‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ top 12 rankings: It’s Zeke’s world and we’re all just living in it
Here’s one of the fun things that is out there in regards to “Survivor” — how much of a ripple effect one challenge win, or one twist in the game, could have on the larger season. For example, had the Millennial tribe went to one more Tribal Council before the swap, there was a reasonably good chance Zeke would be voted out. Now, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which he is until we at least get to around the top 7 and everyone realizes what a threat he is.
We don’t want to give away too much of our Zeke praise in an introduction — what’s the point of reading the rest of the article then? — but we’re going to be getting to that later on. Remember, our rankings are subjective (no spoilers!), and we’re basing these off of strategy, social game, challenge ability, edit, and whether or not you’re somebody with a reasonably good chance to win in the end.
12. Taylor Lee Stocker (last week: 13) – Taylor is that imperfect combination of being an enormous threat, a terrible social player, and a guy who’ll get almost no votes in the end and could be carried there as a result. Still, we think that’s unlikely. While we’re not sure we see the nine players working against Taylor, Will, and Jay all putting their votes on Taylor as the biggest threat, we could easily see him being voted out in a vote-split where Jay, who clearly knows he’s in trouble now, plays the immunity idol on himself.
11. Will Wahl (10) – We’re considering edit strongly with this ranking. We don’t know Will’s story, we don’t know his social game, and we’ve barely gotten his take on anything other than how badly he needed to win this past challenge. We’re just not getting a story here of someone destined to win this game.
10. Sunday Burquest (9) – By the same token, we have our other invisible castaway in Sunday. The difference between her and Will, though, is that we can easily see her lasting many more weeks in this game; other than making it to the end with a Taylor and hoping that it’s a final two for whatever reason, though, we have a hard time envisioning that she could win.
9. Bret LaBelle (12) – It’s probably the same for Bret just because of airtime, but we do actually think that he’s a threat to get some votes if he makes it to the end just he seems to have some semblance of game. He’s probably too affable of a guy for his own good, though, so he’s the sort of Gen X number we see targeted for being a social threat, and also a safe vote who probably doesn’t have an immunity idol.
8. Justin “Jay” Starrett (11) – It may seem somewhat counter-intuitive to give Jay a higher ranking since we’ve seen further validation now that the move he made to get rid of Michaela was probably a terrible one for his long-term prospects this season. The one reason we’ve got him placed here is simply because he’s now aware of the environment around him. It’s going to be a lot harder to blindside him with an idol in his pocket, so he’s probably got at least one more week out there. We do think that his road to the final three is so hard now that if he does make it there, he’d win fairly easily.
7. Adam Klein (2) – He does still have an immunity idol, and with that, he is still a threat to last a while if he can use it correctly. Adam’s weaknesses were unfortunately exposed on this past episode in that he wants to know precisely what’s going on with every alliance, and he’s not exactly transparent about it. You want to be able to play the middle, but a key foundation in doing that is building the strong social relationships. It feels like Adam is thinking about game first and the people second, and you have to at least present the illusion that it’s the other way around.
6. Ken McNickle (6) – In terms of game position, Ken’s in a fairly good spot with many different allies on his side, and we do think he would have a decent argument at the end. Our concern is that he doesn’t seem to have the best Millennial bonds. Taylor hates the move against Figgy, and Adam doesn’t seem particularly loyal to anyone. He’s a perfectly-good blindside target for people who consider him a threat.
5. Jessica Lewis (7) – Jessica’s been virtually MIA ever since the Figgy vote, but given that she’s well-protected and in the numbers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. She may be able to make that final five where she can use that Legacy Advantage. We don’t think the advantage itself would be huge, but her having it there can show that she’s been playing the game this whole time. That’s certainly useful for jury votes.
4. Hannah Shapiro (8) – This past episode gave us the Hannah we’ve been wanting all season, the smart, superficially-unassuming person who can work the strategic game through some of her relationships. It’s a little early to say that this is the person she’ll be moving forward other than the person constantly freaking out, but time will tell.
3. Chris Hammons (4) – Chris survived being the merge boot, which is very important since that’s a spot where he easily could’ve went out. We are still concerned for him moving forward because he’s not the sort of player anyone will forget about. Yet, there is a silver lining with Chris: He’s got a very good social game and has people like Zeke and Bret looking after him who have very different social bonds between the two of them. As of right now, he’s in a tremendous spot.
2. David Wright (5) – Our concern entering the merge was that David would panic or come across as anxious. Luckily, he was incredibly level-headed. He won’t be thought of as a threat for a while, and he does have an immunity idol at his disposal for now. There’s really not much David is doing that is wrong.
1. Zeke Smith (1) – Yet, it’s better to be doing something right than not doing anything wrong, and Zeke is either consciously or unconsciously doing something that we love: Being the player people approach versus the one doing the approaching. He may not have an idol, but he has other people telling him about the idol. He has other people approaching him with alliances. His social game is so good that everyone wants to be around him, and being that likable (maybe it’s the mustache) will allow people to not think about what an obvious threat you are at the end of the game before it’s too late. If we’d compare Zeke to anyone right now, it’d be Cochran in “Survivor: Caramoan.” He’s not necessarily making a number of huge moves, but he’s allowing himself to be a broker of information and keeping bonds tight while other people get more blood on their hands.
Who do you think is sitting pretty right now in the top 12? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to click here to check out our winners / losers from this past episode of the show. (Photo: CBS.)