Day 6: Most Overrated Survivor
Survivor 39-Day Challenge
Ten years ago, during the reunion show of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, Russell Hantz was one of the Top 2 castaways voted by the public for the Sprint Player of the Season special award. They are also the most overrated Survivors, and much like the result of Season 20 Sprint Player of the Season, Russell is the most overrated of them all.
Russell had played the game of Survivor a total of four times — three in the US and one in the Australian version. His first two seasons, which he played back to back, were Russell’s peak. He did find idols without a clue which was unprecedented at the time and changed the whole narrative surrounding idol searches. He dismantled alliances of larger numbers and built empires of his own which were unyielding and unforgiving of the outside forces.
But I think that’s also where Russell’s brilliance ends. His whole strategy was to create chaos in order to alter the state of mind of his competitors, a legitimate strategy if I may say so. He does this, however, with no regard to emotions or reactions by the very people he’s playing with, who could potentially be the people deciding if he’d win or not. What Russell lacked all four times he’d played is the social aspect, which he doesn’t understand up until this point, and may never understand at all.
While toppling alliances after alliances and blindsiding people regardless if they’re an ally or an opposition, using idols left and right, Russell seemed to not discern the need to balance big moves and jury management. He needed to make people like him during the game, and make his big moves made sense to the bigger narrative he’d try to make at the end of the game. And for him, he needed neither. For him, as how I read it, if the people he actually outwitted and outplayed could not vote for him after all of his game-changing moves, the people are the problem, and never the kind of game he plays. “I make it to the end every time,” he said after a back-to-back Final 3 finishes. Boston Rob (who is also an overrated player, albeit much less) said it best, Russell does not play the game to win. He plays it to get to the end and that’s it.
In any game, the endgame strategy matters. And Russell’s lack of jury management and good social connections in the game hurt his chances come Final Tribal Council, where Natalie’s and Sandra’s fourth-quarter surges come in really handy.
Such remorseless approach to relationships hurts Russell, as seen from his latest two appearances where he was the second person eliminated. He does not give a single fuck about how people feel in a game that is emotionally and mentally taxing. This reputation, which will forever precede him, I believe, is the reason he can no longer go further than a week in the game of Survivor. The people he’s played with in Redemption Island and Champions vs. Contenders are not scared of what he can do strategically; it’s what he can do to their sanity that is the problem, and knowing Russell, they can just vote him out and not deal with that kind of madness.
He’s a lock if ever Survivor’s doing an all-legends season, but I won’t be surprised at all if he’s the second out again, or even the first boot.
Regardless of the fact that Russell lacks the ability to build social and political connections in the game, many people still admire him because of how flashy his game is and how entertaining it is for that matter. As a character, he’s colorful as a rainbow and more; but as a great (or even good) Survivor player, he’s seriously highly overrated. Most should have dropped him off their list of great Survivor players after or even during Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains. If he doesn’t understand that Survivor is first and foremost a social game, then he’ll never understand how to play Survivor to win it all.
Runner-up: Rupert Boneham, 4th Placer, Survivor: All-Stars
