Survivor Rankings: Chris*

I considered writing this whole thing pretending Gavin had won and just ignoring Chris altogether, but then I would’ve just been wasting the audience’s time leading up to an unsatisfactory conclusion.  And that would be just bonkers!

I’m also going to do away altogether with my usual Survivor winner category headings since they don’t really apply to the Chris Underwood story.  After all, “how he won” is summarized just as “a very lame gimmick for a season,” you can’t discuss “skillset” since there’s very little evidence Chris is actually good at Survivor, and “could he do it again?” is a hard no, since I somewhat doubt the show will ever revisit the Edge Of Extinction gimmick given the pretty resounding critical pounding this season has been taking.

To be clear, I don’t blame Chris the person for this lame result.  He did his best within the rules he was presented with, and maximized it to his full potential.  He’s also far from the worst possible winner of the season — had one of the Four Horsemen Of The Mediocre Returning Player Apocalypse (Joe, Kelley, Aubry, David) won, it would’ve been absolute rock bottom.  And having the impossibly obnoxious Rick Devens, the other Edge Of Extinction returnee, win would’ve also been worse.  Plus, Chris looks kind of like Aaron Rodgers, so I can’t hate the guy. 

But I don’t consider him a “Survivor winner” since he didn’t win an actual season of Survivor, as the show finally succeeded (after years of trying) in fully undermining its premise.  If putting inexperienced players against returning players wasn’t enough, or the final threes, or the final four fire making challenge, or giving everyone an initial do-over chance with the old Redemption Island premise, or introducing a hundred immunity idols and special advantages into the game wasn’t enough, it took the Edge Of Extinction to finally break it.  The ultimate social experiment catch lying at the heart of the show (how you have to convince the people you voted out to then vote you to win a million dollars) was completely sidestepped. 

Chris ended up only participating in six actual tribal councils all season, and amusingly, didn’t even get the majority of votes from those six people he directly eliminated or tried to eliminate.  Reem and Victoria voted for Chris at the final tribal council, while Rick, Lauren, and Kelley all voted for Gavin and Keith wasn’t on the jury whatsoever.

All the other Chris votes came from people he not only didn’t eliminate, he didn’t even have a chance to eliminate since (this can’t be stressed enough) HE WAS THE THIRD PERSON VOTED OUT OF THE ACTUAL GAME.  The rest of the time he spent stewing at the “Edge Of Extinction” island, which I’m sorry, is more an advantage than a disadvantage.  Chris got personal one-to-one time with virtually the entire jury, while Gavin and Julie were in the much more stressful position of actually having to play Survivor.

Even when he was back in the actual game, what game did Chris even play?  He was gifted an idol since Lauren is an idiot, gifted another idol in that half-and-half split with Rick*, won a single challenge, then took the “bold” move of giving up that challenge immunity to personally beat Rick in the fire making challenge.  This, frankly, wasn’t bold whatsoever since it was apparent that it was Chris’ only move, once he saw that Julie and Gavin weren’t much at making fires.  Chris was open about the fact that Rick was unbeatable in a jury vote, so Chris was only risking dropping to fourth place from 2nd or 3rd if he was in the finals with Rick.

* = let’s take a moment to point out the stupidity of giving what was essentially a full immunity idol to a person coming into the game at the final six

So when it comes right down to it, Chris was very good at the game of “Find Idols And Make A Fire,” which is what the final episode of any Survivor season has devolved into.  At the actual game of Survivor we’ve been watching for close to 20 years, Chris finished in 16th place.  In my rankings of Survivor winners, he finishes dead-solid last since he is the living asterisk, the “well…”  To take my Aaron Rodgers comparison a step further, it’s like if the 2018 Packers had won a group Madden challenge against the 28 other teams, then somehow replaced the Rams in the Super Bowl.

This show really needs to get itself back on track.  It seemed like the great David vs. Goliath season was a nice step in the right direction, but then you had this mess.  I’m not sure all the giant statues of Sandra and Rob in the world can bail Survivor out.  Does the giant Sandra head have an animatronic component that curses out the other players?  That would help.