But he should have won at least four or five times.

Maybe someone else from Russell's family will be on an upcoming season.

Go back and watch his original season if you can. It's one of the better seasons in the show's history.

You've got:

- Yul, who is certainly one of the top 5 winners in the history of the show, and you can make a case for #1
- Parvati's first season
- Ozzie's first season
- Jonathan Penner's first season (you remember Penner, don't you?)


- Candice's first season (you won't remember Candice, but she was inexplicably invited back for 2 more seasons)


But the highlight of the season was Yul's game play. His execution of the immunity idol was sublime.

Here's hoping for an all runner-up season for 41.

It's both, no or there.

Umm, without Candice we dont get "**** you Brad Culpepper" right?

It was actually very smart. She needed to give it to someone that would buy it. Sandra did. Natalie got a fire token. If she gave it to someone else they may not have bought it, thus bad for Nat. I figured she'd give it to Amber since from Nat's outside perspective due to the Rob/Amber situation, Amber may have been the most likely to buy it.

If b Rob is confident with his alliance, he should've lost so Amber doesn't go out.

I probably need to rewatch (I won't, but I should), but I've always diminished Yul's win because he had a super idol. It could be played after votes read. No one voted him and never seemed like he was ever in danger of going out. He probably played well, but for that reason I've lowered his greatness in my mind.

That being said, I really liked him in the premiere. Seemed calm, cool, rational, and logical. I'm cheering for Yul, amongst many others.

Rob, Parv, Tyson, Tony...

This makes no sense. Literally 100% of people are buying the idol for their token after seeing the menu and knowing otherwise it’s just food and a challenge helper (which if you win gets you immunity you already get with the idol).

Not sure I agree. It's an idol good for 3 tribals. One would have to reckon if you can get that for a token, there must be better stuff to get with tokens.

The best thing on the menu was help in a challenge that if you won you get immunity in one tribal.

Tony is confrontational at times, but seems to lack that kind of...sociopathic vibe that Russell puts out there.

I think there's more than a very good chance of there being another 2-time winner in a game full of winners.

I feel like it may have been a mistake for Parv and Rob to allow the Jeremy/Natalie duo to be split up so soon. I feel like the Denise/Adam pair was a much better target for Rob/Parv specifically. Much easier to point at Jeremy/Natalie as a dangerous pair the next week. Also, a pissed off Jeremy could become a problem. Adam/Denise not likely to be pissed off at losing the other, and remain the same kind of problem they were before the vote off.

Dammit, I want to see more of Amber....she looks great. So does Parvati and Kim. Love seeing them older now.

Sophie is my favorite, though....she's awesome.

Yeah, Parvati and Rob laughing over how poorly everyone else is playing was amazing/

You can watch her all season on Edge of Extinction. She’ll definitely get more airtime over there

Probably thinks Sandra might work with her in the future. Who is she supposed to give it to? Tyson?

I wouldn't want to be in an alliance with Ben or Sandra. I'm out on people who run directly to the schemers and tell them all the information they need in order to make a plan.

are you ****ing kidding? rob was about to be voted out. someone suggested jeremy/natalie and rob had no choice but to jump on that.

is any player more charismatic than tony? dude is amazing every time he's on screen.

charismatic????? lol! his charisma is bottom 10% imo. he is very entertaining to watch on tv though. but i couldn't stand spending time with him in person.

Couple of things that have already been covered, but I'll chime in.

1. I like Yul, but you can't really give him that much credit for his win. He found a superidol (with easy directions to find it). The fact that the idol could be used to after votes were read meant he basically didn't have to sweat a tribal for nearly the entire season.

Now I'm sure that he could have ****ed it up, but I'm sure that at least 20% of all contestants will coast to the finale with that superidol and the game as it was played back then. Probably a lot more than 20%. It would almost have been hard not to win.

Above notwithstanding, Yul seems to have all the attributes of a good player. And he probably is. It's just really hard to know based on that season.


2. LOL at the notion that anyone who is offered Natalie's idol would decline buying it with a token. Every contestant is above 99% to snap accept. The notion that anyone would decline it AND that they would be substantially more likely to decline than another player AND that Natalie knows the relative likelihoods is completely ridiculous.

All very fair, but I think the rational conclusion is to diminish his win, but not him as a player. He did the best with the opportunity he had. He's bare minimum a good player, and potentially great. That's really all we can say.

Similar for Kim and her win. Gets slightly diminished by being a solid player among virtually all goats. Looking forward to seeing how she does this season against players that aren't level 1 thinkers.

https://ew.com/tv/2020/01/20/survivo...war-interview/

Yul: I will say, I’m struck by the fact that a lot of people seem to think that I had an easy win because I had an overpowered hidden immunity idol, which I don’t think is actually true. There was a limitation on the use of the idol then, that doesn’t occur today. Back then, you could use the idol after the vote’s been cast. But you couldn’t give it to somebody else, unless you gave it to them prior to Tribal Council. In my case, the idol was obviously very powerful, but if the opposing Raro tribe had any strategic mind at all, they could easily have picked off the other alliance members until they outnumbered us, so they could do a split vote. Then they could’ve flushed out the idol at the next round. That’s what they should’ve done. But they didn’t do it, and I used the idol to help flip Jonathan Penner to our side.

I also don’t think though that I needed the idol to get Jonathan over, because there’s a whole social element to this that was not shown on television, which is they didn’t like Jonathan. Jonathan didn’t like them. There were a bunch of comments that they made, ostensibly about Jonathan’s wife that really pissed him off. And so, in addition to those strategic “Hey, here’s a rational argument for why you should come over,” I really worked the social angle as well. Like, “Do you really want to work with these kids? Do you want any of them to have any remote chance of winning? And, by the way, if you come over to our side, I’ll go to the final two with you.” So there was a whole other series of arguments on the social side that I think got overlooked.