Survivor Season 18 - 2009

At the beginning of my Survivor journey, when I no longer could bear waiting a week between episodes and my jaw unhinged to the floor, ready to consume more content, Jesse told me to watch Tocantins. I just rewatched it and it is undoubtedly a classic season. There’s no tribe switching, no idol plays at all, and most of the cast is pretty forgettable. But you have an all-time face and an all-time heel in JT and Coach.

JT, the Alabama cattle farmer, has maxed out his charisma. He is warm, charming, and fights hard in challenges. When his tribe hits the merge they are down 6-4, and then are reduced further to 3 after a medevac. Against what should be insurmountable odds, JT, his right hand man and skinny nerd Stephen, and singer/NFL wife Taj form an alliance so strong that they take control of the game and pulverize the opposing tribe.

This is possible because the other tribe has Coach on it. The human version of the eye roll/jerk off gesture, Benjamin “Coach” Wade is a familiar type of guy on here: thin-skinned, domineering, and blinded to all but his own glory. But the details really set him apart. A peak spiritual bypasser, Coach has Hebrew tattoos and does “a secret tai chi that you can only learn in an Asian monastery” and quotes Marcus Aurelius and talks about samurai a lot. He is a compulsive and prolific liar, and insists that he has never lied in his entire life. All of the ego boosting reveals a fundamentally weak character; at one point he literally follows JT through a maze to maximize his chances of winning, which is not very Warrior Code. At his final challenge he fakes a back injury to explain why he lost.

JT is happy to feed Coach’s delusions, and whispers sweet nothings while systematically removing his alliance structure. JT goes on to win unanimously, and you are thrilled because you’ve been rooting for him. Outside of a particularly tasty blindside early on of Tyson, a particularly mean mormon guy with the build of a stick bug, this one rides on rails to its inevitable conclusion, but who doesn’t love to see the good guys win?