Survivor One World – what’s been called by many the most predictable, boring and dumbest season of Survivor yet – concluded Sunday night with more predictable, boring and dumb stuff.
And even though there’s really nothing to spoil to anyone who has watched any of this season, I’ll still write this recap in consecutive order in case some still wants to pretend there might have been some suspense in tonight’s Survivor 2012 finale.
At the start of the three-hour finale (two hours were pre-taped on the island and the third hour was the live crowning and reunion), we get the big flashback scenes. It was nice to be reminded that only two things happened all season: Colton was a bully and Kim steamrolled all the way to the end.
And like any competition show at this point, we get the who is aligned with whom and who is going home. And all the flip-flopping and all the pointless talk. Is Kim taking Christina and Alicia or is Kim taking Chelsea and Sabrina? Those were apparently the only two possible options. Which says even more about this season.
At the first immunity challenge, for a split second it looks like Christina might win. Then maybe Chelsea. And that’s a good thing because for at list 30 seconds or so, Kim plans to send Chelsea home that night because she thinks the guys would vote for her to win the $1 million. But like always, Kim wins. So we can all go back to sleep until the next challenge.
We get more of the OMG who are we voting for!? Me? you? Who!?!?!? talk and I want to eat poison. Is Kim keeping Chelsea or Alicia!?!?!?!?!?
At the first Tribal Council of the night, everyone is secure that they’re safe because Kim is actually playing them that well (or are they just stupid?). So it’s Alicia is gets a bit of a blindside and is sent to jury.
The next day the best thing that happens is that Christina “admits” that her strategy the whole time was to play the helpless, mindless, spineless hack. Oh really? Well then, well-played. But whatever. Who is really buying that. You have to kick in the actual game-play at sometime and she never does. Not even in a few minutes when she really should.
So Kim wins the next immunity challenge. Yeah, I know, I didn’t explain it. At this point is there any need? Kim wins again and she’s going to the final tribal council. I could pretend there was some suspense but there wasn’t.
OK, back to Christina and how she should have finally started playing the game. She asks Kim if she’s going home tonight because she doesn’t want any surprises. Kim says yes. And Christina says “OK.” and that’s that. No deals. No fighting. Nothing. She takes it and goes off to chase butterflies, I imagine.
At Tribal Council Jeff asks who is going home and Christina says it’s her. Jeff politely tells her she’s stupid for not fighting for it and she offers an explanation that explains nothing and they vote her out.
So the Survivor One World final three are Kim, Sabrina and Chelsea.
At the following Tribal Council, the complete jury returns and they have complete power in deciding who is going to win Survivor One World. Each of the final three get to make their opening statements.
Chelsea tries to grab a vote from Jonas and Tarzan by flattering them, but other than that I’m pretty sure she kind of just said “oh, just vote for Kim.” I might be wrong, but I sure didn’t hear her pleading much of her own case. Of course there was clearly some major editing, but I doubt she said that much more.
Kim says that she loves Survivor and that she’s proud of herself and that she hopes everyone forgives her for blindsiding them. She’s so confident she doesn’t even need to beg.
Sabrina delivers the best speech. She’s clearly the most well-spoken and even throws in the fact that she was laid off from her job before heading off to film Survivor. Good move. Maybe she will snatch this game away from Kim yet. (Yeah right).
The jury members get to ask their questions next. Everyone asks the typical canned questions. Kat makes it all about her, as does Alicia. Did you know that Kat and Kim played the EXACT same game? Hahahahaahhahahahahahahaha.
The jury votes. So who won Survivor 2012? We’ll have to cut to the live results show in New York City to find out. Jeff starts revealing the votes and it goes like this: One vote for Kim. One vote for Sabrina. Two votes for Kim. Two votes for Sabrina. Three, four, five votes for Kim. NO votes for Chelsea. Kim wins Survivor One World.
And we can all roll our eyes and say “Really!? Shocker!”
We move on to the Survivor One World live finale, and since he loves bullying, I’ll start with some good old-fashioned Colton bullying. He’s so chubby now! He was starting to look pretty good before his deadly constipation got him flown off the island on a stretcher. I did feel sorry for his poor mother. And I’m pretty sure no one is going to feel any less hate for Colton because his “I’m sorry” was pretty much the worst one I’ve ever heard/seen.
Not much else came out of the reunion, except that Kim won the Player of the Season prize of $100,000, which was voted on by the fans. So that means she won $1,100,000. Oh and I think Mike said “In all fairity.” So that’s worth making fun of.
So that’s the end of this season. Thank goodness. See you next season in the Philippines. Everyone cross your fingers Colton isn’t one of the lucky ones to return next season.
This was the worst of any of the seasons, if this kind of boredom keeps up, I don’t look for the show to “SURVIVE”
Worst Survivor yet.. Everyone made stupid decisions.. BORING!!
Yup. This season really sucked!!! Boring ! Predictable! Take a lesson from this season future Survivor players:
If you are percieved by the other players as the best strategist and most stategic player at the end odd s are that you will win the million no matter how many people you blindside. The angerand/or betrayal that an eliminated or blindsided player feels will subside by the time he or she is ready to vote the winner. This has been demonstrated time and time again over the course of this show.
So now here are the rest of my random thoughts about the finale:
Alicia should have been voted out way earlier for just sheer bad taste in baithing suits. I do not know who has more bad taste, the designer who created it or Alicia picking it off the rack at the store thinking it looks good on her. In any event,I am glad that she did not make it to the final three just for association with Flab Boy Cotlon.
Speaking of a waste of Fat: Colton has not changed a bit. Just as a Tiger can not change his stripes. He justified his hicktown redneck attitude by saying that the show got more boring after he was gone. No matter how boring the show was, I am glad he was not there. No doubt he will be back and I hope some people will stick it back to him. I am glad fate did it first but some good old human retribution would be more satisfying. I hope Bill’s comedy routine the night before really laid into fat boy Colton. I hope he used some of my material in one of my previous posts.
It was not until last night that it became obvious that Jonas was thinking with the wrong part of his body this season.
Although Kat has the right outlook on life, she is still as dumb as a rock.
Tarzan: WTF???? Wouldnt it have been easier to take your wife on a tropical vacation then go through all this? And even worse make us watch you for several months go through all of this? On the flip side, your relationship with your wife is truly incredible. Chelsea said it all and I agree 100 % with her.
If you look up the word “blah”-(rhyming with the word “ah” as when the doctor says to stick out your tongue and say “ah”.) you should find a picture of Christina. Christina is blah.
I’d like to see Troyzan next season!!!!
Kim, you deserved to win but: BORING!!! Although Tavern on The Green is looking for a new Matre’de if you keep that mustache.
And as always: Why didn’t anyone lose weight on this island this season???
and if you have made it this far:
Mr. Mark Burnett,
After such a boring season, is all you are going to give us is a change in location? REALLY?!?!?! Is that all you’ve got?? I different tropical island?? Ooooh- one with shark infested waters and dangerous snakes??? Thats quite a switch( intended sarcasm).
Hmmm, have we ever seen or even been worried about a survivor player’s run in with a deadly snake? Do they even go deep enough in water to encounter sharks that would consider them a meal? Now you are insulting the viewer’s intellegence. Please stop with the National Geographic stock footage and realize that your viewing audiance is a lot smarter than you give them credit for. I really want to like your show more than I do but you need something new and exciting to watch if you want to keep people interested in the “human animal”. I know what the show needs to reinvigorate it. Contact me and I will tell you.
Boring cast members, boring game play, just plain boring. Didn’t care if we forgot to DVR it it was so slow. Hope its better next time.
I just flipped the channel and watched Donald.
Worst survivor ever, there were more sheep on that island than New Zealand.
No more hairy armpits (Alicia), no more heavy facial hair (Kim), no more whining (Kat), no more blathering (Tarzan), and, hopefully, no more bullying (Colton). If Colton is on next season, I will not watch it. What a stupid move that would be for the decision makers at “Survivor” to let that snake in the grass come back.
Just glad this one is over! As I suspected, for lack of any more interesting material from what has got to be the worst season of casting ever, the producers had to commit a considerable amount of time to Colton who was gone after only a few episodes just to have something to fill the hour! Kim won (surprise), Colton reaffirmed to everyone that he’s a spoiled, self-centered, prejudiced brat (surprise), and Kat’s revelation that her health is OK now (surprise) makes me wonder if her dramatic speech at final tribal was really true or just her way of trying to explain her immature behavior during the season. Oh well, like I said, it’s over and done with so let’s hope next season is better. (Could it be worse??) Oh, yeah. . . and if you bring Colton back, you’ll have one less viewer as I won’t watch. . . . this from a Survivor “Junkie” who NEVER misses an episode. Please don’t make that mistake!
Good review Scott. This season had some real cringe worthy players, Alicia, Tarzan, Christina, Mike, Matt, Leif. All dumb and with no game. Although at least Alicia was playing, albeit in a self-delusional fog. Tarzan thought he was playing but his game was pretty lame. If you are not constantly plotting to be in the majority, you are not playing and as you said Scott, the jury’s anger usually does subside. In the end they all want to save face and be respected, so they don’t generally vote for undeserving players.
This is true. A terrible casting job by CBS. They stuck to their racial and age quotas, even cast for personality, but what they forgot all about was casting for actual players. As Troyzan said many of his co-horts were playing out of fear. Damn right.
IMO only two players brought real game and that was Kim and Colton and once Colton was out, Kim’s game needed only be about goat management. Troyzan brought game but he brought dumb game. By the time he started playing smart, and challenging those who needed challengeing ( the Kim crew) it was too late.
Great recap Branden. I think you expressed many of our frustrations especially regarding Chrisitina.
A few Season finale thoughts.
1. Kim played superbly, yet I wonder when did she have a change of heart and decide not to target Chelsea or Sabrina? It did appear that she was leaning towards sheperding a pair of goats to the final-3. But her final strategy it turns out was indeed brilliant. Better to put the two goats on the jury and plunk her obedient pals on either side of her, as a visual-aid reminder of her absolute omiscience and superiority.
2. Poor Sab and Chels. Ultimately neither had any game. They were rather, just more-privileged goats, who were allowed the ear of the Queen. Lesson to such future lap-dogs. You got to try and unseat the Queen before the jury deliberations. By then it is too late, but at least you get to sit near her at the re-union show.
2 votes for Sab and one was probably Lief’s ( Does that even count? He was in a fog the whole game) and a big goose-egg for Chelsea, although Jonas at least told her she was Hot-Chick Supremo ,but still didn’t vote for her :)
3. Christina. This chick had no game and we all knew it from Day One. In fact she hit such new levels of bland, that she was never a threat-to-go post-merge, as she was considered to be so utterly irrelevant, there was no point to voting her out. And when she did try to play briefly, by being Town Crier to her private convo with Chelsea, she just got laughed at by the others, and only managed to blather her way out of a nice time on the yacht.
As Branden said in the recap “Christina “admits” that her strategy the whole time was to play the helpless, mindless, spineless hack. Oh really? Well then, well-played.” Indeed
4. Alicia. Utterly self-delusional. But at least she played, albeit very badly. Kim had no competition. CBS needs to recruit not only players, but bold and smart players. And this is very imp0rtant, 25 seasons deep.I figure it’s harder now to find gutsy smart players who will compete to be in the majority, because most contestants are students of the game, who plot only to last week to week and hope for a break, as they have seen too many bold players get ousted, but at least those bold players gave themselves a chance. The scared players never win.
5. Troyzan. Too bad he was so dumb in the early going. He never should have tried to play with Kim. He should have spotted her crew as the group that needed toppling earlier than he did.
6. Mike . What a waste of space.
7. Tarzan. A quirky personality. Spiced things up, but his game was real lame. His so-called strategy was mostly hopeless. Once the guy alliance got stupid he chickened out and slinked along with Kim. He really should have asserted himself and worked with Troyzan and others to topple Kim’s crew.
8. Leif. Spent the whole game in the twi-light zone, trying to figure out who he sould be taking order from.
9. Kat, one of the all-time great blindsides even if it was Alicia and Chelsea that engineered it, with Kim’s reluctant blessing. But at least Kat eventually sucked it up and didn’t do a jury meltdown, poutfest. Kim got real lucky here too, as she didn’t have to take the heat for the blindside and easily got Kat’s vote.
10. Colton. This guy has serious game. He’ll be back in the Phillipines for sure.
Another thought. Many of us , me included, have moaned about the lack of effort of the bottom-5’s failure to try and upend the Kim Crew of 4 ( Kim, Chelsea, Sabrina and Kat) however the fly in the ointment might have been Alicia. Having listened to a lot of their comments on you-tube, it does appear that Alicia considered the alliance was 5 girls once they got to the merge. At 10 players, all Troyzan could muster maybe was a split and by 9 players I think Alicia was un-willing to play ball, which then could have caused them all to pursue their own desperate individual strategies ie Christina, Tarzan, Leif while Troyzan had to go it full-alone, knowing he was next to go.
Blame it on Alicia. She thought Kim had her back, so the other 5 were left to flounder.
Still it does appear the bottom 5 were playing from fear and that there was no big effort to bring around Alicia.
Could be a classic case of Alicia wanting to be with the cool kids rather than teaming with the misfits to upset the apple-cart and turn the game on its ear.
Kim really knew how to push Alicia’s buttons. I think Alicia thought that she and Kim were running the game, and none of the others were able to convince her otherwise.
I agree worst survivor ever. I didn’t even watch the reunion show as soon as Jeff started talking about Colton I turned the TV off, I won’t watch a season that he is on again. Could be the end of survivor for me and I’ve watched from the first season.
There’s a lot of whining about boredom here, but any time the cute girls last longer than the meatheads and worse (Colton), then I’m glued to the set.
It was really, really dumb to put it in the same time slot as Desperate Housewives.
KIM IS A SNAKE SHE SHOULD GET WITH RUSSELL
Worst season, even worse than season 5: Thailand. And I have complained enough about this season, so I have nothing to say on that front. All I do have to say is that a bad season like this should be expected within any reality show that has 24 seasons, its unfortunate it had to be season 24 because season 25 is all that is left in order to convince the network to pick up survivor again. And survivor needs to be renewed (I LOVE SURVIVOR!!!!!) I will watch the show as long as Jeff Probst is involved. So here’s hoping survivor makes it to season 30!!!!!
p.s. Phillipines is going to be awesome, after this big of a let down season Probst will make sure season 25 is up there with some of the best seasons.
im glad that kim won because she was a great competitor in the challenges aswell as in camplife, but overall she did play both sides of alliences, witch was the wrong thing todo, what i have learned from being a survivor fan and being on it 3 times, that if you have a strong allience of 5 you will go far in the game.
ozzy irealy like you as survivor , but your not the best speller.
I won’t be watching if boltin Colton is welcomed back, and I have watched every single episode since number one,. I’m sorry but he is just an unpleasant individual who makes me feel a bit queasy, good luck to you Colton