Top 100 Survivor Characters of the Decade: #50–48

We are back with some more entries in our list! Now that we’ve broken the top 50, I anticipate that these write ups are going to get long. Because of that, I have decided to make it a little easier for myself (and for you as readers) by breaking these next entries into groups of three instead of five. The closer we get to the top, the more likely that number will go down to two and possibly even one in the top 10 or so.

Once again, a quick reminder of the criteria:

•The most important thing to note is that this is all subjective and done by myself. No doubt many readers will see people miss the top 100 and will feel like I have slighted a character. These are simply my opinions on who the top 100 is, it’s my personal list that I’ve been curating for well over 4 months, and I completely understand that you can disagree. I look forward to healthy disagreement as I reveal this list.

• A player’s entire history is considered in their rankings. For example, I won’t be looking solely at Malcolm Freberg’s Philippines appearance, his Caramoan and Game Changers games are part of the whole product.
• This list will only include Survivors who debuted between 2010 and 2019. That means players who have played prior to that won’t be included even if they participated in a season that fits out parameters (IE: the entire cast of HvV).
• I am ranking these Survivors as characters. Not as strategists or game players. I am solely trying to determine who I believe were the most entertaining characters of the last decade.

50. Davie Rickenbacker, Survivor: David vs Goliath

“WHERE’S DAVIE?!” The answer to that question is 50th, right in the middle of this countdown. It’s hard to say whether Davie is an outright great character, or he benefits from being on the best cast of Survivor in the 30s, but either way, I think Davie belongs on this list.

Considering what is going on in the world at the moment, Davie’s appearance on Survivor feels all the more important. He said it himself in the David vs Goliath finale, representation is important. What’s even more important, is diversified representation. And Davie certainly fits that mould.

Davie is a black man who is openly into things like cosplaying and video games. He’s not worried about talking about those things on camera. He doesn’t fit into the stereotype that reality television often tries to fit black men. He’s a nerd and proud of it. Seeing Davie on television is important for others like him, who might not see a lot of themselves on television. We need a lot more Davies on Survivor but getting at least one is a good start.

On David vs Goliath, Davie actually gets a great set-up for his character when he catches an octopus very early on. He gives us a confessional about being someone who hasn’t really fit into any social mould in the past.

I’ve always kind of been someone who doesn’t conform to society. I’m actually a blerd, which is a black nerd. I’ve always been a fan of the zombie gendra, caroons, nerd type things. I love Survivor, so to be sitting here on an island in Fiji. I’m still slapping myself in my mind, because… is this real?

Later on in the game, Davie also gets to talk about never really making Caucasian friends in the past (except his sweet P.T Cruiser, which is a self-proclaimed white person magnet.) That’s the duality that exists between Davie. He’s never once feeling awkward about being black but also feels like his hobbies are not the most culturally black things. He’s a great example of someone being completely comfortable being who he is and living life as he wants to. That’s a great mindset to have and something we should all aspire to reach.

And outside of that, Davie is a very fun character. He has a lot of great moments where he just radiates pure joyous energy. One that particularly stands out in my mind is after the Goliaths have voted out John Hennigan. The very next episode, it cuts to Davie in a confessional, cutting a wrestling promo. Every time I watch this scene, I laugh and can’t help but love how much Davie is enjoying playing the game.

In a Survivor franchise that has quickly become a product that emphasizes strategy and big moves above anything else, how can you watch Davie give that confessional and not love what he’s giving? It’s just a guy being silly and reveling in a successful move on the show. There’s no talk of numbers or boring game bot descriptions, just a dude having some fun.

Or how about the time Carl and Nick needed to go find an advantage? Davie decided he was going to distract the Goliaths from Carl and Nick’s attempt to find the advantage by… doing some Coach-chi with a wooden stick?

And the best part is that it worked. The Goliaths were totally thrown off by Davie’s Kung-Fu and Carl and Nick were able to find the steal-a-vote without being discovered.

Davie’s biggest strength is that he’s able to talk about the game in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s droning on. It takes a special character to be able to breakdown strategy and avoid being labelled a game bot by the fans.

Take for example that scene where he distracts the Goliaths from Nick and Carl’s advantage hunt. This is how he describes the situation after they’ve secured the steal-a-vote.

I’m over here doing my own thing. In the mean time, I know Nick is over there gung ho, bam bam bam bam bam. We got an advantage in the game, another one! Because right now, I got a freaking idol. My very own, no one else knows. Carl has the idol nullifier, which allows him to smash any idols that are played and now, we have a freaking steal-a-vote if we need it! We out here, started from the bottom now we here baby!

Plenty of players would give this confessional and be straight down the line, “yeah we’ve got an idol, a nullifier and now we have a steal-a-vote. We just have to figure out what to do with these.” You know, bland, boring Survivor jargon. Davie gives us that stuff but throws some fun into it. He gives us a DJ Khaled reference. He quotes Drake. He’s throwing some genuine excitement behind his words. Those are the little things that separate good players from good characters.

So, Davie is a great character, but he also knows how to play the game too. Socially, he understands Survivor and knows how to handle people. Contrast Davie getting blindsided to Nick, the winner of that season, getting blindsided and it’s a shocking difference. Davie keeps his cool and can have conversations to find another way back in. Nick lashes out and angrily pushes whoever betrayed him away. It goes to show that there’s a lot more to being a winner on Survivor than pure game skills.

When he swaps with Elizabeth to a tribe with Natalia, Alec and Kara, it might have looked like a bad spot for Davie. Instead, he’s able to worm his way into convincing Alec into turning on Natalia and voting her out. That’s no small feat. Those three had formed an alliance on Goliath beach and within a few days, Davie had gotten Alec to become the first player on the season to betray his original tribe.

At the merge, Davie is a huge cog in uniting the Davids as a common group. He’s the one who really gets Carl and Nick together, sharing advantages and working for the common good. I don’t think that people like Gabby or Christian would have been willing to work with Carl had Davie not been around too. He’s able to use his nerdy side to compel Christian and Gabby into wanting to work with him. Because he’s a multi-faceted person, his options for allies become wide open and he’s able to profit from that immensely.

He’s a player that really understands social dynamics. Like when Angelina proposes a Mike, Nick, Angelina and Davie final four at the family reward challenge. That sounds great to Mike, Nick and Angelina, considering they’ve spent all this time together from Jabeni. To Davie, he immediately recognizes that he’s a distant fourth in that group and that none of them will take him over each other.

Or when he’s the one to realize that Nick might have just made a fake idol to throw everyone off the scent. Those are the kind of things that feel obvious to someone watching the show but are from obvious when you’re playing. Davie is good at that kind of critical thinking and it’s what makes him a strong player.

In the end, Davie’s strongest bond ends up being with Nick Wilson. They have an on and off rivalry of sorts as the end-game nears, but they’re always on good terms with each other. It’s great character development for Davie that he goes from not having a lot of white friends to his best Survivor buddy being Nick Wilson. It shows Davie’s ability to adapt to different situations and people, proving that he is indeed a social chameleon.

Thrown into a strong cast, again I believe David vs Goliath is the best cast of the Survivor 30s, Davie still manages to stand out. He’s a positive presence who can play the game as hard as he can without being mean. He gets blindsided on multiple occasions and still, his spirits aren’t broken. This guy is a Survivor optimist. You couldn’t have a season with only Davies, that product would be far too sweet. But when you have only one, he becomes the cherry on top.

I think there’s a very strong chance we might see Davie play again. He’s got great approval ratings, he made great television and he played a good game. And let’s not forget that this man made a Wand-Off (for the uninitiated, a Survivor song parody contestant on Rob Has a Podcast) in week one of Winners at War. A true legend.

49. Domenick Abbate, Survivor: Ghost Island

Before I get to the good, allow me to explain why Dom may not be as high on this list as you might expect. It has nothing to do with the guy himself. In interviews outside of the game, he sounds like a really nice dude. He’s thankful for his experience and he had fun doing Survivor. Here’s my issue regarding Domenick and Ghost Island.

I touched on it a little bit with Wendell but Ghost Island is a drag to get through. This is especially true of the post-merge. The pre-merge is actually fairly entertaining. The premiere has the Jacob storyline. You have the Dom/Chris Noble rivalry and of course, the excellent Stephanie Johnson boot episode. The season’s peak is unquestionably the merge episode because that focuses largely on Chris, who is by far the season’s best character (more on him later).

But then Chris leaves at the merge. At that point, we are left with like three and a half winning candidates, Dom and Wendell (far ahead of everyone else), Kellyn (though her edit is about to go the wrong way for her) and Donathan/Laurel (highly unlikely but still breathing in the edit). Along with those players, you have seven other castaways with varying degrees of chances to win from “no chance in hell” to “yeah, not a chance”. I bet you can’t even name all seven players (I had to look it up myself: Libby, Sebastian, Jenna, Chelsea, Michael, Desiree and Angela… I missed Libby and Desiree and only remembered Angela because she deep-throated a sea cucumber.)

Those seven players, outside of Michael who won’t be there for much longer, get very little content in the post-merge. That leaves Domenick and Wendell to soak up like 90% of the screen time. Because Wendell is intentionally playing a quieter game, that means Domenick is the voice you hear the loudest and the most in that brutal Ghost Island post-merge.

Look up the confessional counts for Ghost Island. Domenick finishes with 66 confessionals. Kellyn is the only other person to break 40, as she gets 41. In comparison, Jacob the season’s second boot, gets 14 confessionals. Angela and Sebastian, both of whom make the finale, finish the season with 15 and 12 confessionals respectively.

If you focus solely on the post-merge, Domenick has 46 confessionals. Wendell is the only other player to get more than 30 post-merge confessionals. Like him or hate him, Domenick is getting the Russell Hantz treatment. The major difference is this: Samoa tells the story of why Russell Hantz lost (whitewashing Natalie in the process, but it still shows us Russell’s flaws). Ghost Island gives Domenick a winner’s edit… but he doesn’t win the season. That’s frustrating for Wendell, because people will always shove him aside since Dom was never edited to highlight the flaws that made him lose the game (clearly, we saw a more positive Dom than what the players experienced, given that final tribal council). It’s frustrating for Dom because he gets a winner’s edit without the million dollars to show for it.

The problem with such an uneven edit is that it’s also predictable. How am I supposed to be invested in Dom’s moves when I have no reason to think he’s going to get voted out? After Kellyn’s edit sours, am I supposed to believe that Angela or Libby or Sebastian will be the cause of Dom’s downfall? The edit barely acknowledges their presence. There’s no way in hell the king of the season will be dethroned by those guys.

So, we watch Dom and Wendell plot their way to the end with Laurel and it’s boring. That’s the worse you can say about a Survivor season. If you dislike it, at least you feel something for that season (which is what Noura would echo about Jamal on Island of the Idols). If the season bores me, I just won’t have much to say about it. We expect Dom and Wendell to march to the end, and they march to the end.

The only exciting part of that post-merge is the Dom and Wendell debate. Who is going to win the season? That final tribal council, despite how I feel about the post-merge as a whole, is legitimately exciting stuff. The problem is, they sacrificed that entire post-merge to make the last few minutes of the season exciting. Had we spent less time on Dom and more time on everyone else that eventually became fodder, it could have been believable to see Dom knocked out before final tribal council. Maybe that takes away from the exciting tie vote moment but isn’t an entire post-merge being more entertaining worth sacrificing a little bit of the tie vote?

So that’s why Dom isn’t as high as you might think. He doesn’t control that stuff, but it impacts his ranking (and everyone else’s on Ghost Island except for Chris).

The good with Dom? There’s a lot to like in him as a character. Most especially, he’s a great narrator. You don’t get 66 confessionals in a season without being able to talk to the camera. He has chaotic charisma that draws you in. You know you shouldn’t like Dom, because he presents himself as kind of a villain, but because of his energy, you can’t help but kind of like the guy anyways.

Then there’s his relationship with Chris and Wendell. It’s the two dynamics of Ghost Island that are explored with any depth. If there’s any question to who the main character of Ghost Island, you can easily tell by looking at whose relationships are most developed.

With Chris, it’s two alphas going at it to establish themselves as the dominant personality on their tribe. It starts off negatively when Dom openly questions Chris’ leadership and it goes south from there. I’ll probably touch more on this in Chris’ entry, so I will table this for now.

With Wendell, Dom is the boisterous one of the two. He takes the lead on making the big moves because he thinks that will make the jury want to reward them in the end. In the process, he can be a little forceful in how he talks to the castaways. In Dom’s mind, it doesn’t matter because he’s clearly driving the strategy of the season and therefore, he deserves to win.

What he doesn’t have is the softer, more social side that Wendell uses on the downlow. While Dom is out there cutting people down, Wendell is picking them back up and dusting them off. He’s voting out the same people Dom is voting out, but he’s making them feel good about him on their way out the door. Whether it’s by giving Sebastian his seashells or having personal conversations with Kellyn. Wendell was Dom’s opposite, he wasn’t flashy and for Dom, that meant he didn’t have an edge… until it came down to a single vote from Laurel, and that’s when Dom knew he messed up.

And I suppose that the very end is an interesting part of Dom’s story too. The minute he realizes Laurel is going to cast the deciding vote, Dom knows he’s lost. After playing the game so hard for 39 days, it all comes down to a relationship he doesn’t have locked up as well as Wendell did. That quick realization that all his efforts are to fall short is painful for Dom but it does add a bit of interest to him.

In my memory, what sticks out most to me is the Sebastian vote off. Domenick is so forceful about his idol and so cocky that it turns off Sebastian completely. I think that round loses Dom the game because he severely antagonizes the person he’s going to vote off and he does so unapologetically. It showed me that Dom may have been a cutthroat strategist, but he didn’t fully understand the game he was playing. I remember in that moment, after spending the entire post-merge thinking this was a coronation, that Wendell may actually have a chance.

The game of chicken Dom plays with Wendell is also interesting. Both know that they could easily win at final tribal council if the other isn’t there. The issue is timing the betrayal just right, so that they can sit alone at final tribal council without getting cut earlier than that without the other’s support. On multiple occasions during the season, Dom mulls getting rid of Wendell but realizes he can’t get to the end without him.

Then, when he wins that final immunity challenge, Dom sees one final chance to get rid of his closest competition. All he must do is give up immunity and face Wendell in the fire. The winner becomes a millionaire, the loser gets out as a robbed goddess. Only Dom becomes paralyzed with the fear of losing and comforts himself by believing that he’s done enough to beat Wendell outright in the end.

We see a few seasons later what happens when someone is willing to risk it all. Inspired by Dom’s failure to throw himself into fire making, Chris Underwood decides to take on Rick Devens in a winner takes all fire making competition. Without Dom’s indecision, Chris might not be compelled to think of pulling off his move. In that way, Dom might have altered Survivor history.

It’s almost a given that Dom will be brought back the next time he fills in a relevant need (Second Chances 2, FvF 3, HvV2, any kind of legends season). Given that he would be with an all-star cast, the odds are good that he will be with people who will require more air time than his fellow Ghost Island castaways required. I can almost guarantee that this will make Dom a much better character. And I look forward to seeing that version of him soon enough.

48. Noura Salman, Survivor: Island of the Idols

On a season that is shrouded with a dark event, you need characters that bring levity and insanity. Noura is a breath of fresh air on Island of the Idols. Without her presence, the season might be wholly unwatchable. Were she on a better season, Noura is a legitimate top 20 character. It’s just that I can’t stomach an Island of the Idols re-watch and so, that hurts her ranking in the long run.

In terms of archetype, Noura is supposed to be the zany one. Survivor really discovered this kind of player with Coach. A larger than life person who has these unbelievable stories and whose perception of reality isn’t quite accurate. Since Coach, they’ve tried to replicate the formula with people like Philip Sheppard and Debbie Wanner to varying degrees of success. Noura is the most recent person to fit this role.

Ironically, I like Noura more than I like Debbie, but given their respective casts, Debbie is going to end up a little higher on my list. That speaks to how much the quality of a season can impact my feelings on individual characters. You may not agree with it, but you’re stuck with me.

There’s a simple reason for why I think Noura is more likable than Debbie (or Phillip, but that’s a given): authenticity. With Debbie, I’ve always felt like I’m watching a person choose to be eccentric. Like when she freaked out on Brad Culpepper, that felt staged to me. Debbie has enough self-awareness in her that she knows she’s acting crazy. And that kind of takes the enjoyment out of watching her.

With Noura, there is no self-awareness. She’s just going off on whatever she wants to talk about and she’s going to do what she feels like doing. It feels 100% authentic to Noura to be acting how she does on Island of the Idols. That harkens back to Coach where I feel like Coach, despite being this larger than life person, fully believes in all the bullshit he’s saying, especially in Tocantins.

That degree of realism is what makes Noura a great character. I don’t always find her likable but I always like to watch her.

Like for example, her early days on Vokai beach. She immediately finds herself on the bottom of the tribe because she doesn’t connect with anybody. Probably because she’s complaining about things like people sleeping at night. Well, in Noura’s mind, she’s on the bottom because she’s not part of the cool kids. Noura doesn’t see that she’s the one pushing herself out of the group dynamic and instead, paints herself as an underdog. That kind of stuff is amusing to me.

I also love that the reason she feels a bond with Jason is because he reminds her of an ex she once had.

After I hear that people are saying Jason’s name, I’m thinking, I like the guy and I wanna work with him, and he also feels familiar to me. He reminds me of an ex-boyfriend that I feel is a very authentic good guy that I could trust and so I felt that and it’s like I wanna work with that, so, what’s the first thing I do? I go to him and I tell him.

Spoiler alert: it won’t be the last time she talks about her ex-boyfriends on this show.

The highlight of early season Noura is the episode in which she goes to the Island of the Idols. Side note: she does not seem to realize who Boston Rob and Sandra are, evidenced by her saying “of course I know who you guys are” in the most unconvincing way possible.

Her Survivor lesson is going to be on the art of persuasion. The entire time she’s with Boston Rob and Sandra, you can see it on Noura’s face; she’s not listening to anything they’re saying. In fact, at times, Noura is speaking over Boston Rob and Sandra.

Then, she’s given her challenge: if she can convince her tribe to be the caller in the next immunity challenge, she earns a block-a-vote advantage. If she can’t convince her tribe to let her be the caller, she loses her vote. Of course, without even thinking about it for a split second, Noura accepts the challenge and goes off on her merry way to Vokai.

That’s where the hilarity ensues as Noura goes off to convince her tribe to let her be the caller.

Like, there’s so much gold in that four minute scene. Noura telling the tribe they have to “unanimously agree on the role that she will play in the challenge” but not specifying it needs to be the caller. So that the tribe can just unanimously agree to sit her out and in their mind, they’ve met the requirements. The immediate horror on everyone’s face when they realize Noura wants to be the caller. Noura getting super aggressive when the tribe pushes back on her as the caller, “it’s already done! I gave you the information, so I already have that role. It can’t… it’s done!”

To prove her worth, Noura decides she’s going to lead Vokai in a practice run of the challenge. Highlights include getting angry for being corrected when told she can’t tell people to come to her voice because she will be behind them and telling Dan to take, and I quote, “30 steps” only for him to hurt his foot on some wood a few steps into his march. Noura gets some points from everyone here for making Dan hurt his foot.

All of that culminating in the great moment at the challenge where they tell her to sit out. That’s Noura in four minutes for anyone who hasn’t seen her on the show. She’s loud, she talks to much, she doesn’t understand how people see her. And yet, she’s funny and great to watch. Boston Rob is completely accurate when he says, “She definitely is perceptive, the question is, is her perception reality.” And it is not.

The beauty of this is that by sitting out, she loses her vote. So, the next tribal council she will attend, she won’t have a vote. And yet, going into her next tribal council (after the swap) this is what she has to say about the upcoming events,

Tonight is somewhat simple. The only monkey wrench in there is when I went to the island of the idols, I lost my vote for tonight. So that puts us 4–3. But thank God, we still have the numbers. I feel so lucky, and even if I don’t have my vote, I still have a say, I’m still analyzing the game like who-what would be the best for my game, our game. Some people are thinking Karishma because she’s weaker…Dean? Is a physical threat and Tom is a likeable guy, but he’s not as physical a threat as I thought? Tonight there’s three people and you’re like do you go with the weakest person to get out to do better, in winning as a tribe, or do we just get rid of the threats now so when we go to the merge we don’t have to deal with them then. So, I’m really gonna have to think about it in order to make the best decision for this vote.

GIRL! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT? YOU HAVE NO VOTE! As if the rest of her “alliance” is going to listen to what Noura has to say about this situation.

Despite being so on the outs, Noura escapes through the first couple of episodes because she’s too easy of a vote. Everyone keeps using Noura as the default plan to blindside somebody else instead. Then, the tribes merge and she lucks into a great swap onto Lairo where she is part of an OG Vokai majority that forces the rest of her tribemates to keep her around as a number.

And still Noura keeps being herself. After Kellee comes up with a plan to blindside Jack to save Dean, she ropes Noura in on her secret plan as an extra vote. Noura actually manages to follow through and does as she’s told. But back at camp, when people start questioning who turned on their Vokai tribe, Noura immediately crumbles under the pressure and spills everything.

Noura: I do feel indebted to Jamal, you saved my ass, with that idol…it’s Kellee. Sorry, Kellee, I love you. You know that. I’m grateful to Kellee, honestly, I don’t, I don’t think Kellee is a bad person, like, to look…I think she’s an amazing person…

Kellee: Noura! Please stop saying my name.

Noura: Okay. I’m sorry… Kellee.

Or the time she wins individual immunity. It’s a challenge where the castaways are also split into two groups and the last remaining member of either side will battle it out for peanut butter. When everyone but Noura drops on her side, she gets so excited that she immediately drops out too, forgetting about the peanut butter reward. Everyone’s annoyance at Noura in that moment is palpable but for the viewer, it’s great.

Eventually, Noura almost goes back on her Vokai alliance to strike against Tommy. But Dean, who also in on the same plan, gets to tribal council and becomes worried about Noura screwing everything up. So, he flags up Noura’s potential betrayal to Dean at tribal council. This sends Noura into a tilt.

In a Survivor world where everyone is increasingly trying to keep conversations a secret, Noura zags instead. She just has an open discourse with just about everybody about her intentions of betraying Tommy. Which she admits to considering at tribal council where she is in danger of getting voted out. And yet she’s still not voted out.

Noura’s tribal councils are a thing of beauty. She does this thing where she starts laughing uncontrollably when she gets nervous. And it seems to happen a lot in front of Jeff Probst. Sometimes, she’ll laugh out loud when she’s not even part of the conversation. You can see Jeff fall more and more in love with Noura as a person to go to for questions as the season goes on. Every time, Noura delivers.

And what inspired that potential flip on Noura? Not being chosen for the family reward. In fact, she was so incensed about being left out, that she ranted on and on to Karishma, Dean and Elaine.

I wanna say something, and is that cool, can we talk? I’m the only Vokai, that’s here with you guys right now. I have been loyal to these people since the beginning. I’m showing my allegiance. I’m helping them get to the end. And, but now, I know where I rank in that group. I am, in a way that Karishma (points at Karishma), but I am actually enjoyable to be around, I’m funny, I’m providing, I’m cutting coconuts. I’m giving up rewards so you can freaking eat, and kill me the day, and…I’m their bitch! And you’ve been saying it and you guys can see it.

Late in the game, Noura’s best moments come from her relationship with Dean. There’s a lot of animosity between them. She even goes to hiding his shoes at the top of the tribe flag because she’s taller than him, which is a great little dig at him. At the same time, Noura slowly gets dragged into Dean’s charm. To the point where by the finale, she is starting to lust after him and keeps talking about him as a lover and that he reminds her of his exes.

In this game, my relationship with Dean has been challenging, but when Dean chose me, I felt like I was walking, into a date. It’s weird because for a guy he’s shy. He’s pretty slick, and warm, and his whole…beautiful romantic date of flirting, I loved every second of it. He’s cute, he’s pleasant, he’s gentlemanly, and, I don’t know he’s like growing on me.

Despite being a little crazy, Noura is also a strong competitor. She wins three immunity challenges and shows off a lot of physicality. She’s even able to beat an Olympic athlete in an endurance competition. Yeah, Noura talks about a lot of crazy stuff, but she’s also ripped and will beat you up.

Because of those immunity wins, she gets to make a great decision at the end of the season. She will choose who goes with her to final tribal council and which two players will make fire. This is the last great vintage Noura moment of the season. She won’t talk to anybody because she’s already made her decision. But before she can give that decision, she goes off on an incredibly long tangent.

Are you okay guys? Okay. Brevity is not my strong suit, so I am going to just, explain? Why I am making this decision? Lauren, you are my number one. At this point in my life you are my number one. You’ve given me a friend in the game when I had none. Dean, you’re the man. You are beautiful, you are eloquent, you’re smooth, you’re calm and collected as a cucumber even in the…hardest times in the game, and, and, you’ve made some great moves and, you know whatever, kudos to you. Tommy, you are loyal. You are an incredible person. Like, you literally help me do things that made me get to where I am. [unintelligible] I said, forget this girl, she’s crazy, we can’t trust her, boom, out! And I would be an easy vote for you…I gave you my number, I gave you a wink, you still didn’t call me, and all the other people are calling me…I feel like I have given a lot of ammo in the game to many different players that help them, but no one’s really done that for me. I’m gonna say more about that but, it doesn’t really matter what I think because it matters what the jury thinks. So, Lauren, you do your own thing in your own way, and it works, and you see it. Whenever you get [unintelligible] to myself I was like oh my God I have Lauren! The queen! But because you are, such a threat, in the eyes of everyone, I have to tell you, it’s gonna be you going to fire. You are the queen right now, that is why you, I have to put you to fire. ’Cause I’m gonna have the hardest case…in the final three, ah, so that’s what where we go next. I’m gonna start with Tommy. You told me point-blank you suck at fire, I’m just putting this out there, and I trust that. But I do recognize I am still here, because of Tommy. Dean? Our little date yesterday, which I loved, and we had a great time. I told you yeah, I will commit to you, because at that point, your game wasn’t as hot as it is right now. You’re on fire right now. Literally, you’re gonna be on fire tonight. That’s what’s happening, and I’m sorry I gotta do, and, and the most importantly, is ’cause you can do it. And Lauren is more dangerous than you.

Upon hearing that she will make fire, Lauren is understandably upset, which for some reason, makes Noura upset?

Sure, so, so basically we get back, and I start by saying, Lauren you’ve been my number one in this game the entire time. And, I’m not even gonna look? At your expressions right now, but, na, your face is really, I mean, it’s smirky, and it’s kind of rude! I wanted, I, I’m trying to give you love here and give you props here, and let you know, really where I’m coming from…I mean…I’m telling you. I am gonna like risk my game when I got a clean shot at the finish? Am I gonna be dumb enough? DUMB ENOUGH! Did you think I was dumb enough, that I was gonna bring my Lauren number one because you are my number one? No! That’s where I have a problem…Okay…Okay.

I love that I understand what Noura is trying to say, but she’s so wordy and her brain works too quickly that she’s not eloquent enough to explain to Lauren her reasoning. Which of course just makes Lauren madder about the entire affair.

And it needs to be mentioned, in the Dan debacle, Noura was on the right side of history. Few people can say that they did the right thing at the merge, but Noura did. She voted against Dan because he rubbed her, and many other women, the wrong way. She never let the game get in the way of her morals. That is entirely respectable and should be highlighted.

Tonight, I’m voting for, D-A-N…daaaaaaaaaaaan! What really made it simple for me, is, he’s made a lot of women feel uncomfortable, he’s kind of, pushed the boundaries of, you know, snuggling at night, and you know, being flirtatious. This is not okay. We are not going to wait to the end, and then have some talk about his behavior, we’re gonna do this now!

The irony being, that they did indeed wait to the end and have some talk about his behaviour. These people should have all just listened to Noura. She was right all along.

All in all, Noura seems like a nice but intense person. She’s not cut out for Survivor because she’s too much of a strong personality who can’t take criticism about herself. That’s what makes her a great Survivor character. If anything, I think her last address to the jury perfectly describes Noura, told by the only person who might fully understand Noura, Noura herself.

Thank you for your time, thank you for your questions. Thank you for your insight. We learned a lot about ourselves out here. I know I definitely have. For me, this is, Noura. I wanted to come to this game and be so transparent, and to be so open and authentic, and you love me, and maybe you hated me at times for who I am, but you have accepted me for me, and allowed me to be me, and I am not a player, that you have ever seen before. I am a wild card, I am a person of love, but I can be weird and crazy and say shit that hurts, and I’ve done everything I can in the game to use tools to win challenges, and I’m proud to just be here; no matter what happens tonight, when I was me to the fullest? I really felt like I’ve thrived, and I’ve connected socially, and helped my strategic game, and helped me to get where I am right now. So thank you…Thank you.