It’s been more than a month since Survivor: Game Changers ended. A month is not a long amount of time but it’s enough for me to sit down, re-watch the season and ponder on how I felt about it. Recently I’ve shared my feelings about returning player seasons in general. If you haven’t seen that, the short version is that I don’t believe them to be real Survivor seasons because the people playing aren’t strangers. That said, it doesn’t mean I don’t get excited seeing some of my old favorites come back and a lot of the Game Changers cast had me excited when it leaked.

Looking back on it, there should be no surprise for how things ended up. Outside of Heroes vs Villains, most big names in an All-Star season are doomed to meet the axe very quickly. That Sarah Lacina, Brad Culpepper and Troyzan “He’s on this season?” Robertson made up the final three should have almost been expected. Besides in all fairness to Sarah, she did play a very skillful and tricky game to get to the end and Brad went on a very strong immunity run to keep himself alive in the end-game.

Seeing Sarah transform herself into the uncharismatic version of Tony Vlachos was impressive. That she was able to flip between alliances almost every single vote post-merge without accruing all that much attention from the players left in the game was impressive. Even more impressive, she was able to dispatch her competition and send them to the jury in fairly brutal ways but almost none of them were bitter. I say almost none because Debbie Wanner still exists.

Time will tell how her game ends up being rated by to me it is definitely in the top 10. She was playing with a bunch of returning players and was able to replicate Tony’s style, one that was felt by most to be impossible to imitate due to how crazy it was that it worked in the first place. These people should have seen Sarah coming from a mile away and yet they all failed to recognize how she was playing. Anytime somebody caught on, they were either already on the jury or on their way out the door. She had a game plan, executed it and made almost no mistakes. It was a very clean win for somebody I would be happy never to watch on Survivor again.

Whenever producers gets their hands on an all-stars crew, they feel the need to throw them a bunch of curveballs. The thought behind that is that as returning players, they should be more able to adapt to the twists and it also keeps them on their toes. In theory, all of that works perfectly fine but in practice, it almost always screws over somebody. Game Changers was no different.

First was the combined tribal council that sent Malcolm Freberg home. Well in reality, JT Thomas unintentionally sent Malcolm home but the combined tribal twist enabled his stupidity. Full disclosure, I am a Malcolm fanboy and this twist sent me into a tizzy. It was complete crap that someone who was never going to be on his tribe’s radar went home because another tribe got to take a shot at him. Malcolm was essentially the merge boot without even getting close to the merge and really had no chance at protecting himself. I am still pissed about it.

The second twist that really got me riled up, and this one much more so than anything else, was more of a combination of a bunch of things coming together. At final six, Brad won immunity and kept himself safe. At that tribal council, Tai Trang played an idol for both Aubry Bracco and himself, Troy played his own idol and Sarah’s legacy advantage kicked in to protect her for that round. It left Cirie Fields, an undebatable legend of the game, as the only player without immunity and sent her out of the game.

Now before this tribal council, Cirie had never so much as received a vote against her. She became the first person to be sent out of the game without ever being voted against. In a game that calls itself the ultimate social experience, Cirie excelled. She made bonds with everybody that made them want to keep her around. Cirie’s social skills were the reason that she was never targeted by anybody. For someone so good at what the show is supposedly about, how is it that she was eliminated because she was the only one without a trinket that has manufactured powers by the producers? It’s been over a month and I am still not over that bullshit.

Cirie’s face was my face during her boot.

Also, what was up with the decision to hide only one idol at the challenges? Why have Troyzan’s idol there and the rest of them back at camp? It made life significantly easier for Tai who was able to find idols at two camps simply by knowing the location of one of them. If producers want to go around and plant idols at challenges, I’m all for that. It’s exciting and different but they need to stay consistent with it. Especially given that it was never explained why Troyzan is the only one who found a clue to an idol hidden away from camp and the rest of the clues were the traditional way of doing things.

I will give producers major credit for their revamp of the final tribal council format. When I heard Jeff Probst announce a change, I was skeptical and critical of it. That lasted only through a commercial break because once I saw it in action, I thought it was a well needed change. It allowed for a lot more natural discussion between the finalists and the jury and minimized the chances of a long winded, self-aggrandizing speech from a specific juror. It also allowed the finalists a lot more of a chance to really explain their games to the jury.

Not giving Debbie a chance to grand-stand is always a good idea.

As is the case with a lot of all-star seasons, the pre-merge was an especially solid part of Game Changers. While Tony was only around for the premiere, he gave the audience absolute gold. Between somehow being a caricature of himself from Survivor: Cagayan and his balls-to-the-wall gameplay, Tony delivered on every expectation I had of him. So did Sandra Diaz-Twine who went into the season knowing she was likely going to be eliminated for the first time in three attempts. It didn’t stop her from somehow solidifying her status as a legend and possibly even improving on it. Her ability to throw out memorable quotes, stir the pot and escape certain doom had not faded since Heroes vs Villains and as someone who was never huge on the Sandra bandwagon, Game Changers helped me see the light.

In the past, Malcolm had always been one of the biggest advocates for the “big moves” era of Survivor. This time around, he seemed much more focused on contributing to camp life, forming a strong alliance and laying low. In a way it’s almost fitting that the man who invented the “live tribal council” was ousted in what may have been the most chaotic tribal council the show had ever filmed… for a few days anyways.

While his move may not have helped out my dude Malcolm, JT was once again swinging for the fences. I have this theory that since he won Survivor: Tocantins, JT has not really cared about how he places and has tried on both his seasons to make the most bombastic moves possible. He knows nobody can take away his perfect game and if either of his plays from Heroes vs Villains or Game Changers works out, he comes out of it looking like an absolute Survivor god. There have been differing opinions of JT on this season but for my money, he was as entertaining as anybody else on the cast. Who else would take his entire tribe fishing out in the ocean and abandon them to go look for hidden immunity idols? JT has some of the biggest balls of any contestant in the show’s history.

Of course, the pre-merge ended on sort of a bummer. The Jeff Varner tribal council has been talked about more than anything else this season. All I will say here is that I believe CBS handled the entire event about as well as they could have and that Zeke Smith was amazing and honorable in how he went about the entire tribal. His bravery and eloquence likely inspired many people in his situation to take charge of their lives.

All of those people going out in the pre-merge, and Ciera Eastin and Caleb Reynolds, hurt the show in so many ways. Coming into the jury phase, Ozzy Lusth and Cirie were the only certifiable big names left on the cast with Andrea Boehlke on the perimeter and Aubry and Tai as other notable contestants. Ozzy was already not long for this world and Aubry was being given an almost purple edit. Much of the merge would revolve around Brad, Sarah, and Sierra Dawn-Thomas with a healthy dose of Cirie sprinkled in there.

There is nothing wrong with any of that trifecta mentioned above. They all played above-average or better games and weren’t detestable people. The problem is that of those three, Brad was by far the most fun to watch on camera and he’s not exactly a Tony or a Sandra. As well, the advantages kept falling to the least interesting people. Imagine Malcolm finding the legacy advantage and how he might think of leveraging it or JT stumbling upon the vote steal and the wacky plans he could engineer in his mind.

When the dust settled, the most memorable moment of the post-merge is Cirie’s attempt to hijack Sarah’s vote steal. It was a flashy move that would have been mind-blowing had it worked. Unfortunately technicalities made it an impossibility and that should say a lot. A non-move was the most exciting moment of Game Changers which seems very a propos. If the season was hoping to fall back on its namesake, it fell flat for me. Game Changers is far from the worst season ever. It is inoffensive with some good moments thrown in but it will never reach the top of the chain. When I want to re-watch a season, Game Changers will never be the one I reach for first and that’s probably how most people will remember its legacy.