95. Francesca Hogi, Survivor: Redemption Island (barely) & Survivor: Caramoan (barely)

When you have the only two-time first boot premiere in this decade, she’s going to make the top 100 characters of the decade list. It’s just logical. Of course, it helps Francesca that she’s a pretty good character of her own devices. She’s just enhanced by the fact that she’s been kicked off first twice.

It’s not even that Francesca is so bad at Survivor. She got unlucky the first time in that she was placed on a tribe with Phillip. That is basically what doomed her fate to become the recipient of the least-wanted trophy in Survivor history. Well, that and her big mouth.

Maybe calling Boston Rob (and Russell) a “trouble maker” on day one isn’t ideal when you know there’s a chance he might come play on your tribe? It’s not like Boston Rob has been known to be a vengeful player with a long memory or anything…

But even despite that faux pas, Franny might have had a chance thanks to Kristina Kell’s idol find. They could have idol’ed out Boston Rob. It’s just that for some reason, early in the game Francesca trusted Phillip enough to consider him part of her alliance. So, Phillip knew about the idol and at Ometepe’s first tribal council, he revealed it to everybody. Obviously, Rob was going to counter that potential idol and because of his influence, the split vote came down on Franny 4–3–2 instead of Kristina.

Of course, Franny’s memorable moment in RI is mostly attributed to Phillip and his “Franches-KWA” pronunciation of her name. She is mostly used as a tool in Phillip’s story as the edit is clearly trying to set him up as Survivor’s next Coach. Production is still on the hunt to find their next Coach without realizing there is only of him and he can never be replicated. Noura on Island of the Idols is the closest thing they will ever find, and she is much more of her own individual than a Coach clone.

Anyway, Francesca and Phillip don’t like each other. That is established as much in the RI premiere. Their bitter relationship was real and hateful enough that when it came time to cast Fans vs Favorites 2, otherwise known as Survivor: Caramoan, Francesca got the call because Phillip would also be on.

Until Caramoan, Francesca was no different than any other first boot. She certainly wasn’t the most interesting person to ever be sent home first. She would never have been remembered years down the road other than that woman Phillip got into a fight with at his first tribal council.

Caramoan is where Francesca seals her fate in Survivor history. She comes back as one of the Favorites (which, really, Survivor, could you be more transparent about wanting to have Phillip dunk on her again?) Obviously, she is wary of Phillip because of their past history.

To her credit, Francesca approaches Phillip and tries to make amends. She apologises for her role in their rivalry back on RI, not that she had to. Phillip accepts this to her face but immediately sells her down the river in confessionals, proving again that Phillip is an asshole.

I am going to let Francesca be Francesca. The fact of the matter is, I buried the hatchet with her, but when I had a conversation with her, I realized she is stuck in a time warp. I just think that…She annoys me greatly.

I just love that Phillip is telling us that Francesca is the one stuck in a time warp. She’s the one who went out of her way to apologize to Phillip (when it should have been the other way around). She’s trying to show she’s moved on. Meanwhile, Phillip is the one holding on to his bitterness for Francesca from a previous season. We already know Phillip is highly hypocritical but man… that guy sucks. Suffice it to say, you won’t be reading a Phillip entry in this ranking.

Francesca also gives us a doomed confessional in which she says,

I guess I was a little traumatized by like having a really bad minority alliance the first time I played. So, now I’m like I’m going to align with everybody. If I am voted out first a second time, I will eat this rock. It’s not gonna happen!

… damn.

Unlike Redemption Island, where Francesca is mostly a victim of circumstances, she sort of plays herself out on Caramoan. Franny has such a gigantic fear of being the first one out again that it makes her play a little too hard. I understand why she felt that way, but she put far too much pressure on herself.

She came into the season with Andrea, whom she knew from real-life. In fact, she had a pre-game alliance with Dawn, Andrea and Corinne. But Andrea got in with Phillip and Francesca really did not want Phillip to be part of the game. So, when she brought up his name to Andrea, it was reported back to the Specialist. This is essentially where she ended her own game.

On top of that, you would think Francesca would have learned to avoid the crazy people her first time out. As if her botched alliance with Phillip in RI wasn’t enough, this time around, Francesca decided to work closely with Brandon Hantz. Not that Brandon was the cause of her boot in Caramoan but she still should know better than to work with a Hantz. Somehow, despite Russell’s existence, Brandon is still the crazier Hantz!

Along with Brandon, when Francesca saw that Andrea was not willing to vote against Phillip, she went to Erik and Brenda, who were decidedly not part of Andrea’s pre-game alliance. At that point, Francesca was willingly removing herself from a pre-game alliance with people she knew because she was so blinded by wanting Phillip out. Maybe he’s an asshole but in a sense… Phillip was right about the time warp.

With Franny jumping ship, Cochran was recruited to join Andrea’s alliance through his connections with Dawn. In a roundabout way, Franny’s first round performance in Caramoan opened the door for Cochran to play the perfect game he would end up putting together.

People often frame Francesca’s second vote-out as her competitors going “ha, wouldn’t it be funny if she got voted out first, twice?” And for Phillip, that was certainly a motivating factor. But the rest of that alliance made a move they needed to make after Francesca waffled and threw away her alliances.

Of course, there was bitterness towards Andrea from Francesca’s POV but to be fair, Francesca voted against Andre just as much as Andrea voted against Francesca. In the end, Franny just didn’t have the social grace to dance around a donkey like Phillip and it cost her a second chance.

Francesca, much like Caleb earlier in the ranking, is not dynamic TV. On her own, she’s a fan character with nothing too crazy. Her appeal is mostly in the fact that she was booted first twice. When you think back on this decade of Survivor, it’s hard to forget that someone went on Survivor twice and never played more than one round. It just happens that Francesca became that person. If production had been smart and chosen Zane instead, he would probably be a lot higher on this list, but you have to play with the players you’ve got, I guess.

94. Jacob Derwin, Survivor: Ghost Island

When I think back to the first boot of Ghost Island, I think of Jacob. That’s incredibly sad for the actual first boot of the season, Stephanie Gonzalez. It’s further evidence that the Ghost Island editing was generally bad and that the editors had no idea what they were doing. Regardless of your thoughts on the whole season, it’s impossible to deny that the premiere belonged to Mr. Derwin.

By making it a two-hour premiere with two boots, production essentially hand waved Stephanie and focused solely on telling a self-contained story about Jacob’s time on Survivor. After all, most of the events of the first six days revolved around him. He’s the one who loudly proclaimed to still have confidence in his Malolo tribe after their first defeat, drawing Naviti’s ire. He was the first person to be sent off to exile island (saving himself the honor of being the first one out). He then became the season’s second boot.

Going into the season, Jacob portrayed himself as a Survivor superfan. He was going to be living out his dreams of playing the game. It was going to be a fantastic adventure that he could look back upon fondly. From Josh Wigler’s excellent First One Out series, we already had an inkling that Jacob was on people’s radars. Then the game started, and it only went worse from there.

Jacob’s story is a cautionary tale for all super fans of the show. We all have our daydreams of going on Survivor and dominating a season. I’m sure Jacob did too. Maybe we picture being like Cochran, skillfully putting on a Survivor clinic and winning unanimously. What we often forget is that before Cochran could walk, he had to flop and in South Pacific, flop he certainly did.

In his biography, Jacob compared himself to David Wright and in a lot of ways, that was accurate. Jacob is the alternate timeline in which David never finds his footing and his tribe casts him aside for being too sketchy and awkward.

More realistically, Jacob’s fate is what many of us would experience on the island. You want to laugh at his terrible performance because objectively, he performed very badly, but there’s also the sense that watching Jacob play Survivor might be like looking into the mirror. Jacob failed so we didn’t have to, in a way, he died for our sins.

Still, Jacob’s two-hour Ghost Island premiere is a tour de force and it left a lasting impression. His fake idol attempt is one of the sorriest I’ve ever seen in the franchise. Jacob was already on the outs with his tribe. He figured that the best way to move forward was to show them he had gained an advantage that if real, would make the target on his back even bigger. He then gets immediately called out on his obvious lie by Brendan Shapiro. Good thinking there Jacob!

For most, Jacob’s Survivor highlight is the sock rice. Because he felt himself on the bottom of his tribe, Jacob’s search for an idol became more and more desperate. As a Survivor fan, he knew that in the past, idols had been hidden in a tribe’s rice stock. Of course, Jacob wanted to look through the rice for a potential idol but didn’t want to risk losing his tribe’s rice, further enraging the people that were already against him.

The solution? Jacob decides he’ll just temporarily store the rice in one of his socks so that he can go through the entire jar of rice and ensure there is no idol hidden there. He quickly found out that there wasn’t any and put the rice back in its place.

Imagine being one of the Malolo tribe members watching this in the premiere. The rice you spent a few weeks eating had temporarily resided in one of your tribe mate’s dirty sock, unbeknownst to you. I would have immediately vomited out of pure disgust, but you have to admit that this is extremely funny. That Jacob thought using his sock to store rice was an acceptable move is his Survivor experience in a nutshell. Good instincts based on years of watching the show, but terrible execution based on awkwardness.

There’s also his scene with Stephanie Johnson. Here, without too much prodding, Jacob tells his entire to Stephanie. She then promptly votes him out after getting knowledge of the legacy advantage and even who it was willed to. This scene made a lot of people believe in Stephanie as a winner pick, and that would not bear out, but it was mostly on Jacob being too earnest with someone he felt he could trust. Jacob was so starving for somebody’s acceptance on Malolo that any inch of kindness offered by Stephanie instantly made him unlock the vault. He was just having a human reaction to the isolation that Survivor can create but it also made for a memorable moment.

And that’s the thing about Jacob Derwin. He wasn’t outright horrific at the game, he just made horrific choices. On some level, Jacob knew what he had to do but his brain never let him actually do it. Ghost Island had an incredibly fit cast and Jacob likely felt out of place because he wasn’t made purely out of muscles. He was a self-fulfilling prophecy of someone who felt awkward being around his tribe, which made the tribe awkward around him, which made him do awkward things.

The Ghost Island premiere is a Jacob Derwin two-part episode. Usually, two-parters will include a rise and fall, something of a natural beginning and conclusion. Somehow, both of Jacob’s parts were his downfall. It’s probably painful for him to relive it but for his character, it landed him a spot on this list and that has to count for something, right? (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

93. Cole Medders, Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers

One of the things I love most in a character is when they go against the grain of their archetype. Upon looking at Cole, you’d think that he’s a typical Survivor alpha bro. He’s one of the fittest players they’ve ever cast. He’s handsome. It would be easy to throw him into the golden boy category and be on your way.

Then when the season began, he seemed pretty much as advertised. Until, episode by episode, it became clearer that Cole was not exactly how he looked. Cole was not exactly socially adept, in a lot of ways, he probably has more in common with Jacob Derwin than you would think. That kind of awkward personality thrown into someone with his Greek god body was unexpected.

When he began the game, Cole seemed to get close with Jessica Johnston. This isn’t atypical for his archetype and seemed on script for what I expected from him. Though, I still laugh at Cole treating Jessica as Mrs. Robinson because she was 30 and he was 24.

Our first clue that Cole wasn’t that good at Survivor was when Joe Mena got a clue to a hidden immunity idol. Joe went looking for the idol but was clearly looking in the wrong spot according to his clue. Frustrated, Joe showed Cole his clue and Cole quickly realized Joe was looking in the wrong spot. Rather than say nothing and go find the idol for himself, Cole immediately points out to Joe that he’s not looking in the right area and then helps him find it.

Cole then opines that it’s okay that Joe has an idol because at least it’s not in Mike’s possession. Until a little later, Cole becomes uncomfortable with Joe having an idol because Joe is clearly unhinged and having an idol gives him too much power. Well, Cole, if you hadn’t told him where to look for it and then helped him find it, maybe you would have had an idol instead!

Joe’s idol then becomes the source that reveals Cole’s biggest weakness (so far in the game): he physically is incapable of keeping a secret. Worried about the idol, Cole takes his knowledge to Jessica. This buys Cole a lot of trust with his showmance partner. He then promptly takes that trust and cashes it in like an eight-year-old spending his birthday money on useless junk. Cole goes to Roark Luskin and Desi Williams and informs them that Joe has an idol.

Later on, Cole lucks into a good swap. He stays with Jessica and fellow Healer Mike Zahalsky with Ben Driebergen and Lauren Rimmer. Jessica lucks into finding an advantage that will allow her to block a vote at the next tribal council (unless she wouldn’t attend, in which case she would need to block someone’s vote on the losing tribe). Naturally, because they are allies, Jessica tells Cole (and Mike).

Ever the genius, Cole takes that information right to Ben and Lauren and informs them (on separate occasions might I add) of Jessica’s advantage. In a tribe of five people, Cole took it upon himself to tell the people his alliance would be voting against that his ally had found an advantage that might be played against them. Simply brilliant gameplay.

My favorite reaction to this moment is Lauren, obviously realizing that Cole has now told everybody on the tribe about Jessica’s power asking, “how can we believe that though?” Because it makes no sense to her, or any logical person, why Cole would be sharing this information with the people he is supposedly planning on voting out. Ben’s equally funny reaction to Lauren’s question, “he didn’t have to tell us that information”, also known as, he shouldn’t have told us that information, bears mentioning.

Obviously, Lauren and Ben take this to Mike, in order to sow some discontent among the three Healers. Mike takes this back to Jessica and Cole, who immediately denies telling Lauren. When Jessica and Cole are alone, Cole still denies telling Lauren but meekly admits, “I mentioned it to Ben”, which causes Jessica to have a “hang my head in shame” moment. Because at this point, she truly realises that Cole is an idiot and that her game is tethered to a buffoon’s.

On top of not being able to keep a secret, Cole is oblivious to what you might call the banana etiquette of Survivor (shout out Amanda Kimmel). Just by looking at him, you can see that Cole is a big, muscly guy. To feed such muscles, one needs to consume a lot of calories. On Survivor, calories are few and far between. The result? Cole is always hungry and he eats way too much.

At one point, Cole catches a pretty big fish and eats by himself, in front of his tribe. Cole doesn’t even realize that this might anger the people around him. To be fair to Cole, there was some substance behind all his eating because late into the pre-merge, Cole actually faints. If Caleb’s collapse was one of the scariest moments in Survivor history, Cole’s was one of the funnier. I shouldn’t laugh at someone’s pain but Cole going “how did you do, you do, you do, you do that” will never fail to get a chuckle out of me.

Once they merge, the Healers are huge targets for having only lost one member in the pre-merge (RIP Roark, gone and mostly forgotten). Joe and Mike have idols, Desi is immune. The only two Healers for the 7 non-Healers to go after are Cole and Jessica. Because Cole is clearly bad at Survivor, Jessica takes the bullet for him (shout out to #100 on this list, Figgy). Cole manages to survive an extra round by winning the next immunity challenge.

In the same episode in which he wins immunity, Cole also receives a clue to a hidden immunity idol back at camp. It’s hidden on the spaghetti plate from the reward challenge he is sharing with Joe, Chrissy, Devon, JP and Ryan. Knowing that he is likely not the only one to have found the clue, Cole still doesn’t immediately try to find it back at camp. Instead he decides to go pee, leaving the rest of the tribe by themselves.

Ryan immediately goes to retrieve the idol and tells Chrissy to cover it up. At that point, things become Wrestlemania as Cole comes sprinting back to the beach, wrestling Chrissy in an attempt to dig for the idol. Cole is obviously unsuccessful, since Ryan has the idol, but Ben still pins it on Cole who is now assumed to have an idol. Cole manages to not only fail to secure the idol but also receives the blame for having an idol. All the sizzle for none of the steak.

When Cole fails to win the next immunity idol, he’s voted out (accompanied by some fucky gameplay from Dr. Mike, but we’ll get to that later). The Cole experience in HHH is over, but we are all thankful for going through it.

If Cole had looked more like Jacob Derwin, I don’t doubt that he would have been an early boot. His lack of social grace was astonishing and endlessly entertaining. He is the walking example of extremely attractive people having more chances in life. He’s one of a kind in that sense. People might try to compare him to Taylor of FigTails but Taylor had meanness behind his intentions. Cole was just bumblingly himself and while that wasn’t great for his Survivor game, it was endearing and made him memorable enough to earn his spot on my list.

92. Jennifer Lanzetti, Survivor: Kaoh Rong

Tribal council, when players are at their peak, is mostly theatre. The castaways are just a bunch of actors, putting on a play that they’ve written with the hopes of duping the other actors who are reading from a different script. Very rarely do you have a tribal council where a player says something truthful or impactful on the vote.

So, when you have a player come in and absolutely burn down their own game at tribal council, that’s memorable. Unfortunately for Jenny, that’s exactly what she did during Kaoh Rong’s second tribal council.

Going into tribal, Alecia Holden was the most likely boot. She was already annoying the Brawn tribe and had barely survived the first vote of the season. She was dragging the tribe back in challenges and was depicted as insufferable back at camp. Cydney Gillon, Scot Pollard and Kyle Jason, the other Brawn tribe members, were all in agreement with Jenny that Alecia had to go.

Then Jenny started thinking about a women’s alliance and how she could seize control of the game from Jason, who she was starting to doubt. That made Jenny pull together Alecia and Cydney and create an alliance to surprise Jason.

But then… Jenny started having doubts about this decision because in backstabbing Jason, she would also be backstabbing Scot, whom she liked. She brought her doubts to Cydney, who no doubt tired of Jenny’s indecisiveness and Jenny entered tribal council trying to decide between Alecia or Jason. Either way, one of them was going home that night.

And then Jenny totally imploded in front of Jeff.

You can tell that things aren’t going to script when Jason tries to confirm the plans through code “and then you come to tribal, and things get confirmed.”

Of course, Jenny does the opposite of confirming by answering, “things they THINK get confirmed.” And from there, it goes from bad to worse for Jenny. At one point (not in the video posted sadly) she confirms to Jason that she threw his name on the chopping block. At one point, she asks for a second chance… which is not an ideal thing to say when you are trying to pretend you didn’t potentially flip on an ally.

That all culminates to Jenny standing on her tribal council seat, literally giving a stump speech. Probst is shocked. Jenny’s tribe is over it and Jenny’s mind has clearly gone off the rails and into the gutter. That alone would be enough to earn Jenny a spot on this list.

But then you have the first part of Jenny’s story, totally unrelated to how she goes out. For a second boot, Jenny is very prominent across the storyline for both of Kaoh Rong’s first episodes, like an iconic second boot should be.

Modern Survivor has been accused of being too soft or easy for its players. They aren’t shown struggling with the elements like the players were in the early seasons. There is more focus on the strategy and the numbers and much less on the actual survival of it all.

In the Kaoh Rong premiere, our introduction to Jenny is through a horrific turn of events. She’s gotten a bug stuck in her ear and it won’t come out. It’s to the point where she can hear it crawling inside of her head. I can’t imagine how horrific that must have been (and a good ad for wearing your buff over your entire face whenever you are close to the ground).

The confessionals that Jenny gives with the bug inside her ear are almost too real for me. Specifically, the one in which the bug starts to move around as Jenny is talking and Jenny screams out in pain. That stuck with me for far too long after the episode.

At one point, Alecia posits that it might just be water in Jenny’s ear to which Jenny replies, “my ear is bleeding.” That perfectly encapsulates the Alecia experience for that Brawn Tribe. The bug stays lodged in Jenny’s ear for an entire night, during which Jenny understandingly gets no sleep. I would have Van Goh’ed myself mere minutes after that thing got stuck in there. Mercifully, the bug eventually crawled out of her ear.

The two events may not have any relation to each other, but I can’t help but wonder if one begat the other. Jenny doesn’t sleep while the bug is in her ear. Survivor is a game that already depletes your mental state. In not sleeping early on, did Jenny negatively impact her psyche? Can her breakdown at the second tribal council be linked to her lack of sleep and the fact that she had a goddamn bug lodged inside her brain? I know it would affect me negatively and would have thrown me off my game. Maybe the same can be said for Jenny.

It’s just funny the immediate about-face we make with Jenny. After the premiere, it would be understandable to think she might go far. She’s just faced this incredibly brutal bug affair with a lot of strength and has come out the other side. I know plenty of Survivor players who would have quit long before that bug came out. Shamar would have quit if the bug even came near him. After that premiere, Jenny felt almost heroic.

And then the second episode rolls around and Jenny is suddenly a chicken with her head cut off. She can’t ground her thoughts and keeps going back and forth between her heart and her mind. In the end, that’s enough to direct the target onto her, she goes to tribal council with a lot on her mind and the rest is history.

91. Wendy Jo DeSmidt-Kohlhoff, Survivor: Nicaragua

We started this part of our ranking with a first boot who wasn’t necessarily a bad player. Let’s end it with a first boot who would make the short list for the worst player of all-time, our dear Wendy Jo.

This is a woman whose very own husband (but not October’s Very Own) told her that she would be the first boot if she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. That tells you a lot about Wendy Jo in a single sentence. This woman is socially awkward and a talker, not a great combination for Survivor. Well, I should say, it’s a good combination for Survivor producers, just not for you as a player.

You have to understand the Espada tribe composition to truly understand how bad Wendy Jo was at Survivor. She shared a tribe with Jimmy Johnson, a 66-year-old who might have been the biggest stunt casting in the show’s history, there’s no way production thought he was going to survive a vote. There was also Dan Lembo, who had a knee replacement and literally couldn’t run during challenges. Let’s not forget Jimmy Tarantino, an actual crazy person. Of course, we also had Holly Hoffman, who lost her mind in the beginning of the game and threw Dan’s shoes in the water for… reasons? Not to mention Marty Piombo who has not yet been proven to NOT be a mad scientist.

Out of all those people, her tribe still saw it fit to send her home first. Do you realize how bad at Survivor you must be to go out before two complete challenge liabilities like Dan and Jimmy? That’s the level Wendy managed to reach, and she deserves a lot of credit for that.

So how did Wendy get to this point? Well, she (and her husband) got in her head and it ruined her game. Worried about talking too much, Wendy made it a point early on to keep her mouth shut.

Being a goat rancher, you meet a lot of goats. You don’t meet a lot of people. My strategy from the beginning of the game is to take baby steps, not be the first person voted off. My husband thinks I’m going to be the first person voted off, cause he thinks I talk a lot. So, I’m going to bite my tongue and hide my true self.

That confessional essentially tells us right away why Wendy Jo gets the boot. Short of talking way too much, hiding your true self is probably the worst Survivor strategy you can use. Especially in the early going.

There’s a great scene where Marty is trying to engage with Wendy. He asks her where she’s from and she answers in very short, non-elaborate replies. When Wendy walks off, Marty goes to no one in particular, “she’s a little weird.” When a guy like Marty is calling you weird, you’re probably wacky.

It didn’t help that Wendy was also very weak in challenges. So, when Espada lost the first immunity challenge, they had to decide who would go home. Wendy wasn’t connecting with people, because she was actively choosing to bite her tongue, and she had just performed badly in the challenge. She started getting very paranoid.

At tribal council, it got to be too much. Wendy couldn’t hold it anymore and had to just unleash all of her words. She tells Jeff that she didn’t feel like people were connecting with her and that nobody had even asked her age. Jill then throws her a bone by asking her how old she is to which Wendy answers, “48” with this insane smile that can’t be described but only seen. Here, we get a great quip from Tyronne whom deadpans “you look so young” in the least enthusiastic way possible.

She also tells her tribe that she didn’t want to come in and talk too much as to not annoy people, which ironically is what she is doing to her tribe in the moment. She confesses that her nickname back home is chatterbox and that she’s not normally quiet and that, in fact, she’s always talking. I’m sure that’s a great selling point for La Flor to keep her.

Wendy also lists her great qualities, she can be,

very friendly, very honest, very funny, fun to be with, strong-willed, strong physically, people like to be my friend, people like to be with me. They trust me all the time, trust is important! And… I don’t have any blisters on my face!

Yes, that is an actual quote from tribal council. The way she says, “trust is important!” kills me every time. On top of that, we keep cutting to her tribe’s reaction to what she is saying. Tyronne has some great reaction shots and so too does Marty. It’s a scene that needs to be watched. Unfortunately there are no good clips on YouTube of her entire performance so when you get the chance, dig out your Nicaragua DVDs and check it out. It’s honestly worth it.

I also love the fact that she insists that people want to be her friend. Like it’s something she can prove with words as opposed to by making bonds with them, a task she had clearly failed with her tribe. I’m also not sure how the lack of blisters is important, but Wendy felt the need to throw that in there.

Wendy Jo is voted out unanimously. Nobody is surprised. But we are all sad to lose this lovely, kooky woman so quickly into the game. Hopefully this spot in my rankings will help memorialise her a little bit so that future Survivor fans know the constellation that was Wendy Jo DeSmidt-Kohlhoff.