‘Survivor: Game Changers’: The biggest casting snubs
Yesterday, the official cast was announced for “Survivor: Game Changers,” and it’s a pretty good group! There are a number of great inclusions on the season, and not too many reasons to complain. We don’t want to spend any time talking about who shouldn’t have been cast, though — that just seems mean, and obviously casting saw something in all of these people in order to justify them being out there.
Instead, the goal of this article is to bring you the biggest game-changers who were, in our mind, unfairly excluded from the season. Our criteria in determining these was pretty simple — these people had to have made at least one or two game-changing moves on their season, and be a reasonably interesting character to boot. We didn’t really want to get too meta here and think about whether or not these people would return if asked, mostly because we’re not mind-readers and you also have to remember that this season filmed this past summer. Who knows what they would’ve said then?
Cydney Gillon (Kaoh Rong) – In the midst of all of the memorable people being brought back from this season, why not Cydney? Her confessionals were gold, and she was a strong physical and strategic player most of the game. There are probably two things that were working against her — her own career (she is a professional bodybuilder, after all), and the fact that you already have Aubry, Tai, Debbie, and Caleb coming back from this season.
Jonny Fairplay (“Pearl Islands,” “Fans vs. Favorites”) – There was a time when we were very much against the guy ever coming back after effectively quitting in “Fans vs. Favorites.” In retrospect, however, the full story seems to be that he was dealing with a unbearable amount of tooth pain, and that makes it almost impossible to function out there. Fairplay is someone who changed not just “Survivor,” but also reality TV. Plus, the idea of him and Sandra on the same season again is DELICIOUS.
Natalie Anderson (“San Juan del Sur”) – Her move to get rid of Baylor at the final five was the stuff of legend, and she hustled her butt off in a way that only a few other people have. Really, Tony Vlachos is one of the few other people we can even put in this camp. You can’t argue that the show is against casting people with reality TV history; they just brought back Caleb!
Yul Kown (“Cook Islands”) – He may another person who simply has no interest in coming back, but there’s no doubt that he changed the game in terms of how to use the hidden immunity idol as leverage. He may not have been an enormous character all of the time, but he’s a strategy legend and these are the sort of people who should be brought back for another go of things.
Kim Spradlin (“One World”) – She’s got a very young family, so there’s a very clear reason why she wouldn’t be able to come back. We still wanted to include her on this list simply because she’s 1) the greatest winner of all time in our books and 2) she mastered the dominant alliance even more so than Boston Rob did during “Redemption Island.”
Mike Holloway (“Worlds Apart”) – Who is a bigger game-changer than a guy who basically found a way to keep himself immune for almost the entire post-merge game? If you’re going to bring back people like Ozzy who were famous for their challenge prowess, Mike’s someone who did everything that he did plus also win the game.
There are many other people from past seasons we still do want to see back, whether it be Shane Powers, Sabrina Thompson, Kenny Hoang, Jenna Morasca, Twila Tanner, Earl Cole, John Carroll, Michael Snow, Adam Klein, Natalie Bolton, Sophie Clarke, and many more that we’re not even remembering off the top of our head. CBS still has a HUGE pool of potential people to choose from, so we hope that some of these people get another shot down the line.
For now, who are some of your biggest snubs for this particular season? Share below! Also, head over here in the event you are interested in getting some further news right now when it comes to the show. (Photo: CBS.)