Survivor Season 10 - 2005

One of my favorites so far, for location, challenges, game mechanics, and personalities. First, it satisfied my curiosity for a rules-based edge case: what happens if a tribe loses every immunity challenge?

It turns out that they get whittled down to 1. Instead of a vote at 2, there’s a fire building challenge. Then the remaining member is folded into the other tribe, in lieu of a merge. The tribe is said to have been “defeated”. Interesting!

The remaining member was Steph, who became the Main Character midseason and I was rooting for her deeply to step into a fractious receiving tribe and connive her way to victory. Alas, power players immediately realized how much of a narrative threat she posed and ejected her immediately, but not before someone got tired and quit to keep her in one more round.

Stoic firefighter Tom is the kind of guy you need to kick out so he doesn’t win the whole thing, but they didn’t so he won the whole thing. And killed a shark with a machete. Tom ally Ian was also a novelty: not a villain per se, but just a someone who is bad at playing Survivor who made it to the endgame. His inept lying and bad alliance maintenance came back to haunt him every episode, and even though he redeemed his honor by throwing a challenge after 12 hours to sacrifice his chances in the game, why did you have to wait 12 hours to do that, man?