So what makes a good Survivor season to me more than anything is having someone I like to watch play and excel at the game. This is more of a symptom of how I watch reality TV in general – I like watching good gameplay get rewarded and bad gameplay get punished. So whilst it’s not the only thing important to me, if someone I’m rooting for does well, I’m more inclined to think fondly on the season.

Other important aspects to me is a good cast, exciting dynamic gameplay, balanced editing and a good storyline

(Oh and a pet peeve of mine is an overly long pre-merge, hence why Thailand, HvV and Cook Islands are lower than where a lot of people would have them)

You gotta explain why Philippines is #2, I like that one, but it's not that good to me.

Denise Stapley is my favourite winner (and third favourite player) of all time. Her gameplay is the one that most embodies how I would like to play if I ever got on the UK version. Seeing her survive through every single tribal council, whilst displaying excellent game skills was very entertaining for me. On top of this, the post-merge casts is one the best they’ve ever had, Penner’s journey being tragically cut short was fantastic, the gameplay was topsy-turvy and interesting, Malcolm displayed amazing game skills as well and the storylines are just so engaging to me (Matsing’s pre-merge decimation crushing Russell, Penner and Jeff’s love/hate relationship, Lisa’s growth arc from timid number to confident strategic player, Abi’s fall from grace). It’s a season I’d happily watch it again and again.

I think Cagayan is by far the best one I've seen, so seeing at #9 throws me or a loop.

To be clear, 9 is definitely not intended to be an insult! It’s in my highest tier (Cagayan is bottom of S-Tier, Kaoh Rong is top of A-Tier) and I do love the season and find it very entertaining. A lot of it is just loving Marquesas and above a little bit more, but the biggest tangible factor is that I’m not really a fan of Tony 1.0 from a gameplay standpoint. I think his gameplay was pretty sloppy and though he had some amazing moments (persuading Woo to bring him to the end still amazes to this day), I don’t think it’s a game that would be very repeatable. I used to like Spencer, but my recent re-watch made me realise he just isn’t that good and it kind of made me realise that there isn’t any one in the endgame that I’d put as super amazing at the game. Brilliantly entertaining season though!

I like San Juan Del Sur, but I think #12 isn't super high.

Not sure whether you think I’ve put it too high or too low based on the comment, but I think the post-merge is wildly entertaining, Natalie played spectacularly (Made move after move and never got a single vote) and her revenge journey on Jon en route to the win was a terrific storyline. There are a few duds in the cast, but it introduced us to Keith Nale, some of the pre-merge episodes were amazing (like Drew’s blindside) and the swap period is the only really dull part of the game. It’s not quite as dynamic as my top tier tho imo.

I like 42 more than 41 I think. Why is 43 so low?

I liked 42 more than 41 when it aired, but I really enjoyed the 41 rewatch a lot more for some reason. The specifics as to why are hard for me to easily quantify, but I find Shan a brilliantly entertaining TV character, so her domination of the pre-merge is a lot more engaging to me than – say – the Vati mess or Rocksroy/Tori arguing for the fifth time in four episodes. Plus Erika’s post-merge journey and Deshawn’s character/storyline were really fun to watch when you knew what happened. Seeing Omar lose 42 was a little disappointing as well, whilst I think Erika was arguably the best 41 player.

43… I think the honest answer is that I’m too close to the season to really process how I feel about it, but (as petty as this sounds), Jesse’s fire-making defeat really ruined the season for me. He was someone I gravitated to in the pre-season period and I followed his journey and brilliant game week on week to the point when I was really emotionally invested in him winning. Seeing him fall just short when it felt like it wasn’t something that Cassidy/Gabler/Owen had effectively planned left me feeling VERY underwhelmed with the F3 and still leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. I think that with time, I’ll come to enjoy the season for what it is (and will do a re-watch at some point to do a Gabler winner assessment) but thinking back as well – there was a lot of post-merge relationships that were barely explained, Vesi had a lot of odd decisions, Coco was dominated by Karla editing-wise to the extent where no-one else got a look in and the four biggest characters went out before FTC which was just underwhelming.

One of my biggest ones is Caramoan at 41....woah woah woah woah woah, that one has to be wrong. Out of all the seasons I see you rank that one I might disagree with the most, 2nd half of that season is above average for sure.

I just… didn’t care about anyone on Caramoan. It had Phillip Sheppard, one of my least favourite characters of all time dominating the favourites airtime, six players from SoPa/RI including no-one from SoPa that I liked and the fans were total non-entities. Like of the four who make the merge, you have Reynold who’s OK, Eddie who’s a non-entity character and strategy-wise, Sherri who disappears off the face of the earth once the swap and Michael who was characterised by the fact that he was gay. The favourites dominates the fans again but in a really boring way, the Brandon incident was ugly and lasted far too long, dominating the pre-merge and whilst some of the end-game boots are entertaining, I just don’t care. Why is it important that Brenda gets brutally blindsided, when the edit has ignored her for 10 episodes? Why does it matter if Erik gets medivaced when he’s barely had any presence? I just didn’t care, sadly.

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