Season 23 of Survivor was released in 2011, hot off the heels of the worst year of Survivor with Season 21: Nicaragua and Season 22: Redemption Island both being panned for their boring gameplay and uninteresting story, with Redemption Island being commonly considered the worst season of the show by fans. So, naturally the genius minds at CBS decided to simply use an indentical format to Redemption Island, with 2 returning players, one on each tribe and a cast of newbies with the redemption island twist active for both the pre and post merge. Similar to redemption island the returnees, both Coach and Ozzy were fan favourite players looking for another shot at the crown.
Backround
I want to preface this post with the fact that this is the only season of the dark ages that I have watched and seeing as this season is not considered as the worst of the era that probably will not change for a long time. It was a very dark time for Survivor. Spoiler warning, of course.
The Pre-Merge
To give the season some credit, it does start out pretty strong. It is possibly the the best “the tribes stand on a mat while Jeff talks at them” we’ve seen up to this point, with both Christine and Cochran aura farming with very different affects on their games, with Christine putting a giant target on her back and Cochran immedietly becoming Jeff’s like, favourite player ever.
However that first meeting is where the season peaked for me. The premerge consisted of two warring factions inside both tribes. For Savaii, it was whether it was worth keeping John Cochran around despite his weakness in phyiscal challenges and general weasellyness, a battle which Cochran would eventually survive, culminating in Ozzy sacrificing himself at the final pre-merge tribal as he felt he had the best chance to return from redemption island.
Things were much less interesting in Upolu, as an early majority picked off the two most interesting characters on the tribe in Christine and Stacy, before Brandon Hantz went full psycho-mode on Mikayla as he felt she was trying to use her body to get in good with people (she wasnt). Brandon was a deeply unstable man, and despite this Coach, the tribes leader sided with him, feeling that he could be very easily controlled.This was the correct move for Coach as Brandon was very controllable for exclusivly Coach. However this move would foreshadow the most frustrating part of this season, how easy it was for coach to control this group.
A Quick Stop by Redemption Island
The pre-merge redemption island being probably the most interesting part of the season should probably tell you how rough this game really was. Christine, the 2nd boot of the season almost made the miracle run happen and return to the game, before being cut just short by Ozzy, Chrisitne was, in my opinion, the only truely great new character on the season and this is largely due to her fighting so hard to stay in the game and coming so close.
The Post-Merge Split
Once Christine is defeated at the final hour on redmption island, the show has 1 good round left before turning incredibly boring. The first post merge vote was, on paper, split down the middle, with 6 Upolu and 6 Savaii. 11 players were willing to go to rocks if no one from the other side would flip over to theirs. However Cochran, being the gamer that he is decided to flip to the Upolu side as he was almost certainly at the bottom of Savaii and didn’t want his game to end by rock draw, resulting in the only real blindslide of the season.
The Pagonging
You might be thinking, wow 1 blindside in a season? That doesn’t sound very fun. You would be right.
From this point forward every vote out was of a Savaii member until there were none left with basically no internal opposition from anyone in Upolu. This is likely due to Coach effectively forming a cult with how much control he had over everyone in it, other than Albert and Sophie who did not feel they needed to flip. This is a very serious problem for the enjoyment of the season. In a slightly interesting turn of events, Coach actually lost control of the tribe once the Savaii members were gone, with him losing both Edna and Brandon in the next 2 votes, despite them being his planned final 3.Eventually Ozzy returned from redemption island and almost won both final immunity challenges, which would have led to him winning the season and becoming probably the worst winner ever. Thankfully we were spared of that fate when Sophie beat him in the final immunity challenge, and she went on to win the season by a vote of 6-3-0.
Conclusion
While I did skim over much of the season, that is for the best. Very little of note happened all season and when it did it was weirdly uncomfortable. Sophie is a decent winner who layed low and rode an alliance that would take her to the end and had 5 people she knew she could beat at the end. She was also the least weird member of the Upolu alliance which is good. Something funny about this season for me is that I went into it thinking that Cochran won as I had been spoiled that he was a winner, which gave me alot of false hope during the post merge and while he was on redemption island. It’s a bit sad that someone as fun as Cochran is relegated to only being allowed to play with Brandon Hantz on really bad and uninteresting seasons and he has no interest in coming back after his perfect game on Caramoan. Overall this season is boring, most of the players are uninteresting and there is no innovation on any level at all.
I probably should’ve started this series with a season I actually like, but I wanted to get my hatred for this season off of my chest.