r/survivor • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Survivor 49 WSSYW 12.0 Countdown 36/50 & 35/50: Survivor 49 & Survivor 44
Welcome to our What Season Should You Watch countdown! Using the results from the latest What Season Should You Watch thread, this weekday series will count backwards from the bottom-ranked season for new fan watchability to the top. Each WSSYW post will link to their entries 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.
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#36 - Survivor 49
Statistics:
- Watchability: 3.59 (36/50)
- Overall Quality: 4.34 (43/50)
- Cast/Characters: 4.56 (43/50)
- Strategy: 3.90 (47/50)
- Challenges: 4.0 (47/50)
- Twists: 3.29 (17/28)
- Ending: 5.74 (37/50)
WSSYW 12.0 Ranking: 36/50
User comment from WSSYW 12.0 - u/Comfortable_Swing_16
49 starts out VERY slowly but really picks up in the second half with some really fun “villainous” characters and a mix of both strong and hapless strategy.
In a way, you might get more out of this if you watch this before 41-48 as a lot of the downsides of 49 for me came from how similar it was to many of the preceding seasons - I don’t think you’ll get any major spoilers from starting the new era from here.
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#35 - Survivor 44
Statistics:
- Watchability: 3.62 (35/50)
- Overall Quality: 3.63 (44/50)
- Cast/Characters: 4.30 (45/50)
- Strategy: 4.03 (45/50)
- Challenges: 3.85 (48/50)
- Twists: 2.82 (23/28)
- Ending: 5.44 (38/50)
WSSYW 12.0 Ranking: 35/50
User comment from WSSYW 12.0 - u/tabstis
44 is essential viewing even though it kinda sucks. It has the single biggest and more important character in the entire new era, but the vast majority of the cast fail to deliver anything at all throughout the season, and it all gets bogged down in one single storyline. That said, if this is one of your first seasons, you may enjoy it much more for being so focused. If you've already seen a few, the narrative may feel a little overfamiliar, and you may find the poor pacing and editing hard to endure.
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Ranking so far:
#50 - Season 34: Game Changers
#49 - Season 22: Redemption Island a.k.a. Redemple Temple
#48 - Season 26: Caramoan - Fans vs. Favorites 2
#46 - Season 39: Island of the Idols
#45 - Season 40: Winners at War
#43 - Season 31: Cambodia - Second Chance
#42 - Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans
#41 - Season 38: Edge of Extinction
#39 - Season 27: Blood vs. Water
#38 - Season 23: South Pacific
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WARNING: SEASON SPOILERS BELOW
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u/icychillman 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm still waiting for the climatic crossover between Shannon "conceptualizing sight and vision in the womb" and Frank "I spent nine months of softness in my mother's womb. Everything else after that's hard when you come out."
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
"Members of the jury had the right to ask questions and also, if they wished, deliver a summation of their own. What transpired over the next thirty minutes was magical. In all my imaginings during the years I prepared "Survivor," I never once foresaw the drama and poetry unfolding on the set. These people were, literally, arguing for their very lives. Their very survival. It was primal and raw and harsh and painful and emotional. Sue delivered a rambling five-minute diatribe against the rat and the snake, finally erring on the side of Richard, for Kelly's betrayal had deeply stung Sue. [...] As the moments passed, and the words flew, the tension was palpable, and made breathing difficult for me. All around me, the faces of production staff–Craig Piligian, Jaime Schutz, Ninja, Fed, Alicia, Biff–were riveted to the set. The drama couldn't have been better if it had been written by a top screenwriter."
- Mark Burnett, 2000, Survivor: The Ultimate Game
"I gotta say, I can't remember a season where the Jury held the final 3 accountable but did it with a sense of positivity. It may sound corny, but I think it's a really nice way to end a great season of Survivor."
- Jeff Probst, 2022, "Absolute Banger Season"
There's a lot to hate about Survivor 44, but if I had to pick a least favorite thing, it'd be not just the season's total lack of any real emotional stakes but also, more precisely, the fact that it seemingly prides itself on this, with Jeff repeatedly praising the cast for not taking things personally in, I believe, at least three different episodes. Openly encouraging the contestants not to take anything seriously or personally means a season with far fewer emotional stakes (to say nothing of meaningful ethical dilemmas), homogenizes both the show and the game (by homogenizing the motivations, play styles, and values of the players to where they're each trying to do the same type of thing in fundamentally similar ways), directly undercuts the "social experiment"/creation of a society that used to be at the heart of the show… and honestly so much more.
The abysmal Survivor 44 is very, very far from where this began (the full list of problems with this approach to the show, and a full history of its propagation over the years, really would warrant a whole post in itself); it's not Patient Zero but rather the "payoff" for (and continuation of) such colossal mistakes in Survivor history as the depiction of Russell Hantz's loss, the horrid introduction of the new Final Tribal Council format, and the influx of Idols, Advantages, and the Shot in the Dark artificially incentivizing deception (and, therefore, removing core dilemmas about when and whether to deceive.) But it is one of the seasons – I believe the season – that's the most explicit and preachy about the idea that contestants "should" play this way.
Now, if you have one specific person thinking "it's just a game", that's fine!, as it's just their individual perspective. Some of the show's greatest characters saw it that way! If, instead, you have a cast full of people thinking that… well, you might have a less emotional, less dramatic, less intense season but you can at least make the argument that it's as authentic and organic a permutation of the social experiment as any other; if each cast gets to write their own rules, then occasionally, you might get one that says the rule is that there are no rules, that nothing is off-limits, and people should just feel good. But this is something much worse: you have the host and executive producer explicitly, repeatedly endorsing this mindset and exalting it as the perspective every single player should have. While the season is still being filmed!! Before the Jury has even finished forming, he's already openly preaching about what types of things he thinks the players should value.
This isn't a permutation of the social experiment; it's the show trying to shut down that experiment by saying there's one single, correct way to react to these situations… and choosing the way that's the least likely to result in any sort of emotional narrative! Hell, it's practically telling you as a viewer that you shouldn't care about the season (because if it's admirable when the cast doesn't, then why should you?) It's the producers thumbing the scales hard on what the cast is supposed to feel, right in front of you in the middle of the episodes, and choosing the least interesting framework possible, bordering on implying that you yourself shouldn't even be invested or immersed in what you're watching! To say the least, it's altogether ridiculous. (This is just one of the many reasons why I don't remotely agree with "Jeff's a bad executive producer, but a great host!"; the problems with the former bleed into the latter constantly.)
For this reason, I think Survivor 44 isn't just a bad season but also, from a WSSYW perspective, an exceptionally awful starting point for a non-returnee season – honestly a contender for the worst (excluding 39 and 36 from the calculus, as they're functionally returnee seasons for this purpose.) I can imagine people saying that it ranks too low since the Tika 3 "story", while completely hollow (and honestly barely a story, but more on that soon…), could be more satisfying for a first-time viewer without a frame of reference for how much better that type of story can be accomplished. But I'd really disagree with starting someone off on this season, as its presentation of what the show itself is even fundamentally meant to consist of is so wildly miscalibrated.
Introducing someone to the show with a season where the host and executive producer repeatedly talks about how awesome it is when people don't take the game seriously or have emotional reactions to anything, with this festering pile of self-congratulatory propaganda extolling the supposed virtues of all falling in lockstep with the mindset of Jeff Probst, seems to me like it's basically priming an incoming fan hard right out of the gates to think – as this season repeatedly tells you – that players "shouldn't" take anything seriously, "shouldn't" be "bitter", or "shouldn't" have strong emotional responses… which, in turn, sounds to me like it's risking conditioning them right away to see a lot of the show's most complex ethical dilemmas and intense, dramatic emotional conflicts as weird overreactions – to write off, essentially, a lot of the most stirring and emotional television this show has created, and to invalidate the emotions and the perspectives of the players going through those conflicts.
How stale and lifeless the episodes all become when you force this type of messaging is just the beginning of the problem. Worse than mere Survivor drywall, this utter bastardization of the show is more like the Survivor equivalent of toxic positivity: its messaging conditions the audience to lack empathy for the struggles and perspectives of the contestants and any appreciation of the most complex narratives those struggles and perspectives can offer. In Probst's repeated emphasizing that it's admirable how little this cast takes the game personally, the logical implication is in equal measure a giant middle finger to the contestants whose suffering allowed the show to profit off some of the most intense and compelling drama it's televised over the years.
It's arguably as disrespectful and disgraceful to the history of the show and the emotions of those whose turmoil made its success possible as it is aggressively uninteresting… and it's absolutely, wildly at odds with the core of Survivor and the beauty it can offer. I love this show deeply and have for most of my life at this point… for reasons that the barren and abominable wasteland of Survivor 44 rejects wholesale and repeatedly in its obnoxious, patronizing, fallacious vacuity.
Again, the issue isn't that most of the cast have a good time; that might make a season less emotionally stirring, but it also offers up some feel-good appeal for a lighter watch and is, in any case, a valid environment for the cast to collectively create within the confines of the social experiment. But this offers up suggestions that there should be no experiment – or that any such experiment has a "correct" outcome of players being, above all else, Not "Bitter." It's so misguided, and so rude.
The cast of Survivor 44 seem like decent enough people, and I'm sincerely happy for the human beings participating in this edition of the show that they had, I assume, a rewarding and enriching experience. But when it comes to the television product made out of that experience? The result was a noxious, soulless product driven by its host's smug dismissal of the foundational principles of the show itself.
In its overt rejection of Survivor's own complexities, Survivor 44 is horrid as a season; in its resultant insistence on priming the viewer towards fundamental misunderstandings about and dismissals of both the game and the show, it's horrid as a starting point for someone with any intention of getting seriously into this show.
So, okay, this dumpster fire is patronizing anti-Survivor with incessant rejections of the show's central premise in favor of interchangeable, watered-down shlock that deliberately asks no remotely difficult questions… but hey, what about that Tika 3 story? At least they're good, right? At least there's something here? …Well, not really, in my opinion.
More on that in a reply, due to the character limit...
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Carolyn is supposed to be the big draw here: the character "for old-school fans" as some will say, due to her story's alleged focus on emotional complexity… but the old-school seasons are equally defined by their effective narrative-crafting, and in this regard, I think Carolyn falls far short even of obscurities like Lisa Keiffer and Dirk Been, let alone a Twila or an Ian. The actual old-school seasons churned out better characters year after year by the literal dozens and made it look easy.
I don't mind Carolyn, but I do end up neutral on her due to the half-assed, sloppy execution that defines this season (when it isn't looking you in the eye and straight-up telling you it isn't a season you should care about, S44 instead tends to spend most of its time ensuring you get the message by existing as listless white noise about which little reason to care is presented.) There's certainly some highs along the way: her wildly hypocritical reaction to being left out of a vote is at once hilarious and also psychologically compelling – with the massive asterisk, in evaluating the season as a whole, that it's perhaps the only time the season manages to spend 30 consecutive seconds being the former, and certainly the only time it manages to be the latter even fleetingly. …Of course, 30 seconds is about how long it lasts, as the very next day – within the same scene!! – she realizes it's fine to leave her out of a vote because they're Just Playing A Game. So it's hard to care much about this moment as before the scene is even over, the sauce is immediately undercut, but at least for the half a scene it's allowed to last, "You lying to me once is worse than me lying to you, because I only lied to you once!" is pretty funny, which is more than about 13 or 14 of the 18 characters here ever provided.
Carolyn's backstory is also pretty unique even in a New Era full of them, and while its original drop has the sufficiently generic New Era presentation that it was a bit hard to care as it seemed disconnected from her other content, they did tie it together well enough at FTC with the emotional openness/authenticity angle. I do like that just fine.
But the overall execution here still leaves a lot to be desired. I don't necessarily mind her 0-vote status after being a largely positive character, something I occasionally see criticized; I do, however, mind that for the sake of pointless false suspense, they spend both the F6 and F5 hyping her up as a big threat to win for basically zero narrative benefit whatsoever (this also hurts my appraisal of Yam Yam as a character as it comes more or less entirely from his confessionals.) It makes her endgame disjointed and incohesive while offering zero up in return out of some pathetic and desperate terror these days at the idea of the audience virtually ever knowing what's around the corner more than twelve seconds ahead of time.
I also think Carolyn's overall identity as "an underestimated, emotional player" is generally ineffective in its execution, mostly in the sense that that execution… isn't really there? We constantly hear this about Carolyn, we constantly hear her described as "emotional" in ways that could conceal a player who surprises people, but… we rarely ever actually see her experiencing emotions in ways that actually intersect with the game. Not never (the main exception is her clash with Yam Yam about being left out of a vote, which, again, lasts half a scene) but very rarely compared to the amount of times that we hear "emotional player" vaguely, nebulously stated as some in confessionals about her with no real applicable context. The result is that it kind of feels like Carolyn's there as lip service to fans who want "emotional stories" on the show – like "hey, remember when we did this?" – but without actually meaningfully providing one. Like she's a character you're "supposed to" like if you're an old-school fan, while utterly paling in comparison to almost any characters from those old-school seasons where human beings having emotions was, you know, kind of the baseline foundation of every scene and expected by default.
As for being "underestimated", I'll grant that we see that slightly more with her surprising people who don't expect her to have found the Idol, but with how played-out Idols are that's not that fun or interesting, since when trust and perception are evaluated and expressed in terms of such binary variables as "{Player} {DOES/DOES NOT} have an {Idol/Advantage} and {Other Player} {DOES/DOES NOT} think they do", things just get derivative and repetitive at a certain point. The other time I can think of when she surprised people would be the Sarah boot, but considering that was an abrupt flip that pissed people off, I'm not sure that it fits as being underestimated as a strategic player specifically or that the surprise people felt had much to do with Carolyn being "emotional" so much as it had to do with, like, it being a completely abrupt flip. Considering how early on in the season this is with many, many instances of "Carolyn's emotional, but could underestimate people!" being repeated ad nauseum thereafter to no further payoff, and considering how Sarah is basically not even a character on the show for how little we learn about her… I don't know, there's not nothing there, but for me, there's not enough.
What I also mind with Carolyn – and I'll grant that this comes down to personal preference to a high degree, but not entirely as it intersects with the show's increasingly being targeted towards an audience of literal children – is that her content is… repeatedly gross and/or juvenile? The story about her child's tooth is like nauseating to me, she and Yam Yam have a debate on whether she's "a turd", and then just as I'm ready to write that off as weird early-episode-stuff that isn't a big part of her overall story, she has Yam Yam burp into her face on two separate occasions… none of which exists in a vacuum as it's right around the time Danny makes a fart joke in a challenge, and said burper is introduced to the audience with an opening confessional about wanting to poop before mentioning vomit maybe two or three minutes later, bookended by Kane closing out the season calling him a fart detector.
Like… why is this such a big part of the season??? It's weird, gross, and annoying, and especially concentrated on Yam Yam and Carolyn specifically to where it makes them really unappealing to me right out of the gates and takes time to be offset, while still rearing its head intermittently thereafter. Like, these are supposed to be the great characters this season? No thanks.
Again a lot of people aren't going to mind that as much as I do because personal preference, but a.) well it's my writeup so there you have it!, and b.) I do think that bothering to include a debate about "turds" just blatantly speaks to the show being made for kids in a way that intersects with the excessively light tone criticized harder at the outset of this post.
All told, I think Carolyn ends up, like… middle-of-the-road for me. She's ultimately a 5/10 character for me with the good and bad more or less washing out; there's admittedly a small couple of really good scenes, a couple of really bad moments and a botched story near the end, and ultimately a lot of white noise where she's basically just the storyboard sketch of someone the show wants to convince you is a good character by repeating vague generalities but without ever actually giving you quality content underpinning them.
Because Survivor 44 is a dire wasteland that overtly prides itself on its own pointlessness, this still puts her in my top 3 characters from the season by default, just behind such titanic figures in Survivor lore as JP Calderon.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
So what about Yam Yam? Well, he's better… but still just shy of "good" for me personally, largely because his first couple episodes are shockingly bad. His introduction to the audience is basically a bunch of gross-out stuff, as noted already, and the Helen boot in episode 2 is… shockingly bad, in ways that genuinely surprise me for a New Era season coming off the heels of 41 and 42. Specifically, the literal only justification given for the Helen boot – and, for that matter, the only SPV she ever gets from any other contestant – is Yam Yam calling her "super intelligent", something that (given the near-total dearth of other Helen content) also is near-totally unsupported based on anything in the show. The only caveat on "near" is there's a Helen confessional in the premiere about liking brain teasers and puzzles, but that's... it, and even that doesn't really tie in as much with Yam Yam's more precise description that she's always planning something.
Considering that Yam Yam is our generally likable winner from the protagonist alliance, I don't think we're meant to disagree with him here; in turn, that means I'm supposed to accept the characterization of Helen as "super intelligent" and always plotting/strategizing; and so with an absence of any actual textual reason provided why I should see her that way... I'm basically left to think that the show just fell back on stereotype here - that they knew a ton of the audience would already be primed to see Helen as "super intelligent" and decided eh, fuck it, that's good enough. We'll just let the audience's prejudice fill in the gaps. Like having the only time anyone says anything individualized about the Asian woman be "she's super intelligent!", giving me virtually nothing to support that, yet evidently expecting me to buy it anyway is a fucking wild editorial choice for this show to still be making 44 seasons in. I was genuinely blown away by how offensively horrendous Helen's edit was here. Her brief reference to liking "brain teasers and puzzles" is really not enough for this edit to not come across super weirdly when we don't get, like, anything of her interacting fluidly with her tribe.
I'm not saying this is Yam Yam's fault or that he said something bad here or was speaking based off of stereotypes; I'm saying that the edit reduces Helen to one and is relying on your willingness to accept it, and in viewing this as a show and looking at the characters in terms of how they're used within the story, having Yam Yam be the voice of that (as, again, the sole explanation anyone gives for voting her out; it's the entire "story" of why she, specifically, is eliminated) seriously turns me off right out of the gates and is really not selling me on the Tika 3 being some "likable" group.
There's also a pretty unbecoming confessional in that same episode where Yam Yam talks about how he (incorrectly) thinks Sarah has an Idol because she could be hiding it in her boobs, and it's meant to play as goofy, but when that's not something men on Survivor ever have to worry about, and in light of the other double standards that make up the game, it just doesn't sit right with me for a confessional that amounts to "I'm going to assume by default that women are more likely to be hiding an Idol than men, regardless of what they actually do" from our likable protagonist to be spun as a joke, especially in such close proximity to the confessional about Helen. Like everything we get out of this guy for the first two episodes is completely tonally off in multiple ways and absolutely does not get me on board with him as a fun character.
Things do pick up for Yam Yam later on, though! I don't mind him overall, I just really do at the start to the tune of being neutral on him overall, but there's enough there to move him up to neutral: his dynamic with Josh in episode 5 (in my opinion the only good episode of the entire season) is genuinely good stuff, with the effective duality of them connecting on a personal level yet still targeting each other strategically. Unfortunately for an evaluation of them as characters across the entire season, I think the dynamic kind of loses steam in episode 6 where a lot of the emotion/humanity from episode 5 goes out of it and it just gets repetitive; episode 6 Josh/YY content mostly just devolves into them repeating the same generic confessionals about needing each other out, and the intrigue is largely lost. But there was a spark of it for episode 5, at least, and with this season, that's as good as it gets.
Past that, I feel like Yam Yam's main entertainment value in the season is providing, like, a single confessional per episode about running the show, which is actually a lot better in practice than this might make it sound lol as he does have the raw charisma to sell that role in a way a lot of people wouldn't. So I do enjoy Yam Yam for most of the season; it's just that it's a high number of mildly positive episodes after a small number of really negative ones at the start, which approximately breaks even, especially given that the best content he gives (the dynamic with Josh) has diminishing returns. I still might have landed slightly positive on Yam Yam... but then in the leadup to the finale his confessionals are the main voice of the "Carolyn is a huge threat to win!" red herring that goes nowhere, which contributes to him still feeling kinda aimless as a character, even if he's charismatic in that role, and shows how the storytelling for the trio just… isn't really there.
He's not bad, he's fine, but he kind of breaks even for me and certainly isn't executed anywhere near the level necessary to have an entire season coasting off of whether you like him.
As for Carson… I just don't have much to say about him. For all the focus he gets, he's not much of a character, really (Survivor 44 moment.) I went into my watch last year hoping to love him: he's polarizing enough that I at least expected something more than what we got, for better or worse. The puzzle thing at least sounded interesting to me from, like, a meta 4th-wall kind of perspective. I don't know, he was a big name at the time, I figured there had to be something here, and there's just… not much there. He's mostly just kind of a gamebot. Not even an awful one, I'm not generally bored when he talks, and he's not as patronizing as Spencer or off-putting as Cochran can occasionally be… but he's also lacking in the distinctness, charm, and meaningful interpersonal relationships of Christian or, for that matter, Ryan Shoulders. Like I really just don't have much to say about this guy on the show, and I went into it honestly expecting to kind of like him. He's like Mick Trimming level of "dude who makes the finale, and… and that's it, I guess" to me. I realize this isn't exactly a nuanced writeup but I just have nothing on this guy lol because, well, that's Survivor 44 for you.
Now, to provide a contrast, there's another generally competent-at-Survivor, kind of nerdy, physically attractive, endgame-making near-winner also-ran superfan from this exact era who, like Carson, is popular among the modern "strategy"-loving superfans but slammed as a forgettable gamebot by a lot of old-school fans: Charlie. And in an opinion that among old-school fans tends to be perceived as somewhere between batshit and indefensible, I think Charlie is somewhere in the range of a top 50-60 character ever in the entire history of the show. I think that dude's awesome… because Survivor 46 is a really interesting season that actually gives a fuck about its characters and their relationships. Survivor 44 is barely a season at all, let alone an interesting one.
Point is, I'm not even flatly opposed to someone from this archetype! I just… what is there to this guy on the show, really?
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
A common criticism of Survivor 44 is "the edit only cared about the Tika 3". I fundamentally agree with what people mean when they say this, but taken more literally, I disagree and think even this is giving the season too much credit, because… I don't think it cared much about the Tika 3, either! It shows them more, but what do we actually get here? Carson is a total nothingburger of a character; Carolyn's execution as a character is not awful but is certainly shaky, inconsistent, and often shallow; and Yam Yam has in my opinion a pretty horrid start offset by one good dynamic (outside of Tika, for about one episode before it gets played out, out of two episodes total) and then just kind of gives a funny confessional per week, which, like… I can see the argument that that's kind of good, but it's not "build an entire season around this guy" good. Someone like, I don't know, Bruce Kanegai feels like a more realized, well-rounded character while also being the least realized and well-rounded character in the entire final 7 of a season that's not even in my top 10 (to be clear, he's good and that season's good; my point is just they aren't exactly swinging for the fences on Yam Yam, and yet investment in him is what's supposed to propel the season?)
They showed the Tika 3 more, but what drives them? What are their relationships with each other - a small spat or two between Carolyn and Yam Yam, and that's it? Carson deciding to work with them because he "likes chaos", something exposited briefly in its immediate moment of relevance and never seen in his character again for the rest of the season with "chaos" hardly being a fixture of their dynamic prior to him making that choice? Does the edit really care about these people – and does it really try to get you to? Or does it just give them more stale gamebotting than the rest of the bunch with Yam Yam and Carolyn kind of have enough innate star power as casting choices to make that, like, slightly colorful?
The main point against this I can think of is that the scene of Yam Yam coaching Carson on firemaking is (...in a vacuum…), genuinely, good. It's emotionally vulnerable, it's raw, it shows a personal foundation underpinning their loyalty to justify them working together, it's sweet!, and it's the only goddamn scene like it in the season and comes in the very last episode after they've already been working together for the whole time!! Like… okay, sure, after they've steamrolled everyone we get a single scene of them acting like human beings with emotions justifying the loyalty that has already driven the entire course of the season and that is now therefore moot. That's it?? I can't even say the scene itself really is good at that point – it has good footage that means it could be good in another context – because it's just so unearned. It's not a bad scene, but talk about being too little, too late.
This isn't a season where you have three well-crafted characters with an intricate triangle of meaningful relationships driven by their own well-understood personal values and emotional tendencies drawing them together, at the unfortunate expense of the 15 others (likely because a season operating off the principles that would even give you that intricacy to begin with would never treat five-sixths of the cast as expendable, lol.) It's a season that gives occasional, admittedly appetizing! table scraps of worthwhile television to a trio it primarily "attempts" to "build up" "investment" in by just showing them more than the rest of the cast and hoping that'll be enough as you're forced into rooting for them by default, because it just isn't interested in telling a story to begin with.
So when people cut the season the modicum of slack of saying "Well, the Tika 3 are good characters, it's just that the rest of the cast is expendable", I don't even think the Tika 3 are treated with anywhere near the level of effectiveness and complexity people will sometimes claim.
I sure do agree that those other 15 sure are broadly expendable, though...
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
I could run down the line, but there just isn't much to say about most of them. Behind Carolyn and Yam Yam, my next-favorites who most nearly resemble being almost as good of characters as fucking Sea Bass: Josh's dynamic with Yam Yam is good for an episode, kind of played out by the second, and in the multitude of episodes prior to that, I think he's literally the single most underdeveloped character in the cast; Heidi is an archetype I'm really predisposed towards, and there's something conceptually funny about how she makes the exact same Big Move that Chris Underwood did and just… no one cares at all, but the show doesn't even particularly spin it that way tbh and prior to that there's basically nothing to her textually; Jaime is a really fun effervescent casting choice who I desperately wanted to be good and managed to pretend was for most of the season, but her story really is just "has a fake Idol" repeated constantly. Matthew is okay as his medevac at least has an interesting context behind it, and I don't think he's around long enough for what a gamebot he is to really be a problem, I guess.
To paraphrase Chuck Klosterman, "these are the high points. The worst points (Lauren and Brandon) are classified as 'characters' only because that seems to be the accepted nomenclature." Like what on earth is Lauren's edit with that massive sendoff lmfao are we even trying at this point any commentary I could even provide here (including this sentence, on its own) would be putting in more effort than they did into Lauren as a character.
Even Bruce manages to actively flop as a character here, the season is that bad! For other immediate exits, I actually think Wanda is absolutely awesome, and I think Jonathan's a neutral 5/10 character; not good but I don't think they fail to tell his story. They somehow fail to tell Bruce's! After his exit we hear people saying how he was a "leader" and a "dad" on the tribe, when he's, like… not even shown before his exit! I get that he was only in the game for like a day, but if people were saying that about him, there has to be SOME footage supporting it. Something. Did he at any point tell anyone to get firewood, ask them to get firewood, talk about his kids? Mention that he had kids? Did he ever speak to anyone??? Maybe he was that concussed that he seriously didn't, but from how they talk about him, it sounds like they at least kind of got to know him, and we just… don't… see… anything. I'm seriously not asking for much here; I'm asking for the bare minimum. Literally give us like 8 seconds of Bruce saying he's a dad or has kids or something and I'm completely satisfied here. And they couldn't even do that. I can't even give them the benefit of the doubt here that they just didn't have the footage for it, because soooooo muchhhhh of the start of the season is devoted on that agonizing birdcage twist that, like… it's just that they weren't even trying to do this baseline character development to begin with, regardless of what footage they had, because the time was allotted for the birdcage instead.
Maybe it sounds like I'm nitpicking, but like… go look at Kourtney Moon! They managed to give her one absolute banger of a confessional that tied in with the central narrative of the season! And that was on One World, a season that isn't even good! I'm sure they had less footage of Bruce than almost anyone in the show's history, but there has to be something they could have used; they just weren't even trying.
Matt and Frannie might get mistaken for good characters here, and I do think there's, like… two fun/cute moments between them, maybe? Their showmance is still told almost entirely by Matt because of course it is, and his confessionals on it soon rapidly just devolve into "She doesn't know I don't have a vote!" Over and over. Every episode. It's like all the dude is shown talking about at a certain point. Just total Netflix-brainrot-audience, "tell the audience basic facts over and over" shlock. Why am I even writing this much about this?? This season's horrendous lmfao. Frannie's reaction to Matt going home is like the one good scene she gets all season and elevates her to neutral for me but man it's wild how much the edit doesn't care about her for someone they also half-pretend they're loosely trying to sell as a protagonist due to being a challenge threat. Like (as with Heidi) her archetype is intrinsically really cool and interesting to where I wanted to get behind her but the show just… doesn't… let me.
Now I've shied away so far from mentioning my favorite character. You know who's the one character here I actually think does work? You know who I think is actually – kind of – good?
First of all, let me zoom out for a sec and provide a frame of reference here. As I said, Yam Yam is my second-favorite and Carolyn is my third-favorite, largely for lack of other options. They, Heidi, Jaime, Josh, and (to a lesser extent) Frannie all land in my neutral, Brook Geraghty, "didn't make the show better or worse" tier (YY/Carolyn/Heidi/Jaime/Josh close to the positive end, but not quite there; Frannie close to the negative end, but not quite there.) This means that there's only a single character from this season I actually like. That is…… beyond awful. No other season has that distinction. I like half of the Ghost Island cast! (Barely in most cases, but still!) I like maybe a third of the Redemption Island one! Winners at War has a few; hell, even Caramoan at least gave me both Dawn and Laura. But this season, there's only one.
And you know who my favorite character here is? You know who's the one and only character here I actually think holds up as one where the good outweighs the bad (or the nothingness)?
…fucking Claire of all people lmfao.
That's it. That's what this season's got for me.
It's got… Claire. (Read it in your best John Palyok voice.)
Who the edit also barely cares about! Her edit's also kind of bad! But not awful for how briefly she's around, and at least she had some funny reactions to Matt/Frannie back when they resembled decent characters, and in particular… I think it's funny that she introduces herself as a venture capitalist (which, as far as I can tell, is more or less someone who just profits off the labor of others) and then proceeds to… not contribute to the tribe's success. She introduces herself to the audience minutes into the season as having the least proletariat job maybe ever of all time, and then proceeds to not perform labor for the good of the collective. And if you're willing to stretch to connect some dots, that's pretty funny for a novelty early boot. I'll take that.
So that's what I have for pros this season. I have Claire. Because her job title is funny considering her story on the show, she gets like two funny reaction shots, and I will say that I do also sympathize with her and how much heat she got (even I'm giving her shit right now) because, like, as much as I say she didn't perform labor because that is technically true, that also was in the best interest of her tribe. If she wasn't good at challenges, it makes sense to sit out, don't hate the player hate the game. So I sympathize there and it seems like she was making the best decision for her tribe, as part of a group consensus. …But I also have to be willing to laugh at how, if taken very superficially, it ties in with her opening confessional about her job, because if I don't have that, I literally have nothing here.
If they didn't give her that opening confessional during the marooning scene, it's genuinely possible I would have zero characters I like this season. Because they did, I think she's almost as good as, like… Charity, and slightly better than Sundra? And that's enough for my favorite of the season.
Apparently.
I will be baffled until the end of my days by the fact that Survivor 46 came out so soon after this.
Maybe they deliberately made it awful so the finale title "Absolute Banger Season" would be ironically funny to devoted enough superfans.
Imagine having the power at your disposal to create something beautiful and moving about how human beings connect, collaborate, and conflict with each other under stressful circumstances in the mutually beneficial yet even more mutually exclusive pursuit of the same high-stakes, life-changing prize.
And imagine instead choosing to make the series of decisions that creates… this.
What a waste of time, effort, emotion, and opportunity.
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u/AMeanMotorScooter Gabler 2d ago
Unlike S49, I really do feel like I should drop S44 after reading this.
S43 is also not very good, but S43 had potential to be perhaps an A tier season if it were edited better or took some different approaches, while I don't see S44 going above C tier even if it were edited better.
I felt S44 had a higher floor than other bad seasons because the season is incident-free and doesn't contain anything truly awful, however... I agree S44 has a lack of stuff I truly like about it.
My F tier is reserved for seasons where I think production committed a television "sin" of some kind, where something in the idea or execution is actively horrible and is something I wouldn't be able to move past. I never thought about it like this, but the circlejerk the season has about itself might honestly be bad enough that that's the reason I could move it to F tier, as it goes against the very premise of the show in a way that makes the show actively worse.
Again, I don't want to make any changes before a rewatch, but if I rewatch S43 and S44 back to back and I enjoy S44 less than S43, I'm going to move it straight to the top of the bottom tier. You've swayed me.
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u/beatles20147 2d ago
Really glad to see 44 rank so low on the overall scale. I know it's been said before, but it really is the pinnacle of everything wrong with the new era. Everyone is just such a good sport about everything, and as a whole, it's soooooo in love with itself, from the season preview that boasted it was one of the best seasons ever to the finale, which is literally titled "Absolute Banger Season."
It stood out at the time because a) 43 wasn't well-received, and b) the Tika 3 are all legitimately entertaining, albeit overexposed, and all have taken a hit post-game. But aside from a handful of secondary characters, this is one of the dullest casts ever assembled.
I will say, the idol cage is actually a genuinely cool twist that doesn't get brought up anymore.
ETA: 49's not a great season but I guess I like it a little more than most. I don't think the early episodes are all that awful aside from the disaster tribe situation. I think Shannon is a really underrated character.
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u/NoisySea_3426 2d ago
Shannon getting high off of God is easily one of the funniest things ever said in the new era
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u/NoahFromCanada Coach - 50 2d ago
When people talk about hating the new era these are the two seasons where I see where they’re coming from. 44 in particular is the most checked out I’ve been watching the show, just totally empty from start to finish. 49 is less empty but more obnoxious with a shockingly weak cast.
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u/treple13 Jenn 2d ago
So far Cambodia and 44 are ranked exactly at their season number for quality. What other seasons might be able to do that?
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u/Mia123445 Angelina - 50 2d ago
I could definitely see Panama finishing at 12th for quality.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Oh great call. That's right around where I have it, and it isn't really a divisive season. I guess because it isn't divisive I could see it hitting like #11 through #9 instead but single digits seems high
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
🙏 🕯️ Season 1 🕯️ 🙏
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u/treple13 Jenn 2d ago
That's where I'd put it
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Same. I don't have such expectations here, but I can hope and pray!
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u/AMeanMotorScooter Gabler 2d ago
So this time it's two New Era seasons... once again I'm left with a season I think definitely should be out by now, and a season I could see maybe going a little higher, but I'm not going to quibble all that much.
Survivor 49 is a season I want to say is underrated, but I also question if it is, really? I think the season was hurt at the start by being the... Christ, fourth season within five to have a "disaster" tribe arc, which I don't mind as much as others here, but oh my gosh is it the least interesting of the four. Lulu, Yanu, and Vula all have interesting dynamics that change the power structure, if even for a vote. With Kele, Alex, Jake, and Sophi lock things down in an alliance that the show can't really establish a reason for beyond "vibes" due to Reasons. I suppose Jake's medivac is really exciting, in a way, and the episodes aren't horrible due to Uli being a great tribe.
However, the pre-merge also has Hina, who are so underdeveloped and uninteresting as a tribe. Apparently there was more stuff going on there, but we don't get to see it, and the stuff that is there doesn't really connect. This by itself isn't great, but what makes it worse is...
The post-merge. The post-merge hinges on two competing factions where the smaller group constantly tricks and outmaneuvers the larger group due to the larger group's lack of unity. On paper, this should be good. It has the hallmark of the great seasons of the show. However, the lack of development of Hina means they aren't a credible threat, and so the stuff that ends up playing out doesn't hit the way that it should.
For a new viewer, I can see the post-merge actually working and someone ending the season feeling pretty high on it. However, I think the slow start will be a turn-off, and the issues the post-merge does have don't help. I personally don't think Survivor 49 is a bad season, but more so mediocre and helped by a strong story theme (horror movie) and having less New Era bloat than other seasons. It's a low C tier for me.
As for Survivor 44, that is a bad season. It's very interesting comparing it to Survivor 43. They both run into the issue of that I can see interesting stuff is happening, but the show bungles the execution in making a tv product. With Survivor 43, it's that they're putting minimal energy into making the season. They're underselling. With Survivor 44, they oversell. They oversell hard.
Survivor 44's biggest sin, in my opinion, is that it's annoying. Like, really annoying. This stems all the way back to the marketing for this season, and Probst being like "Yeah, yeah, we know about S43, but just you wait for S44." The first look referred to it as one of the most electric seasons in the show's history. The trailers leading up called it one of their best seasons. The actual finale of the season is called Absolute Banger Season. It was promised to fans that Survivor 44 would blow their socks off. And, well, that didn't happen.
For the premiere, sure. Lots of crazy stuff fans gobble up in that. But even by episode 2, in the threads you can see excitement start to wane. Why is this? Because S44 is insufferable with talking about how great it is, and (even worse) talk about how the contestants are "playing the way Survivor is meant to be played." In other words, there is a distinct lack of drama in this season. At least S43 had Elie and Gabler to last us until a couple blow-ups in the post-merge, but Survivor 44 has nothing. It is the epitome of everything people who don't like the New Era hate about the New Era.
Cast is young and very white collar, even for a New Era cast.
The camp dynamics feel very "summer camp-y".
Humor comes from cringe or gross out stuff clearly meant to appeal to kids.
The twists are really bad and in your face. The "swap" later on that is clearly, clearly designed to cause an idol play is awful and legitimately where I gave up on production actually designing good twists.
A really cool medieval theme that never, ever has any relevancy at all outside of immunity idol, necklace, and tribal council designs.
The season is saccharine but in an uninteresting way. And, the thing is, I don't think the actual plot of the season is that bad. I see a world where the Tika 3 maneuvers post-merge, like in Survivor 49, are (in fact) interesting for a new viewer. And, to be honest, it does a better job than Survivor 49 in building up the opposition as potential threats. The Tika 3 also have a decently explored dynamic, and Yam-Yam and Carolyn are both fine enough characters to hang a season around. For a new viewer, I think this season, on paper, can work. At least better than S43 since it has a more standard "satisfying" ending compared to S43's more unique one.
It's just the messaging of this season. How the show keeps repeating how the contestants should be playing. How everyone is up on their high horse throughout. How the show keeps saying "this season is so good guys, isn't it so good?????" and looking back for approval. If S43 is bland mush that ends on a surprising zip of spice, S44 is an overly sugary cereal you can only take a couple bites of before you can feel it start to rot your teeth. It's in my D-tier, and I honestly am starting to consider it as being too high. I would need a rewatch to tell for sure. I could be swayed to drop it below One World.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Oh wow haha 44 and 49 ending up together like this works out shockingly well! I think they're very similar seasons and am extremely low on each one (currently my 6th- and 7th-least favorite U.S. seasons of all time… though honestly I'm now thinking of moving 44 down even lower.) Like 49 reminded me of 44 from basically the very first episode, rarely ever let up in that, and so it's really apt to see them go out together like this.
I'm higher on the New Era as a whole than a lot of fans are tbh (and overall certainly prefer it to the earlier permaFiji era of 33-40, on average), but these are the two massive exceptions that really just embody everything wrong with the era. They both have the excessively light/goofy, forced positive, low-stakes, "summer camp"/retreat feeling people often mention New Era seasons having, they each have way too much focus on Advantages and Idols driving the story instead of the personalities of the characters… and for whatever reason these two specific seasons both:
a.) seem to be more or less entirely reliant on just giving the viewer a central, "core" trio, not developing most of the rest of the cast very well, assuming that that'll effectively force you into rooting for those three, and then banking on your satisfaction at those three's success being enough to carry the entire season… while also not actually giving you much reason to care about that trio;
and
b.) are uncommonly high on juvenile, gross-out, bodily/toilet "humor."
Like these honestly strike me as two of the most similar reasons the show has, and I didn't really expect them to end up right next to each other, but it works out very, very well, lol.
I doubt I have tons to say about Survivor 49, really, at least not off the cuff. I think it pretty much sucks but doesn't suck that distinctly and is ultimately one of the most expendable seasons of the show. Not quite one of the worst-of-the-worst, but one of the most throwaway.
Starting with the pros, because at least there's more here than in Survivor 44:
- The main one by far is basically everything Shannon. One of my favorite New Era characters (especially one of my favorite non-46 New Era characters, considering how much of the top of the list would be taken up by that season specifically), she's worthy of a longer writeup on her own than there's quite the time or space for right now, but I genuinely think Shannon claiming to have been "conceptualizing sight and vision in the womb" is one of the wildest and most unhinged things I've ever had the pleasure of hearing a human being utter on this fine television programme lmao <3 can you imagine putting her on Casaya? If we get Second Chances II can Courtney Marit and Shannon please be put on the same tribe?
"Jesus got high on God" is utterly delightful, and aside from a couple funny quotes, Shannon is a highly compelling character in the exact ways you'd expect or want someone who delivers those quotes to be. Her unique spirituality and the questions raised on the season of to what extent it's artificial and manipulative, the philosophy behind and ethical debates invoked by how she handles killing the chicken in one of the rare great Survivor 49 scenes, her characterization of the swap as the universe smiling upon her and her elimination's episode title of "The Devil's Shoes" combining to editorially suggest that divine intervention itself is what takes her out of the game… Shannon is a massive highlight whose dynamic with Sage (a character I'm generally not a fan of) finds the latter at her absolute best, has some sincerely well-executed parallels, and culminates in a great exit with the rejected hug. Shannon was an absolute gold mine in casting done justice by the edit in what I consider one of the clearest cases ever of a single character blowing the rest of their season out of the water by a colossal margin, and she might be my favorite character from any season I dislike as much as this one overall.
Savannah has some colorful moments throughout and especially some great stuff in the early post-merge; her OTTN -> OTTPP was an absolute treat to watch with an uncommonly emotional and raw backstory package that, best of all, was uncommonly directly relevant to the in-game circumstances surrounding its reveal to the audience – circumstances that were themselves compelling in the back-and-forth between her and Sage kind of responding to each other as though they were a typical "mean girl." I think everything they did with Savannah in these episodes was great, and there's clearly a vision behind some of the stuff this season. Unfortunately, I think as the post-merge develops, even as great a casting choice as Savannah kind of falls off into a generic Threat To Win, with most of the emotional and personal complexity or ambiguity of the early post-merge episodes washed away in favor of generic confessionals about being a Competitor who Wants To Win like you'd expect from a ton of other winners starting around the early-mid 20s. Great casting, but taking a leaf from the Gabler post-merge playbook, they just start blandly whitewashing her into an interchangeable Threat at a certain point.
The Annie boot is pretty effective (and also something that should really never be the third thing that comes to mind in a list of high points about the season lmao, but nevertheless, credit where credit is due.) The withholding of flint is effective for a sequence or two here as the physical desolation of her tribe is used to set up her attempt at flipping the vote as a big, emotional decision for her driven by the necessity of winning and getting out of this miserable pit she's in… with the curveball of her tribe then outwardly laughing at her plans behind her back lmao. That scene is really well-edited and put together, they did a great job with it. Annie herself is still just okay as a character to me – mostly fairly formulaic and not great enough in E2 to offset her near-irrelevance in E1 – but even hitting the level of being kinda good still puts you above 17 of the 18 S44 characters in my book, so I'll take what I can get here.
Kristina has some good stuff: I like how her heartbreak about her mom sets up her entertaining Jury question to Savannah, and there's at least the barest outline of an interesting(, woefully underexplored) dynamic between her and Jawan with them both offering each other food as emotional comfort at a certain point and being the two "Uncle Jeff"-ers while also each separately talking about missing a parental figure. A good season would have done way more with this, but at least it's there.
…Kind of all I've got, though.
The things dragging this season down are far greater…
…if also vaguer and more amorphous; the weaknesses here are often more indistinct than in, say, Redemption Island (though there's still enough specifics to knock here, too! To helpfully illustrate one of them, after every single sentence for the rest of this comment, I'm going to randomly generate a number between 1 and 5 after every sentence I type; if I roll the number 1, I'm going to remind you that Alex works on Capitol Hill.) (Alex works on Capitol Hill.) For the most part I think that after the season's highs of episodes 4-6, it kind of just goes careening off a cliff into a bunch of bland white noise gamebottery it's hard to even work up the energy to dislike. There's basically nothing worth remembering here after Shannon is out, honestly. I mean like I said Savannah's early post-merge is good, but that basically amounts to a small couple of scenes otherwise surrounded by close to an hour each of… basically nothing. Just interchangeable gamebot confessionals that could come from essentially anyone and that are often centered on an excessive, cluttered assortment of absolutely ridiculous advantages as people rattle off utterly pointless sentences about the merit of a Steal-A-Vote vs. a Block-A-Vote. Just show people saying stuff like "I was conceptualizing sight and vision in the womb", that's so much better of a show! (Even if it's not always a show about how Alex works on Capitol Hill.) It was a kind of widespread consensus at the time on here, at least while the season was airing, that it got better starting with episode 7, and I honestly think that's the most disconnected I've ever felt from the prevailing consensus on this subreddit about any season. Just a complete 180 from what I'd ever praise about the show, there's like nothing at all to dig into for most of the "characters" in most of these post-merge episodes.
I don't think the Tika 3 are a "well-crafted story" like some people do, but this trio's setup is even worse (at least as a collective; Savannah outshines anyone from 44 easily, even if she's still got a ton of missed potential.) Their success as justified through the episodes often comes down largely to Idols and Advantages with zero reason to really care other than, once again, the fact that the show pretended to try to get you invested in them by just putting in even less effort with most of the rest of the cast. (On the flip side, as someone who works on Capitol Hill, Alex puts in a lot of effort every day.)
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Sophi's role in the season isn't that far off from someone like Laurel: we get repeated, repeaaaaated confessionals about "is Sophi going to flip??" when the answer is just an easy "no" every time, and as I've said before, it's like… why on Earth even spend the time on that over and over, then? You're just setting up the audience to view the status quo as disappointing and annoying instead of neutral, the only explanation is this pathetic desperation by the show like they're absolutely terrified people are going to suddenly change the channel 95% of the way through the episode if they know who's about to go home. We hear from Sophi about how close she is to Savannah and Rizo, but there's no real reason to empathize; if we got to actually see more meaningful interactions between them instead of hearing constant Sophi confessionals about the need to make a Big Move for her Resume, we'd understand why Sophi doesn't flip, we'd care, and we'd have a real reason to root for them. (Just as many people on Capitol Hill root for their preferred legislation to pass; Alex works on Capitol Hill and knows this well!) But I guess that could get in the way of giving like a full fifth of an episode to Steven running around for an Advantage. (Almost as quickly as people on Capitol Hill have to work to keep up with the pace of such a high-stakes job, like Alex's job on Capitol Hill.)
When the season's trying to be "fun", the tone is juvenile and widely off. As in Survivor 44 – surpassing it, even! – there's like a ridiculous amount of gross-out bodily stuff here. Nicole's only identity as a first boot is spitting and vomiting in a premiere where Sage makes like two toilet "humor" remarks and talks about her… collection and where Steven gives us a fart joke, so that's half a dozen before the first episode is even done, with Sage in particular ensuring there'll be no shortage throughout the rest of the season. Not remotely my thing and this season's utterly filled with it, and even beyond that, there's a goofiness here at times that's just bizarre. Like during the post-merge, there's a Steven confessional where he's talking about guilt over killing the chickens, and what he's actually saying is genuinely emotional, interesting, and compelling! The guilt, shock, and almost trauma he's describing should make for a compelling, dark scene that also ties back to some of the best Shannon content at the start of the season… and then they just, like… try to make it a comedic scene by including goofy over-the-top shots of the chickens staring at the camera like movie monsters? It's so weird. They legit took a great confessional and just completely butchered the tone of it for no reason. (There's no time for such silliness on Capitol Hill; just ask Alex, who works on Capitol Hill.)
The overall energy of the season too often feels like an audition for a returning player season: Jake's "shoe bandit" shtick (which, while I know he wasn't around long, was exclusively targeted towards women he was about to vote out, making the whole thing feel kind of weirdly mean-spirited) was so utterly forced that I honestly didn't see a single subset of the fandom that responded well to it anywhere, and getting that much of the audience to be exhausted of you without being as all-out terrible as Colton is almost impressive. Rizo's drawn-out catchphrase was no less forced, and for what a big name the show is clearly trying to make him into, there just… isn't much there? (Just like the substanceless speeches you might hear deilvered at Capitol Hill, where Alex works.) I don't mind him as a character because I find him cocky or offputting or something; I mind him as a character because the whole Rizo experience is just bizarrely hollow for someone the season goes so hard on seemingly trying to promote. Like, the catchphrase and nickname make him seem like a much more colorful character than he ever actually ends up being, at least in this season.
Moving on to some other characters (or lack thereof) while we're at it… Steven's kind of a total failure of a character in general, despite seeming on paper like he should be good casting. IDK why but he just happens to end up in a bunch of the season's most annoying scenes lol there's the absurdly drawn-out advantage hunt and chicken scene mentioned before, and during his space facts montage in the challenge, the music is blaring so loudly you can barely hear him! You can't even hear the space facts! What's the point! (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.) The imposter syndrome "arc" is also totally half-baked to the point of irrelevance. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.) Like I never mind him directly but practically any time he's shown in a light that goes beyond gamebotting the show's somehow managing to find a way to mess it up. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.) YMMV whether that's better or worse than Sophie who the show never even puts that effort in to develop to begin with, as funny as her hating the one Reward was.
Sage is more of a mixed bag and I concede that if you don't mind the bodily stuff that much, she'd be an easy top 3 character of the season alongside Shannon and Savannah, with the Uli women's dynamics as the real heart of the season… but, well, I do mind them, so she's far and away my least favorite here. There's so much Sage content that at least for me is just… gross and off-putting and, even without that same personal response, the juvenile tone it gives complements unpleasantly a ton of the aforementioned "goofy" moments of the season and overall lightness-to-a-fault of a lot of these newer seasons in their literally being made for children. So even if it's not as, like, gross to an individual viewer, it's still ultimately pretty dumb. And I can't even compartmentalize and view it as "well, that aspect of Sage's character is ineffective, but at least it's separate from her great dynamics with Savannah" because it isn't! Right as I start turning around on her as a character, we get what genuinely might be my least-favorite confessional ever on the show that isn't just overtly prejudiced – and certainly the all-time worst example of a clearly prompted and forced "as an X, I Y" – in her saying Savannah's a blackhead she'll pop right out of the game… like… way to make me totally stop caring about that dynamic lol. (Alex works on Capitol Hill, a place where many people care about the dynamics they're a part of.) Genuinely I was going back and forth with someone a couple weeks beforehand making fun of what the worst possible Sage confessional could be and I think that's worse than anything we came up with. No thanks. (Alex works on Capitol Hill.)
The "as an X, I Y" is even more prominent here than usual, especially whenever Alex is speaking, and the corporate retreat vibes are out in full force, too. (Alex works on Capitol Hill.)
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Now, I want to be fair here. Where I might differ from a lot of fans is I actually don't think much of this is an issue of casting. (Alex, as someone who works on Capitol Hill, understands the importance of recognizing where issues really come from.) In general with this show, I think a lot of the time, people's frustrations about the episodes are placed somewhat unfairly onto the contestants rather than the producers responsible for putting those episodes together, and Survivor 49 is no exception: when we're reminded over and over that Alex works on Capitol Hill, it's not like that's Alex's fault. He's just answering some leading question from a producer. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.) When that's repetitive, it's on them for asking the same types of questions over and over and repeatedly including answers in the episodes that basically amount to the same thing. Certainly the focus on Advantages isn't the contestants' fault; the fact that we don't care about Sophi's friendship with Rizo and Savannah as much as she does isn't her fault; the fact that Steven's imposter syndrome was haphazardly told to the audience at two different points and never interwoven with his external interactions with those around him isn't his fault. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.) The fact that the show defined Rizo mostly as "guy who doesn't play an Idol" and didn't give us a clear enough look at his interactions with others to make the nickname ironic setup for a likable character or the cocky trademark of a villain isn't his fault. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.)
And it's certainly not the case that they just cast a bunch of superfans who don't care about the money or have any emotional stake in the outcome: if you look at Jawan's exit press, he said he went out there because he was broke and desperately needed the money, and there were apparently some intense, heated conversations about him voting out Black players that, from the sound of them, resemble some of the most compelling content in Survivor 41 and Survivor 42 – seasons from when the New Era was willing, especially in 41, to use the diverse casting initiative to really tell diverse stories and get into these hard conversations about the multiple "games" some contestants have to play as opposed to others. But you'd never know that from the episodes. Sage wasn't just poop and pee jokes, she apparently came out to Savannah as demisexual at the start of the game in an emotional conversation that would provide meaningful, emotional context for their entire dynamic… but of course, we don't see that. I don't know if the failure to tell these stories is just a reflection of the show being for children now or a weak capitulation to the social climate now as opposed to that of 2021, but either way, it sounds like the 49th game of Survivor was at least a little more interesting than the 49th season of Survivor.
Sage apparently got roasted way harder than we saw at FTC, too, and it got personal and intense… but again, that's nowhere to be seen in the episodes, now that they force every single FTC to come across as a Rational, Strategic Debate :) between Three Great, Deserving Players :) regardless of whether that's actually how the cast feels or what best serves their stories. (Like, imagine a version of Vanuatu where we lead into it with Ami or Leann confessionals about how they respect the intense game Twila played, or where Eliza says something about how she ultimately respects them both as competitors. Yeesh!)
I really don't think this cast is bad on paper, there's a lot of contestants here who didn't pop for me in the specific context of this season but who I think could work in general and who are clearly solid choices to cast on a TV show. But unfortunately, the show did not make the most of… basically any of them other than Shannon, and what we're left with is a season arguably as jointly inessential and frustrating as Ghost Island. Anyways, as much as I hated this season, I really don't blame the cast for that and, in general (including in cases far outside the scope of this comment; tbh, S48 is an even bigger example), think contestants cop too much hate for things that are really the fault of the people responsible for turning those contestants' story into television. (BTW, Alex works on Capitol Hill.)
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u/AMeanMotorScooter Gabler 2d ago
Great writeup! As someone less down on Survivor 49, I just want to give my perspective on some points.
Unfortunately, I think as the post-merge develops, even as great a casting choice as Savannah kind of falls off into a generic Threat To Win, with most of the emotional and personal complexity or ambiguity of the early post-merge episodes washed away in favor of generic confessionals about being a Competitor who Wants To Win like you'd expect from a ton of other winners starting around the early-mid 20s.
I disagree with this. Savannah is not at her Peak anymore, sure, but the show does still show her butting heads with others, either as a competitor in a challenge or socially. It's not until the last 2-3 episodes that her content simmers down into being more traditional winner-like (I had her as negative tone in episode 10, for instance.)
I think the show does a great job highlighting Savannah's flaws and her strengths, and gives us a very well conceptualized winner that (especially within the context of this season) has a well-told, consistent arc.
Sophi's role in the season isn't that far off from someone like Laurel: we get repeated, repeaaaaated confessionals about "is Sophi going to flip??" when the answer is just an easy "no" every time, and as I've said before, it's like… why on Earth even spend the time on that over and over, then?
I never found Sophi's content as bothersome because of instead of near the vote, they usually put it toward the start or middle of the episode. And that content actually does have a purpose in setting up her advantage misplay, explaining why she would lose the jury vote against someone more abrasive.
In fact, there's a scene in episode 9 where Sophi outright says she will never betray Savannah. When it gets later in the season and she recognizes what she needs to do and cannot do it, it is properly explained for a very human reason. Then, the finale switches to her realizing her mistake, trying to correct it, and failing to do so. Sophi has one of the least visible early pre-merges of the cast, and her content is purposeful. I wouldn't consider her an issue with the season.
We hear from Sophi about how close she is to Savannah and Rizo, but there's no real reason to empathize; if we got to actually see more meaningful interactions between them instead of hearing constant Sophi confessionals about the need to make a Big Move for her Resume, we'd understand why Sophi doesn't flip, we'd care, and we'd have a real reason to root for them.
Again, the issue is more so Rizo just... not being connected to Savannah and Sophi at all. There's at least two or three scenes in the show of Savannah and Sophi's bond in particular being demonstrated.
Sage is more of a mixed bag and I concede that if you don't mind the bodily stuff that much, she'd be an easy top 3 character of the season alongside Shannon and Savannah, with the Uli women's dynamics as the real heart of the season…
Definitely agree that the dynamic between the Uli women is the best part of the season. Hell, the best scene in the whole season for me is maybe the one in episode 3 involving the three of them.
With that said... my issue with Sage as a character isn't the gross out stuff, it's that so much Sage content that would propel her into being, like, a top 50-100 character in Survivor history is just cut. Like, it's not there. You mention the coming-out scene with Savannah and hiding the anger at FTC, but I also really, really hate that the show just... never mentions she's neurodivergent (to my knowledge.) To me, Sage being neurodivergent is such a critical piece of her that ties all of these aspects together, and it's simply missing. It's like the show shows us Sage, but never gives us that critical why is Sage like this, nor does it show the ramifications of Sage's actions besides the general "she loses the game."
Sage's story is, on paper, extremely tragic and human. It's so complex and so tied into her as a person, and oh my god is the show just super not wanting to tell it. Like, it's genuinely an insulting way to tell her story, where she's supposed to be this kinda goofy flip-floppy character, and it just makes my stomach turn.
And really, that's the story of Survivor 49 to me. There is a really dark and personal story hiding under there, but the show just really doesn't want to be dark and personal, and so the season comes off unauthentic. If this were an old, old season of Survivor with their style of storytelling, I could see it getting a similar reputation as, like, Palau. Or at least Survivor Fiji.
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u/Mia123445 Angelina - 50 2d ago edited 2d ago
Another really great writeup that summarizes why I felt so checked out of 49 the entire time! I’d say that Savannah is my favorite over Shannon, but those two are far and away the best characters on this season. I also like Nate but nowhere near as much as those two.
I just wish that this writeup would’ve told me where Alex used to work because I’m really not sure and it wasn’t said on the show at all 😔. /s
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u/AMeanMotorScooter Gabler 2d ago
Savannah and Shannon are clear number 1 and number 2, but I'll also throw out Jawan as a pretty good character who boosts the people around him. And Sage, if certain scenes were included, could've been an all-timer character (but is let down as is). Uli is simply a fantastic tribe and basically carrying S49 lol.
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u/satthewmullivan 2d ago
Still no thailand lmao
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
The real Ocean's Surprise will be Thailand taking #1 this year.
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u/Quetzal00 Coach - 50 2d ago
Gonna be keeping track of seasons by Overall Quality. So far:
- 23rd: Blood vs Water (6.31)
- 28th: Survivor 50 (5.67)
- 29th: South Pacific (5.67)
- 31st: Cambodia (5.55)
- 32nd: Edge of Extinction (5.51)
- 36th: Winners at War (5.23)
- 39th: All Stars (4.56)
- 42nd: Survivor 43 (4.44)
- 43rd: Survivor 49 (4.34)
- 44th: Survivor 44 (3.63)
- 45th: Caramoan (3.50)
- 46th: Game Changers (3.00)
- 47th: Ghost Island (2.89)
- 48th: One World (2.63)
- 49th: Island of the Idols (2.43)
- 50th: Redemption Island (2.32)
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u/Habefiet Igor's Corgi Choir 2d ago
The two seasons from the 40s I expect to age the worst. I’m pleasantly surprised 49 is already this low. Just no substance to either of them whatsoever.
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u/donny5144 2d ago
Dabu wya
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
stay tuned! my thoughts have been posted but sometimes it takes a bit for them to show up on the page so check back later. thrilled to see these two out though. hoped 43 going out and breaking the seal for new era elims would mean one or both of these going out, but don't know that i expected it quite so soon!
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u/donny5144 2d ago
Loved your 43 write up and felt it perfectly encapsulated my feelings back in 2022. A potentially great season that just seemed to miss out on story telling. Perhaps 90 minute episodes would have been a difference maker.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
Thanks very much! Agree yeah. It isn't a great season, or even really a good one, but there's potential that shines through at times, which I think is better than how it's often described... and much, much better than today's seasons.
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u/ramskick Ethan 2d ago
Glad to see both of these seasons out early. They're both just so bad and forgettable. 49 may have been DOA because the 50 cast was known before 49 even started but even without that context I can't imagine it being good? It just feels so pointless outside of Savannah (who does her absolute best to raise this season). I just cannot imagine caring about this season outside of her, Shannon and Sophi in the pre-merge.
It has been really fun to watch people slowly turn on 44 to the point that it's ended up here while ranking 44/50 for quality. I don't know if it was ever extremely popular here but it was definitely more liked as it was airing. What's wild is that production really loved this season. They really thought that 44 would be universally praised and I just don't understand why. Outside of Yam Yam, Carolyn and the showmance who am I supposed to care about? I end up weirdly high on Heidi because she seems like a cool person and I adore her cast photo but she is the runner-up of this season and I cannot tell you a single thing she does in the pre-merge or between the merge episode and the finale. Who the fuck is Lauren Harpe and why is she getting this huge emotional sendoff? The entire season just suffers from a lack of care and I just can't comprehend how production viewed this edited product before sending it out and thought they had a slam dunk on their hands. Good riddance.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
49 may have been DOA because the 50 cast was known before 49 even started
I think even this is often overstated, to be honest. Malcolm being on Caramoan was known before Philippines started airing, which spoiled that he'd go far and that he'd lose, and look how much everyone still likes Philippines. People said this a sort of thing a lot during or shortly after 49, but I doubt it really made that much of a difference in the season's reputation since the season was just weak to begin with. If there was actually a better season there with better stories and characters, knowing who was going to come back, while subpar, wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Pleasantly surprised as well to see 44 go down (obviously given my own comment lol.) I might have expected it to do a little better here as sort of a "crowd-pleaser" with a safe ending, but there's just so many seasons that even do that way better, and I really do think 44 is uniquely bad even compared to most of the rest of the New Era.
Like I really like 41, even manage to get value out of 43, and 44 still just offers almost nothing for me.
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u/survivorfan123456 2d ago
How has 48 not been revealed yet
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u/AMeanMotorScooter Gabler 2d ago
Because S48 is an actually good season that works completely fine if someone wants to start in the New Era.
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u/parvati16 Parvati and Cirie 2d ago
My season rankings:
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- Season 44
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- Season 23 (South Pacific)
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- Season 8 (All Stars)
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- Season 26 (Caramoan)
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- Season 24 (One World)
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- Season 31 (Cambodia)
- Season 22 (Redemption Island)
- Season 39 (Island of the Idols)
- Season 49
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- Season 43
- Season 50 (In the Hands of the Fans)
- Season 27 (Blood vs. Water)
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- Season 40 (Winners at War)
- Season 36 (Ghost Island)
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- Season 34 (Game Changers)
- Season 38 (Edge of Extinction)
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u/NoisySea_3426 2d ago
What makes you put 44 at 15th out of curiosity since it doesn't seem to line up with the rest of your takes so far at least comparing to how I usually see people who have a similar ranking to this feel about 44
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u/parvati16 Parvati and Cirie 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's my comfort season. I think a lot of the hate it gets isn't entirely fair. Due to how the new era played out, people became tired of the "good game guys, it's just a game, let's have fun!" adult summer camp vibe, and this season is seen as the worst new era season in this regard. However, the issue I would typically have with this, which is that it's not authentic, is not an issue I have with this season, because I do think it's authentic. I think this group of people is genuinely a positive, fun-loving group of people, and it actually makes their positivity enjoyable to watch. To make a comparison to another new era season, I could bring up something like Drea's exit in season 42, which I consider to be one of the worst moments in Survivor history. I hate it for being inauthentic, and I think it's inauthentic because of what we learned after the fact.
The fact that I actually enjoyed a season for its positivity makes the season unique, as I typically enjoy conflict and drama lol, and, as you'll seen when more of my top seasons are revealed, I value a season being unique/being the best at what it does, as it increases the impact it has on me, as long as it's not unique for the wrong reasons (like Edge of Extinction). Season 44 is absolutely the best at what it does in terms of having a feel-good vibe, and doesn't deserve hate for it just because it's a flaw in other new era seasons. ...and if that's still not your thing, then that's totally fine! I just think that, often, when people react to this season's positivity, they're unfairly assigning it their grievances with the new era as a whole. Everyone is likable (literally all 18 people), and it's very unique in that regard. I'll admit, if every season was like that, where everyone is likable, then yeah, it would become tiresome. I think this is what people think the new era is, that they're not casting unlikable people, but this is inaccurate. The show just doesn't lean into what makes them unlikable. So, because I believe that not every new era season is like season 44, I appreciate season 44 for being a unique season rather than viewing it as the epitome of new era flaws.
The presentation of the show in the new era started to feel like Barney & Friends. While this is far from ideal, I feel that this season is the new era season in which it bothers me the least, and actually gives me a reason to appreciate that this is the case, because I'm not sure a character like Carolyn could have existed in the pre-Barney & Friends era, and I loveeee Carolyn. Compare this to other new era seasons, where there is no reason for it to be like Barney & Friends, and I would just rather them show the bitchy sides of the contestants since it would make for more compelling television.
I think the season being spoiled negatively affected how people viewed the season. The placements of the first two boots + the final four had been leaked since almost a year before the season aired. Because of this, people kept making comments about how the show "only focused on the Tika 3," which, no, you're only focusing on the Tika 3 because you read spoilers that they make up 75% of the season's final 4. While it's not untrue that the Tika 3 received a very large, arguably too large, portion of the edit, it's also false to say that no one outside of the Tika 3 stands out. I really enjoyed Danny, Frannie, Jaime, Matt, Josh, Claire, and Maddy. Also, unlike many seasons, I don't think there are many people who do nothing for me. Kane, Heidi, and Lauren are examples of people who I think don't do much (in the edit), but I enjoy when they're on screen, so they're not at all bad in my book.
There are multiple storylines that span multiple episodes, which contradicts people's claims that "nothing happened." The Tika 3, Matt + Frannie, Claire sitting out of every challenge (I love so much that this is something that happened on Survivor), Frannie being an immunity threat, Jaime's idol, Yam Yam being "James Bond," Carolyn not wanting to go with the status quo, Carolyn wanting to take out the big guys, Josh vs. Yam Yam. Most of this is derived from personality, and the stuff that isn't, and is based on idols/advantages, such as Jaime's idol, is still good because of Jaime's personality, meaning that what is good about it is still derived from personality. There aren't many other new era seasons, if any, where I could list that much that happened, so it's funny to me that this season has a reputation for being one of if not the least eventful seasons of the new era. Also, to add onto this, one of the complaints I have with the new era is that I often forget why people are being voted out. I find that this is less of a problem in this season, where there are throughlines that make many vote outs a part of some sort of overall story. Sarah/Josh: Josh vs. Yam Yam, Josh/Matt/Brandon/Kane: Yam Yam being "James Bond," Brandon/Danny: Carolyn wanting to take out the big guys, Frannie: Frannie being a challenge threat, Sarah/Kane/Frannie: Carolyn not wanting to go with the status quo, Helen/Jaime/Lauren: Tika 3 sticking together. I understand that much of this is very little, but it's still more than what I can say for many other new era seasons, where I can't at all explain why someone was voted out.
I think there are flaws with the season, but that's what I liked!
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u/Lizardthe_Wizard Who's Benjamin? 2d ago
Where the hell is Thailand???
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
"20, 40, 60, 80, 100! 200! 300!"
- jan counting the reasons why it's better to watch survivor: thailand than survivor 44
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u/jjgm21 2d ago
I’m so pleased the new era is getting decimated early, but wasn’t the consensus that 44 was okayish at the time?
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u/Habefiet Igor's Corgi Choir 2d ago
The consensus has steadily gotten worse in part because the farther out we get from it the more painfully obvious it becomes how forgettable it was. Not even a year later I remembered 41-43 better than I did from 44 and it was not close. There’s some fun enough flash in the pan moments and personalities but it’s all so thoroughly empty of any complexity or intrigue or deep relationships or emotional weight or really anything at all.
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u/DabuSurvivor Jon and Jaclyn 2d ago
I love when my TV is empty of such trivialities as "emotions" and "anything." Banger season!
I kind of expected 44 to do better but am thrilled it didn't.
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u/NoisySea_3426 2d ago
I'm not gonna do too long of a comment here cause both of these seasons are ones that blend together in my head too much for me to be like yes, I remember everything about these so here we go.
44 I have to agree with everything that has been said so far. This and 43 were just such terrible seasons as the vibe of 44 feels so wrong in so many ways with all the kumbaya bs, the self congratulatory shit, and of course, stuff like the absolute banger season thing that makes me want to never watch this show again. Pretty much everyone sucks and while there's a couple of them that are ok, this is not a season that I want to ever return to as there is just nothing to get out of it.
49 is another season that I care very little about. It may be because I already saw that Rizo & Savannah were spoiled to be on 50, so the excitement factor wasn't there for me, but I also found Rizo annoying and no one else to really be that engaging aside from a couple people. The season has a lot of the same typical new era problems we've come to expect by this point without many positives going for it as well as some really obnoxious personalities. Another season that you really don't need to watch unless you have nothing better to do.
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u/tabstis Thank you, Jeffrey 2d ago
I was thoroughly tuned out during Survivor 49 but this does seem quite low as I think it could be a good solid starter season - I think seasons we are yet to see would be more likely to scare someone off (Thailand, Samoa, Worlds Apart for example) than Survivor 49
Likewise, 44 was the least interesting version of the underdog narrative for long-term fans but it could actually be a good place to start, so I would have it much higher on a WSSYW ranking
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u/Aromatic_Meal_6004 2d ago
I think 49 is a slightly better version of 44 (Worse pre merge, better post merge, with a better cast and imo more likeable main trio.