‘Survivor: Kaoh Rong’ finale review: Was Aubry Bracco, Michele Fitzgerald, or Tai Trang the winner?
“Survivor: Kaoh Rong” kicked off its finale with just four people … and it ended with three. What we had in between was probably one of the slower-paced finales we’ve ever seen. We wouldn’t call it boring, but there were certainly better ones for many different reasons.
The biggest thing that this finale did that was a little odd was not give a really good reason why there needed to be a tie vote at the final four. Was Cydney a bigger threat than Aubry? We really do not think so, which is why this was somewhat of an odd choice. It did give us a fire-making challenge, which was really not as intense as the show probably wanted us to think that it was because of the fact that Cydney could not build a fire to save her life. Seeing her exit was incredibly sad, mostly because she played an AWESOME game. She probably just had one little social slip-up near the end of not corralling Tai when she needed to.
From here, we had the big TWIST as advertised: In the final reward challenge, Michele won the chance to eliminate a juror, and she chose Neal. Smart move? Probably, given how nasty he was to her going out the door as he also became probably the game’s first bitter former juror. This final three still looked from the outside like a blowout, given that Aubry was just a much more evident player than the other two.
Yet, there’s something magnificent about Tai bringing Mark the Chicken along to the final tribal council, really for no reason since it’s not like the chicken is coming along with him.
The jury – Coming into this, we were very confident that Aubry was winning this, and probably not close. After the jury all asked their questions, we still felt like this was likely. She had votes coming her way from seemingly Joe and Debbie, and while Michele may have had the likes of Julia and Scot, who knew if that was really the case?
Ultimately, Michele pulled if off! As a matter of fact, Aubry only received two votes, which to us may be one of the biggest surprises we’ve seen. Michele was really good in these final days, but personally, we probably would’ve voted Aubry just on the basis of her moves. Finale Grade: B- (mostly because of the dragging).
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