Time flies by so quickly. It seems like just yesterday that Survivor’s 35th season was just premiering but here were are with it in our back mirror. Last night, Ben was crowned as the show’s most recent sole survivor and with it concluded Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers. That doesn’t mean we are done here because there is a lot to unpack from this finale. I’ve seen a large variety of opinions on how everything went down, now allow me to add my two cents into the mix.
Before we get to the finalists, let me get through the 5th and 4th placers who also happened to take part in this finale. The Mike tribal council may have been my favorite of the season for a lot of reasons. Prior to that, you had Ben finding his 3rd consecutive hidden immunity idol. That alone places him in the pantheon of Survivor history. He is now tied for most idol finds in a season, owns the record for being the first person to cast a sole deciding vote (outside of a final three to final two scenario), and holds the record for most consecutive idol plays with three. Move over Russell Hantz, there’s a new idol king on the island.
Anyways, back to the actual tribal council. Chrissy and her alliance have concocted this plan to pull out her nullified super idol to deter Ben from searching for the actual idol. It would have been a good plan… if Ben hadn’t already found the real idol hours beforehand. The ironic comedy of Chrissy thinking Ben is biting on this fake idol so hard was too much. If ever there was a clear-cut obvious moment for the Funny 115 v4.0, this was it. Chrissy, Ryan, Mike, and Devon are so happy and confident that they finally have Ben. Ben is playing up the entire thing with his “woe is me act”.
Then the votes are cast and Ben dramatically and obviously goes for his idol to drop yet another BenBomb TM. The reactions everyone had to that were amazing. Chrissy jaw just dropped. Ryan looked like he was seeing his family tortured by the Pygmies that had once captured Coach Wade. Then to top it all off, Ben pulls out his own fake idol and says “since we’re pulling out fake idols, here’s mine” and puts it around his neck. I don’t care what you think about Ben as a player. Everything about his behaviour at that tribal council was baller.
With all that action, the votes still hadn’t been read. Before tribal, Devon had gotten a feeling from Ben that he may have had another idol. Ben was acting too defeated and sad to actually feel that way. Everything Devon knew about Ben was that he was a man who does not quit until it’s officially over. That sent massive red flags to Devon’s intuition and he started considering pinning a vote on Mike. Devon even voiced these concerns to Ryan who shot him down and basically Keith Nale’d him with a “stick to the plan” ideal.
So as the votes were being read, I had a lot of tension going on. Did Devon trust his gut or fold and go with his alliance? The first Mike vote came out and I relaxed a little. Then Jeff read the final vote… “Devon”. That was an exhilarating moment of television. Feeling uneasy, Devon went through with his plan and saved himself out of nowhere. We were moments away from Ben becoming the first and second person to be the sole vote caster and Devon took that away from him. Ryan and Chrissy knew they needed him in the final four to help against Ben and obviously saved him in the tiebreaker. Had Devon made it into final tribal council, this would have been a million dollar move.
Instead, it only cost us Mike. This season, Mike was an endless source of entertainment. Not since James Miller in Survivor Palau has a player been shown to be so consistently wrong about everything. Despite constant failure, Mike never lost his sense of optimism or his belief that he would be the winner of his season. I respect his ability to never lose hope in himself even when the entire world is showing him that he should. Mike was a terrible Survivor player. I hope he never comes back to play again. That said, Mike was an amazing character, one of the best this season, and I will always have fond memories of watching him bumble around the island, somehow surviving blindly amongst the chaos ensuing around him, happily oblivious to his own mortality.
After Mike went home, it was more of the same. Ben against the majority. Only now, hidden immunity idols were no longer an option to save him. If Ben was going to get into the final tribal council, it was going to have to be earned through competition. He came so close too, only an upside down “u” cost him the immunity challenge. By the way, that was a terrific immunity challenge that I would definitely have gotten so angry at were I playing it myself.
Instead, Chrissy won her fourth immunity challenge. This is something I do not want to gloss over. As a 46 year old woman, Chrissy has now tied the likes of Jenna Morasca and Kim Spradlin for most immunity wins for a woman in one season. That is no small feat. This is further proof that challenge beasts can come in all shapes and sizes. Chrissy has four immunity wins to her name. Over the course of three seasons, James Clement has zero. Think about that next time people want to target physically gifted players for being challenge threats. Chrissy very well could be the best puzzle solver in Survivor history. I don’t say this lightly. She took part in many different puzzles and each time, they laid down for her like lovers. More on Chrissy later but her immunity run is legitimately impressive and her loss should not change that in any way.
Looking down and out, Ben was understandably pretty upset about it. In came the secret advantage. Ooooh boy did people have opinions about the secret advantage. As an aside, I was surprised at how many people were not aware of this coming into the finale because it was something that had been leaked in the preseason by multiple media sources. Knowing the final three would be decided by a forced fire challenge ahead of time definitely helped me lessen my reaction to it when Chrissy was reading her parchment.
On paper, I understand what production was going for. I have long said that the biggest drawback to a final three is the lack of weight to the final immunity challenge. In a final two, that last challenge is huge. The winner gets to choose who they are taking with them to final tribal council. It could be a game changing decision. In a final three, the winner is safe but doesn’t have final say on who goes home. There is a lack of climax there. By adding this twist, production was hoping to create some tension like a final two might provide by letting the winner choose at least one person to bring into the final tribal council, thereby allowing the challenge winner some control over their opponents.
Now on paper, that might all sound good but in practice, it certainly wasn’t. One thing production should know 35 seasons in is that forced drama never works. Things should be allowed to evolve naturally, without any interference. Instead of allowing Chrissy some action in her fate, they basically handcuffed her into keeping the biggest threat around when she had finally managed to get a leg up on him. As she was reading that paper, Chrissy had to feel crushed when she realized she was not going to be able to vote out Ben.
Now imagine being Devon. All season long, you’ve escaped scrutiny. It’s taken until final five for someone to even write down your name. People like you, you’re in an alliance that is going to the final three. Socially, you’ve ’one everything you can in the world’s “greatest social experiment” to put yourself in a position to win the game. Suddenly, your ally comes up to you and tells you that you’re going to have to make fire for your life tonight because this new advantages forces her to choose two people to throw to the wolves. That’s quite a blow isn’t it?
I also believe that Jeff should have told the group at final four, before the immunity challenge about this twist. It would have changed how people approached it and put everybody on a level playing field. I don’t think blindsiding Chrissy with this knowledge was a good decision by production.
Chrissy and Devon would both have plenty of room to gripe about how this twist ended up impacting their games. Ryan doesn’t care either way because as soon as Chrissy won that final immunity, he was guaranteed a spot at final three. Hell, he was probably guaranteed a spot the minute Mike was sent home. For Ben, he was given a million dollar chance to make a fire. The showdown between Devon and Ben was pretty intense. In the end, Devon just couldn’t get his flame going, Ben did a nice job of staying calm and got a pretty massive fire going fairly quickly. Devon did all he could in the game, placed himself very nicely to collect a nice paycheck and it didn’t pan out. Nobody ever said Survivor was fair. Besides, he’ll be back.
The final tribal council format had to be a surprise to the contestants. As viewers, we saw it last season but by the time the season 35 cast was filming, the Game Changers finale had yet to air. After two seasons of this format, I have my thoughts. I like that it encourages discussion between jury and finalists. I don’t like that this format prioritizes early jurors. Of course the Desis and Joes of the world are going to have a lot more thoughts than Devon, Mike, or Lauren, who have been at Ponderosa far less long.
The early jurors have had time to sit, think about their games and talk amongst each other. They also have far less accurate information than those late jurors. I think this format really makes it hard on people who were just voted out to properly assess the finalists. Just look at how little Devon spoke at final tribal council, it makes sense. He’s just been voted out and has to process all of this. How is he expected to participate in a round table discussion at this point? In the old format, at least he would be given the spotlight to come up with one question he needs to ask to decide his vote.
I think it’s fair to say that Chrissy had the best final tribal out of the finalists. Her answer to Joe in particular was fantastic. She owned up to some of her mistakes, like leaving Ben unattended for hours while he was searching for an idol, and came off as very human and affable.
In particular, what got to me was her speech about her mothers are heroes, healers, and hustlers. She’s 100% right in what she was saying and there’s something I want to say about Chrissy’s game. All season, we’ve seen talk about “she’s trying to avoid being another mom” or mom-related discussion. I’ve said some of that myself. I think that at the end of the day, it’s important to stress that Chrissy is not just a mom. She’s a woman who played Survivor, won four individual immunities against much younger competition, strategized her way to the end, and played a very cutthroat game. Chrissy is not a Survivor playing mom. She’s Chrissy Hofbeck, Survivor player, and I hope we remember her as such.
We also saw Ryan trying to take credit for things he didn’t really have a hand in. He told us that was his plan going into final tribal council and I immediately felt that this was a bad idea. Try as he might, Ryan was never going to convince this jury that he deserved the money over Ben or Chrissy. I think he spoke pretty well at tribal council in parts, then flopped miserably in others. Like when he was asked about his camp life contributions and Ryan basically said “I didn’t want to try that part”.
Getting to Ben, Ben’s edit this entire episode (and really, season) was very heroic and winner-like. He got so much triumphant music in the finale that it was hard not to see him winning. Then we got everything about his family and service experience. He also gave the episode’s title. Ryan even said that Ben was definitely not becoming a millionaire. You can’t give someone a Fairplay style winner quote and not expect us to think that Ben wasn’t going to win.
I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Ben’s win. His over-reliance on idols and bad social gameplay. I understand how people are seeing this. I do believe that Devon and Chrissy are both better Survivor players than Ben in a vacuum. Ben isn’t very graceful socially. He doesn’t really think through the strategy of the game like the elite players might. What Ben has, and Mike vocalized this as ferocity, is hunger. He was hellbent on winning the game and nothing was going to stop him from doing so.
You can hate on the idol playing all you want, Ben didn’t do anything wrong. He simply took advantage of the game construct in which he dropped into. Ben didn’t force production to hide three consecutive idols, he just knew that they would and he went out and found them. Nobody else was trying as hard as he was to find idols, and that cost all of them dearly. Ben didn’t force production to create this new final four twist, he just went out and took advantage of it to put himself in a position to win. As they say, don’t hate the player, hate the game. In this specific season with this set of circumstances, Ben’s stars lined up and he won the game. Good for him.
I think what’s most important from his win is the message that he brought along. There is a very real problem with PTSD and veterans. Like his buddies said, if Ben can help even one vet, all of this was worth it. If Ben has erased any stigma associated with PTSD and helped people realized that it’s a real medical issue, he’s done more than just win a television show for a lot of money. He’s done something for the greater good.
About that reunion… wasn’t that just terrible? Jeff spoke to Ben, Chrissy, and Ryan. That was it. Oh and Jeff somehow found a way to namedrop Cochran as he was getting to the stage. Love always finds a way. The moment with Ben’s friends was great but why did we not talk to anybody else? Couldn’t we get crazy Alan’s thoughts on Ben’s win? No talk of JP’s things like that? People were angry about the Survivor: Caramoan reunion for excluding the pre-jurors but at least Jeff talked to people in that one. I feel like we got absolutely no real closure on this season.
That said, I am excited for Survivor: Ghost Island. I have a lot of thoughts about this idea but I am going to keep that for another piece. This one is already too long and I have to wrap it up. Thank you everybody who followed along this season, it was an absolute treat. I am going to take a few weeks off for the holidays but come back in the New Year ready to write some more Survivor material. Happy holidays to everyone one of you and good luck dealing with this Survivor withdrawal.
