Survivor Retrospective: All-Stars

Rating: 3/10

Coming off the heels of the franchise's two best seasons, featuring a hand-picked cast of stalwart players, with the nuts & bolts of production and editing mastered, Survivor All-Stars appeared as if it would be infallibly entertaining. But while the previous two seasons impeccably navigated the hazards of predictability, castaway distress and casting doldrums, All-Stars found them all. Hotly-anticipated by casual and diehard fans, All-Stars quickly fell into treacherous waters and never recovered. It was a massive clunker.

Mark Burnett & co. didn't make many casting mistakes, but the few they did came back to haunt them. It felt like Jenna Lewis got the nod due to nostalgia for the debut season rather than anything she did to accentuate herself there; in All-Stars she persisted all the way to final three without a memorable moment. Sue was as caustic on All-Stars as she was in that debut; this time her infamous moment came through a sexual harassment scandal rather than an angry speech. Alicia was on hand because of her fitness and demographic; she failed to provide anything compelling before busting out seventh. Jerri was selected to fill the femme fatale role; she organized a blindside or two of superior players before being pathetically discarded. Many former castaways - including champions Sandra and Vecepia and luminaries like Colleen, Greg, Heidi, Brandon and Kim Powers - would doubtlessly have made the season more watchable. 

The first half of the season was submarined by a series of unfortunate exits. Two of the exits were unfortunate for the castaways themselves, as Jenna Morasca decided to leave the game for her cancer-stricken mother (arriving home eight days before she died) and Sue quit after a naked Richard Hatch rubbed his genitalia against her during a challenge. Nevermind that Hatch is gay, that Sue hardly reacted in the moment or that Hatch was voted off before Sue exploded - once again a cast member felt they were violated, and once again Survivor did nothing about it. All-Stars is further evidence Survivor's handling of sexual harassment is long, checkered and deficient. 

The Alpha-males of All-Stars set about to devour each other as soon as they got off the boat. There wasn't enough room for two Robs in an initial tribe of six, so Cesternino was offed by the Robfather before sinking his strategic claws into the game. The aforementioned Hatch lost an alpha-battle to Colby, who had his own back stabbed at the next Tribal Council. On day 21, Ethan became the final former champ to fall. None of it was particularly captivating; the show's most engaging moments centered around Amber & Rob's love story (begun before the halfway point of the first episode), Hatch winning a protracted battle with a shark and Rupert failing on a shelter.

The castaways received a surprise when, with ten left, they swapped buffs instead of merging. Coincidentally, every member wound up with their previous tribemates except for Amber. She was the obvious target, but the Robfather made a dramatic move. During a transition after the immunity challenge, Rob pleaded with Lex to spare her in exchange for a future favor. Amber scrapped, charmed and promised as best as she could with her new tribe. Lex talked it over with Kathy and they decided to take the gambit, ousting Jerri instead of Amber. The tribes merged in the next episode. Instead of a favor, the Robfather served Lex a summons to be the first member of the jury. Kathy was next, but not before shedding many tears over ravaged friendships. 

It was hard to sympathize with them. Having watched Marquesas, Kathy and Lex should've known Rob's word was meaningless. Kathy even played alongside him that season. Kathy and Lex could've voted Amber off and controlled the post-merge game, but they fell victim to Survivor's most classic mistake: misjudging the significance of a short-term relationship within the sphere of the game. Apparently their relationship with Rob had developed outside of the game, illuminating another way in which All-Stars misfired: players who know and know of each other are less interesting to watch because their interactions are less deceptive. Kathy's agony felt more deserved than Lex's, as he'd presided over half a dozen eliminations of "friends" in the name of strategic gameplay.

The second pivotal moment of the game came with five left. Incorrectly concerned Big Tom might turn on them, Amber and Rob elected to go with Jenna and Rupert to the final four. Jenna cemented her undistinguished, unprincipled legacy by stabbing Rupert in the back rather than drawing rocks. Then she screwed up an endurance challenge and busted out third. Rupert's exit didn't contain the tragic element it did on Pearl Islands, as his personality and providing lost some of its vibrancy and he was clearly in over his head strategically. Rupert got the last laugh when fans awarded him a million bucks in a surprise special America's Tribal Council four days after the reunion.

That reunion finale was actually the best episode of All-Stars. The season's preeminent storyline gained weight when the audience saw Amber & Rob were still together; when he proposed to her and she said yes, it truly appeared a duo had won the game together. Indeed, they had played the entire game together. Their alliance was greater than the sum of its parts. Rob was in peak form throughout the season, more nuanced than the heavy-handed soldier-in-training we saw in Marquesas, dominant in mental and physical challenges, just as providing as Rupert if he set his mind to it. Amber played a brilliant social game, massaging and blinding the other castaways from the finality of her alliance with Rob. Moments after becoming his fiancée, Amber defeated Rob 4-3 to become The Survivor All-Star. It was the proper result, as Rob's social manipulations had been too ruthless for the Jury to stomach, his Final Tribal performance so wretched you wondered if he was trying to throw the vote.

Amber & Rob wrote the book on Survivor coupling - how to start, how to play and win the game, and how to make it last afterwards. It was an impressive achievement, an alliance of mind, purpose and spirit never seen before or since. No two players have ever immersed themselves so deeply into the game, erasing and rewriting the boundaries between game and life. Their legacy is two championships, two of the hardest dominations in Survivor history, and decades of castaways insistent on breaking apart any hint of a potential couple.