Yuku free message boards

In fairness to Yul, he did utilize the idol perfectly and can't really be blamed for taking advantage of the opportunity...but yeah, it was a pretty hugeass advantage. He played it smarter than Terry did, but in comparison to the other 15 winners, he had a powerful tool that none of the others did. Still, I can't mark him as least deserving since I think he was a pretty intelligent strategist as far as making the most out of the idol.

No, for once I must give kudos to Probst for not beating around the bush and giving what's probably an unpopular opinion among the Survivor inner circle. I like Jenna post-Amazon, but there is a lot of revisionist history going on because at the time 99% of the audience was totally baffled over seeing this girl somehow win after the way she acted (especially in comparison to Matt, who, yes, was a little weird but as far as the edit goes, he had a perfect comeback arc). Sure, it makes sense reading all the post-game interviews and now that she's proven to be awesome to the fan community, there's a lot of Jenna adoration around these parts but I still maintain that when that finale aired in May 2003, I was totally perplexed and even flat-out pissed off.

Ethan is the perfect example of someone playing the game without actually playing the game though. He really didn't have much of a say in any major decisions besides the Silas and Brandon boots (the latter of which only could've happened because of the misguided Kim Powers) and yet he had wrapped up the win from relatively early post-merge. Earl is like the modern-day equivalent; a lot of things just went his way throughout the course of the game (with the obvious exception of his original tribe placement). Both nice guys but hardly amazing players, although they weren't terrible either, or else they wouldn't have won. That description also fits for the guy who I personally would give the title to: Aras. I don't know or care if he would've beaten Cirie in the final two; the problem with Aras was that he never seemed to plan for the future, which Earl and Ethan at least did to a degree. It wasn't until the final four or five that Aras actually knew to play for rounds in advance and not just take it one boot at a time. Besides, if you think Yul was bad in needing the idol to survive--Aras needed Terry to win all those immunities to survive, otherwise he would've been idol'd out. At least Yul had control over the idol; the only thing Aras could do was depend on either him or Terry winning challenges every single time.

I'm glad to see Probst finally giving Chris credit though; he obviously did have a major bias going against Chris initially but I'm glad he's seen the light. After Vanuatu, I actually ranked Chris as the best winner ever briefly, and then I later began to rank him towards the bottom but rewatching Vanuatu, Chris was hardly the bumbling schmuck I'd pegged him to be at one point. It's also good that Probst didn't say someone like Vecepia or Brian Heidik just because he didn't like them and/or they weren't exactly exciting to watch.