Board Thread:Season Rankings/@comment-24899664-20141222121159/@comment-26485526-20170508170850

5) Heroes vs. Villains (20) - On paper, this was the best season of all time! I mean, you had 10 amazing heroes going head-to-head with 10 amazing villains! No tribe switches, no new, fancy twists, NOTHING! In practice however... it was still great, don't get me wrong, but it bumps down to 5th best of all time. The villains this season were especially amazing, and each and every one of them were fantastic characters in their original seasons, and this tribe delivered from the get-go, providing amazing television! At camp, they just could not get it together for some reason, yet they somehow won the first two immunity challenges! All of the Tribal Councils the villains went to as a tribe were fantastic, entertainment wise. In fact, I'd argue that this was one of the few seasons where the "Council" portion of Tribal Council (prior to the reading of the votes) was consistent entertainment all season long! Sandra vs. Coach at the villains first Tribal Council, banana etiquette, COURTNEY ON THE JURY, and much more! Speaking of Sandra and Courtney, both of them were incredibly awesome, providing hilarious quotes all season long, especially when it came to making fun of Russell! If you were to specifically count "entertaining moments", this season would probably have the most of all 34 (yes, I'm including Game Changers in there, even though it's still ongoing) Sandra un-clipping Sugar's bra at the first reward challenge, J.T.'s letter to Russell, Russell & Parvati reading said letter, Tyson voting himself out, JT's blindside, Rupert's elimination (Sandra: I don't wanna go home with the idol in mah bra. <3 Also Sandra: "I'll write your name down again, and you'll still give me the million dollar vote."... then Rupert votes for her to win <3 ); Candice flipping to the Heroes just because she could; Colby flopping in challenges, Sandra burning Russell's hat, etc., etc.! Another thing I love about this season is the fact that there were ZERO QUITS and ZERO MEDEVAC'S! We had 17 people voted out, and 3 in the finals, as it should be!

All that being said however, there is a reason that I dropped Heroes vs. Villains down to being my 5th best of all time. While both the Heroes and the Villains were both fun to watch for the most part, prior to Cirie's blindside, the Heroes tribe was just a little slow for my liking (although at least the villains made up for it!) Now that I think about it, maybe that's why I find myself usually rooting for villains nowadays, villains are just more entertaining to watch. Anyway, While the editors did a good job post-merge of providing us fantastic entertainment while the Heroes were being pagonged, there's no taking away from the fact that the Heroes were pagonged, so things do slow down a bit. Not only that, but once again, Russell was a central focus of this season, and I feel like that took away from people like Jerri and Danielle, who could have used the screen time. That is especially considering that (as Parvati put it in a post-season interview) all of Russell's confessionals are essentially him going "I'm Russell Hantz! I'm Russell Hantz!" All that being said though, there is no denying that Heroes vs. Villains was a fantastic season and that it is very deserving of its spot in the top 5 of my rankings.

4) Kaoh Rong (32) - I'm not going to go on that much about Kaoh Rong, because Tozza above (once again) said a lot of things that I do agree with. Firstly, I just want to say that I initially considered placing Kaoh Rong somewhere between 8th and 11th in my rankings for this simple reason that I thought my love of the season was mostly due to recency bias. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was very little wrong with the season itself! I appreciated literally everyone as a character at some point! Even the first three eliminations (Darnell, Jenny & Caleb) were ALL characterized well, which usually never happens! Alecia was one character that I HATED at the start of the season (because I felt as though she was being a princess and expected things to be handed to her), but I respected the way she fought as soon as she realized she was on the bottom. Speaking of the brawn tribe, that second Tribal where Jenny was eliminated was just so insane! Jason & Scot (especially Jason) became some of my favourite villains in a while, and Cydney was my favourite character of the season! Obviously with Kaoh Rong being this high up on my list, you know that I don't simply think that To Tang was the only awesome tribe this season. In fact, all three tribes were amazing in their own way! The Brains were quickly divided into 3 couples who all fought for power, which led to Peter & Liz getting cocky because they assumed they were in control. However, Debbie turned around and got rid of Liz in a great blindside! The beauty tribe also had its fair share of entertainment between the bromance of Caleb and tie, as well as the women rising to power. The tribe switch was also fantastic as the three beauty women were broken apart in the most horrifying, but entertaining way possible since Julia was exiled and Michelle and Anna were placed on two separate tribes (Anna was robbed!) The Peter blindside was also iconic considering that Aubry changed her vote LITERALLY at the last possible second!

Come the merge, the action didn't slow down at all as it was blindside after blindside, shocking elimination after shocking elimination. Even if the elimination itself wasn't a complete shock, there was still a lot of drama and chaos happening at camp that you had no idea what was going to happen next, and it just kept you on the edge of your seat! I was hoping for Aubry to win, I still respected Michele's game, so I wasn't too mad about the result. Speaking of Aubry, she had the greatest growth story since Cirie in Panama, and that is NOT an exaggeration! Aubry went from crying in the shelter on day 2 due to the heat, the hunger, and the exhaustion, to one of the most confident and savvy players of the post-merge, and it was just awesome to watch! You couldn't help but root for Aubry in Kaoh Rong, and I think that's the primary reason a lot of people (including myself) weren't thrilled (to say the least) that she lost. From what I can see, there was only one thing that keeps it out of my top three, and that was the three medevacss. Not only were three people medevac'd, but they were either the wrong person to go out at the worst possible time (Caleb & Neal) to one of the worst possible times any medevac could take place (Neal right after the merge, Joe at the final 5). Anytime someone is medevac'd it is quite deflating as the best possible way to see someone leave the game is by getting their torch snuffed. All that being said though, considering that the medevacs were literally the only flaw I found in this season, I am very happy to rank Kaoh Rong as number 4!