Board Thread:Season Rankings/@comment-24899664-20141222121159/@comment-25629305-20160629015349

4) Survivor: Philippines

I honestly believe that Survivor: Philippines was the season that saved the series. After the unholy trinity of One World, South Pacific, and Redempshit Island, the series needed a GREAT season to revitalize it... and boy, did Philippines deliver. On ALL fronts.

Philippines had crazy gameplay, amazing characters, and was overall just a fantastic season. We got great storylines like Denise surviving every single tribal council, Denise and Malcolm coming back together after Matsing's decimation and running the post-merge along with Lisa and Mike, Lisa's moral dilemma and story about finding who she truly is, Abi being one of the best villains in modern Survivor, probably one of the best Survivor villains of all time.

The first four episodes of Philippines were dynamite, focusing on the hapless Matsing tribe, the first tribe since Ulong to lose every single challenge it ever participated in. Every person on that tribe got great characterization and it really was amazing.

The Tandang tribe, meanwhile, was an absolute mess, constantly imploding from within but somehow winning every single immunity challenge. Basically, it was Casaya 2.0 (although Tandang was more of a "catty high school cliques" type of crazy than an "LA trash monsters" kind of crazy) and it was AMAZING <3.

The weak point was the Kalabaw tribe, a bunch of boring zombies controlled by Jeff Kent, who is an awful homophobe outside the show and a boring gamebot inside the show. No need to go into that, Kalabaw's episodes after the swap were the weakest points of the season and the reason why Philippines isn't above China, Borneo, or Pearl Islands.

The merge is an amazing clusterfuck with everyone flipping on everyone early on, and later on even though the game slows down a bit it never ceases to be entertaining thanks to the storylines that are built throughout the game.

Basically, Philippines is a near-perfect season and if it weren't for Kalabaw it could be number 1. However, Kalabaw exists, so it's only at number 4 :(.