[Macie Lightfoot]

So I started Australian Survivor 2002 (also known as season 1 if you are brainwashed by Wikipedia like I have been accused of on Reddit) last August and only made it a few episodes before real life took over, but I decided to celebrate this summer by actually watching it in full this time and I enjoyed it! I'm admittedly an old school head who watched the Borneo VHS countless times, but this season was good and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves old school Survivor. The first half is admittedly slow, but the merge really picks up to a captivating endgame with an all-time finale. I think I still like Survivor UK 1 better in terms of old school international seasons, but this was also very good. If I were to make a US comparison, I'd say it's a mix of Borneo and Palau?

1. Katie (I'm going to preface this by saying that no writeup can do Katie justice. She simply needs to be experienced. She immediately told us that she's not controlling but wants things to be done her way. She's extremely competitive and was in it to win it more than anyone other than Rob. She spent the entirety of the premerge fantasizing about her path to victory and writing down dream boot lists before discarding them in the fire lest anyone see them and figure out her game. Unfortunately, as soon as they merged Katie had the subtly of a sledgehammer and Craig immediately clocked her game and tried to open everyone's eyes. This led to multiple confessionals where Katie called him a manipulative asshole and a creep, and conceded that while she could be seen as manipulative as well, she surely doesn't think she is. Craig then told Rob that he's voting for him each week because he made a deal with Katie to pile votes on him in preparation for a vote countback tiebreaker. This led to Rob distrusting Katie and climaxed with him betraying Katie in favor of Joel. Katie took this as well as you would expect, since she is a gracoius winner and the exact opposite in defeat. She cried, she yelled, she screamed, she picked a fight with Rob by calling him dumber than dogshit and saying he's hardly a man, she then apologized to Rob and got in another fight with him mid-apology. Then after she lost the F4 IC to Rob and literally had to walk the plank to her defeat, she put together a surprisingly competent pitch to get Joel to vote for Sciona since she'd lose on vote countback. She also tried to pitch that Sciona vote for Joel to restore their old alliance but it just led to her and Sciona fighting. Then Joel and Sciona compared notes and everyone started confronting Katie on her lies and hypocrisy. This led to her running away from everyone, sobbing about how her game's fully fallen apart and she sees no route to survival other than murder (!!!) Katie's mental breakdown and the toll of the endgame also led the entire F4 to attempt a mass quit that was only thwarted when production threatened to give the $500,000 to 5th place Sophie?!?! The story of Katie Gold is a Shakespearean tragedy unlike anything ever seen before on Survivor and it is something that must be experienced by anyone who considers themselves a True Survivor Fan. Fin.)
2. Sciona (my shock love of the season because I feel like nobody talks about her and she's ****ing great? Kinda gives Sue Hawk vibes as well as Lorette from Survivor SA 2? Just a brash older woman who was into Survival and constantly looked down her nose and the youngings who couldn't start a fire or make rice or doing anything, but then accidentally found herself in a powerful position as Rob's #2 and gradually started to approach the show more as A Game all while struggling to connect with the younger girls since she's not into dresses and makeup and **** like that. A LOT more complex than her edit suggests and had a lot of key important relationships, especially being the lone Tipara to sympathize with Craig and struggled with having to vote him out)
3. Craig (kinda whatever until the merge hit but then omg what a tour de force. Sussed out the majority alliance as soon as Katie overplayed her hand and then won two ICs and just taunted everyone about how Rob, Katie, Sciona, and Sophie are aligned and they're idiots for not seeing it. Naturally Katie took this as well as expected, by calling him a creep and an asshole for trying to manipulate the people she was trying to manipulate herself. I was also very impressed with Craig's use of vote countback as a strategy, openly telling Rob that he's going to vote for him and coming up with a lie that he made a deal with Katie to pile votes on him each week so that he'd go home in the event of a tie. And even though his lie didn't work to keep him in the game, it absolutely lit the match to start a turbulent endgame.)
4. Jane (lmfaoooooooo just a cheery 18-year-old who never spoke badly about anyone and yet her tribe ****ing HATED her and bashed her at every opportunity. We'd get a Jane confessional about how she thinks the tribe admires her and views her as an inspiration for being so young, and then it'd be sandwiched by like three separate confessionals about how Jane is so ****ing annoying and unbearable to live with and can't pull her weight to save her life. I think the one moment that sums up Jane was when she tried to be nice and offer to cook dinner for the tribe, and then immediately had to ask Sciona how one boils rice despite the fact that it was like Day 29 or so at this point)
5. Rob (okay so Rob as a person like... I think he's kind of an evil asshole with just how manipulative he was. He kinda seems like a scumbag despite presenting a "nice family man" and it really wasn't likable a lot of the time. HOWEVER, he's a huuuuge reason why this season was as good as it was so I'll give him his flowers. The game was like stupidly easy for him because literally everyone undoubtedly trusted him and wanted to go the endgame with him, but then he randomly decided to backstab Katie and Sophie at F6 by booting Jane and all hell broke loose in those last two episodes. I think what makes Rob different than other masterminds is that we also saw him progressively lose his mind throughout the endgame? He openly talked by like F6-F7 that he would never dream of playing this game again because of how taxing it is both physically and mentally and that he absolutely needs to connect with a therapist after all the trauma he's endured, and yes he brought a lot of it on himself but it was still ****ing gripping to watch)
6. Sophie (lots of talk about how she was STRONG and the YUMMY MUMMY and A HUGE THREAT TO WIN but she really didn't get much of an edit at all sadly lol she seemed fun and cute and like she had potential the few times we saw her though, loved her and Katie teaming up in their John Tucker Must Die era when they realized Rob was two-timing both of them)
7. Jeff (lmfao this snoring maniac who would continually call the other tribe NERDS and LOSERS and openly antagonize them after they lost ICs and then next scene would make a wooden carving about how much he misses his family lmaooooooo like it was absolutely insane behavior from someone in his 50s but I dug it)
8. Naomi (could've been an MORP sweetheart but was instead just a MOR presence that was liked?)
9. Sylvan (I know he has his fans but he's kind of a nothing for me sorry! Got sick and wanted to go home and then felt better, and then got sick again and felt better, like that was his whole story a few times... oh and he won a car despite not being able to drive so good job?)
10. Lucinda (lmfao she apparently quit smoking 30 a day and drinking to train for Survivor and then by Day 3 asked everyone to vote her out and even voted herself out which is ****ing funny. She was kind of annoying at the reunion though bc she denied that she actually wanted to go and was just trying to be noble despite her final words saying otherwise)
11. Joel (denied the existence of any alliances like Lance did, but then eventually realized people *were* forming alliances and was kind of the catalyst for the incredible endgame by approaching Rob and Sciona so I can give him props for that? But part of his deal was that he was going to throw the final IC for them and agree to place 3rd so he could maintain his integrity which is ****ing stupid so it almost cancels out... and then post-show he got sentenced for attempting to murder his girlfriend YIKES 11 is probably way too generous considering that)
12. Lance (just repeatedly denied the existence of any alliances no matter how many times he was given any sort of evidence of them, basically Sean Kenniff but underedited and boring)
13. Caren (boring narrator)
14. David (got sick like immediately and was just kinda shifty and trustworthy but ultimately boring)
15. Deborah (kinda annoying and cringe at times)
16. Tim (RIP I guess but who?)