Rank the Seasons!

[BottleItUp]

Posting this in here because no one really looks in the general Survivor section...

Here's my rank:

---Free of Flaws---
1. Amazon
2. Gabon
3. Borneo
4. China
5. Pearl Islands
6. Heroes vs. Villains
7. Palau

---Still Fantastic---
8. Africa
9. Philippines
10. Marquesas
11. Micronesia
12. Nicaragua

---Solid Survivor---
13. Australian Outback
14. Panama
15. Tocantins
16. Vanuatu
17. Guatemala

---Flops---
18. One World
19. Thailand
20. Samoa
21. South Pacific
22. Fiji
23. All-Stars
24. Cook Islands

---Under Investigation by the UN for Crimes Against Humanity---
25. Redemption Island


Anything between Africa and Guatemala is relatively interchangeable for me though tbh.

[ReaLiTyTVfan]

gurr u shouldcontinue ur survivor ranking~

[Jigsawce]

---Free of Flaws---
1. Amazon
2. Gabon
3. Borneo
4. China
5. Pearl Islands
6. Heroes vs. Villains
7. Palau

Agree with this though I'd replace Borneo with Micronesia~
Guatemala and Tocantins were also amazing. Cook Islands would've been up there too had it not been for the vital HII flaw.

[ReaLiTyTVfan]

Here's my rank:

---Flawdesses---
1. Gabon
2. China
3. Micronesia
4. Amazon
5. Borneo
6. Palau
7. Heroes vs Villains

---Good Ones---
8. Vanuatu
9. Philippines
10. Nicaragua
11. Panama

---OK---
12. Marquesas
13. Pearl Islands
14. Tocantins
15. Africa
16. Australian Outback
17. Guatemala

---Failures--
18. One World
19. Samoa
20. Cook Islands
21. Thailand
22. All-Stars
23. Fiji

---Sh!tty Gang--
24. South Pacific
25. Redemption Island

[Thunderfall]

Time for me to rank this and stuff~

~Perfection~

1. Pearl Islands
2. China
3. Vanuatu
4. Gabon

~Great~

5. Amazon
6. Micronesia
7. Guatemala
8. Nicaragua
9. Panama
10. Borneo
11. Philippines

~Still pretty good~

12. Marquesas
13. Heroes vs Villains
14. Australia
15. Africa

~Meh~

16. Tocantins
17. Fiji
18. Palau (unpopular opinion in da house)

~Bad~

19. One World
20. South Pacific
21. Russell Hantz feat. some girl named Natalie (some people call it Samoa, dunno why)
22. Thailand

~Gag me with a spoon~

23. All Stars
24. Cook Islands
25. Getting arrested in drag and sent to jail in rural Texas
26. Redemption Island

[rawr_imadino]

TBH, this is a rough ranking so I just separated them by tiers. Some seasons are pretty even in how much I enjoyed or loathed them.

---Top Tier (seasons I could rewatch again and again)---
Pearl Islands
Amazon
Borneo
Philippines
China
Tocantins
Gabon
Heroes vs Villains
Micronesia

---Middle Tier (seasons I enjoyed but there's still something missing)---
Panama
Gautemala
Vanuatu
Marquesas
One World
Australian Outback
Nicaragua
Africa
Palau

---Lower Tier (seasons that take a lot of effor to rewatch but aren't unbearable)---
Thailand
Fiji
Cook Islands
Samoa

---Bottom Tier (a completely worthless season that should have never happened)---
All Stars

---I just can't even consider these real seasons because of that awful twist---
South Pacific
Redemption Island

[bobbobachoo1]

1. Pearl Islands
2. Micronesia
3. China
4. Heroes vs. Villains
5. Amazon
6. Philippines
7. Panama
8. Nicaragua
9. Borneo
10. Vanuatu
11. Gabon
12. Marquesas
13. Palau
14. Australia
15. Guatemala
16. Africa
17. Samoa
18. Tocantins
19. All Stars
20. Caramoan (unless the last two episodes are perfection)
21. One World
22. Fiji
23. Cook Islands
24. South Pacific
25. Thailand
26. Redemption Island

[LMS2]

Can I just ask what was so bad about RI? Because I liked it

[GuruBishisama]

Can I just ask what was so bad about RI? Because I liked it

Can I flip the question and ask why you did like it? I'm genuinely curious.

For me (and I'm sure for many other fans, though I won't presume to speak for them), there were a number of issues with Redemption Island, starting with the titular twist. The rule of Survivor has always been that when your fire is gone, so are you. To navigate the game, you must be able to avoid the vote, point blank. Redemption Island offers people an opportunity to succeed at the game without really playing it. For example, had Matt come back following the final duel and then made it somehow to the top three, he would have been to exactly five tribal councils the entire game and been voted out in two of them. He would have had a massive advantage going into the jury phase because not only did he not vote out the majority of the jurors, he wasn't even eligible to vote them out. He literally did not have to play the social game, and if the jury was unhappy enough with the other two finalists, which they probably would have been, they would have rewarded Matt, who didn't get blood on his hands solely by virtue of getting voted out. Redemption Island shifts the focus of the game from the social and strategic game to a game that is based purely on challenge success. The same thing almost happened with Ozzy in the next season, which I think helps to reinforce this point. For me, the whole premise of Redemption Island goes against what the game of Survivor is at it's core.

Beyond that, it was frustrating that the whole season was used as a framing device for two characters that were becoming increasingly more and more pimped out to the viewers, and I think the season is largely responsible for issuing in an IMO weaker modern era of Survivor where returnees are par course. Rather than bringing in a new cast and focusing on the stories that they could bring and develop, the whole season was dedicated to being the ultimate Rob vs Russell showdown, and like... again, that's not Survivor. It pulls you out of the mythos and turns 90% of the cast into one dimensional secondary characters and/or living props. As the helicopter flew in before Rob and Russell appeared, Jeff said that this was the story of these new castaways, and it was far from their story at all. The show managed to make it 21 seasons using the twist of returning players very sparingly, and all they really serve to do when mixed in with newbies is suck screentime away from them. If I wanted to see the same 20 douches play the same game over and over and over and over again I'd watch MTV's The Challenge.

To further elaborate, the characters who were focused on of the newbies were dealt with very poorly. Zapatera was largely undercharacterized--perhaps as punishment from editors for depriving the season of it's theme by ousting Russell? I'm not sure. But the group that made the merge were largely interchangeable beyond vague surface characteristics. The same was true for Ometepe, aka Rob's Zombie's, who the editors made next to no effort to differentiate from one another, save for the times when they would lamely half-attempt to have Andrea come off as mildly competent winner's doubt for Rob. The two best developed women on Ometepe were removed immediately for threatening Rob, and the two best developed men, barring Rob, were the aformentioned Matt (if you can call his one dimensions "Redemption Island has brought me closer to God" plot developed) and Phillip Shepard. And while I personally found Phillip to often be uproariously funny, he was literally the only mildly funny and/or interesting character in the season, and no castaway is interesting enough to carry the weight of a whole season on their shoulders. In smaller doses, Phillip could have been brilliant--Tocantins Coach was hilarious because there was enough going on around him so that the whole show wasn't forced to focus on him. For Phillip, the only other thing going on was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest problem with the season...

BOSTON ROB. And overall, as a person, I do like Boston Rob a lot. But each of his individual seasons have to be taken differently. He was a breakout character in Marquesas, he was brilliant in HvV, and while he was hard to swallow in All-Stars, the events of the season were vital in the overall structure of Survivor Lore and in setting up his character for HvV.

Redemption Island felt like it was a seasonal homage to Boston Rob, who both Jeff Probst and Mark Burnett have gone on record as saying is their favorite castaway of all time. And they're both good personal friends with him at this point, why wouldn't they say that? I don't know how much truth there is to the rumor that Ometepe was crafted so that either Rob or Russell could ~finally~ win, but the point is even if they weren't crafted that way, Rob still had a massive advantage going into the game. Playing Survivor for the 4th time against newbies isn't even interesting, it's a curb stomp. It's like watching an NBA player take on the middle school basketball team at a private school in suburban Ohio. No matter how well Rob played, it just wasn't fun to watch, because there wasn't an even playing field. And I don't fault the players for playing in the way that they choose to--it's their shot at a million dollars, so they need to make the moves they feel are best for themselves and I respect that, but in my opinion, the way that the castaways of RI chose to play did not make for compelling television.

RI was saddled with multiple twists that sucked the essence of Survivor out of the season, and then we got to watch 17 players bumble around blandly for 39 days while the edit forced the supposed splendor of Boston Rob down our throats harder than they've ever done with any castaway ever before. Jeff Probst nearly orgasming as Boston Rob is inches from winning immunity and shouting "BOSTON ROB IS LITERALLY CARRYING HIS FAMILY ON HIS BACK!!!!!" is one of the worst moments in all of Survivor history, if not the worst, and I would have no problems calling Redemption Island one of the worst seasons of reality tv ever made if only because of how shameful and embarrassing it is to everybody involved.

[Thomnom]

It's baffling how anyone could like Redemption Island

--Love--
1. Pearl Islands
2. China
3. Amazon
4. Heroes vs Villains
5. Gabon
6. Micronesia
7. Philippines

--Like--
8. Australian Outback
9. Nicaragua
10. Tocantins
11. Panama

--Meh--
12. Guatemala
13. One World
14. Cook Islands

--Dislike--
15. Samoa

--Hate--
16. South Pacific
17. Redemption Island

--Not watched--
~ Borneo
~ Africa
~ Marquesas
~ Thailand
~ All Stars
~ Vanuatu
~ Palau
~ Fiji

Right now, Caramoan is heading for ~Meh~ territory. We'll see if these final two episodes change anything.

[enfalala]

I didn't get to watch every seasons, so I just rank those that I've seen.

Perfection
1. Gabon (Crystal love)
2. China (Peih-Gee love)
3. Philippines (Jonathan love)

Good
4. Pearl Island
5. Heroes vs. Villains

Okay
6. Cook Island - this season is kind of lame at some point but I hated Candice and seeing her keep going to exile island was such a joy.
7. Exile Island - lame pagonging and predictable, but hey, the dominated tribe was interesting to see.
8. Micronesia - Awesome season but horrible finalists.

Uh...
9. Guatemala
10. Tocantins
11. Samoa
13. South Pacific

Bad
14. One World - Excellent and unpredictable pre-merge. Turned out to be complete opposite post-merge, this is the only season that nobody need a spoiler to tell who is going home.
15. Redemption Island - At least, One World still has a good pre-merge, RI has nothing.


Caramoan should be rank around the Okay and Uh...

[LalaDreams]

Oh, I'm seeing One World now and I'm loving it