‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’: Putting a cap on the season, John Cochran’s win
We’ve taken a few days since the finale of “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” before writing our take on the season in review, and where it stands in comparison to some others, for one basic reason: We did not want to be writing this while coming across as impulsive, or freaking out over something awesome / awful that had literally just happened. Take, for instance, our reaction to Topaz’s vote scandal on “Big Brother Canada,” where we complained for about ten minutes that the show would never recover from that.
We’ve updated our list of season / winner rankings with this season included, and we wanted to share some insight into what we’ve done.
When it comes to the season … “Caramoan” is the 19th best ever, just one ahead of “South Pacific” and one behind “Samoa.” If we were looking at the post-merge game specifically, then this would easily be in the top 10. There were great moments (Andrea’s blindside, the three amigos going crazy), some good alliance-making skills, and it felt very much focused on game-play more so than “let’s watch people be crazy.” Unfortunately, the pre-merge was ruined by that. Shamar and Brandon wasted our time with stories that didn’t matter, and save for Sherri, Michael, Matt, and Allie, we don’t know how many of the fans were genuinely actual fans of the show. (We don’t know if Eddie even knew what “Survivor” was during the season.)
There were just so many elements at this point in the game that caused things to slow down more than watching a few unnamed people in immunity challenges, whether it be a bad tribal swap, one tribe dominating the other, and seeing so much of Stealth R Us that Brenda may have disappeared from the show. Add to this an awful, gimmicky reunion show that we do consider to be a part of the season, and this is why the number is so low.
When it comes to John Cochran as the winner … We have him at #16, right behind Sophie Clarke of “South Pacific.” Both played very similar games in our mind, so it didn’t seem right to separate them. Both were part of large alliances from the start of the game, and they relied on them, never really being in any danger at all until around the final five. Both were possibility even in positions where they would have gone home had they not have won final individual immunity, with Sophie getting the edge because she had to beat Ozzy.
While we would rank Cochran as one of our five favorite winners ever, we have to draw the line and recognize that the man was pretty lucky at times to A) be on a dominate tribe early on, B) be on a swapped tribe built up of his allies, and C) have so many huge threats still around after the merge.
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Do you agree with us? Disagree? Want to vote us out of writing forever? We don’t care, but we want to hear from you. Meanwhile, we have a list of things that should change for “Survivor: Blood vs. Water” over at the link here.
Photo: CBS