Board 8 > What are the best seasons of Survivor?

(+) Yeah! (+)

My wife started watching some of the 40 (!!) seasons on CBS All Access/Paramount+, and it's so dumb and so entertaining that I kind of want to binge a few with her.

I've only ever seen season 1 in full personally, and just caught most of the first all-stars and season 24.

Excluding all-star seasons, the consensus best season is 28 (Cagayan).

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Borneo
Marquesas
Pearl Islands
Vanuatu
Guatemala
Exile Island
China
Gabon
Heroes vs. Villains (I wouldn't recommend this one until you've watched the prior seasons)
Nicaragua
Philippines (I wouldn't recommend this one until you've watched Australia/Cook Islands/Micronesia/Samoa)
Cagayan
San Juan Del Sur
Kaoh Rong
David vs. Goliath

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I stopped watching around Season 30, but my favorite was always Pearl Islands.
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bwburke94 posted...

Excluding all-star seasons, the consensus best season is 28 (Cagayan).

Seconded

But of course you SHOULD watch them all to see the game evolve
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GameStonk posted...

just caught most of the first all-stars and season 24.

Honestly in contention for most mediocre season, lol

There are some that are probably considered worse because of actual awful shit that happens, but One World is considered the most boring

Probst actually talked about how there were 2 people on that season who were too stupid to even understand how to play, and in response they started doing IQ tests for potential players, lol
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Cagayan is top tier.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Honestly in contention for most mediocre season, lol

There are some that are probably considered worse because of actual awful shit that happens, but One World is considered the most boring

Probst actually talked about how there were 2 people on that season who were too stupid to even understand how to play, and in response they started doing IQ tests for potential players, lol

Lol really? Which two?

He never actually threw them under the bus

But fans speculate Leif and Christina
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Inviso posted...

Borneo
Marquesas
Pearl Islands
Vanuatu
Guatemala
Exile Island
China
Gabon
Heroes vs. Villains (I wouldn't recommend this one until you've watched the prior seasons)
Nicaragua
Philippines (I wouldn't recommend this one until you've watched Australia/Cook Islands/Micronesia/Samoa)
Cagayan
San Juan Del Sur
Kaoh Rong
David vs. Goliath

This is a pretty good list except Nicaragua is well below average, and I'd throw in Amazon as well.

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Honestly, I've only ever seen one season randomly at a friends house.

It was Cagayan. I learned later that it's rated one of if not, the best.

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which one is 24

oh it's One World lmao

yeah that one's trash

i would rec:

6 - Amazon
7 - Pearl Islands
12 - Panama
13 - Cook Islands
15 - China
25 - Philippines
28 - Cagayan

kateee posted...

13 - Cook Islands

This is also generally considered below-average, and also has a very controversial theme that could immediately turn a new viewer off.

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there's one thing in that season that i think newer viewers especially can be drawn in by

as for the theme, it was literally the reason i watched it as a newer viewer

you know what i'm amending my list

13 - Cook Islands
15 - China
18 - Tocantins
28 - Cagayan

if after watching any of them, you like enough to watch the other seasons, you'll do that on your own but i think for newer viewers these are good to potentially get you hooked. i don't know why i left out Tocantin at first.

It is wild to me both that there are 40 seasons and that somehow the best one is 28.

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VintageGin posted...

It is wild to me both that there are 40 seasons and that somehow the best one is 28.

Best all first time players season

There are other seasons many consider the best, but they all include returning players, so obviously its tough to recommend them as starting points
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Cagayan is not the best first-time players season. It's very good, but there are some flaws (namely that one of the three tribes is absolutely worthless, much like Philippines) that hold it back from being great. Plus, Cagayan comes from a very specific era of the show and I feel like watching it first sets unrealistic expectations for the first 27 seasons (while despite their best efforts to recapture Cagayan's magic, 29-40 fail to varying degrees).

If I were trying to suggest seasons to watch to give an average viewer an idea of what Survivor is as it has evolved overtime, I would say...

• Borneo (the first, just to understand the game, plus every additional facet makes this look outdated by comparison, so it's good to watch it fresh and understand that Survivor is a character-driven game)
• Australia (I wouldn't normally recommend Australia, because it's not an especially interesting season, but it does establish the gameplay of the first few seasons, building off of Borneo)
• Africa (Much like Australia, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Africa, but it is important to understanding the evolution of the game. Plus having the Borneo-Australia-Africa trio establishes the tone of the franchise early on)
• Marquesas (Marquesas is an underrated season, and after three seasons of pretty standard gameplay, Marquesas is the first season to start innovating in an interesting fashion.)
• Pearl Islands (You could easily say Amazon here, but I feel like anything Amazon does, Pearl Islands does better, and Pearl Islands is just a better season altogether. One of the best, if not THE best season of the show.)
• Exile Island (Big skip at this point, but as much as I like them, you can probably skip Vanuatu/Guatemala without missing a whole lot in the franchise as a whole. Exile Island is the next really big evolution of the game with one of its twists, and it has a surprisingly-good cast.)
• China (If I really had to trim this list down, it would go Borneo, then Pearl Islands, then China. China is a great season and it's a great example of the near era Survivor entered between seasons 11 and 17.)
• Samoa (I would NEVER recommend this season, but it is VASTLY important to understanding the evolution of the show. Survivor has never fully recovered from the lessons learned in Samoa.)
• Cagayan (HUGE leap, but much like China, Cagayan is a great season that is emblematic of its era, and it kinda builds off Samoa to really cement the lessons learned there.)
• Millennials vs. Gen X (Again, I would never recommend this season. And honestly, I would put Cambodia in this place, but Cambodia's a returnee season, so it's hard to recommend it without recommending a full series watch. But yeah, Millennials vs. Gen X is mostly beloved for some reason, and it, along with Cambodia, pretty much mark the start of Survivor current era.)
• David vs. Goliath (It's not perfect, but it's the best season since Kaoh Rong was filmed, and it's the least-flawed modern season, avoiding a lot of the trappings inherent in modern Survivor.)

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Jakyl25 posted...

There are other seasons many consider the best, but they all include returning players, so obviously its tough to recommend them as starting points

7?

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Hard for me to remember that Sandra and Rupert were ever first time players <_<
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Pretty much what Inviso said, but to trim it

Borneo
Pearl Islands
China
Samoa
Cagayan
David Vs Goliath

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Inviso, what do you mean by these specific "evolutions"? Most curious about this comment:

Survivor has never fully recovered from the lessons learned in Samoa.

Okay, so Seasons 1-11, the show was basically one format. Bunch of people out in the wilderness, trying to survive, voting each other out, with a couple twists to shfit the game up.

Season 12-18, they started to really push a couple new twists: specifically the hidden immunity idol and exile island. The show was still character-driven, but these two twists really started impacting the show itself, and turning it into a more strategy-focused show.

Season 19, there is a very specific character (who I could probably just openly reveal, but spoilers regardless) who gets the VAST majority of the screentime and the whole season revolves around him, and everything he does is flashy made-for-TV strategy with idols and blindsides. And this character is so prominent that he gets brought back for two of the next three seasons, a relative of his is cast on two future seasons, and a DIFFERENT relative is cast on Big Brother. The show really starts to shift its focus at this point, no longer being about a group of players bouncing off each other, strategically. Instead, it feels more like the producers want that ONE person who's going to dominate strategically and make the whole season revolve around them. Hence 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 27 all having returning players. And if that person doesn't exist, then they focus the strategy around a constant stream of idols, and the edit reinforces this as the "right" way to play the game.

Cagayan, after like, eight seasons of failing to get their desired outcome from Samoa, they get what they wanted. But that spoils them, because the events of Cagayan are very much lightning in a bottle. The next three seasons filmed, I enjoy two of them, and the third was done dirty by the editors being lazy as fuck...but the they did not work out the way the producers wanted.

This leads us to the newest era of Survivor. Starting with Cambodia, the show pretty much abandons ANY pretense that the characters matter or that long-term storytelling matters. Instead, the producers start going out of their way to stuff the show full of idols and extra votes and vote steals and other advantages, because to them, it's easier to force the game to be interesting by adding chaos, rather than relying on the players themselves to be dynamic characters. Cambodia was super popular because it was a returning player season, on the heels of a highly-unpopular season, and the fans got the vote who would be in the cast. Producers kinda took the wrong lesson from this and have ever since tried to make every season just like Cambodia. And I would say they've had far more misses than hits since then.

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The only one I ever watched was Gabon, since Ken was on it.

Mostly have some quality memories of Crystal being a medal winning athlete but worse at most physical stuff than the older crowd.

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Inviso posted...

The next three seasons filmed, I enjoy two of them, and the third was done dirty by the editors being lazy as f***...but the they did not work out the way the producers wanted.

You dont like Kaoh Rong?
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Jakyl25 posted...

You dont like Kaoh Rong?

Worlds Apart was the one that got screwed by the editors being lazy with how they told the story.

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Hilariously enough, for as popular as they were at the time, the family that Inviso talked about that was on like six seasons of Survivor and Big Brother is now basically banned from CBS shows and they don't even speak their names when referring to them (ie one piece of trivia on the CBS site refers to three players who accomplished a particular feat, naming two of them and then adding "and one other player").

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ViolentAbacus posted...

Pretty much what Inviso said, but to trim it

Borneo
Pearl Islands
China
Samoa
Cagayan
David Vs Goliath

Samoa is a terrible season to start with. From the editing to the results, it's one of the biggest anomalies in Survivor history.

I'd put Tocantins in its place as a good season to start with, otherwise yeah these are my recommendations.

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Inviso posted...

Worlds Apart was the one that got screwed by the editors being lazy with how they told the story.

Oh okay
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Hey if you end up binge watching some please make a watchthrough topic. Don't do every episode, but some general thoughts as you go would be fun!

Definitely try and go from earlier seasons first into later seasons. As was stated its fun to see the strategy evolve and you'll at least get to know some of the returning players as you get further in!

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I quit after season 10 or something. Did it ever change up from people just trash talking people all the time? That was really what wore me out.

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masterplum posted...

I quit after season 10 or something. Did it ever change up from people just trash talking people all the time? That was really what wore me out.

Yes it did, and I'll take the constant trash talking over what it became any day.

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Underleveled posted...

Samoa is a terrible season to start with. From the editing to the results, it's one of the biggest anomalies in Survivor history.

I'd put Tocantins in its place as a good season to start with, otherwise yeah these are my recommendations.

Yeah, I wouldn't start there but figure it's an important one to see. And it's fairly entertaining if you can stomach them. I somehow forgot all about Tocantins despite having one of my favorite cast members from an entertainment standpoint.

Underleveled posted...

Yes it did, and I'll take the constant trash talking over what it became any day.

Also this.

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Here's my Survivor history:

2 - Australia
3 - Africa

I watched these two to be a part of the cultural phenomenon, since the original season was such a surprise megahit. I watched a bit of the fourth season but quit out of boredom, then the first All-Star season brought me back for a few episodes before I checked out again.

13-18 - watched em all

Kind of embarrassed to admit that the "hook" for Cook Islands compelled me to tune in, and I actually enjoyed the show and followed it regularly for a few years. I even lurked the Survivor Sucks message board, a den for the show's biggest fanatics (or at least was at the time). I watched about midway through Season 19 but quit because I couldn't stand the obsessive focus on one attention-starved contestant. Haven't followed the show since.

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Ok, Im not going to watch recent survivor if its bad. What did it become? A quick google didnt help me

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kateee posted...

you know what i'm amending my list

13 - Cook Islands
15 - China
18 - Tocantins
28 - Cagayan

if after watching any of them, you like enough to watch the other seasons, you'll do that on your own but i think for newer viewers these are good to potentially get you hooked. i don't know why i left out Tocantin at first.

This is the perfect list of standalone seasons for a newer watcher.

i still think there's some good stuff in the new seasons; imo the stretch from like 19-26 is a much worse overall stretch than say, 33-present, despite the faults of modern survivor

if you're interested in watching more survivor i support the idea of just picking a season and if it bores you after a few episodes just move on to a different one

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There's a reason we call the early to mid 20s "the Dark Age of Survivor".

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Inviso showcasing no personality on this website beyond being a Survivor fanboy. Typical.

masterplum posted...

Ok, Im not going to watch recent survivor if its bad. What did it become? A quick google didnt help me

Inviso posted...

Instead, the producers start going out of their way to stuff the show full of idols and extra votes and vote steals and other advantages, because to them, it's easier to force the game to be interesting by adding chaos, rather than relying on the players themselves to be dynamic characters.

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PrestonWheee posted...

Inviso showcasing no personality on this website beyond being a Survivor fanboy. Typical.

lmao

They've also upped the standard cast size over the years from 16 to 18 to 20, and 20 is just too many people for the show to focus on, and it's unfair to the people who get shafted in the edit (and I mean royally shafted, not like, their screen time is a little disproportionate, it's practically nonexistent) and unfair to the audience who has someone just sitting in the background for 12 episodes and is then suddenly supposed to believe they're a "huge threat" when they finally get 90% of the screen time in the episode in which they are voted out.

Combined with the fact that they are now more concerned with telling stories episode-by-episode rather than having an overarching story for the season (and they have actually said that they've changed their focus), which makes investing in a season less fun.

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Not to mention that every season is cast in Fiji now. Seeing the same scenery, beaches, challenge areas, etc. make the show seem very sterile.

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When you watch the earlier seasons, I would definetly recommend watching 1-8 in order, although Season 5 is unnecessary for most people. There's a nice progression there. You can kind of jump around afterward, but I feel like those ones should be watched in order.

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Underleveled posted...

They've also upped the standard cast size over the years from 16 to 18 to 20, and 20 is just too many people for the show to focus on, and it's unfair to the people who get shafted in the edit (and I mean royally shafted, not like, their screen time is a little disproportionate, it's practically nonexistent) and unfair to the audience who has someone just sitting in the background for 12 episodes and is then suddenly supposed to believe they're a "huge threat" when they finally get 90% of the screen time in the episode in which they are voted out.

Combined with the fact that they are now more concerned with telling stories episode-by-episode rather than having an overarching story for the season (and they have actually said that they've changed their focus), which makes investing in a season less fun.

Oh, so its survivor Pawn Stars now

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I've always meant to try and get back into survivor. I watched the first 5 or so seasons, and I lost interest when they started bringing people back, whenever that was.

Apparently now it's like every season, that seems lame.

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masterplum posted...

Ok, Im not going to watch recent survivor if its bad. What did it become? A quick google didnt help me

Basically twists the game. Also I really don't care for the final four fire making challenge.

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Centurion posted...

Not to mention that every season is cast in Fiji now. Seeing the same scenery, beaches, challenge areas, etc. make the show seem very sterile.

I gotta say I dont mind this particular thing theyve started doing

Ive never watched Survivor for diverse scenery
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