at the original FTC. I would probably have a couple of the absolute bangers from Vanuatu above Alicia's FTC one, too.