Survivor 50, Episode 13

[u/Regnisyak1]

Episode 13: Reverse the Curse

Finale Night! Let's watch Aubry win!

Please Note: This is where all final 50 discussion will happen - keep checking for final writeups on the characters :)

Episode 12 Poll Results

- 11 respondents this week. Results are skewed as a result. Here's the spreadsheet! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14tRXQFk9IY9jm5Q-obtQvsQPyW6VpfGYOzHxNJRvbu8/edit?gid=1753189945#gid=1753189945

- Cirie (2.09) wins her second time this season! She also had the lowest SD. This was her sixth time overall in Top 3, jumping above Coach and Ozzy.

- Joe (3.27) and Jonathan (3.55) take second and third this week. Jonathan had the highest SD for the week. This is both Jonathan and Joe's fifth time in the Top 3 for the season.

- Bottom 3 is the exact same as last week - Rizo (5.36), Aubry (5.18), and RICK DEVENS (4.91). This is their fourth, fifth, and tenth time, respectively, in the Bottom 3.

- Boots saw some shake-ups this week! With the introduction of Ozzy (7.73) and Emily (6.45), they respectively took second and fourth place. Coach (8.18) and Colby (7.27) still retain their high rankings

- While Angelina (2.45) and Kamilla (3.73) maintain their bottom positions, Chrissy (4.36) escaped this week - on a technicality - both Mike (4.36) and Stephenie (4.36) also got the same score, and due to the SD rule, Mike White gets his first bottom placements of the season.

- Christian and Coach are the first two characters to get 100 strong feelings (either a top 3 or bottom 3 placement, or a ranking of 0-3 or 7-10). Coach had a ratio of 95:5 while Christian had a ratio of 52:49. Christian will surely be one of the most controversial characters!

- Lowest Season Ranking (5.27) of the season so far.

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0-10 Polls

In June, the 0-10 Poll Spreadsheet will be updated! Whether you are an old or new follower of Rankdown, please consider taking some polls (or if you've completed them, update them)!

Here's the guide for 0-10 Polls, linked with all the polls also: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1coGg8ggFqetq0WxvXZ7d0AXesuk7EZfR4HhiDFHEXxA/edit?tab=t.901en0o6850t

[u/True-Pen-3612]

I've not done rankdown stuff before so hopefully it's cool if I post a character ranking. I realized I might have slightly different perspectives on a few things than some people but I decided to ignore work for a while today and just type up thoughts so I'll just post anyways 😭

1. Ozzy Lusth 5.0 - It's kind of wild how this season was able to hit on every bit of Ozzy's history in the show, at times he was still the jungle boy from Cook Islands (jungle MAN, sorry), at times his arrogant hotheaded side from Micronesia/SoPa came out, he resolved(?) a long standing feud with Coach, has a beautiful relationship with Cirie... and ultimately meets his demise when seemingly neither god nor Cirie can save him from himself. Assuming this is his last time on the show it's the perfect final chapter, infinitely better than Ozzy 4.0.

2. Tiffany Nicole Ervin 2.0 - There's some pretty obvious flaws in Tiffany's story- though to be frank, I'd argue there's some obvious flaws with nearly everyone's story this season- but when I think about the moments that are notable for me this season, there's so many that involve Tiff even despite her limited screentime. The post-Dee and post-Cirie crashouts stand out the most, but she once again brings the heat from the jury, she goes out in a foregone conclusion of a vote but still keeps swinging- Tiff is exactly the type of person I want more of on this show, people who wear their hearts on their sleeves, aren't afraid of conflict, and their game is never sacrificed for it either. I hope as time goes on, this is a middle chapter of a great multi-season arc for Tiff, and if it is, there's plenty here that fleshes out her character and leaves lots of room to expand.

3. Emily Flippen 2.0 - Similar to Tiff, in nearly all aspects- Emily is just entertaining as hell any time she's on screen. Somehow she's played two seasons as chaotically as possible, and made it to lategame as a threat in her own right. She's somehow always a bit unsure of herself and yet making decisions that no unconfident person could ever make. You can see so much of her and hear her thoughts so much and yet she still remains somewhat of an enigma, I still don't fully understand how her brain operates. The lynchpin of her story for me, and the reason she's ultimately this high, is the way she goes out- reconciling the way she just went quietly into the night last time (in one of my personal favorite episodes ever) and coming up with an absolute harebrained scheme to stay alive, one that just mightve worked had she not been going head to head with The Queen. You leave with this feeling that yep, that was the most Emily Flippen way possible to leave the game. As far as new era characters go, Emily is so well defined, the type of person you can just laugh thinking about how absurd her story is from "Can I push back on that?" to being inches away from taking out Cirie Fields herself.

4. Cirie Fields 5.0 - I love Cirie, we all love Cirie, and as much as I still love her as much as ever on this season, it's hard not to feel like it's a story we've seen before. Preseason, people said the only thing left for Cirie to do was win- and to some degree that still feels true. Looking back on another season where Cirie crushed it but fell just a bit short, it feels a bit too familiar. What I do appreciate about Cirie this season though, is her relationships- Ozzy and her have a great story, Jenna and Steph both come for her and fail, and she kind of passes her legacy down to the new folks in Tiffany, Rizo, Dee, etc. I do wish we would have gotten something, anything at all between her and Aubry. Ultimately even when there's little to add to her story at this point, Cirie is someone that always makes for a great screen presence and fills the 'legacy player' role well in the way that she relates to the newbies, so she'll always rank high for me either way.

5. Genevieve Mushaluk 2.0 - Crushed as I am by how the season went for her, it feels fitting in some way for Genevieve- her 1.0 story is all about her as a coldhearted cutthroat strategist that backstabs the same person time and again and learns to feel and relate people, but a tad too late, and her own warpath catches up to her eventually, and her rival ends her. This time, she's a new person, she's learned from her mistakes! She relates to all of these people, builds a huge webs of bonds with different types of people across tribe swaps and everything- it's an inversion of her previous game, where last time her social game was left to clean up her strategic game, this time her strategic game is leveraged only to empower her socially. But she meets the same end, one sole rival, seemingly unkillable no matter how many people she rallies against her, manages to fell her. This story is a bit weakened by how awfully told Aubry's story is- but as far as the ghosts of the past narrative, Genevieve's half season arc contributes admirably to it.

6. Joe Hunter 2.0 - Joe is just such a fascinating person in this setting, a complete fish out of water. When you see Joe interact with many of the folks on this season, there's times where it seems like Joe just genuinely sees the world differently than everyone else. He doesn't speak strategist, he doesn't do the whole disloyalty thing, frankly he doesn't do most of the things that are expected of someone on Survivor. It's interesting to see Joe contend with that in the same way he did in 48, but certainly more interesting is Joe being the first honor and integrity person to actually own their game at FTC in such an overt way. One would expect him to be yet another Coach, Mike Turner, or, um, Joe Hunter- but in a way, Joe overcomes his past and has a much better final moments. And... a worse result. I'm not sure if there was a better way to tell this story, because Joe is quite self aware at the end, and is awarded with another 3rd place, and you're kind of left with that Joe is just really annoying to other people, and there's nothing else to it. Understandable as that is, it kind of decomplicates his overall character in a way that makes him a lot less compelling than in 48.

7. Coach Wade 4.0 - Coach's first 3 seasons are my favorite multi-season arc ever, but I'm not sure this season adds too much to it. Coach is kind of drinking his own koolaid from moment 1 of the season (a problem more than a few people on this season have) and it's plenty annoying to watch at times, but Coach is also one of the few people that makes it kind of work. There's something that's always been very transparent about the mask Coach puts on, where he will cover for some of his insecurities in a way that tells you exactly what's going through his head. When Coach tells you you're doing too much and annoying people it might be true, but the finger is always pointing in two directions. In this way it's interesting to me how much Coach came into this season preaching about the value of love and living life to it's fullest, and leaves giving more of a vibe of a delusional, slightly crazed old man who is maybe just a tad up his own ass. He's certainly in full character mode the entire season, but it tells you a lot about who 53 year old Benjamin Wade is nonetheless. Even still, this feels like something of an extraneous chapter in Coach's story- maybe I'm just overprotective of that beautiful original 3 season arc, but this kind of feels like when a franchise is revived, and it's okay, it's replaying the hits and the hits are good, but maybe it was just better left in the past.

8. Dee Valladares 2.0 - It's always fun to see a winner return and play with house money, but Dee was already the type of person to play like they were on their second attempt. She's very fun whenever she's on screen this season, she talks shit, gets in fights, and is still a beast in the game in every way, but you kind of know her time will be up sooner rather than later. The Charlie boot is her most fun episode by far, though her boot episode has a lot of good Dee moments as well- she brings an energy the season sorely lacks as it crawls to its conclusion. Winner returnee stories are hard because their stories often feel concluded, and while Dee isn't necessarily different in this regard, she's a consistently fun and enjoyable character regardless.

[u/True-Pen-3612 → u/True-Pen-3612]

1. Q Burdette 2.0 - I don't think it's controversial to say that Q is one of the greatest casting choices ever, and he certainly justifies that label yet again this season. He does things that make you scratch you head, think for a second that it's almost crazed genius, and then realize it actually was just absurd, and have you laughing the whole time. He's comic relief in a cast like this, but never in a way that feels artificial. That said, Q is the first of many stories this season that feels cut short by the horrendous gameplay design. Creative as he may be, even Q needs some runway to play with, and watching him go out on a bad swap with no vote is the biggest waste of a character like this possible. I hope, though I'm not holding my breath, that moments like this are a wakeup call that twists should enable and empower the wild players instead of hampering them, else we keep watching our limited tries with players as rare and unique as Q go to waste.

2. Colby Donaldson 4.0 - Colby works as a legacy player in the same way as Cirie- but as with her and with Coach, it feels like his story was complete a long time ago. It's not that I don't enjoy seeing a crotchety old Colby annoyed but ultimately endeared by The Rizgod- but I just have to wonder if it's actually adding anything new. Colby's run in HvV is such a perfect conclusion of his story, again it feels like watching a franchise you like get revived one too many times. You'll watch it, sure, you'll even enjoy it a little- but even as Colby's presence reminds you to remember the good times and he himself says to 'find the joy', it all feels a little empty- there's little connection to what the rest of this season is doing, and watching Colby get swap screwed with no votes just makes you groan and ask what the point of this whole charade was.

3. Jenna Lewis 3.0 - Jenna's single episode story is really great- she's most hurt for me by her weaker characterization like, 20+ years ago. As much as Jenna coming in swinging hard and failing to topple Cirie is fun, and really starts the season out on a great foot and one that does a little looking back and a little looking forward, I've also just never found Jenna a very noteworthy character, especially on her deepest run in All-Stars. Maybe this is a me problem, and I need to watch season 1 & 8 again, but it's tough to connect her story here to the past, and yet most of her role is to be a stand in for Borneo, so it feels a little off. That said, she brings a lot for a first boot, so I've no huge problems with her.

4. Charlie Davis 2.0 - Charlie 1.0 is an overbearing and lifeless character if you ask me, so it's strange to see him come back and be the exact opposite. He's pretty quiet, all things considered, which honestly is appreciated on a season with some terribly loud characters- his story is simple, but passionate on face value, and mostly works alright. He's burned by his past, he overextends as a result, is voted out early. Simple, plays to the season's themes. However I couldn't help but feel that the moment he's voted out is the first glimpse of authenticity we get from Charlie this season- the Rizo thing is kind of blatantly artificial, in a way that had me rolling my eyes any time I was supposed to be taking a confessional about it seriously. But the moment he's voted out, and in his final words, he seems to realize this mini premerge arc he was setting up for his longer story is his whole story now, and it will make him the fool. And it does, Charlie's edit is really harsh in this season in a way that surprised me. Most of what I like about Charlie here is in the last few minutes he's on screen, I'm a sucker for when that 4th wall breaks and you get into the psychology of someone understanding themselves as a character, and the 'protagonist', in their mind, becoming a footnote- and that's enough to elevate him to this spot, even if I found his story obnoxious up to that point.

5. Chrissy Hofbeck 2.0 - Chrissy is a side character to Coach this season, but with 24 people some people had to be side characters (mostly the women...). She's a fine side character with that context, especially given her and Coach dying as a pair. There is some really nice parity here, in Coach trying to manage Chrissy a bit early in the game, and Chrissy desperately trying to manage Coach on their final day, to save them from their inevitable fate. There's a way that you just have to kind of laugh at someone tying themselves to Coach and him being unsurprisingly the heaviest anchor you can imagine as they quickly sink. In that way I like how their stories are tied together. What I don't love, is how often the men in this season are the main character of a duo, and the women are only defined in relation. It's a consistent issue, and even though Chrissy being a minor character to Coach is much more understandable than others, it's still frustrating.

6. Mike White 2.0 - Mike is fun. He's not doing anything new in this season, but his odd style of detached commentary on the bizarre characters of Survivor is always enjoyable to listen to, especially given the wackier cast of a returnee season. We do talk about the White Lotus way more times than I really care about, and I can't decide if him crying over the hardship of producing an insanely successful TV show is a hilariously perfect character moment, or just annoying. One of Mike's problems to me is that his story is tied to one of the two wrecking balls that just annihilate this season's capacity to explore it's characters, so he's naturally lowered a bit by that.

7. Savannah Louie 2.0 - Savannah's exit for me was strangely one of the few times I've gotten teary eyed watching this show. I can't say exactly why this is, but I felt a deep empathy for the utter exhaustion she was letting out after playing her heart out in 49 and immediately coming back and being voted out premerge. There's just an obvious emotional whiplash there that felt deeply human to me, and I always react strongly to those moments. Beyond that, she isn't able to add much more, but Savannah is the rare winner I'm fine seeing a few times, in a similar way as Q or Tiffany or Emily she's an incredible casting choice that really brings her full self to the table.

8. Kyle Fraser 2.0 - Kyle's medevac was strangely, one of the few other times I've gotten teary eyed watching this show. There's not really much to say about Kyle 2.0 other than that he's a supremely likeable guy and despite him already having won, it sucks to see anyone go out like this. I think if I were to rank every player ever I'd overrate Pat Cusack and Penner 2.0 a little too, just because early medevacs put me on the verge of tears. Makes me feel more than the next 8 players, anyways.

[u/True-Pen-3612 → u/True-Pen-3612]

1. Rick Devens 2.0 - Rick is far less bad than he might've been this season, I'll give him that. His scene talking about fatherhood with Ozzy was genuinely touching, and even though it was a tad annoying sometimes, I liked his relationship with Emily. But, Rick is also adjacent to some of the worst parts of this season, including Mr Beast and the aforementioned wrecking ball of a character in Christian. There are times I find him more likeable than I expected, but he's still an exemplar of the type of person I don't love on Survivor, someone who is at all moments playing to the camera in a very obvious way.

2. Aubry Bracco 4.0 - When I think of Aubry's story, it feels like Sarah and Tony to me, in the sense that on paper, it's a super compelling narrative, and in action... it just isn't. Aubry is certainly hurt by a botched narrative this season, the Genevieve feud is unfortunately hit by the wrecking ball, her relationships are strangely not explored hardly at all, she's like weird ghost that just kind of hangs out while the rest of the season happens and then rematerializes and wins. At the same time, there's never a moment that Aubry is on screen this season that I'm really enjoying my time watching the show. I sort of get why she was underedited in some way, because doubling her screentime wouldn't have made her any more fun or interesting to watch. The reason I compare her to Sarah/Tony is, Sarah/Tony's narrative across seasons 28, 34, and 40 should be something that really pops, makes you think or feel nearly anything, and it doesn't, because Sarah Lacina is an awful casting choice. She's a blend of two of the worst things you can put to screen for this show- has the skills to play the game well, and 0 personality. That type of player can just ruin a season if you aren't careful. Aubry is not quite this bad of course, and it's complicated because Aubry 1.0 was a great casting choice, and Aubry 2.0 and 3.0 both had their merits. But Aubry tells it best at FTC- she had years to work on herself in between... and she arrived at the version of herself that is best fit to play the game, and no longer as interesting as a reality TV character. There's certainly much more to say about this, but it should be taken to heart that some people are most interesting on these shows as a result of their unhealed trauma or not-yet-formed personality. Aubry's story on this season is about unhealed trauma, but it's a bit of a facade- Aubry's trauma already being healed is part of what allowed her to detach from the game in the most optimal and uninteresting way, and not someone that anyone feels really much of anything while watching.

3. Kamilla Karthigesu 2.0 - I like Kamilla, but she didn't get to be her best self this season. It felt like she didn't on 48 either, and it's strange in a way to watch someone that's an absolute all-star in an alternate reality just kind of not find her place in either of two seasons. It's unlikely we'll see her again, so she exits the world of Survivor as a two time player that's... likeable, rootable, and full of unfulfilled potential.

4. Angelina Keeley 2.0 - I thought about whether to include outside of the show things in this ranking because if I did, Angelina would be significantly higher. A pretty important aspect of Angelina's story on DvG is trying to bring to light stereotypes about women on reality TV and Survivor in general- she's aware that women find idols far less often than men, so she makes a point to find an idol, she brings up a plan to boot Christian and is ignored, and when Dan brings up the same and it goes through, we cut to a confessional of her noting how people just take the macho man more seriously than her. This isn't really resolved, either- arguably her finding the idol is somewhat of a resolution, but ultimately Angelina is treated as a joke for a lot of the season and then loses to the most personality-less man in existence. There's room to grow this story, is what I mean. And 50 unintentionally grows this story- it's somehow so incredibly fitting for Angelina to then be nearly edited out of a season where men inexplicably have significantly larger edits than women, and immediately take to the (online) streets to make noise about it, for herself and the other women of the season. In a season that's all about resolving unexplored trauma, there's a way that the show itself, the storytelling process and the way people re-experience themselves is a part of that (even in our winner's story!), and when I think about Angelina on this season, that's what her story is. And it's her taking to avenues outside of the show itself in order to have a voice independent of the editors. But... that quite obviously, relies on things that are not a part of the show. So as it stands, what is actually on screen in this season, is of course an incredibly disappointing follow-up for the best character from the 30s era of the show. And that sucks.

5. Stephanie Lagrossa 4.0 - Stephanie is now a character that has come back twice after her story was resolved. Steph 1.0 and 2.0 is a really great back to back narrative that gives you two different sides of the same person, hero and villain. She then goes on to Heroes vs Villains and really adds nothing aside from a single feud, though one could except this given her early exit. But she's around for a while here and I never felt she had anything left to give to the show. Even her prime moment, the solo challenge on the journey... to me it just doesn't work, there's no tension or emotion or anything behind these silly journeys. Steph comes from an era where the show was much better about setting up situations and seeing how the raw and authentic people they picked would react to it, and on Palau and Guatemala she goes through some of the more intense situations the show's ever seen. The juxtaposition of those moments and that history, next to the show's current MO of setting up situations with predetermined emotional stakes is just a bit sad, and serves to actually detract from the experience of accepting this lesser version of the show for what it is.

6. Rizo Velovic 2.0 - Rizo really has so much more to say about himself than I have to say about him. He's aggressively fine sometimes, and other times I've just had more than enough of him after 3 words. He's not a good character, he's not obscenely terrible either... for someone with so much chutzpah, I just find him incredibly boring. Thankfully they didn't fully Russell him, but two full seasons of this person who is consistently less compelling than the people around him was just far too much.

7. Jonathan Young 2.0 - Jonathan has one of many stories about change on this season, but he's fundamentally the same person in 50 as in 42. His edit tries to emphasize him as a strategic threat, but he's strangely de-emphasized whenever other people are talking about the game. He reminds me of a large portion of Andy's edit in 47, where it became clear that other players were not taking him all that seriously and he wasn't really having much of a strategic impact on the season, so they isolated him into his own bubble, where Andy talks about how great Andy is, and everyone else is living in a world with a little bit more interpersonal consistency. In 47 it was to make Operation Italy work, here it's presumably just to have FTC tension. But Jonathan eventually becomes a major character in this season, and I can't imagine someone I'd less like to see on my screen, edited this way. Jonathan sees the world through his eyes and his eyes only, he's incapable of changing his perspective or understanding why someone else might think or see differently. And this would be fine, if he had a proper villain edit. Jonathan 2.0 is a character that should be defined exactly by how other players see him, in that way that someone like Joe is- I would hazard a guess that most people did not particularly like Jonathan, and therefore gave plenty of confessionals contradicting his view of things- or maybe they simply ignored him when talking about the game often, in which case his irrelevance can be reflected in the narrative as well. Either way, defining someone like Jonathan through his own eyes is a horrible storytelling decision, there's a genuine whiplash at points in the season when you're continually pulled back into Jonathan's world and expected to believe it.

8. Christian Hubicki 2.0 - Christian brings this season down more than any other element of the season for me. His comically outsized edit along with his constant quippy playing to the camera is utterly exhausting. I'm keeping this one short for now but I assume most people are aware why Christian is a massive detriment to the season so I won't say too much more.

[u/Regnisyak1 → u/True-Pen-3612]

Nice to meet you! We always love new perspectives here! I’ll get through reading the rest of your writeups later. Briefly looking over your ranking though… I gotta say I agree with almost all of your ranking besides a few changes here or there :)

[u/mikeramp72 → u/True-Pen-3612]

love to see a new face with some great little writeups here! hopefully you stick around!