‘Survivor: Cambodia’ preview series: Who should return? (Part 4, women from middle seasons)
We’re now officially past the halfway point on our “Survivor: Cambodia” preview series, which is really all about going back through the past 30 seasons and tracking who we think are some players who have been overlooked in the search to find players to return. We’ve made this clear in some past articles, but one more time with the criteria! There is no criteria. That’s it. Easy enough? We just want to focus here on players from different eras of the game who have a narrative that is still to be played out. Maybe they have something to prove, they are disrespected by the fan community, or they got screwed over by something the first time around. Maybe they’re just so entertaining that we miss seeing them on TV. This time around, the focus is on the women from the middle era of the game (Vanuatu until Heroes vs. Villains).
It was tough narrowing this field down, because there were three women we considered putting on at some point: Ami Cusack, Corinne Kaplan, and Crystal Cox. Ultimately we just figured that we’d rather see more first-time returning players here, and Crystal, as entertaining as she is, may not be someone “Survivor” ever even considers bringing back.
Twila Tanner (Vanuatu) – We have no idea what happened to keep Twila from coming back on the show. We feel like she does know how to play the game, and she’s a huge personality to go along with it. Do you know just how rare it is hard to get a combination of those two things with this show? We still feel like Twila could come back today and bring us just about everything she brought us so many years ago, and as long as she made it to the merge, she’d be a threat to go really far.
Danni Boatright (Guatemala) – An underrated winner, and is right up there with Chris from Vanuatu and our recent champ Mike Holloway in being able to rally from behind, and then win over a jury in the end. We feel like Danni’s been criminally forgotten thanks to so many different winners that have come and gone sense, but she would still be able to come back and play well. Since she is so overlooked, we also don’t think there would be a huge target.
Michelle Yi (Fiji) – Michelle to us really feels like someone who should have been included in the “Survivor: Second Chance” voting, given just how screwed over she was when it comes to a tribal council twist that made it very hard for her to stick around in the game. Maybe she’s not the most aggressive personality out there, but she was fun! It gets hard after a while to see the same people out there complaining or fighting, and you need someone to liven things up a little bit.
Natalie Bolton (Fans vs. Favorites) – We really think Natalie could come back and win the game rather easily. She had a chance to play the game alongside two greats in Parvati and Cirie, made it really far with them, and proved that she has a sharp, strategic mind. She just didn’t have the right numbers at the end and couldn’t get something going. Unfortunately now, we feel like she was on a season so overshadowed by other players and so far removed from the present narrative that it’s hard to see her again.
Shannon “Shambo” Waters (Samoa) – Some backstory here. Samoa was the first season we did exit interviews for, and Shambo was one of the most memorable ones from that season. Unfortunately, she ultimately told us that even if she was paid over a million dollars to return to “Survivor,” she wouldn’t go back. Just like we included Colleen and Elisabeth on the last list, though, it would have been wrong to not include someone like Shambo here who, next to Russell Hantz, was really the only huge character from this season.
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