LogFAQs > #968354598

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.