Top 100 Survivor Characters of the Decade: #65–61

First of all, allow me to apologize for not posting a new entry sooner than today. As people may know if they follow me on social media, we recently welcomed our second daughter into the world. While that is amazing and great for my little family, it has also taken a lot of my time.

On top of that, with all of the holiday shenanigans, my schedule has been completely off the rails. But as we enter the new year, that is beginning to normalize again.

Sure, this project has been slightly delayed and it won’t end with the decade as I had originally planned, but we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. The delay even has a nice silver lining, which we will get to with this article.

So without further ado, here’s a quick reminder of my ranking stipulations, and we’re off!

•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.

To read any of the previous entries, click HERE.

65. Spencer Bledsoe, Survivor: Cagayan & Survivor: Cambodia

This is a write-up I’ve been dreading. I know it’s going to be much more negative than positive and I feel bad about that, I really do. It’s just that Spencer is not someone who would be on my personal list. It just wouldn’t feel right to have a list of the top 100 Survivor characters of the decade and not include Spencer. So here I go, with apologies in advance to any Spencer super fans.

On the surface, it’s easy to see why Spencer is adored by many fans. He’s a huge Survivor fan. He’s an attractive guy (but not too attractive where it becomes threatening). He’s a good public speaker. I’ve always thought of Spencer as a more physically capable John Cochran (which right off the bat, makes him a less interesting character).

And his edit is so large that it takes away from a lot of people’s potential air time. That’s the dirty secret about Cagayan… it’s a very top-heavy cast. Tony, Kass and Spencer dominate most of the airtime. You have Woo taking his fair share and then the rest of the jury mostly falls behind them. There’s so much Spencer material that feels like fluff that feels like it could have gone to better use for other players. It’s hard to ignore.

In another write up of Spencer’s Cagayan edit, I saw someone describe him as never telling us something we don’t already know. I think that’s exactly accurate when it comes to Spencer. We are meant to think of him as this brilliant Survivor player, mostly based off his existence as Cagayan’s “nerdy superfan” (which honestly takes away from Kass, who was a long time Sucks poster… who went so far as to be the one who started the Michelle Yi Ponderosa gangbang rumor), without ever really showing us any brilliant moves he pulls off.

I mean, this is a guy who came very close to getting voted off instead of J’Tia in the pre-merge. We’ve seen the type of players who get voted out before J’Tia and they aren’t what I would call good at Survivor. But that contrast between his depiction and the reality is what I enjoy most about Spencer.

There’s a lot of talk about Spencer being a gamebot. I think that he came onto Survivor thinking he was going to play this emotionless, strategic, cutthroat game. Look no further than his opening confessional to see how Spencer was presenting himself,

In 2010, I entered the World Open Chess Tournament and I tied for first. I certainly don’t look diabolical or like a genius, both of which I am. I will go down as one of the best players to play, and I want to play an awesome game.

But truthfully, Spencer is an emotional player. The most obvious example of Spencer being unable to control his emotions is after Kass blindsides him at the merge, “Kass: 0 chance of winning this game.” Those aren’t the words of a gamebot.

Spencer represents the duality between production trying to sell us on a story and the actual events that unfolded. Spencer becomes Cagayan’s underdog because Kass was tailormade to be a villain and Spencer happened to be leftover. You want to see an underdog role played correctly? Watch Survivor: Vanuatu. You want to see someone being shoehorned into something they’re not? That’s Spencer in Cagayan.

Go back and read Spencer’s first confessional again. Are those the words of an underdog? No, and I am confident that real-life Spencer would have agreed with me too. That’s someone who is young and cocky. A potential great villain in the Bradley Kleihege school of “douche frat boy villains.” But with Kass’ chaotic presence on the season, there was no room for Spencer’s brand of villainy.

Instead, we are given a golden edit for the young lad because due to his position in the game, we are meant to cheer for him. For a lot of people, it works. For someone who spends far too much time thinking about Survivor, Spencer’s Cagayan edit simply feels hollow. He has a lot of good dynamics with other people, but the thing is, Spencer is never the interesting person in thepairing. Kass and Spencer? That’s all Kass carrying the heavy load. Tony and Spencer? Same thing.

I’ll be fair to Spencer here. That’s my favorite thing about him. He becomes such a great straight man for the cuckoos of Cagayan. Be they Tony, Kass or Woo flavored, Spencer is the one who has to deal with their shit. That’s made even funnier when you remember that he started off on Luzon and tried to align with Garrett while also having to deal with J’Tia.

Like I said, Spencer came in expecting to play this surgical game only to end up way over his head with a bunch of lunatics he didn’t know how to handle. That to me is Spencer’s story and the one I wish would have been told. I don’t care about his strategy when none of his moves have any impact on the season. I would rather know how he feels when Tony is going around talking llama and Kass is doing her thing on the beach.

Then there’s his jury speech:

A lot of people truly hate this speech. I have no strong opinion. Yes, he’s posturing and yes, it makes it seem like Spencer was a reason why Tony eventually gets this win. But I also give Spencer props for recognizing that Tony improbably played the caliber of game Spencer wishes he could have played and rewarding him for it.

The passage of time has not been kind to Spencer’s Cagayan edit. Fresh off the season, it seemed like most people were in his camp. Kass was the villain that people cheered against and Spencer was our hero (Tony was the jester who somehow took the throne). As the years have gone by, I’ve noticed a shift in a lot of the fandom towards Kass, with more people seeing that Spencer isn’t the underdog the edit would have had us believe.

I’m not sure how he would have fared in Second Chances balloting if it had come a few seasons later and he would have had competition from the Devon Pinto and Jay Starrets of the world. For Spencer, voting came at the exact right time for him to get an easy road into his second season, where once again, Spencer will be saying one thing but doing another.

This time, Spencer has learned his Survivor lesson. He needs to make better social bonds with people. Oh, you don’t say Spencer? As a student of the game, you didn’t think you might need people to like you to have the chance to plot and scheme? Sorry, I’m digressing.

Quickly we see how much he’s changed when in episode two, Spencer and Shirin go to Woo, hoping for his vote to save them. Here, Woo delivers what is probably my favorite moment from Cambodia. Woo’s utter shock at Spencer and Shirin asking for his vote, after they’ve not talked to him for 6 days, is priceless. In that moment, you see the difference between a human being playing Survivor and two super fans who only chess pieces on a board.

Woo’s complete shutdown of Spencer and Shirin’s begging gives me life every time I watch the scene. He may have played in a new-school season, but Woo is a decidedly old-school player and a nice reminder that, yeah, you must talk to people when you don’t need anything from them if you want them to eventually do something for you.

Eventually, Spencer does make bonds with some people. Specifically: Jeremy and Tasha, with whom he will ride to the end of the game (but not before betraying Stephen, a real-life friend who would go on to feel very tilted towards the betrayal… Spencer 2.0: Master of the Social Game).

If I thought Spencer was robotic in his first season, Cambodia doubles-down. The entire season is essentially a montage of Spencer telling us he’s going to build better bonds this time around and then some footage of him talking to people. All for the gains of winning the game, not because he wants to be a better person. Cambodia Spencer often feels like Brian Heidik without the fun angle of possible sociopathy.

But there is a fun ending to this edit. Throughtout the season, production hammers home that Spencer is a changed man. He’s making bonds, people like him now. And he makes final tribal council. He’s got all these friends on the jury. Okay, Spencer is ready to collect his payday.

…and he gets demolished by Jeremy, who collects every single vote. It’s like a twist ending everybody sees coming but the protagonist (which I suppose we could call dramatic irony). Spencer’s main goal in Cambodia is to make friends and his biggest question going into final tribal council is whether that goal was achieved. Once the votes come in, he gets his answer, a very vocal NO.

And when I say the edit is hammering home this point, I mean it. Spencer ends Cambodia with 56 confessionals. By contrast, Jeremy gets 44. Maybe if Spencer hadn’t spent so much time giving confessionals about socializing, he could have made friends like Jeremy did and won the game.

Still, I feel like we are cheated from some potential golden stuff with Spencer 2.0. You know what would have been a better journey to show? Spencer’s transformation from a legitimate jury threat in Cagayan to a goat in Cambodia. He spoke so harshly about Kass as this gigantic goat only for him to eventually become what he hated the most. Wouldn’t that have been much more entertaining? It would have been a full-circle arc where Spencer learns to appreciate what Kass went through in Cagayan and maybe seeing that season from her point of view.

It’s admittedly tough to watch Spencer have his dreams destroyed during the live finale. The dude showed up in a hoodie and looks downtrodden the entire time. You can tell that this experience shook him a lot more than in Cagayan because this time, he feels the ultimate rejection of being shut out in the final vote. Even Kass didn’t get that honor, thanks to Woo, and you can tell that Spencer is just over it at this point.

Ironically, I feel that current day Spencer could be a top tier Survivor character. He’s older, with more life experience. He’s gone on to do some experimenting of his own, which has helped shape him into a different person. We know from his appearances outside of the show that he’s funny and down to earth. It’s just that production had a certain image they wanted to give Spencer and even if he didn’t perfectly fit into that hole, they shoehorned him in there. Ultimately, I think it hurt his overall character, just not enough to leave him off this list entirely.

64. Ken McNickle, Survivor: Millennials vs Gen X

When the cast for Millennials vs Gen X came out, the most often cited thing I saw for Ken was his age. He was the youngest generation X castaway, at 33 years old, only 2 years removed from Mari Takahashi whom was cast on the Millennials tribe. That closeness in age with the other tribe might make him a prohibitive favorite to fit in with both sides we thought.

Then the season began and Ken, the youngest generation X player, was the oldest soul on the beach.

It’s that kind of duality that makes Ken an interesting person. It’s cliché to say you should never judge a book by its cover, but Ken has made that his life mantra. Here is the physically fit model walking around the beach. Wouldn’t it make sense for him to ally with the football player, police officer and whatever Paul Wachter was supposed to be? It might to everyone else, but not to Ken.

Because despite his looks, Ken is an introvert at heart. He didn’t see commonalities with the people he might look like. Instead, he saw friendship in David Wright, the panicky, physically weak Hollywood writer.

I was the kid with speech impediments and the nervous twitches… so David and I are kind of mirror images of each other. Socially, we’re a little bit awkward. We’re a little bit shy. And as I see him opening, it’s inspiring me to open up.

Together, they formed an unlikely pair that would carry most of the storyline on that Gen X tribe. Their duo is truly something I enjoy because of the dynamic. It would be easy to think of Ken as the leader of the pair, but he willingly takes a backseat to David, whom he recognizes as the more dangerous strategic player.

We also find out that Ken doesn’t like being boiled down to his looks. At the summit (which you could be forgiven for forgetting ever happened), Figgy tells David and CeCe Taylor that the millennials call Ken, “Ken-doll”, because of his body and the shared namesake with the famous Barbie paramour.

When David and CeCe share this with Ken, he is less than amused. He tells the camp, “when you’re a boy, the last thing you want to be referred to is a plastic barbiewith no penis.” Which elicits a great chuckle from CeCe. He elaborates further in confessional:

So, the Millennials know me as “Ken-Doll.” They think of me as the pretty boy and all the things that come along with that; but I have the body strength and mind to make it far in this game. The Gen X tribe would be hurting if they got rid of me as far as the challenges go and my work ethic.

And he’s right about the work ethic. On top of being an old soul, Ken is also an old-school player. Ken values hard work to a degree most newer players would think is ridiculous. Most of the season, if we see Ken on camera he’s either tending to camp, fishing or off collecting fire wood. The dude works hard. He’s also not on Survivor to play some devious game. Ken wants to make some allies, stick with them until the end and there, they can battle it out. In a way, Ken’s Survivor strategy is kind of like Coach’s “iron sharpens iron” only without any of the false pretense behind it. That’s just how Ken sees Survivor (and probably the world).

Since he’s a kind soul, he becomes the target of Lucy’s wrath when she emerges from what we can only assume, from her absence until her boot episode, is a coma. Lucy hates that Ken is so sensitive and goes so far as to say that he isn’t a “real man.” Poor Ken becomes the subject of toxic masculinity being hoisted upon him, something he’s dealt with his entire life.

Thanks to David’s idol, where Ken once again takes a backseat to his partner, Ken is spared from further harassment by Lucy. Instead, he goes with Jessica Lewis to Takali, and meets Adam Klein and FigTails, whom at this point, have fallen deeply in lust. Much of the action at Takali revolves around Ken and Jessica trying to convince Adam to join their side. But Jessica does most of the talking because as we find out later in the season, Ken isn’t great at talking strategy. They are eventually successful in roping in Adam and survive a potentially dangerous swap.

That’s entirely in the pre-merge. Up to that point, the edgic community had Ken as one of the most likely potential winners. His edit was fantastic, with a lot of personal content and getting to explain his feelings about the game. Then, the tribes merge and Ken essentially disappears from the season.

Millennials vs Gen X is a very strategic season, especially after the merge. Most of the conversation is about the game, where it’s headed, and how the players want to go about their next move. Which is interesting considering how personal and emotional the winner’s story ends up being. That strategy angle is why, while the season has a lot of great characters, I don’t particularly enjoy the product.

We know from him telling us that Ken isn’t great at the strategy part of Survivor. So, when the tribes merge and everything becomes strategy talk, it makes sense that Ken sort of just… disappears. This isn’t his lane and thus, he has nothing relevant to add to the conversation. It’s like everyone else was on the autobahn going 140km/h and Ken was a bus, crawling along at an 80km/h pace.

The one-time Ken tries to make a move in the post-merge, it completely blows up in his face. As this old-school player, Ken can’t just accept a player flipping on an alliance. So, when he hears that Will Wahl is willing to work with his side after previously being on the opposing side, Ken doesn’t quite buy it. He devises a plan to test him before accepting Will’s loyalty, a move that angers Will and almost shuts down the flip entirely.

Here is the explanation for this move from Ken’s side of things,

I had a pretty good feeling about Will but it wasn’t a hundred percent. And, I don’t just have a five minute conversation and then hop in bed with somebody. I’ve got to know the core of a person. Their integrity. Their values. Because I’m trying to win for my little girl and I wanna make sure that I’m safe.

Yeah… safe to say that from there, Ken isn’t given much leeway to make any strategic decisions. In fact, the shine comes off Ken’s edit a little bit in the post-merge. Where he was once presented as virtuous and heroic, he now comes off a little more pretentious and hard-headed. Ken sees the world in a specific way and if your view doesn’t align with his, he’s unlikely to work with you for very long. It’s a much more nuanced image of Ken than the pre-merge version and one that feels more genuinely human. We all have flaws, even this handsome, hard-working, smart model.

In a lot of ways, Ken reminds of me of Ozzy Lusth, especially Cook Islands Ozzy. Both guys are physical competitors, hard workers and great providers. They both rely on those skills as strategy rather than try to make elaborate moves. They’re both a little pompous about the worth they bring to their tribe. Neither are very good at the game of Survivor.

Throughout the season, as David’s power and influence continues to grow, Ken is approached about potentially betraying his closest ally. Each time, Ken shuts down the plan, citing his loyalty being something he places too much emphasis on to go back on his principles. Usually this leads to a frustrated Adam yelling at us in confessionals about how David is going to win the season because no one wants to turn on him.

Here’s a quick confessional from Ken when he’s told that Zeke is planning to go after David,

I’m gonna stay with David. I made a promise to the man that I would never put his name down and so, I wanna go out swinging and fighting with David in this game.

But then Ken wins the final immunity challenge. And he knows that if he makes it to the end, David is going to win the game. So, he’s faced with the biggest test of his own loyalty, somewhere Will probably laughed. Despite his entire brand being based on being the guy who stuck to his team, Ken pulls the trigger and votes with Adam and Hannah, sending David home in 4th place.

He’s then destroyed by the jurors for not playing a strategic game, placing all his marbles on his loyalty, and then deceiving that loyalty at the very last minute. Ken is only trying to do what he thinks could have won him the game but as we’ve established, he is not good at strategy and has missed the boat on how the jury would react to David’s vote out.

It’s a fitting end to a character who starts off so strongly and whose allure dims with each passing episode. Ken feels very human in a season full of robots who want to play Survivor. He’s an outcast in that sense too, which is where it seems like Ken is most comfortable in life.

63. Sherri Biethman, Survivor: Caramoan

Off the backs of the Ken entry, here is another person who goes to final tribal council and has a visible pre-merge while disappearing come the merge. This time it’s our wacky business owner, Sherri.

Usually on Survivor, the older woman is immediately perceived as a liability to her tribe. It’s like the first ever Survivor cliché, down to Sonja Christopher becoming the franchise’s first ever boot. Thankfully for Sherri, she got thrown on a tribe with Eddie Fox and Reynold Toepfer, who as we explored in his entry, doesn’t know how to do basic math.

In putting together his cool kids alliance, Reynold alienated the 6 other players on the fans tribe. Sherri, being the boss lady that she is, saw that group get tossed aside and quickly worked to throw everyone together. That’s how we get the ragtag group that forms the early majority on the fans tribe and how Sherri inexplicably becomes their leader.

Here’s the bad with Sherri: she enables a brutal alliance. It’s either composed of nobodies like Matt Bischoff (whose reappearance as Jonny Fairplay’s cohost on their podcast doesn’t make him any less of a nobody), Laura Alexander, Julia Landauer and Michael Snow or annoying assholes like Shamar Thomas. In her entire alliance, Sherri is the only person who becomes a good character (forget good, nobody else is even average).

On top of that, her alliance allows Shamar to remain in the game for far longer than he had any right being in. She actively works to keep him around despite Reynold’s best efforts to mend the tribe and Shamar ultimately ends up quitting because of a minor eye injury. Try telling Jessica Lewis you’re quitting over a bit of dust in your eyes.

But to me, all of that is outweighed by the good Sherri provides. My favorite element of Sherri’s Survivor story being her relationship with Reynold and Eddie, which we could describe as antagonistic. From Reynold’s dumb faux-pas of excluding Sherri and co. from his Cool Kids alliance, Sherri does not like them and vice versa. The best moment from that little cluster is this fun moment in which Sherri totally doesn’t lose her cool with laidback AF Eddie, on loop for your viewing pleasure.

You have to remember that going into the game, Sherri felt confident about her abilities to handle the young people on her tribe. Because she has a lot of employees with whom she deals with daily that remind her of these young Survivors. So, she was going to treat her fellow castaways like her employees and everything would go smoothly…

Yeah, well maybe not so much Sherri?

The other great part about Sherri’s Survivor experience is her final tribal council performance. Obviously it’s not an objectively good showing. She gets destroyed by the jurors for being a floater and never doing anything once she merges and joins up with Phillip’s alliance. But as this lambasting is happening before her eyes, Sherri has this realization: she’s not going to win this game. That much is clear. So why not let the jurors have it?

I’m sure every Survivor finalist wished they could have said what they actually wanted to say to their jurors. Sherri actually did so. Her telling Erik Reichenbach to sit down and shut up is a great moment. Sure, Sherri didn’t do much in the post-merge but it’s pretty rich of Erik to be criticizing her when he did even less than Sherri throughout the season.

Even then, Sherri held back because this is what she actually wanted to say:

Sherri is not some major character that people will remember from this decade. She’s just somebody I enjoyed (despite most people holding the opposite opinion). I’ve tried to balance my list with people who universally would make anyone’s list (like Spencer) and my own little favorites and let’s just say that this one is for my own enjoyment.

62. Jamal Shipman, Survivor: Island of the Idols

Here’s one fun thing about this countdown being delayed: with the time it’s taken for me to get back in the saddle, Survivor: Island of the Idols has aired in its entirety. That has allowed me to modify my ranking so that I can grab a few players I feel deserve placement on this list and give them their due. I always felt sad that this ranking was going to represent the decade of the Survivor but wouldn’t have an entire season because of scheduling constraints. There’s a silver lining to everything.

Island of the Idols was not a season I would say was fun to get through. There were a lot of dark moments and it went to a place we had never gone before. There were a lot of tough conversations had both on the show and about the show. A lot of stuff needed to be aired out.

Throughout this entire mess, I would say that nobody held their discourse as beautifully as Jamal managed to do so during the entire season. Jamal is a man of conviction, who believes in his words and follows through with his actions. It’s rare we see someone on Survivor with his gift of speech and when we see it, it leaves a lasting impact.

To kick things off, Jamal was the key player in one of the most powerful scenes in Survivor history. One of the things that angers me about the Dan incident is that it kind of took over the entire season’s narrative (as it should, because it was a huge event). In doing so, Jamal’s moment with Jack was lost in the shuffle. For all the criticizing we do against production, this was a moment that was handled beautifully for all involved.

In relatively quick fashion, this is what happened: Jack asked Jamal to pick up a pot of boiling water from the fire. He suggests that Jamal use his durag to do so. Jamal is obviously taken aback by the use of the word, pointing out that if it had been anyone else, Jack would have simply called it a buff.

From there, we get this powerful scene between Jack and Jamal. It’s clear that Jack is very apologetic about his choice of words. Being a great man, Jamal actually takes the time to explain to Jack the error in his use of words. In a game of social manipulation, Jamal takes a chance by actually telling Jack what he did was wrong. It’s a moment that isn’t part of game play and that just so happen to have existed on Survivor. Given what would happen later with Dan, it’s an even more powerful moment where Jamal can put the game on pause for a moment to have a bigger discussion about race, microaggressions and the power behind our own words.

This is what I wrote about Jamal and his handling of this situation in an episode recap:

This was an incredibly uncomfortable situation for Jamal. He said it himself, he’s in a social game. His closest ally has just said something incredibly racially insensitive towards him. He’s hurt and feeling very low. It would have been easy for Jamal to swallow that pain and play it cool as to not hurt his positioning in the game. He would not be the first person not to speak up on Survivor out of fear of being booted.

I added the bold to emphasise my own words. Only a few episodes later would be the merge. I didn’t know what was waiting for us at that time (though I had heard through some back-room conversations we had a shit storm coming) and those words feel even more prescient now.

Showing further how understanding of a man he could be, Jamal accepted Jack’s apology. Not only did he accept the apology, Jamal was incredibly moved by Jack’s genuine feelings of regret. This was another moment in which Survivor highlighted something in our society, something that needs to change.

That a black man was so moved because a white man apologised to him for saying something racist speaks to how much change we still need to go through. Still, as a stand-alone moment, it’s something that will stay with me for a long time.

Thankfully, someone on YouTube has uploaded the entire scene, which I will post here for posterity. It really is that important.

Two episodes later, Island of the Idols had its merge. This is where the Dan blowback came into full force. Kellee raised concerns about Dan’s behaviour, he was permitted to stay in the game and she was voted out by other players, who used Dan as a cloak to hide their plan to vote Kellee out.

Jamal was one of the players who did not vote for Kellee. Janet was another, because Janet could not allow her moral compass to keep Dan if the women were feeling uncomfortable. When he stayed in the game, it was Janet who was made to feel bad for throwing Dan “under the bus”, even though it was deserved.

What followed was an uncomfortable tribal council where Janet was gaslight by most of her tribe. The one person who was shown staunchly coming to her defense? Jamal Shipman. In the midst of Aaron excusing Dan’s behaviour because “if it happened, I would have known about it” (a statement Aaron has since strongly apologized for, it should be noted), Jamal cut him off. His words about not feeling like we should be owed knowledge of a woman’s situation and that we should simply believe women still echo in my head.

In that moment, Jamal was showing every man how to be an ally for feminism. It’s not about being better than men, it’s about being equal and being taken seriously. We are seriously kidding ourselves if we think that men and women have made it to equal footing and that episode was a reminder.

As the season was crashing down around him, Jamal played with his morals intact. He showed kindness, empathy and understanding in a brutal situation and in a moment were few of his castaways could say the same. Jamal was able to draw a line in the sand, decided he wouldn’t cross that line, and stood by his morals.

Even at the end, during final tribal council, Jamal is given the chance to bury Dean. The latter asks Jamal to confirm that the legacy advantage he had gifted to Dean was in fact real. Rather than take that chance to mock Dean’s stupidity for believing the legacy advantage was real, Jamal took the far kinder approach of praising him for his next level thinking of making a duplicate to preserve the original despite the advantage not being real.

Jamal is one of the most important characters of this decade simply because of what Jamal represented. The thought that Survivor can still hold important discussions and do it well (the Jack situation). Or the thought that even with a lot of money on the line, people can still play this game while not betraying their own values.

Which is funny to compare to Jamal the Survivor player. He’s often shown being unaware of what is happening around him, particularly when Molly gets blindsided and he’s shown sleeping while people plot against him. He misplays an idol for Noura that he wouldn’t have needed to use, on someone who in the very same tribal council, said they sometimes hated him. Jamal the person may be fantastic but it’s clear that it doesn’t always translate to having a good grasp on the game.

It should also be noted that he gets extra points for getting very screwed in his boot round. Everyone else who visited island of the idols got a chance to gain an advantage for themselves. Not Jamal. Instead, he picked up a random package hanging around camp (like anyone who found it would have) that sent him to island of the idols where he was informed that he lost his vote. Then, his game consisted of having come up with something he can give to someone else. Poor dude got absolutely snowed by Boston Rob and Sandra and there is nothing he could have done to save himself, short of being a little slower getting to that dangling package.

I don’t doubt that if he wants to return, Jamal will have an essentially open invite to contact production in the not so distant future. Hopefully this time around, his grace with words will translate into a little more actual success in the game. If not, I’m sure he will leave us with a few memorable speeches anyways.

61. Nick Wilson, Survivor: David vs Goliath

Nick is the perfect example of how little moments here and there can culminate into a huge change in history. If the waters of Fiji had been calm on the faithful down when the David tribe was being transported back to their beach after losing the first immunity challenge, we may not have had Nick in the second episode of the season, let alone as our winner.

Unfortunately for Pat Cusack, the water wasn’t calm and in fact, was rather violent. That’s how the David’s boat got tossed around, injuring Pat in the process and getting him removed from the game. Earmarked as the tribe’s first boot, Nick was given a stay of execution. He used that extra time to build some bonds and the rest is history.

It’s those little moments in Survivor history that helps you remember how silly this can be. We spend so much time thinking about this show when a lot of it boils down to luck. Imagine living in a world where Timber Tina comes into Survivor: Panama with a sound mind and not fresh off tragically losing her son. Do we even have the legend of Cirie Fields? Nick is essentially the human manifestation of that entire train of thought. And he realizes the luck he had in Pat’s unfortunate medevac.

Each new day I get out here is a blessing cause I was only supposed to get three. So, I’m either gonna win, or I’m gonna die trying.

Since American Survivor has never had anyone die in their hands (that would be a colossal PR nightmare that might shut the show down entirely), we should have seen Nick’s win coming from the second episode! He goes from being down in the David dumps to forming a bond with Christian Hubicki. That bond buys him some room to move in the David hierarchy. From there, he swapped onto a tribe with Mike White, Angelina Keely, Natalie Cole and Lyrsa Torres. Objectively, they were the physically weakest tribe by far and looked to be in major trouble in competitions.

Feeling like his butt was in the fire, Nick made some more social bonds, this time with Mike White. Nick deserves credit for realizing very early on that he couldn’t rely simply on his starting tribe and doing something about it. With Mike, Nick became part of the Rockstars alliance that would dictate how the Jabeni tribe dynamics would play out. First Natalie would go home upon losing immunity, next Lyrsa.

Mercifully, the merge would come soon after losing Lyrsa. In keeping Angelina along with them, Mike and Nick would forge a strong bond with the eventual goat empress of the season. The merge is where Nick really shines. He finds the steal-a-vote advantage, thanks to Davie Rickenbacker’s expert diversion tactics. Then, he is able to get in with the Strikeforce alliance that is established by Alec Merlino.

It’s thanks to that Strikeforce bond that Alec tells Nick when the Goliaths are thinking of going after Christian. Not wanting to lose Nick’s trust, Alec feels it important to let him know what his initial tribe is thinking. It shows how far Nick has come on a social level that he now has people feeling like they don’t want to upset him. It means that Nick really was working on bettering his game while in the midst of playing it which, if you ask me, is pretty impressive.

Armed with that knowledge, Nick is the one who is able to bridge the Davids together and form a counterstrike against the Goliaths. First, he tells Christian that the Goliaths are coming after him. Not knowing that Davie has an idol, Nick unintentionally convinces him of playing that idol for Christian by laying out why they should try to keep him.

Then in the next round, we get that great moment where the Davids are fully on board with each other. They compare their advantages and get positively giddy over the potential for destruction they now have in the game. If there is any one scene I would point to as evidence that advantages are good, it’s this one. If I could point to one scene to point out why they are bad, it would be Advantagegeddon in Game Changers. Choose your poison I guess.

Sadly, almost immediately after coming together, the Davids broke up. But not before Nick managed to snag another idol. Gabby Pascuzzi, annoyed with Carl Boudreaux’s overconfidence, decided it was time to go after him. She got Christian to agree to the plan and together with the Goliaths to blindside him out of the game. Suddenly, Nick’s power position was in flux again.

Thanks to smart social bonds, Nick was able to avoid yet another fall from grace. He fell back on his Jabeni buddies, Mike and Angelina. Along with Davie as the fourth wheel, Nick was able to make them the new power group in the game. That group ostensibly stayed together until the very end with Nick going on an immunity run to guarantee his own way into the final tribal council.

Nick doesn’t stand out as the most memorable character on his season. That’s only fair because David vs Goliath has the strongest cast of newbies in the 30s easily and considering the top-heaviness discussed in Cagayan’s cast, maybe of the entire decade. Despite not being the showiest, Nick finds his spot in this crew.

He makes sense as a winner because he is always able to keep one or two bigger personalities ahead of him. Nick becomes a social chameleon of sorts, never being the weakest or the strongest and when the time comes, he proves his worth in the immunity challenges.

I can’t imagine the feeling of being on that boat, going back to camp after losing immunity and thinking you’re going to be the first one out. Then, suddenly, one quick wave sends Pat to the ground, knocks him out of the game and there’s a new lease on life. In a sense, maybe it helped Nick play more freely, feeling like he was already on his second chance, like Rick Devens and Chris Underwood would do a season later.

Regardless, there was no way I was going to leave the winner of the best season in the Survivor 30s off this list. We’ll get our second dose of Nick in Winners at War, once again, Nick will be surrounded by a cast of personalities that are bigger than his. We’ll see if that kind of coverage will be enough to let him secure the bag a second time.