Top 100 Survivor Characters of the Decade: #80–76
Villains, Rock Draws and Actors
Welcome back to my countdown of the top 100 Survivor characters of the decade. Before we begin, here’s a quick reminder of the criteria in play:
•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).
•Sadly, as it is still playing out, I can’t fairly incorporate out Island of the Idols cast into my rankings. That means I will have to leave them out entirely. With that said, there’s no doubt that Noura would have cracked the top 20 (probably the top 10) if she sustains this run she has been on. Likewise, players like Missy, Kellee, Elaine and even Dean would also have had a shot at making the top 100. I sadly don’t have the time to put this thing together if it means having to wait for this season to end.
•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.
With all of that out of the way, I present you numbers 80 through 76 in A Tribe of One’s Top 100 Characters of the Decade countdown.
80. Brenda Lowe, Survivor: Nicaragua
This is one of those moments where I wish I could separate two different seasons by the same character. Nicaragua Brenda is a fun entry, Caramoan Brenda would have had no chance of making it onto the list as a one-shot player. Combine them together and this is where I end up putting Brenda, but I’m still not certain I’m even making the right call.
We can start with the positive by going right into Nicaragua. It’s a season that survives mostly on its characters. There isn’t a lot of strategy going on during this season and most of what might be deemed strategy would also be deemed as bad strategy. The one exception is Brenda, King of Nicaragua.
Brenda is quickly established as a Parvati (or at least Probst’s version of what Parvati is like) type character. Her opening confessional sets the tone for how she will be portrayed during the season,
I’m single. I am single, single, single. I’m very single. And flirting is something I’m going to use if I have to.
It plays right into Brenda’s planned strategy when Nicaragua is divided between the young players and older players. I’m not sure Brenda’ flirting would have worked on Jimmy Johnson or Dan Lembo but among the Chase Rice’s of the world, it was a much more viable strategy.
Early on, Brenda establishes power on La Flor. Thanks to her good looks, Chase is immediately attracted to her. Brenda sees that Chase is picking up what she’s putting down and quickly snaps him up as a number. They have an interesting relationship because unlike the stereotypical power duo where the man is presented as the alpha, it’s 100% clear from the very beginning that Brenda oversees this partnership and that Chase is merely along for the ride.
Somehow, the tribe with players like Shannon, Fabio and NaOnka is still the more sensible starting tribe in Nicaragua. These players are at least trying to play Survivor. So, Brenda continues her alliance building, and with Chase, Brenda adds an alliance with NaOnka, Sash and Purple Kelly (who you will be shocked to find out did not make the cut for this list).
The most trouble Brenda could have been in during the pre-merge is the first La Flor vote. She is targeted as being a social threat by an alliance made up of Shannon, Alina, Fabio, Kelly Bruno and Benry. That group might have had a chance at sticking together if Shannon didn’t have a total meltdown at tribal council. Sash is not a likable character but when Shannon tries to call him gay on national television, you kind of have to side with the smarmy douchebag over the obvious homophobe.
Once Shannon is gone, Brenda gets her grips into the La Flor tribe and only Alina, Kelly and Fabio are the outcasts. Benry is kind of accepted into the fold for flipping, Kelly is not because NaOnka has decided she doesn’t like Kelly B and despite also flipping, she is not part of the group. None of this matters because La Flor dominates the older Espada all the way to the swap (not sure what production expected out of the older tribe but this seems like the obvious results).
At the swap, Brenda lucks into being one of the leaders to choose tribes. She is able to grab a majority for her La Flor people staying on La Flor. This guarantees her safety into the merge where she reunites with NaOnka and Chase and that group clearly has the most power in the game.
Some people can play with power and manage to stay level-headed. Those are the players who usually do well, and they are a special few. For most people, getting power on Survivor will go to one’s head and inflate their own ego. It’s exactly what happens with Brenda. She doesn’t become an all-out despicable villain but there are shades of villainy in how she acts.
It’s there in the way that Brenda phrases things,
I think Marty is sooo arrogant. He just whipped out the immunity idol, you know okay, “no BS, I have the idol.” And we’re sitting there like… “wooow, so impressed!” But in our heads, we’re like, “are you stupid?” He’s coming into our home and he’s already setting up like he’s the king. He has a lot of balls. That is the dumbest thing he could have done. Hellooooo.
Her inflection makes her sound so entitled. Like no one can be playing the game but her. That confessional is essentially a microcosm of Brenda’s antagonistic relationship with Marty that follows her into the merge. Thanks to Sash, Marty eventually gives up his idol to the other side for safety, leading to his demise after the merge.
There’s also the fact that at a certain point, she starts saying that people need to “remember their place” and referring to other players as peasants, which can never be construed as heroic behaviour. Rupert would not approve.
After the merge, her relationship with Chase becomes more interesting. While singing a song about his dad, Chase stirs some emotion from Brenda. But Brenda doesn’t believe Survivor is a game that should be played with any emotion. She sees it as a sign of weakness. And if Chase is anything during his time on Survivor, he’s emotional AF. It becomes sort of a balancing act between the two where Chase will annoy Brenda with his feelings and she will try to get him to shove them down, away from the surface.
Chase’s song about his dad got me super emotional. With his singing and music always has all these emotions and I thought no one could see me but I started to tear up a bit. Just thinking about… just the whole thing. Just so many emotions. But I just have to remind myself to stay focused on the game.
For a second, you can see a glimpse of the real Brenda when she’s talking about getting emotional but she never lets that out. She’s content playing as an emotionless shell of herself and that holds her back both in the game and as a character.
Anybody who really wants to play this game and win this game has to do so without emotions. Chase is super emotional. He’s not thinking about the game, he’s just trying to be nice. Which is great, good for you, but that’s not gonna make you win. So, you go home feeling like a great guy, but you will go home without a million dollars. And someone else will. Which is fine for me.
Brenda also has to deal with Chase’s extremely poor decision-making when it comes to choosing people for rewards. It doesn’t help that Chase wins a lot of challenges because of his physicality and thus, constantly has to be making choices.
Chase, I don’t think he made a smart move, I think he should have gone with the guys. He just went with his little emotions and he didn’t wanna disappoint North Carolina Jane, and mommy figure Holly and maybe me, sooo he went with the girls. Chase doesn’t make smart moves. That’s his problem.
He also becomes too clingy for Brenda,
Chase is a worry worth “what’s going on Brenda, are you okay? Are you unsure? You seem unsure. Is every… I’m freaking out. I’m worried.” You know, Chase is like, a little baby that’s always going “wah wah wah wah.”
And also paranoid,
One of the things I can’t stand is paranoia and Chase is too paranoid. You can be tall, and you can be muscular but where’s all that alpha-male power, control. It’s an illusion.
The more I am doing this Brenda entry, the more I am regretting leaving Chase in the honorable mentions, he probably deserved more than that. Sorry bud, but I’m sure your millions of dollars from the country world will be enough to soothe your sadness.
It’s funny for Brenda, who feels like emotions should not be part of the game, that she would end up aligning with Chase and NaOnka, two of the most emotional players on her cast. While trying to deal with Chase’s problems, Brenda also has to manage NaOnka’s unpredictability and penchant for freaking out at the drop of a dime. Like the time NaOnka decided to steal flour and cooking supplies from the camp because she got a small tortilla. Brenda’s exasperation at NaOnka’s behaviour is pretty good.
Even funnier, NaOnka (and partly Chase) end up becoming the reason for Brenda’s boot.
Through the merge, Brenda and Sash have showcased a little too much power. They’ve flexed their muscle in each vote and have proven to be the nucleus of power. Holly, one of the few Nicaragua players with some strategic sense, picks up on that and with 10 people left in the game, sees her chance to make a move. Maybe she picked up on their influence in the game because Brenda is giving confessionals like,
I think Sash and I being in control does look like a king and queen situation. But Sash is more of a queen and I’m more of a king. The way I look at it.
I’m so surprised someone was able to figure out they were calling the shots!
Holly (who already has Jane) rallies Benry and Fabio over to her side, using the Marty boot as evidence that Brenda is not with them and has all the power. With those two come Dan, who is mostly just Fabio’s little buddy during the season. She is then able to approach NaOnka and flip her on her best friend, with little to not effort. Probably because in that moment, NaOnka was agreeable to the plan and that was it.
That’s already enough to get Brenda out but Holly still works on Chase. He is thorn between voting out Brenda and going for Benry. Chase is so close to Jane, through the North Carolina connection, that he doesn’t feel like he can go against her. In a wonderful moment of storytelling, the weakness Brenda sees in Chase, his emotions, are exactly what eventually causes Chase to flip on her in the end.
Because Chase is the king of making bad choices, he still feels like he should tell Brenda about the plan to get her out. Brenda is obviously displeased about this news but is also rather… nonchalant, about it. She decides not to press anyone about voting for her to stay. She feels solid in her alliance.
It looks like there is operation “take out Brenda” put in place. I’m pretty annoyed about it. But I think all I can do is stay cool. The last thing I wanna do is start scrambling. It just shows that you’re desperate, sooo, if I show confidence, my friends have confidence in me, it shows that, “yeah I kinda wanna stick with Brenda.” I’m just furious that NaOnka would make such a dumb move. I thought we had a great alliance. I really believed that we would go to the end. But now, I don’t even wanna see NaOnka’s face. I wanted to take out Benry but, I’m hoping Sash is gonna give me his immunity idol and we blindside NaOnka.
Sash… did not give her the idol. In fact, he voted against her.
Brenda’s theory would have been fine if her alliance was still secured. The problem was that it wasn’t. Purple Kelly had been informed of the rebellion, though she would not go against her friend. Sash also got word. Everyone was being told that the numbers were in place because they were. Brenda not fighting for her life didn’t give any of her allies any reason to want to change their mind and go against the already established plan. Her complacency buried her last chance at surviving.
At final tribal council, she voted for Chase over Sash, whom the entire jury found too slimy, and Fabio. And that’s it! Brenda goes down in the books as a fun villain-esque character whose confidence led to her demise. She was never seen on Survivor aga… oh you want to talk about Caramoa Brenda? Fine, if we must.
Brenda, like Vytas, is another character whose second appearance informs her first with the benefit of hindsight. We get hints of Brenda’s attitude and poor sportsmanship in Nicaragua, in Caramoan, it’s on full display. Really, it’s the only thing we get from Brenda at all.
When people point to Caramoan as a badly edited season, Brenda is one of the finest examples. They did an odd choice in choosing the Favorites for Caramoan and Brenda was one of the few legitimate choices. So why then put her out there and give her eight straight episodes without a single confessional?
Then, when we finally hear from her, it’s in a moment where she helps Dawn find her fake tooth in the water. It’s a great moment that highlights the bond between the two women and helps Brenda’s character development from villain of Nicaragua to nice-girl Brenda of Caramoan. We also learn that apparently Dawn and Brenda have a tight alliance that wasn’t highlighted up to this point.
Later, Brenda wins the loved ones reward challenge and becomes the poster girl for never, ever winning the reward challenge. Probst asks her to pick someone to share the reward with. She obviously chooses Dawn. Probst then asks her to choose either a second person to share with or allow everyone else to see their loved ones except Dawn and herself. This is a lose-lose situation and Brenda makes the right call by allowing everyone else to see their family.
This breaks Dawn, who was already on the verge of seven different breakdowns over the course of Caramoan. When approached about potentially blindsiding her closest ally, Dawn doesn’t balk at the prospect because she is fuming with Brenda. Once again, Brenda is going to get outdone by someone playing with emotion, her least favorite trait in a Survivor player.
When she gets voted out, Brenda displays all kinds of sour grapes.
Never forget that in the previous round, Brenda was part of the group that blindsided Andrea, her own ally, who had an idol in her pocket. So much for being genuine and true Brenda, you played and got played like everybody else.
Then comes the bleakest moment of the season, Caramoan’s final tribal council and more specifically, Brenda’s turn at addressing the jury. I won’t link the video but we all know what I’m talking about, toothgate.
Look, maybe Brenda didn’t know the full story behind Dawn’s tooth. It shouldn’t have mattered. Brenda isn’t stupid. She saw how Dawn reacted when she lost the tooth back in the water. She knew that this was a deeply hurtful thing she was going to ask Dawn to do. And she did so knowing that even if Dawn did take out her retainer, she wasn’t going to give Dawn her vote. This was pure spite and came from a place of genuine meanness. She did this to embarrass Dawn in front of a national audience. It was calculated, it was cold, and it was gross.
Top that all off with Dawn being the one made to apologize to Brenda at the reunion? That shit was truly disgusting. That moment doesn’t belong on Survivor and Brenda is lesser for going through with this.
It’s why I struggled with where to put Brenda on my list. I do think she deserves a spot. The added twist that emotional players ended both of her games is even a fun wrinkle. Her Nicaragua appearance would have probably put her in the top 50 alone. The Caramoan ugliness drastically dropped her but I couldn’t leave her completely off. In the end, I settled with the 80th spot. I just wish we could go back in time and never cast her for Caramoan.
79. Mike White, Survivor: David vs Goliath
If there’s one thing about modern Survivor that I dislike more than anything else, it’s how the show has started preferring strategy over everything else. Survivor was never about strategy. It was about the social dynamics between 16 (or 18, or 20, and even sometimes 19) strangers and how they create their own society. With their own rules, like banana etiquette. That’s the true beauty of Survivor, not how you can split a vote in three and come up with little trinkets to beat the other alliance’s little trinkets.
No word is more synonymous with the direction that Survivor has taken than the idea of a Survivor “resume”. I don’t know where it started but I mostly blame Millennials vs Gen X’s Will Wahl for getting the train rolling on this concept. He only mentioned it 875 times in the episodes leading up to his own boot.
A resume is exactly what it sounds like. Players believe that to win, they need to have this list of maneuvers they did in the game. It’s also known as big moves and that’s the era Probst has tried to push us towards for the better part of this decade. Never mind your social connections or general ability to be likable. To win, you have to make flashy moves, or at least that’s what the show tells us.
Flash-forward to David vs Goliath’s final tribal council and Mike White’s final plea. He pushes back on the idea that his moves should be the reason he should win the game. Instead, he talks about his journey and personal development. He focuses on his own personal growth rather than the moves he made to get to the end and in that sense, he tapped into an old part of Survivor that isn’t addressed anymore.
Um, as far as my game, I never really felt too… nervous. I wanted to play a good game. It wasn’t like I just wanted to get to the end as like, a goat or like, as somebody who wasn’t playing. I wanted to play and I feel like I did play. I mean for me, my personal struggle was like, what am I… what do I stand for? What am I playing for? Like, what do I stand for? And like, trying to figure out what coming on here means to me to try to feel like there is something worthy in my battle to win. You know like they say every rainbow has a pot of gold at the end and it’s like, for me it was never about the pot of gold. It’s about the rainbow. And it so speaks to what I value which is: taking a risk, embarrassing yourself, having an adventure. You know, I’m not acting like I’m a saint. I’m no saint. But it was more about the struggle for me to feel like it was a worthy endeavour for me to win this game.
There’s more to just Mike than that speech. He’s also one of the best sidekicks for Angelina’s ridiculousness. He has just the right amount of sass, annoyed and in disbelief at her various crazy actions. Like when Angelina plants the fake idol for Alison and she finds it, Angelina in view of Alison fake excitedly yells at Mike, “she found it!” Mike’s facial reaction says, “are you fucking kidding me Angelina?” and it ends me every time. Or the face palm he pulls out when Angelina is asking Natalie for her jacket after Natalie has been voted out. Mike’s the only one who can never get away from Angelina, spending all 39 days in the game with her. You can feel both the friendship and annoyance he has with her and it switches on a moment-to-moment basis.
An addendum to one of the funniest scenes in Survivor history (Angelina and her ladder) is Mike and his wine combing the Fijian beach for an idol clue Angelina lost. His drunken stumbling and accompanying commentary is wonderful. His exasperated, “they’re idiots!” when he does finally find the scroll on the beach is a great punctuation to his discovery. It’s not surprising that Mike is good on camera, but you can tell that his Hollywood background has taught him a lot about comedic timing.
How Mike is with Angelina is how he is with most of the people in his cast. He’s not loud or in your face but Mike can always be counted on for a quick quip. Before Jeremy disgraced himself in the exit interviews, he was a great partner for Mike. Jeremy was the bossy one and Mike kind of ineptly followed along, bemused at Jeremy’s sourness.
Once Jeremy left, Mike found another kindred soul with Nick. Their alliance and general relationship was kind of cute. Mike kind of laughs at everything Nick does but, in the end,, he always ends up going along. For a Goliath, and the most successful one at that, Mike plays Survivor without much of an ego and it’s a testament to his abilities as a player.
There’s also the loved ones visit. Mike’s visit is allegedly his boyfriend (or husband? I honestly forget, sorry Mike). I say allegedly because we’ve seen Mike be more affectionate with most of the people left in the game at that point. It felt more like the person coming to see Mike was his drug dealer, which given some of the rumors that were spread during DvG, might be closer to the truth.
On top of all that, I enjoy how much Mike wants to be on Survivor. This is not somebody who needs the prize money. Mike just loves the show and wanted to be a part of it, much like Jimmy Johnson. The difference is that Jimmy greatly overestimated how much he could handle the realness of Survivor. Mike came in, saw how hard it was and grinded it out anyways. He wasn’t scared of looking silly or hurting his reputation outside of the game, he fully immersed himself in Survivor the minute he got to Fiji.
I try to steer clear of things that happened outside of the game for this list, but Mike has a moment that needed to be included. After hearing Rob Cesternino do an impression of him and mock his (very bad) movie, the Emoji Movie, Mike pounced on Rob during the reunion. I’m still not sure what percentage of this is performance and how much of this is actual irritation towards Rob but it’s 100% amazing to watch.
On a final note, it should be noted that Mike is the one who told Probst to stop with Redemption Island already. On the one hand, it’s scary that Probst is so easily influenced by the famous people he knows. On the other, at least Mike is giving good suggestions (unlike Tyler Perry for example).
78. Chris Underwood, Survivor: Edge of Extinction
If I can find some room for first boots and early mergers on this list, I think I can find some room for Chris Underwood too. After all, I’m not trying to decide the best players of the decade, just the best characters and if anything else, Chris goes down as a memorable character for the last 10 years of Survivor.
When we found out what the edge of extinction was, there was a near-universal reaction to the twist: production is rigging the game for Joe Anglim. In my cast preview, let me highlight this part I wrote about Chris:
That outside appearance is going to matter too, of course. Remember when production had to throw in Joel on Survivor: Micronesia because the fans needed somebody on their tribe to compete with James Clement? Chris is Manu’s answer to the Joe Anglim problem that Kama presents. He’s going to be tasked with matching Mr. Amazing in competitions and I think that Chris is up to the task.
Once in a blue moon, I get something right. Chris couldn’t outcompete Joe in the tribe immunity challenges. On the edge, however, it was a different story. He stood tall amongst the giants and managed to win his way back into the game. The rest, as they say, is history.
Much of pre-returning Chris is forgettable. He had a bond with Keith he had to sever because Keith was useless on Manu. At the first tribal council, he was the first one to voice to Reem’s face that she was annoying the tribe. He had a bond with Rick that was severed when Chris was thrown under the bus by Rick and David to Wardog. Chris’s willingness to trust people like Rick and Wardog got him voted out early, pinned as the would-be Wentworth assassinator so that Rick and David could avoid the target.
There were some good moments on the edge for Chris. His fight with Reem about giving away an advantage to Keith was entertaining. Especially when that advantage ended up being used on Chris, likely stopping him from returning to the game at the merge (and maybe winning him the game in a weird, roundabout way).
I pointed out earlier a moment where I predicted things correctly. So how about a moment where I totally missed the mark? It seems fair to keep myself humbled,
The letters from their past selves that the players on extinction received felt gratuitous but they did serve a purpose. For players like Julia, Chris and Eric, they served as the end to their narrative. Julia’s especially sticks out in my mind because they aired the part where she said something akin to “by going on the show you’ve already won”. This undoubtedly rules her out as the player to return from extinction and Chris and Eric had similar content (though from the amount of airtime those three have gotten since being eliminated, we could have deduced that already).
Big whiff on my part. Though to be fair to me, production had the winner on extinction for much of the season and didn’t feel it necessary to give him any air time until he came back into the game. Seemed like an odd choice at the time and it still feels odd now. If I had known that Chris unintentionally spoiled himself by wearing his merge buff during a snowboarding trip and snapping a selfie of it, I might not have made a fool of myself.
None of that stuff collectively is enough to carve some room for Chris on this list. So how does he get in? By putting together, the most impressive single episode of Survivor that I can ever remember, also known as the Edge of Extinction finale.
And yes, Chris had helped. The edge became a focus group for whoever would end up returning into the game. All the voted-out players assembled and gave their thoughts for what the returnee should do if they want to win. That is undoubtedly an advantage. But you give credit when credit is due, and Chris pulled off what the others merely talked about.
At the final 6, this dude comes into the game and introduces himself to certain players he had never officially met. This speaks more to the insanity that is the edge of extinction as a twist, but it bears mentioning. Then, Chris started spitting game we didn’t know he had in him.
His first move was to convince Lauren into not only flushing her idol at the final 6 but using it on Chris himself. It takes a lot of charm and wit to get a player like Lauren to do something so stupid. For Chris, this was a great warm up for the challenges ahead. He had received an idol from coming back that would activate at the final 5 but without an idol for the first tribal council, Chris needed some protection. He managed to secure that protection with Lauren’s idol, even if he never needed it.
Then, at the final 5, he manages to convince Rick to give him back the half-idol Chris had given him during the previous round. He needed to do that so the idol could become legitimate. Rick knew giving back the idol was a mistake, but Chris made him feel bad for voting him out in the pre-merge. Rick felt like he needed to give Chris his idol as a show of good fate and to ensure they could continue working together towards the end-game. This is the moment that cost Rick the game. Without an idol, Chris goes home at final 5. In handing over that idol, Rick also handed over a million dollars to Chris.
At final 4, Chris likely made all of production orgasm simultaneously. I have no doubt that the fire-making challenge was in part, added to create a moment like this. Realizing he would only ever win if Rick was out of the game, Chris took it upon himself to end him. He gave up the immunity that he had just won to Julie and gave Gavin protection into the final three. At that moment he announced his decision: a fire-making battle with Rick, the winner would go to the final three and win an easy million dollars, the loser would never live this moment down.
Chris made one of the gutsiest plays in Survivor history and with everything on the line, Chris pulled through. According to production, Chris managed to light that fire faster than anybody in the history of Survivor fire-making. This was a man committed to his game plan and following through to the end.
There’s no doubt that Chris was influenced by Survivor history in making this move. He’s a self-proclaimed superfan and had just finished watching Ghost Island, which finished airing like three days before the EoE flew out to Fiji. With Domenick considering facing off against Wendell to make fire, choosing not to and ultimately losing, Chris likely knew he couldn’t risk the same fate. It was made even easier for Chris because Dom had legitimate reasons to think he could beat Wendell. Chris did not have the same for Rick.
Chris shouldn’t have been a Survivor winner. He shouldn’t have been on this list. He should have been a forgettable third boot that people never talk about two years from the season wrapping. Instead, production gave him the means to become much more than that. He took control of his own fate by winning his way back into the game and the winning his way into a million dollars by beating Rick 1-on-1. He’s easily the weakest winner of the decade but he’s also amongst the most memorable.
77. Hayden Moss, Survivor: Blood vs Water
If you’ve been following along from the beginning, you’ll know that I’m big on moments. As in Caleb almost dying on the show or Francesca becoming the first person to be sent home first twice. Those moments for me elevate a character that might otherwise just be perfectly average.
There’s one such moment in Blood vs Water that elevates Hayden, a character I already kind of like, a few notches above other castaways in his tier. That moment is the final six tribal council. Going into it, Hayden is at the bottom of a 4-person majority. Tyson Apostol has control of the game thanks to an alliance with Gervase Peterson, Monica Culpepper and Ciera Eastin. They are all under his thumb. In the previous round, Hayden tried to take a shot at Tyson’s group with Katie Collins, Caleb Bankstead and Ciera, whom he thought he might have flipped. Unfortunately for him, Ciera stuck with Tyson and they voted out Caleb. Now Hayden and Katie are at the bottom with very little hope.
That’s where we pick up with this tribal council.
Everything that goes on here, Hayden pounces on it. If you ever needed to understand how he won Big Brother, it’s on full display here. From the beginning, Hayden sets the tone by saying that everyone else is being controlled by Tyson. Nobody likes being controlled and Hayden knows this will elicit some emotion from these people. When some people get heated, like say Gervase for example, they start saying stupid things. Like when Gervase says he chose Tyson and Monica for reward because they were original Galang. Ciera even offered up her own reasoning before Gervase’s answer (that she had eaten a lot already) and still, Gervase made sure to point out that wasn’t why he didn’t choose her. Great job Gerv.
That’s where Hayden really starts putting on the pressure. He knows Ciera isn’t stupid. She can see that there are four people in a three-person alliance. Hayden keeps hammering that point home with everything Monica or Gervase says.
Then you have Monica’s incredibly stupid “4 is better than 6” comment. In one fell swoop, she essentially confirms to Ciera’s face that she is number four in the alliance. Then Gervase counts out his alliance, Ciera counted as number four because “that’s just how I’m counting” as Hayden is basically incredulous at how stupid these two are being.
I’ll put it this way. Tyson is about as laid-back as they come. It takes a lot to make him angry. During this tribal council, he is seething as his two allies keep fucking up and he can feel Hayden start gaining some momentum towards his side. All season, Tyson was the kingpin but at that tribal council, it’s a faceoff between two incredible players. Some of the stare downs they give each other give me chills.
Watching this tribal council even today, my heart beat starts to pick up and I get goosebumps. There’s something so primitive about Hayden’s fight. It’s like he’s starving and won’t let go of the bone. This is a man who wants to win the game and by sheer force of will, he manages to swing a vote.
It needs to be stated over and over. Swinging a vote at tribal council is incredibly hard. It was even harder back in season 27 when the “live” tribal council era was just beginning. You go into tribal council with your plan and you stick to it. Probst will needle you with some questions, you do your best to answer without pissing him off and hopefully, all goes well, and you go back to camp to eat some rice. Hayden bucked the status quo by forcing that rock draw.
This move is so impressive that Hayden manages to bring out the old Tyson. He’s spent so much of the season focused on his game and not letting arrogant Tyson come out and ruin it like he did the first two times. For the entire season, Tyson is able to keep himself in check. At this tribal council. Tyson is so angry that he loses control of himself for a few seconds when he insults Katie on the way out the door. The relief he feels from drawing a good rock combined with the anger he feels towards his idiot allies becomes a perfect recipe for arrogant Tyson to emerge.
Among all of that action going on, Hayden is even involved in another great moment when he has the nerve to say “rustle feathers”. That aside with Tyson, in the most intense tribal council of the season (and for my money a top 5 tribal council of all-time), is so weird and out of place. It’s so typically Tyson and Hayden’s annoyed dismissal of Tyson’s correction is the perfect reaction.
Sure, the rock draw doesn’t go Hayden’s way but it doesn’t matter. This is an all-time great desperation move. Hayden saves himself by forcing a rock draw. If the rock draw does go his way and Tyson gets rocked out, we’re probably looking at a Hayden win in the end. It would have made him a Big Brother and Survivor champion, no doubt rustling some Survivor feathers in the process.
Outside of the rock draw, Hayden has a lot more going for him. Like in Big Brother, Hayden originally finds himself in a dude alliance on Tadhanna. It’s the tried-and-true method for Hayden, it worked once, it’s been proposed to him on Survivor, so why not?
But then that bro alliance starts collapsing. Brad Culpepper gets a lot of heat from everyone for voting out their loved ones. Caleb eventually flips on Brad and Hayden is the only one who remains loyal to him as Brad is sent out of the game.
Still, Hayden’s unwillingness to flip on his ally isn’t held against him. Instead, he becomes closer to Caleb where in the swap and merge, the pair becomes instrumental in helping Tyson vote out Aras Baskauskas and his brother Vytas.
After the merge, Hayden settles into an alliance with players like Katie and Ciera. The guy known for getting down with the bros is suddenly aligning himself with the women. It’s a nice indication of how adaptable Hayden can be. Just because he’s worked with guys in the past, it doesn’t mean he’s closed off to working with women. Hayden just wants to win and he will ally with anybody that can help him do so.
It’s kind of nice for this guy who is portrayed as such a bro is almost devoid of toxic masculinity. He’s never the one spouting off anything about gendered alliances and he has no qualms working with anybody. Look at Enzo from Big Brother, his closest ally, a New Jersey-born bro who happens to be the bro-iest man that’s ever existed, and Caleb, his closest Survivor ally, a laid-back gay guy from Alabama. Hayden is predisposed to get along with everyone which is a quality that is inherent and valuable in a game like Survivor.
Clearly, Hayden is a smart guy, which makes the mystery of his relationship with Kat even more intriguing. As a couple, they don’t get much coverage. Kat is worried that she is no longer dateable for making the merge and I honestly don’t remember Hayden talking about Kat outside of being asked about it. I don’t see the chemistry there and they obviously aren’t together anymore. It speaks to how much production wanted to get Hayden onto Survivor that they agreed to bring back Kat in the exchange.
I don’t always go to game moves for the reason why a player might make this list, but Hayden’s move at the final 6 in BvW is an all-time great. It propels him in the top 100 of the decade and in fact, I’ve recently started to think I probably even placed him too low.
76. Joe Mena, Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers
If Tony has had any impact on Survivor, it’s ruining the pre-game chances of any bald-headed, tattooed guy. He was such a force on Cagayan that he will be remembered until the end of time. Because he had such a distinct look, that many guys who suffer through male pattern baldness happen to share, any time a guy like Joe Mena comes on Survivor, the comparison will be made. It will be made by the fans, it will be made by production and most importantly, it will be made by the players. Dread it, run from it, the Tony curse still arrives.
To me, Joe was never a Tony clone, they have different energies. Tony exudes chaotic energy. Everything he does, he does in fast forward. There’s no neutral zone with him. Joe was different. He was much more negative and had was much more of a willing villain. I wouldn’t call Tony a hero but I would also never call him a villain. That’s a role that Joe embraced.
There’s also the fact that Tony was good at the game. Yes, he got lucky that the season played out like it did for him, but Tony had Survivor skills. Joe is all bravado. He talks a big game but backs up very little of it. Most of his time in HHH, he’s inconsequential, kept around as a nuisance while people pick off much bigger game players first.
From the beginning of the game, Joe decides he’s going to be antagonistic. He seeks out Mike in the woods and proceeds to interrogate him over some rope Mike has in his pockets. Joe is so aggro in this moment and Mike is kind of just… confused?
He’s just so brash. Like, he’s barely met Mike and he’s accusing him, to his face, of having an idol. And then he tells Mike that it’s good because Joe came right out and said it to him, which means he respects Mike. All of this to the guy who is going to end up becoming Joe’s closest ally in the game.
Afterwards, Joe proceeds to go do exactly what he’s accused Mike of doing: looking for the idol. He gives this great quote which goes, “the window is a very, very small window but I can accomplish a lot of things in a small time.” It begs the question Joe… what are these things you speak of?
Regardless of his speed, Joe does actually find an idol clue and proceeds to read it terribly. Which leads to the scene I discussed in Cole’s entry, where Cole stupidly tells Joe exactly where to find the idol and then watches as Joe discovers the idol for himself. From there, Cole starts becoming weary of Joe and vice versa.
Joe’s premiere doesn’t do a lot to dissuade the Tony comparisons. He’s so idol hungry. He’s running around the island like a madman in his red shorts. He’s sneaking around the island like a certain former cop might have done.
That’s basically Joe’s story until the merge (he also throws away some badly cooked potatoes, which pisses off Desi). Well, that and that time he told Ashley, “I read your face, thank you baby girl.” That was a decent scene too.
Before the merge, he also finds a second idol at Heroes camp, which was essentially located in the same spot as the one he found on Healer beach. This is kind of Joe’s thesis on Survivor: idols represent power and if he finds idol, he can win the game. Joe’s not thinking about the social game or the numbers, he’s very focused on the idols of it all. You see it in how paranoid he was when Mike might have found an idol and how hungry he is to find his own.
At the merge, Joe is a blight on humanity when he orders two steaks… well done. It’s also Joe’s introduction to Chrissy who shall we say… doesn’t exactly enjoy his presence. The same can be said for Ben who will eventually become Joe’s biggest nemesis in the game.
Because he’s so confident from his first idol play, Joe is sure he can do it again. At the merge, he pulls out his idol and wears it in front of everyone. Both as a ploy to attract some heat and because Joe likes being a loudmouth. This HHH tribal council is so good, mostly because Joe brings the theatrics. It’s here that Mike imitates Joe (deuces) and Joe claims to be “chillin’”.
When it comes time to play the idol, Joe confidently struts to Probst and misplays the idol. Jessica is blindsided instead, and Joe has suddenly thrown away all the power he had acquired in the game. From this point on, Joe is basically never in control of his own fate.
At this point, Joe also decides to make up this lie that Ben swore on his marine past in the game. Ben… does not take this took kindly but Joe is so unapologetic about it,
So, I’m thinking he’s always saying, “I’m a marine,” you know, this and that, you know, so I told him, I said, you know, “You’re going around swearing on your marine,” and he’s like, “I have never done that.” Maybe he didn’t directly say, “I swear on my marines,” but it doesn’t really matter. I know I’m in trouble, so I got to do what I can to try to blow up his game.
This is a guy who is willingly going out there and being a villain. You have some players who begrudgingly accept their dark side on Survivor. There are even some who are clearly villains but won’t accept their role. This is not Joe. He fully embraces being a dick to people because he can get away with it. That kind of joy in villainy is something that is sort of absent in a lot of Survivor seasons and it does feel refreshing.
In fact, as it becomes more obvious that he’s out of the power structure of the game, Joe makes it his strategy to be a dick. He thinks people will take him to the end as an easy win if he keeps picking fights with Chrissy and generally does things to annoy people. Sadly for Joe, he forgets to factor in the fact that people have to be willing to live with you until day 39 for that strategy to work out.
As the Healers get knocked out one after another, Joe finds an unlikely ally in Dr Mike. That is the birth of the Coco-Nuts, the most inept power pair in Survivor history. Usually two players coming together so publicly would cause an uproar at the camp. In this situation, they are mostly left to their own devices while the big players strategize around them and sometimes, they get roped into a plan if they are needed for numbers.
This is a deep pull for probably everyone reading, but the Coco-Nuts tandem always reminded me of the Final Fantasy IX villains, Zorn and Thorn. They are jesters to the queen and are used as comedic elements in the story because they are mostly incompetent.
Joe is eventually defeated by Ben thanks to the double agent plan, where Ben is pretending to be working with one side but is secretly with the other. They successfully manage to fool Ryan into flushing an idol and sideswipe Joe instead, sending him out of the game without any suspicion his number was up.
The beauty of Joe Mena is in the false image he gives himself. He tries to pretend like he’s this alpha strategist who controls the game. He talks a lot of trash and is openly antagonistic towards people. On the flip side, Joe has exactly one good read in the entire game, and it happens in the pre-merge. He wastes an idol on another bad read and then he joins an alliance that is only using him as a number until he can be cast aside for being useless. Joe has almost 0 agency over his own game for the duration of HHH and yet, hearing him talk, you would think he’s dominated every round of play.
That combined with his willingness to be the bad guy makes him a fun character. He’s not being a malicious person, he’s just there to stir the pot. Joe is a guy who understands that to make good television, you need strong personalities and he’s just giving production what they need to make entertaining television.
It could have come off as fake or try hard, but I do think Joe is exactly the kind of guy who would play like he did on Survivor. He hasn’t been any different on social media since coming off his season (likely making more enemies than friends among the casts after his own) and hasn’t ever tried to pretend like he was something he wasn’t. That kind of self-awareness is king for a character like Joe, otherwise he would have been another fake version of Coach.
Next time, we get into the top 75. Hopefully this was a welcome distraction to what is currently going on in Survivor, because God knows I needed to work on something to get my mind off the episode we just watched last night.
