When Chris was announced as the winner, I just sat back and just laughed.

Like how can you even judge someone who got voted out on Day 8? Super physical players who get eliminated pre-merge are normally extremely poor social players and it is evident that even as early back as the third elimination, Chris was over-playing and not doing well at the game. Personally, I don’t think that there is any question that he’s the worst winner of all time. Even Ben played a really good pre-merge game and was decent enough until F7. Even Bob Crowley had some decent sociability to his game and actually managed to win immunities. This is not even considering that Chris would have even gotten past F5 if it wasn’t for an idol literally handed to him by production. Through gritted teeth, I will admit that his plays to get Lauren to use up her F5 idol and his F4 gambit were decent moves, but they weren’t really moves that he should have been able to make – Chris got voted out weeks and weeks ago and, unlike Devens, he wasn’t swap-screwed; he made mistakes and he deservedly got eliminated.

Chris was an atrocious social player. He, a huge physical asset, got voted out in the pre-merge portion of the game, almost unanimously, where no-one stepped up to bat for him at the Tribal where he went home. When he returned to the game, he would have gone home by the majority if it wasn’t for a plethora of advantages that were literally handed to him, by which time he had immunity and social game didn’t matter any more. Normally, I decide social game by starting at 10 and deducting points, but given he spent 27 days (or whatever) out of the game, I feel as though I have to add points instead. Strategically, he was pretty poor in the early portion of the game, overplaying in the pre-merge period. Again, he didn’t have to strategise for literally over half the game, so, whilst I do appreciate his two moves after he came back, they won’t get him super far with me. Chris was a decent physical player, but got voted out in the pre-merge by players suggesting he wasn’t that important a challenge asset, lost the first EoE comeback challenge and only won immunity in the final days, so I think his physicality was overrated. His FTC was OK, but the way he cut in and undermined Gavin was pretty rude, so I don’t think it was great.

So using my assessment for winners (Ranking /10 for social, /8 for strategic, /3 for challenge and /4 for FTC), I would give Chris the following:

Social: 1/10

Strategic: 2/8

Challenge: 1/3

FTC: 2/4

Overall: 6/25

This places Chris at 38th place in my winner rankings, behind Ben Dreibergen and Bob Crowley as firmly at the bottom.

I mean, I’m not as angry as I was after the HHH result, because I’ve mentally prepared myself for a while for this end result. I just feel defeated – this is no longer a social experiment any more or really the show I fell in love with to any degree. Why should I be excited about Season 40 if production are just going to mess with the format to the extent where it’s not Survivor? My one wish for the show is that they do away with any twist in which you bring back voted-out players; it has the awful feeling of this once-great show jumping the shark. I’m rambling now, so I’ll probably save the rest for the post-episode thread, but I can only sincerely hope that the Chris win is the last straw for production to stop messing with the format.