I personally don't why this season isn't as generally viewed as positively I liked it. This was the first season I've watched in full since Caramoan (4 years!!) and I really enjoyed this season and all the blindsides and flip flops and good game play (even though I didn't know a lot of the "game changers" from seasons 27-33, plus the fact that many of my faves went early) and it brought me back into a full-fledged survivor fan, and I'm probably gonna binge watch several seasons this summer.
So it brings me to the question as why y'all didn't like this season as much as I did?
Comments
I agree I think people are far more down on it than it should be
It had some truly iconic moments and that premerge was beautiful
even the merge wasn't extremely straightforward gameplay wise, my biggest gripe personally is the editing; early strong edit combined with how rough they made him look in the finale showed brad making it to the end initially, then you could tell he was getting 2nd/3rd, Troy's INV edit showed he would be mostly inconsequential to the results and he'd probably get 3rd/4th, Aubrey's INV edit showed the same as Troyzan, Andrea went from INV most premerge to a spike right at merge, Sarah got an obvious winner edit imo
it had its moments but idk just the general shift in "big moves!!!!!! if you dont make moves you dont deserve to win!!!!" makes seasons very bland to me so lately survivor in general has been meh
- No story arcs like whatsoever. There was no cohesive story, the post merge was just a series of unrelated vote-offs. When someoen voted off serves no story role, their vote off has zero effect. Take like Kaoh Rong for example. Peter Baggenstos was a huge douche and talked down to his fellow tribemates and barely scraped by in the Liz voteoff, and post swap was arrogant and cock to all's hell. This makes his downfall when Aubry flips on him very fun and memorable. We saw none of these buildups post merge.
-TERRIBLE boot order. Most of the big names we were excited to watch got out early, and with uneven casting (half legends half no-names), we're left with a mege full of people no one really wanted to watch in the first place and left with a sour "what could have been" taste in our mouths
-the horrendous editing. a MAJORITY of the post merge boots we didnt even see reasoning for. It was always "Hey lest vote out person A, or maybe person B" and then person C would get the boot without their name even coming up. When you make Aubry Bracco invisible, you fucked up
and a lot more. this season is utter garbage and im so glad its over
I also think it's who is narrating the game that plays a lot into it.
For example, Aubrey is a fantastic narrator from what we saw in Kaoh Rong, however, since she wasn't anywhere near in control, we didn't see too much of her. While we did see a bit of Cirie, we didn't get as much as we should have because, well, nothing she did helped the F3 get there.
Sarah being the winner forced editors to set her up via narration, and while I think she played a great game, she isn't the most exciting to watch, which makes it difficult when we see quite a bit of the story from her perspective, as also happened with Sierra, who was in control for a bit, so we had to watch from her point of view.
As exciting as it would have been to see contestants like Tony, Sandra, Cirie, Varner, or Aubrey be the ones who took us on this journey, because they left early or overall didn't have much of an impact on the final result, we were neglected that opportunity. jakehou97
Cirie's unfair boot and Aubry's lack of any edit hurts the season greatly. Sarah played a great game but no lie her personality is lowkey boring, but she deserved it over Troy/Brad
It had some truly iconic moments and that premerge was beautiful
even the merge wasn't extremely straightforward gameplay wise, my biggest gripe personally is the editing; early strong edit combined with how rough they made him look in the finale showed brad making it to the end initially, then you could tell he was getting 2nd/3rd, Troy's INV edit showed he would be mostly inconsequential to the results and he'd probably get 3rd/4th, Aubrey's INV edit showed the same as Troyzan, Andrea went from INV most premerge to a spike right at merge, Sarah got an obvious winner edit imo