Survivor Season 19 - 2009

This season has two very different halves.

The theme of the first half is “off the rails”. The most chaotic and uncontrolled the show has ever been, it features camp sabotage, unapologetic racism, two medevacs, a week straight of rain and insufficient shelter causing players to cower in crooks of trees for a shred of dryness, a player getting thrown out of a challenge for repeated illegal moves, and a challenge getting shut down halfway through because one of the players appeared to die on his feet.

The theme of the second half is “Russell”.

I’ve identified the Rat Boy archetype before. Think Johnny Fairplay, or the Rob that has a podcast. This guy (it’s always a guy) is not particularly strong or charismatic, but has an animal cunning that allows him to sense social opportunities. He’s usually in the middle of big faction changes and is able to capitalize on strife and mistrust to get very far in the game. He almost never wins, because he’s bad at challenges and no one likes him very much. Sometimes he spews incel-coded invective about women as a fun bonus. There’s usually one every season.

Russell, a self described “oil company owner”, is on another level entirely. He looks like Richard Hatch was melded with Oddjob from Goldeneye. He’s a physical beast, and has a forceful charisma and an eye for group dynamics. He is the show’s first ever Rat Man, and he changes the game utterly and irrevocably.

Reality shows have “villains”: people who are proudly antisocial in pursuit of the prize or the fame that comes with being on TV. Small-time shit. Russell is on another level: already independently wealthy and with nothing to gain, he’s competing to prove that he can easily win the game using maximum deceit and cunning. To quote the Literal Joker, “It’s not about the money; it’s about sending a message.” He’s an actual supervillain, forcing the American public to watch him destroy a show that aims to celebrate virtue and achievement, and teach a dark lesson on the human condition. I am yearning for him to fail.

On the first night, he pours out all the water canteens and burns everyone’s socks. The following day he promises everyone in his tribe a secret and powerful alliance that will carry through the game. If anyone begins to detect the font of lies and blasphemy flowing from him, he targets that person for removal via Tribal Council. At any given point, he is either scheming with person A against person B, scheming with person B against person A, or bragging to the camera about how much he is dominating. Only one speed on this guy. And then, he goes down in Survivor history by locating a hidden immunity idol without getting a single clue.

Just by deducing that there is one in the game and that it’s probably near camp, he clips out of the game world entirely. Like Richard Hatch before him, he is seeing the matrix code of the game, forever changing it in his image, and he gears up for an unprecedented reign of terror on the other contestants.

Perhaps as a result of the low morale caused by open sabotage and deep-seated mistrust (Russell the oil executive teaming up with Ben the racist “hillbilly outlaw” to sow division is a too-perfect distillation of Republican politics), Russell’s tribe sucks at challenges. Going into a merge at 4 members versus the competing tribe’s 8, it’s looking like a blowout and an early end to Russell’s insidious ascent.

But the opposing tribe is well-fed and comfortable, and have too many members. Deep divisions surface immediately, and Russell is there to exploit them. Ex-marine Shambo, who sports the world’s greatest mullet and suffers from prophetic dreams, is an early defection. Power players on the other side use Russell’s squad as a well of votes to settle personal scores, and their advantage starts to become less lopsided.

After flushing Russell’s idol (it became an open secret that he possessed it), they were ready to deliver the killing blow, but Russell just went out and FOUND THE MOTHERFUCKING IDOL AGAIN. In one of the most cathartic tribal councils ever, he revealed his ace in the hole and sent another enemy packing. Of course, he is able to find the third idol with a minimum of information, and dares people to take another swing by wearing it around his neck. At this point, he is untouchable.

This is the start of an absolutely insane run, where Russell and his tribe manage to conquer an enemy force twice their size, banishing them one by one to the Jury. At this point it is impossible to root against Russell. He’s still a conniving bastard, but with a group of people to look out for and an underdog position, you want him to overcome the odds. And he ends up playing the perfect game. After the last remaining holdout refuses to go down in a series of immunity challenge victories, Russell finds the inner strength to best him head to head and ensure that the final 3 are the people he picked on day 1. He thinks no one has a chance of beating him; he taught a masterclass in Survival strategy and permanently changed the game. He simply wants it more, and the other two contestants in the running got there by cowering in his wake.

And then he lost.

The jury, it turns out, did not have to hand it to him. Seeing his megalomaniacal entitlement, they used the power they had to deny him what he felt was owed to him. At the end of the day, the supervillain was undone by his hubris, forgetting that personal beef is as valid a motivation for a juror than any “objective” assessment of what constitutes a good game.

What a ride this guy took me on. The face of entitled capital, begging to be rooted against, ends up being one of my favorites players of all time. And yet, the ending is perfect. He ultimately was proven wrong. Sometimes the people in the boats don’t blow each other up, and we go on fighting another day.