Survivor Retrospective: Pearl Islands

Rating: 9.5/10 

Pearl Islands accelerated the momentum generated in The Amazon, parlaying the whimsy of its opening pirate theme into a thrilling and dynamic closing stretch. While The Amazon was clearly engineered to dramatize sex, Pearl Islands relied on the charm of its castaways and the skill of its editors to produce the best season of the first seven and an entry into the pantheon of all-time greats.  

The banality of Survivor's initial meet & greet got a shot in the arm when the Pearl Islands castaways were forced to barter for supplies in a Panamanian town. The Drake tribe got off to an imposing start thanks to Sandra, whose Spanish and disposition obtained them an array of useful supplies. The Morgan tribe splintered haplessly and returned with few possessions - not even their shoes, which had been pirated by Drake's Rupert after Morgan left them unwatched.

Rupert's first impression was that pilfering, but he quickly endeared himself to his tribe and audience by providing. Rupert immediately distinguished himself as the premier provider in the game's history, casually catching enough seafood for all of Drake to feast on every day. Drake's only hiccup came when Rupert reluctantly allowed doofus Shawn to fish with his prized spear; Shawn predictably lost the spear, but Rupert located it on the Pacific Ocean floor after several hours of searching in a grid. 

Drake decimated Morgan with six straight challenge victories to open the game. To make matters worse, the reward challenges included the right to plunder one item from the other tribe. Drake lowered the bootheel by thieving the most prized of Morgan's few possessions. The dichotomy of the first two weeks was stark: Drake's castaways lived more comfortably than any survivors in history, while Morgan's suffering was so acute it spawned the first quitter in Survivor history, Osten. 

Drake's first challenge loss was purposeful, as they elected to tank an immunity challenge despite Rupert's reservations. That proved to be the crack Morgan needed to get back into the game; they edged Drake in the next two immunities to settle the player score at 5-5. 

Then came the twist, the most hair-raising of the first seven seasons: all the players who'd been eliminated suddenly strutted back into the game as the "Outcasts" tribe. One Outcast would be eligible to return to the game per tribe they defeated in a challenge. The Outcasts prevailed over both tribes in the challenge, so two got to return to the game in place of Drake and Morgan members voted out that night.

The twist backfired when the Outcasts "voted in" unentertaining Lill and scheming Burton. Socially-incompetent Lill persisted all the way to Final Tribal, while conniving Burton joined forces with a supervillain to orchestrate the murder of the show's most celebrated hero.

By the time his back was stabbed, Rupert's heroism bordered on mythical. He'd been briefly swapped to Morgan, who he rescued from destitution before returning to Drake. His confessionals revealed surprising vulnerability, a former fat kid who fashioned himself "The best damn Survivor player ever." Rupert was more than the game's greatest provider: he was a challenge beast, a loyal ally, a wonderful companion and an articulate tactician. Rupert set a record for per-episode screentime before his downfall, edited to be a Shakespearean tragedy in the vein of Julius Caesar.

Rupert was assassinated by an unholy cadre of Morgans, Outcasts and his own Drake companion, Jonny Fairplay. The latter slowly emerged as the preeminent villain of the game's first seven seasons, an egocentric cancer who delighted in strategic exploitation. Fairplay launched his most legendary gambit during the family visit episode, faking his grandmother's death for pity so the other castaways would let him win the challenge - giving up their own rights to see family members so Fairplay could hang out with his friend.

The season lulled briefly without Rupert, as Fairplay and Burton brutishly took control of the game while their bromance bloomed. They may well have ridden the wave all the way home if not for committing a classic mistake: the devious duo went on an extravagant reward together, leaving the other three castaways together at camp. Darrah, Lill and Sandra quickly conspired to vote Burton out. The female plotting was interspersed with decadent clips of Burton & Fairplay congratulating each other on their control of the game while blasting the women as helpless, thickheaded sheep.

When the men returned, each woman played up the stereotype they knew Burton & Fairplay considered them to camouflage their alliance: Darrah played dumb and detached, Lill acted increasingly erratic and antisocial, while Sandra pretended she was giving up before "accepting" a final three offer from the men. Burton & Jon sniffed out the ruse, noting the melodrama in Darrah & Lill's performance. But Sandra obliterated the men with detailed, nuanced lies built on the foundation of her ruthless reputation. It was a stunning, glorious late-game rise for one of Survivor's all-time greats, the third and most unexpected of Pearl Islands' classic characters to emerge.

Sandra laid low for most of the season, but her performance down the stretch revealed her to be one of the shrewdest thinkers to ever play the game. Sandra found herself on the wrong side of the numbers several times down the stretch, but always found a way to linger at the back of the slaughterhouse line. She never received a vote against.

For once the edit played it straight, casting incandescent light on Burton's impending demise instead of trying to blindside the audience. The men appropriated the unusual edit with bushels of wildly chauvinistic confessionals, entertainingly cut with clips of Sandra dunking on them. Burton's torch was snuffed at an epicly satisfying Tribal Council, with Jeff Probst joining the dunk contest: "For the second time, the tribe has spoken."

Fairplay was spared at the next Tribal in order to oust Darrah the challenge-dominator, leaving a disjointed final three of Fairplay, Lill and Sandra. Lill outlasted Fairplay in the endurance challenge, then surprisingly chose to go to Final Tribal with Sandra. Lill claimed her decision was motivated by honor at the Reunion Show, but had said on camera she was choosing based on who she could beat. Four jurors said they would've voted for Lill over Fairplay, so perhaps Lill gave up $900k by choosing Sandra. In confessional, Sandra said she'd surely vote herself out and expected Lill to off her. In any case, Survivor fans are forever indebted to Lill for choosing Sandra. If daft Lill or evil Fairplay had won, it would've felt hollow after such an illustrious and dynamic season. Instead, Sandra's dominant Final Tribal performance and 6-1 vote trouncing capped a thoroughly satisfying finish to a classic season.