User blog comment:Courierthekid/Survivor Guilty Pleasures./@comment-26485526-20180505193117

I agree with you on both Aaron & Kota, although I will say that Gabon is my favourite season ever, and with that, I actually liked watching Kota as well (except Marcus, although his blindside made up for his bleh character).

Some of my "Guilty Pleasures" include:

Survivor: Guatemala- I don't know if this season is "hated" as much as it's just forgotten/overlooked, but I love it so much! I find that the characters are all incredibly underrated, and unlike in Redemption Island & South Pacific, the returnees (Bobby-Jon & Steph) actually add quite a bit of depth and intrigue to the cast as opposed to taking over the season & robbing us of some great character development from the newbies. Even though the original Hidden Immunity Idol isn't great in and of itself, every twist has to start somewhere, and I feel like this was the perfect season & cast for it to make it's debut with considering that we got Judd's lie about the clue and that great moment where Gary played it at Tribal. There is also some great game-play, and I think it's a real shame that nobody's returned from this season yet. While I understand that the boot order does get a bit predictable at times, at least the cast keeps the season interesting and entertaining throughout compared to certain other pagongings.

Chuay Gahn- First off, I need to stress that I'm referring to Chuay Gahn during the pre-merge of Thailand here. I feel like this tribe had the most interesting characters of the season, and with the exception of "Grindgate," I think they were pretty entertaining to watch. Clay & Ghandia were hilarious, Jan was adorable (especially with her pet cemetery), Helen & Brian provided a great contrast to all of those characters with their dead serious & sociopathic demeanors respectively. Even John was entertaining to watch in that first episode given how the tribe freaked out over his little prank. I get the reasons why Thailand as a whole is disliked, and while the remaining members of this tribe certainly made it boring post-merge, I feel like this tribe as a whole during the pre-merge phase is good overall (except Grindgate).

Missy Payne- When people talk about hating San Juan del Sur, Missy usually pops up as a reason for why it was "awful". Personally, I think that Reed's jury speech really over-stated Missy's "negative" qualities, and while her social game obviously wasn't great, I don't think she did anything that bad. People bitch about Missy "coddling" Baylor (even though Baylor is her daughter, for fuck's sake), and what mother wouldn't look out for her child? I also think that Missy also played a pretty good strategic game, and as a character, I think she added a lot to the season and is a big part of why I find it entertaining.

Previous Votes Tiebreaker: Okay, while the threat of going to rocks certainly can make some seasons interesting, I do think that this tie-breaker is pretty underrated all things considered. I mean, I sort of get why this twist was scrapped for the rock draw, but in today's Survivor, I feel like it could add a really interesting layer, especially with the tribe switch. Players that feel on the outs could leak to the opposing alliance who from their tribe got votes in an effort to shake up the game. Not only that, but I feel like this twist if used today, would discourage throwaway votes because they could result in you screwing over an ally later, meaning that stumped castaways might be forced to make a decision, again, resulting in more drama. Much like Courier said with RI, I feel like this twist just hasn't been fleshed out enough, especially with the game being so vastly different from the last few seasons. Just throwing this out there, maybe this could be a primary tiebreaker in the future, with rocks only being used if both deadlocked castaways have the same amount of previous votes (instead of that God-awful true/false trivia challenge). Just a thought.