Lurker > Inviso

On a different and hopefully less angry note:

Real Love Boat is moving to Paramount+ and TAR is moving into the 9 PM time slot!

I can understand disliking Shan, even though she was a big character.

But how can you hate Maryanne? She's one of the best winners Survivor has ever had.

I feel like having the audience and the cast informed at the start of the leg that it was a NEL really made it boring. There was no REAL tension.

Underleveled posted...

Elie was a legit decent character don't @ me. She was like a diet Angelina Keeley and while the "diet" is still there we've had like 6 diet Tonys and a couple of them have been decent characters in their own right (think Angelina -> Elie as like Tony -> Joe Mena).

Elie's more like RC, with Gabler as her Abi-Maria.

Mewtwo59 posted...

I agree. He reminds me of Michael from Ghost Island in that he keeps getting confessionals despite having no charisma whatsoever.

I hated Michael in GI, but the difference is that Michael never came across like a douchebag. He was just a photogenic white guy who got far too much screentime. Sami is more like Spencer, when Spencer is in a position of power.

Corrik7 posted...

9 and 10 wasn't parallel

I think he meant parallel in terms of 9 being all about the Hightowers and their planning, while 10 was almost entirely the Targaryens and their planning.

This is a beautiful location, but holy shit this episode is boring as hell.

The past two episodes, primarily focused on Coco and their fun messiness, have been the best of the season thus far. Not great...but better than Vesi's boring bullshit, and Baka being THE WORST.

Unrelated to tribal, but I HATE Sami. He's so smug and arrogant, and it pisses me off to no end.

Geo faking an underdog story, getting his bluff called, and losing out on the vote, would be amazing.

I really hope this is legitimately just an edit just clowning on Ryan, because if he DOESN'T go home...ffs.

I still really dislike Baka, but I'll give credit for making a Beware Advantage scene that feels unique and different from the prior two. All three scenes felt really different, actually. Cody enlisting his allies to keep the outsiders in the dark, Karla going solo and hustling, and now Jeanine working to get the whole tribe (who fully knows what she has) onboard with giving her an idol.

L-Ron

I really hate Baka. I can't remember the last time they offered something positive to an episode.

That scramble was a big part of why Coco is the best tribe. The original target is the biggest potential tryhard, but then you have a player get super paranoid for no reason, and the tribe still largely like each other and come across as genuinely pleasant people.

That really sucks. It's a lot easier for the middle tribe to copy a puzzle.

Still hoping for Coco to win immunity.

Drew Christy is in shambles.

Also, what is the point of a camp raid right now? The tribes have almost nothing to steal.

I'm going to guess Lucky Number Slevin, if only because I think the classics might survive a little longer due to some of the people who ranked this list.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Angela turned out to be amazing on The Challenge (and, if I did a ranking here, she'd be in my top 20, possibly top 10 - a shock to me given how I didn't like her much in BB20, which says a lot coming from me), so I'm glad they gave her another shot. I'm with darkx on Domenick and David, though with them it's ambivalence - give them a chance to show they have something more to give (neither of them really did tbh). I also didn't have much of an opinion on Leo due to skipping his seasons of TAR; I just knew he and Jamal were the "Afghanimals" and had a few dozen cats between them, that's it.

Karen is insufferable. Enzo just sucks. Ben had no business being back. Tasha sucks too. But, going in, Will and James were the LAST Amazing Racers I wanted to see, given how they pretty much broke the game and acted all arrogant about it. I only lasted an episode of that nonsense. I really do come and go with TAR....

Yeah, Angela was the only real positive surprise for me. The Challenge seems much more designed for someone like her than Big Brother.

Underleveled posted...

It doesn't even surprise me a little bit that James was awful. I wouldn't have Domenick and David in my list of people I wouldn't want to see again though. Domenick was entertaining enough on Ghost Island (granted, mostly by virtue of being one of the only electric players/personalities in an extremely lifeless cast) and David was at least a very nice, funny guy, even if he is a bit of a trainwreck of a BB player (a lot of which isn't his fault... I think he ends up in unwinnable scenarios a lot).

I don't hate Domenick in Ghost Island (because, as you said, that season is so supremely lifeless), but he's very much in the vein of "over-strategic gamebot". He was absolutely cast to be like a diet Tony...and I just didn't want to see that on another show. As for David, we'd gotten two seasons of him at that point, and I just didn't feel like I needed to see him again. It's not that he's bad...I just don't know if he was ever going to make a big contribution to the show.

And finally, just to catch up, there's still one entry ranked below this one, but I have 28 Challenge characters to rank in total, so whatever.

James Wallington (The Challenge: USA, 23rd Place) - I think it says a lot, in a season of television that produced the absolute worst character of my list (and another of the finalists was second worst), that a seemingly-inconsequential episode three boot winds up just barely missing out on my bottom ten overall. Going into the season, this cast isn't the best on-paper. I can't comment on Love Island (so that's 8/28 cast members I had no opinion on), but Sarah, Domenick, Enzo, Angela, Ben, Leo, Tasha, and even David were not characters I needed to see back on my TV screen. They'd all either been severely untelegenic in one season (Angela/Domenick), or actively ruinous to multiple seasons (everyone else). However, James Wallington was one of the players I least wanted to see back, and it was frustrating, because he was one of only THREE Amazing Race players in the entire cast.

In his three episodes on-screen, James was awful each and every time. Episode one, he had a particularly weak showing in the daily challenge, and because he was paired up with a Love Islander, his team was on the chopping block to be sent into the elimination. But fear not, because we got a whole segment about how James is this amazing strategic mastermind, and he convinced Tyson/Angela to target Javonny/Cely instead. Big whoop...there were a fuckton of teams available and you convinced people to target one that would only upset one group (Love Island). But yes, James was the big narrator and big strategist of that first episode, getting the most confessionals (8) in a 28-person cast, despite neither winning the first challenge, nor ending up in elimination.

Episode two, James/Cayla lost the daily challenge outright and were sent into elimination against Tiffany/Cashel. Again, James got to make a big thing about how smart and strategic he was to try and get the Big Brother alliance broken up, by having Tyson turn against Tiffany. And despite the fact that Tiffany is a FUN character and James is a shitlord, James/Cayla won the elimination. It was literally the worst possible outcome at that point, because James was far and away the worst character of those first two episodes, yet he'd managed to survive elimination and take out one of the best characters of those first two episodes instead.

Episode three...wouldn't you know it, James OUTRIGHT LOSES the daily challenge ONCE AGAIN. Hmm. It's almost like, when you don't have an entire cast of players forming a massive alliance and giving you all the answers, you're not a good competitor, James. But yeah, after flopping on the challenge, James is scrambling and keep in mind, there are only three Amazing Racers in the entire cast, and they've been watching each other's backs as is reasonable. James, desperate to save his ass since he's kinda pathetic as a competitor, tries throwing Leo/Justine under the bus for seemingly NO reason. For fuck's sake, Cashay was weak as hell up to that point, and Domenick was so pathetic he was all but ready to go into elimination...why would you throw your ally under the bus for no reason, James? Anyway,James goes into elimination against Cashay/Domenick and LOSES, thankfully sparing us more of him, but at the same time...you couldn't have done this LAST round and kept Tiffany in the game? Ugh, James sucks so bad, but at least he didn't ruin a season by winning, like in TAR32. Nope, only Sarah did that this time around.

Swifty Sanders (121/142): Darkx, you nailed it with this guy. Swifty talked SUCH a big game in this season about how awesome he was, despite doing very little in terms of actual performance. He was always on the cusp of elimination until there was no fodder left (and holy shit did TaN2 have) a lot of fodder, and he was just grumpy and unpleasant about it. It didn't help that he was buoyed so hard by how much stronger Savage Crew was than Dirty Hands, so he constantly succeeded in spite of himself, rather than because of his actions. Also, he injured his foot very early on, yet still managed to last a long time, and he wasn't even a lovable underdog because of it. Swifty was just lame and not at all fun to watch on a season that had an absolutely AWFUL boot order in terms of keeping likable players in contention.

Daniel Strunk (119/142): Yeah, I agree with darkx's assessment. Even though Daniel was a pre-merge boot, he was just SO focused-on during the pre-merge, and he was this obnoxious superfan-type character who was a bumbling idiot half the time. It's just really hard for me to appreciate those types of players in general, since aside from like, Jacob Derwin, it always feels like superfan flops are given a LOT more leeway in their terrible gameplay than others...so it always annoys me when you have someone like Daniel outlasting Jenny, or surviving to episode 5 because his tribe is just strong.

Cynthia Bailey (133/142): Like I said when discussing Miesha...it says a lot when, by the endgame of CBB3, I was genuinely rooting for Miesha Tate over most of the rest of the cast. Cynthia Bailey is a large part of that. Not only was she completely useless as a player, but she was so mean-spirited and nasty towards people, largely because she tucked herself under Todrick's arm and decided to play as like his extra appendage. She/Carson/Shanna FINALLY had a chance to turn the season around at the final seven, and because Cynthia had this do-or-die bond with Todrick, she got suckered in and this led to her trashing Shanna. Not just betraying her, but genuinely treating Shanna like shit for NO justifiable reason. She was just so aggressively clueless about the game that it infuriated me to watch her try to act like she had any idea what was going on. The fact that she was the sole vote for Todrick speaks volumes about her game overall.

Monte Taylor (125/142): The ONLY reason Monte even ranks this high for me is because he was so blinded by his own misogyny that he threw away $675,000 in order to save BB24. Monte was not a good character on the season. He was the most standard "athletic dudebro" in the cast, which had been the default winner for the prior several seasons, but he largely didn't DO anything. He got into a big alliance, as is tradition, then rode that out without making any difficult moves until the double eviction, where Taylor had to convince him how stupid it would be to take Michael into the final five. Then he just comped out from that point to guarantee a spot in the final two. I appreciate him taking Taylor, instead of sticking with his dudebro attitude and taking Turner...but that doesn't make up for the general lack of respect shown to Taylor throughout the season. Monte was right there alongside Paloma in turning the house against Taylor...on the basis of Taylor trying to help him out. And then by the endgame, he just treated her like shit, despite her finally giving in and hooking up with him. It was really unpleasant, and I cannot tell you how much I dreaded him being given a default win and facing no real comeuppance for his actions.

Zach Wurtenberger (110/142): Everything I said about Daniel being annoying applies here...but Zach had the decency to be SO pathetic (on an already physically-lacking tribe) that he got booted in episode one. He was trying WAY too hard to be a memorable superfan character, and I hated that. People like Zach were why I was so nervous about the S42 cast in the first place, because it felt SO superfan heavy (compared to the more normal S41 cast). But yeah, he got booted early, so I'm okay with that. And he's fun enough on Twitter, so whatever.

Akbar & Sheri (59/142): I definitely GET the hatred for Akbar, because his attitude towards Sheri often became very uncomfortable. It's the same reason I got really BAD vibes from Travis & Nicole towards the end of TAR23. However, the reason I still rank them high is because, despite Sheri constantly getting berated by Akbar...she really WASN'T the albatross on their neck...so watching them fail because of AKBAR? That was a satisfying end to their story. Plus, the thing about TAR33 was that, as a season, it was really predictable...so having ANY team with some interesting interpersonal feuds just spiced the show up a little bit. TAR33 wasn't BAD...it just was very flat. I feel like the COVID stoppage really fucked it up, tonally...and it made everything feel so safe and nice and sanitized. Akbar being a dick was at least somewhat amusing, and the season needed that, in my opinion.

Paloma Aguilar (111/142): This is another one I absolutely get, and I think if I take out the Challenge players from my list, she ranks almost exactly the same spot for me. Paloma's a tough one, because she is aggressively and actively awful in her time on the show...BUT it was really interesting to watch her go full Vanessa Rousso in week one, only to have a mental breakdown and quit the game that same week. She's absolutely one of the biggest personalities of the season, and as horrible as she is, I'd argue that a solid 3/4 of the house was awful in those first 2.5 weeks, and most of them didn't have the decency to be interesting about it. Most of them were just low-key, boring dickbags. Paloma going insane was at least entertaining...plus she probably would've failed regardless, due to the backstage boss twist. If anything, her week one set the stage for the season, and BB24 wound up having perhaps the strongest overall STORY of any Big Brother season as a result. Paloma's still awful, but she's a major part of why BB24 succeeded, rather than failed.

Nicole Layog (131/142): She's not as awful as Daniel, but I just couldn't enjoy Nicole. Even her downfall wasn't pleasant, because as much of a raging bitch as she was, her defeat came at a time when we'd just seen the Leftovers form and take out Ameerah as one of the strongest women in the house...and then they targeted Nicole for similar reasons. I'm gonna be honest...I never really liked the Leftovers as an overall alliance, outside of the fact that they were suddenly protecting Taylor (because they needed numbers). I think Monte/Kyle were always in the majority due to multiple alliances, so forming the Leftovers and acting like they were the underdogs (without TRULY reconciling the fact that they were just as awful to Taylor those early weeks as everyone else) just rubbed me the wrong way. So then the Leftovers taking out the only real competitive threats on the other side in back-to-back-to-back weeks just didn't satisfy me as much as I would've liked. That's ultimately why Nicole ranks this low. I think under different circumstances, a cocky character like her getting blindsided two weeks in a row could be amusing (particularly at the hands of her best friend in the house), but at the time, it just felt like eliminating one of the only USEFUL members of the opposition (as opposed to Daniel, who was even worse than Nicole).

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Yup, I'm with you two. We've been getting all this backstory, and yet I don't give a damn about anyone but Karla and Noelle. While they have different backstories, they're all virtually the same on the island. There is nothing to differentiate where people's stories are going. There are bunch of people with interesting backstories. And yet all of them are being shown as gamebots.

I do second that this cast isn't very dynamic - too many redundancies and too much kumbayah. There's also how the confessionals have been soulless, save for Karla's "my wife's birthday is in February" and Noelle's "I haven't run out of leg jokes" today. It's the personalities that make Survivor pop. We're not seeing that, we're only seeing strategy strategy strategy and that's boring.

Where are my crazy people? Where are my villains? Those kinds of players create tension and drama and cause gamebots to deliver unintentional comedy in droves. Survivor SA knows this. Why doesn't Probst?

I feel like Cody and Mike are meant to be that sort of character, but they're so firmly ensconced in boring majorities that their personalities don't get to shine through. Plus, Mike is flopped way too much to maintain whatever quirkiness he has going for him.

Underleveled posted...

Yeah so far this is quite the letdown compared to 41 and 42 and I blame the cast. This is just not a particularly dynamic group as a whole.

Agreed. It feels like, especially with how many goddamn sob story flashbacks we get, they cast this group based on their story, rather than their television potential.

Three episodes in...this season just feels so...it's like, weirdly LIFELESS. I don't HATE it, but I just don't CARE.

It's very MvGX/GI in that regard. Very flat.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I wonder what we're missing here. Did Noelle flash something to Jesse to make him paranoid enough to get him and Cody to vote for Nneka? Maybe...?

I really hate how every vote in US Survivor has to be a "blindside" to the viewers. Even when it's clear that Nneka was not cut out for this game.

It made sense to me. I mean, after two weak performances from Nneka in a row, plus the threat of Noelle having an idol, Nneka was the easy choice.

Cheetah is bae.

Encantadora

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Akbar sucks. He was depressingly annoying. A strange combination, I know.

This has to be Jackson, because at least Paloma was entertainment. I don't know any others that would be in the conversation; putting Taylor/Isaiah this low after their tragic evacuation in TAR33 would be just mean, and I don't know any others. Jackson wasted a spot and there's no arguing around that one - by withholding critical information from production as to what drugs he was taking, there was no way he'd have ever made it past day 5, and I mean physically. I almost never agree with the "X wasted a spot!" people but this is one of those exceptions.

I can't imagine disliking Jackson this much. He seemed like a nice guy, and it wasn't like he was still taking drugs...he had started kicking the drug several weeks in advance and thought he would be okay in time for the show. It just didn't work out, and he wasn't aware that there was a possibility of lingering effects, combined with the dehydration and starvation.

Finally, it's not part of your ranking, but time for another Challenge entry, since everyone below him has been ranked on your list.

138/142: Enzo Palumbo (The Challenge: USA - 9th Place)

Big Brother 12 and 22, Enzo's in a weird place in my mind where he's this useless sycophant most of the time who aligns himself with stronger players and gets carried deep into the game. BUT, he's never SO obnoxious that I rank him low...even though he's one of those "you could do better if you didn't insist on broing down with people who are obviously going to demolish you" kinds of players. As such, I wasn't EXCITED for him on the Challenge, but it wasn't like I was inherently rooting against him either. And you could be forgiven if you forgot Enzo was on the show for the first five episodes. He was never a great competitor; he lacked any sort of endurance, and he couldn't swim. Despite this, he managed to avoid being on the losing team through those first five episodes. And in those five episodes, the focus on eliminations was largely on either taking out Love Island/Amazing Race (due to the Survivor/Big Brother alliance), or targeting members of the BB23 Cookout due to spite for how BB23 went down. It also didn't help that, aside from Leo (whose personality and general lackadaisical attitude was negatives for him), there wasn't as strong of a push to eliminate the weaker GUYS as there was to eliminate the weaker GIRLS.

Anyway, episode six was when Enzo finally made a splash on the season...ironically by not making a splash at all. The teams had to jump into the ocean, climb up a hanging rope ladder, leap from a suspended shipping container to a secondary suspended platform, and memorize some symbols before jumping back into the water and replicating their memorized pattern. I'm not going to claim it's an easy challenge, but most of the teams accomplished it. Tyson and Kyra did not, due to Kyra being sick as a dog and lacking the strength necessary to make that leap, and because of this, it looked likely that they would wind up in elimination. Enter Enzo. After gingerly easing himself into the water and climbing up to the shipping container, he decided he was too afraid of heights to even TRY the leap. Thus Kyra, who even in her sickness gave it a SHOT, managed to avoid elimination. Meanwhile, Enzo's partner Justine (who'd already proven herself with a daily win AND an elimination win) got thrust into a bullshit elimination challenge with a partner who'd already proven himself absolutely pathetic.

Anyway, Enzo won because admittedly he and Justine used better strategy than Derek/Shannon (plus Shannon had an injured leg). But of the three remaining eliminations he was eligible for, Enzo partook in two of them, first by coming in last during a foot race, and then by being chosen as the only option for the massive Survivor alliance after David lost the daily challenge. In both cases, Enzo won these challenges because they were one-on-one physical altercations where his opponents were either much smaller than him (Leo in Hall Brawl) or just lacked any sort of endurance (David in Balls In). The point is, at a certain point, the other players (namely the women for whom Enzo's continued survival was a potential threat) TRIED to take him out on NUMEROUS occasions, but Enzo benefitted tremendously from all the strongest guys banding together so they'd never be at risk in the arena.

This all leads to the finale. Enzo got randomly paired with Desi in the first leg of the challenge, which was a swimming leg. And I don't know how long he TRIED the challenge in real time, but we watched Desi BEGGING him not to quit, only for him to not give a fuck, quit the challenge, and end up eliminating Desi as well through NO fault of her own. It hearkened back to that first elimination he faced, where Justine got fucked over because Enzo just didn't want to try. It was just so shitty on his part, constantly talking about how everyone underestimated him, and he wanted to rub it in their faces for thinking he was an easy elimination...and then he quits on the final leg and fucks Desi over. At the very least, David wouldn't have quit there.

Big D: Fucking FINALLY. I'm not kidding when I say that it was a tough call for me between Todrick and Derek F. in terms of determining the worst Big Brother character on this list. Ultimately, I went with Todrick because he played a more active role in creating a toxic house and the season sucked as a result, while Derek was just an asshole, and BB23 still turned out pretty okay. But Big D managed to hit SO many awful buttons with me, and his presence in the BB23 endgame was one of the most infuriating aspects of that season. Early on, he was a big ol' whatever, since the Jokers Team was a chaotic group and he was the bitchy gay guy among them. But he was still part of the Cookout, so he was safe and secure.

Now, I'm not going to badmouth a player JUST for sucking at comps, especially because modern Big Brother has become SO slanted in favor of athletic dudebros, but Derek sucking at comps actually played into his character in a negative way. From a point VERY early in the season, he got the BIGGEST head imaginable about how awesome of a player he was. And because he was perhaps the most misogynistic person in the cast, he got a big head about how awesome he was in comparison to the "useless" women he was aligned with. He shit on Tiffany especially, when she was doing much of the strategic heavy lifting for the Cookout (specifically cutting off her options when she was best positioned within the house, for the betterment of the alliance as a whole), and had the nerve to act like the Cookout was HIS idea. Derek did NOTHING by lay around, nap, and then pop up to talk about how he was some kind of mastermind. He shit on the women of the house SO much that, despite being the biggest slam dunk imaginable, he managed to convince Azah (who had, at that point, won an HoH and beaten Derek in part 2 of the FHOH) that he didn't deserve second place, and she would take Xavier if she won. How fucking awful do you have to be in the final week of the game to convince your allegedly closest ally (who he had to be convinced by Xavier to keep around over Kyland) that you don't deserve to make the final two? But of course, despite being absolutely terrible and useless, Derek was dragged to the end as a goat, and was rewarded with 75k for being a mean, nasty, worthless waste of space all season. It was such a frustrating ending to his story, because there was no real comeuppance. Even he wasn't so delusional to think he deserved to beat Xavier (because Xavier was a man and therefore had value in Derek's eyes), so him getting second is basically like him winning the best reward he possibly could, and that sucked. 140/142

Mikey Eyebrows: Can't blame you for this one. I didn't rank him THIS low, if only because he lasted a grand total of two episodes, but he sucked in both episodes. Even going off his nickname, he was very much the "camwhore" of the season (which isn't great in a show like Tough As Nails), and within the first episode, he wound up accidentally shoving Patrick (on the other team) off a pier. He just came across like a dick, and then in episode two, we found out that he was cut from the season for undisclosed rule breakages. I'm pretty sure it's COVID-related, but whatever. 124/142

Miesha: Miesha sucks, but she benefits a LOT by her association with Todrick, because EVERYONE looks better in comparison to Todrick. He was a fake tryhard who stirred up shit just to stir up shit and belittle people, whereas Miesha always came across as a UFCbot that just wanted to beastmode challenges and didn't care about running people over in the process. Her desires just happened to align with Todrick, since for whatever reason, he decided she was his ideal partner, so they made a lot of moves together. I put most of the worst blame on Todrick though, so Miesha comes out looking a little better, plus that endgame was dire, and once the Shanna eviction happened, it got to the point where I was like "I hope Miesha wins, because at least she deserves it". She's still awful, and CBB3 was still HORRIBLE, but at least she saved the season from NUMEROUS worse options (spoiler for my overall ranking). 128/142

Kyland: I'm of two minds with Kyland. On the one hand, his endgame is ROUGH. The trend of dudebros dudebroing to their own detriment was part of the reason the BB24 finale was so nervewracking in the first half for me. But Kyland effectively killing his chances at winning by siding with Xavier over Tiffany (and using some obnoxious logic, like he wanted to compete against the best, but didn't target Azah/Derek F., as though Tiffany/Hannah were inferior despite pulling their weight just fine within the Cookout). It was also gross that this came on the heels of him hooking up with Tiffany during his F6 HoH week, only to send her home. The nephew comment upon his eviction was also gross...but at the same time, it was the kind of messy drama (from someone who just got evicted, so whatever) that makes for fun viewing. Given that we were going into an endgame with Xavier versus Derek F./Azah...whatever drama we could get was much appreciated.

Overall, I think Kyland is kind of an asshole, but he's an asshole in a very messy fashion that makes for fun television. I liked BB23 in spite of it being a steamroll, because it was largely a pleasant season...but Kyland's insanity and general attitude spiced things up a little bit. It sucked that he targeted fun characters like Frenchie, Britini and Tiffany with his HoHs, but sometimes it adds some spice to a season that could use a little flavor. I'm not saying I LOVED Kyland, but in the context of BB23, I think he was okay. 113/115

I've gotta catch up on these now.

First up: Scott. Damn right he's the worst winner on your list (not mine, because second place Sarah still gets a title, but whatever). The thing about Tough As Nails is that it's almost entirely challenge driven, but unlike the ironically-named Challenge, there's usually no strategy involved in who gets eliminated and when; it's almost entirely on your own skill as a competitor. Because of this, if you have a player who is just so far out in front of everyone else, their very presence can make the season boring (see: Danny from TaN1). This was Scott: four individual wins, three second places, never in danger of elimination. Now, that makes for BORING television, but what made Scott especially annoying was what you described: he was very arrogant and bossy when it came to the team game, and on multiple occasions, his team lost (to a FAR weaker Dirty Hands team) because his bad strategy and leadership. But he never really owned up to his failings, and just went on to dominate the individual challenges. I guess I ultimately hold winners to a higher standard too, becuase they're the culmination of a season's story...so having the arrogant jerk who wins everything...WIN (and win the team portion as well)...just was a completely unsatisfying end to the season. 135/142

Underleveled posted...

That was suspenseful! I really wasn't sure what was going to happen! I mean this seemed like Justine's boot episode but crazier things have happened.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.

The second they tried to add suspense to whether Cody could vote or not, I knew he was gonna have gotten Noelle's bead.

Underleveled posted...

Survivor and TAR are both on for an hour and a half tonight. Next week they go back to standard hour-long episodes, but TAR is on at 10. The Real Love Boat is on at 9. The fact that they put TRLB between two shows with established and overlapping fanbases and which have done very well airing back-to-back in the past tells me they have 0 confidence in it standing on its own.

I mean, they already had to cancel Love Island for its failure. I'm sure another reality dating show that airs during the fall will be MUCH more successful than one which couldn't even survive airing during the otherwise dead summertime period.

The other problem is that I think the producers believed (and not unrightfully so, based on anecdotal evidence from speaking with other show-watchers) that by painting Sarah as opposition to the dominance of Tyson and Angela, she would come across as the more palatable option for casuals to latch onto. She was the "underdog" and Angela/Alyssa were the "bitches".

All of this is awful, but at the very least, had it resulted in some sort of comeuppance or failure on Sarah's part, I could at least appreciate her as a villain in an otherwise enjoyable season of television. But the finale guaranteed her placement of 142/142 for me, and it honestly tanked the show as a whole. The first hour was the final female elimination, where after failing round after round after round, Sarah finally get her daily comp win and got to gloat and lord it over Alyssa/Angela, forcing them to face off for elimination. Again, this in and of itself wouldn't be so bad, because a good villain should at least hold power at some point to do something bad with it. But then the rest of the finale happened.

The whole finale challenge was a shitshow, and due to completely random circumstances, Sarah benefited immensely from the show's formatting. Ben got medevaced, meaning the genders were uneven at 5-4, which fucked with the ability to run the final in pairs. To compensate, the producers decided to randomly pair women with men, and each round would have one woman running solo.

The first round was a lengthy swim through cold ocean water, which sucked for two reasons. One, Desi got fucked over by being randomly paired with Enzo. The women tried to eliminate Enzo; he survived THREE eliminations after absolutely pathetic showings in the daily challenges. And wouldn't you know it...when it came to the final challenge, he quit swimming and got Desi eliminated through no fault of her own. Meanwhile, Sarah got to run this leg solo, and I would argue that this particular leg was the EASIEST for a solo player to accomplish, because it's ENTIRELY dependent on your own abilities. Sarah's a triathlete, so she's going to do well at swimming, and she didn't have an Enzo or a Domenick holding her back. As a result, she finished the leg in second place.

Next leg, Sarah was paired with Tyson, who was one of the most dominant men of the season, and she finished in second place as a result. Third leg, she was paired with Danny, who was the most dominant man of the finale, finishing in second place AGAIN. I just want to make it clear that Sarah had perhaps the best selection partners compared to the other women up to that point. Enzo was clearly awful for Desi, but Domenick was the OTHER weak link among the men, and Angela, Justine, and Cayla all got stuck with him, leading to third (or fourth) place finishes every round. But then in the fourth round, Sarah gets Domenick in the ONE task where he's ideal: pure, brute strength. Naturally, she wins and goes into the final leg with a huge numerical lead over her opponents (plus Angela, her biggest competition, got fucked over and eliminated from the whole competition by unclear rules).

The final task? It was a ten mile hike and every one of Tyson, Danny, Domenick, Justine and Cayla were able to solve a relatively simple puzzle checkpoint, while Sarah fell behind and cried about it. But then, due to piss poor production, Tyson, Justine, Domenick and Cayla all "quit" the next puzzle, leaving Sarah as the only woman still in the race, despite being far behind everyone else. She conveniently got a pass through her puzzle (that the other four did not with THEIR puzzle), and then we see her leaving Sudoku to finish the finale and claim a "win" (really, second place since Danny actually dominated that final leg) that resulted it her finishing the season with more money than the guy who beat her to the finish line.

Sarah had luck work her way throughout the entire final leg (perfect, randomly assigned partners that not only boosted her, but also sandbagged her competition; the pre-finale eliminations of two of her biggest competitors, which had the added bonus of putting her into a final where the worst score she could achieve without quitting was 6 points (instead of a potential 4 if Angela was still around), meaning the only way she wasn't winning was if Cayla finished first, Justine finished second, and Sarah finished third), and she came out on top in spite of EVERY single flaw she displayed throughout the course of the season. There was no satisfaction to her win because she was a whiny bitch who talked a lot more shit than she could back up, and her win even LOOKED like a pure fluke. She single-handedly tanked the show, which is worse than I can say about any other player on any other season. Again, it takes a lot for someone to out-terrible Big Brother's worst, but Sarah accomplished that.

Michael was 32/142 for me. >_>;;
Jonathan was 115/142.

Also, to comment on Jonathan...YES he's got some definite issues and misogyny, but he just feels so different from every other challenge beast dude bro alpha male we've seen on the show, that I can't completely hate him. He's definitely not my least favorite from 42, either.

To agree with Andy, Sarah is absolutely the worst CBS character to fit in this time frame. It honestly takes a lot on these lists for the worst to NOT be a Big Brother character (if only because we see them for a MUCH longer period of time, and we witness them LIVE), but Sarah accomplished it. She's such a dour and unpleasant personality to start...but that's not inherently bad. Angela from BB20 is a boring bitch, yet she came back for the Challenge, and she was a star.

But Sarah is dour, unpleasant, and also arrogant in a very misguided way. She had all of these Survivor connections (and Survivor was the strongest collective group in the season), so she was super insulated all season. But she kept talking and acting like she was this massive badass, despite the fact that it took her, I think, until around the final eight women to actually finish in the top three for a daily challenge. But she was just boring up to that point. She got TERRIBLE after Tyson/Cashay threw her into elimination. This was partially as a shot at Ben (who was allegedly talking shit per Cayla/Derek, who were the easy targets that round), but also partially because Cashay wanted to eliminate Leo as a physical liability if she happened to get paired with him in a daily challenge. It's not a completely unreasonable choice, but Sarah spent the rest of the season as a literal helldemon after this.

It COULD have been amusing. Sarah's bizarrely aggressive showboating after beating Azah/Cinco (who, mind you, are NOT strong competitors when it comes to puzzle challenges) COULD have been fun. Instead, she continued to constantly perform mediocre in daily competitions (thus never holding power), while whining about how Tyson and Angela suck. And the other thing about this is that, as the season progressed, more and more people qualified for the final, while Sarah had yet to reach the $5,000 threshold necessary. So on top of her complaining about Tyson/Angela and their circle of friend, she had the added plot hook of "I need to make my money to get into the final".

Eventually, the show turned individual, meaning it no longer mattered who your partner was in terms of who you'd get saddled with in the arena. Sarah, being a roided beyotch, insisted that this would be her chance. She kept belittling Angela and saying Angela hadn't proved herself and all that good stuff. But the very first individual challenge, Angela wins outright, beating Sarah, so once again, Sarah did not get a win. But this is also the point where Enzo injured himself at some point, and he wound up in the elimination, guaranteed. Sarah, as we learned in WaW, is a feminist crusader who wants to prove how strong women are. So she went to Ben/Angela and begged them to throw her into the arena against a hobbled Enzo (who has consistently proven weak in challenge after challenge). Naturally, this was rejected because it wouldn't be allowed (and it would've been pointless since Sarah STILL wouldn't have enough money to qualify, after beating Enzo), but it just felt like a brazen attempt at garnering camera time from a person who lacks the charisma for it.

Then the NEXT challenge was just a comedy of errors as Angela/Alyssa worked together to fuck Sarah over in a strategy competition, and Sarah spent her time whining about it to anyone who would listen, begging them to help her out, and eventually losing because of Angela/Alyssa's efforts.

Honestly? The only problem here was that A&A targeted Sarah instead of one of her friends and forced Sarah to face off against a tougher opponent if she wanted to "get her money". But Sarah went into the arena against Cashay (who was, hands down, the weakest woman left in the cast), and won handily. Keep in mind, Sarah won two eliminations against absolutely pathetic opponents who had demonstrated little in the way of competitive ability up to that point.

The next round? Angela flatout WON a competition, beating EVERY other player and ending up as the only person to ACTUALLY complete it. Sarah? Got disqualified by falling off the truck. But that didn't matter because it was a male elimination day, so the women's performance didn't matter outside of determining which woman would be deciding on the person going into elimination against David. Buuuuuut Angela/Ben selected Enzo, and Sarah of course had to put her two cents in about how Ben was whipped and pathetic for caving to Angela's demands (even though I believe the rule would be if the partners couldn't decide, then Ben would've been forced into elimination unnecessarily).

Awww yeah. More La Dama rankings.

Annnnd bump.

Bump.

Daniel is 137/142 for me, so not too far off. He's just so fucking awful. Daniel's delusions are insane, first falling for Paloma's crap because he's got a weird fixation with barely-legal teens (and she reminded him of one of those), but also...it's one thing to be a Frenchie, or a Cody Nickson who torpedos their game week one by being too chaotic or aggressive. But at least they tried to use their first HoH to establish a solid, week one alliance. How bad of a player do you need to be, as first HoH, to get out of the week by cowering to the house's demands, and having no long-term alliance to show for it?

It's not a BAD final, it's just kinda not very exciting, especially since ENG went on a Cinderella run to final 4.

The Lion King

LiquidOshawott posted...

how do we know Fang secretly isnt the main character of XIII?

Honestly, Fang IS the main character of XIII. Lightning gets drawn into the story, but it doesn't really revolve around her.