[Macie Lightfoot]

Finishing up my spontaneous Australian Outback rewatch and even though I don't like it as much as I used to, it's still a good season. Pre-merge is great but things start to drag after the merge, and especially after Jerri's booted. The last few episodes are mostly filler and focus on ~survival~ but there are some iconic moments in there like the flood that make it worthwhile.

I can also say that I firmly dislike Colby and Tina though! They do go on to redeem themselves in Heroes vs. Villains and Blood vs. Water respectively, but they were kind of yucky in their original appearances, Colby especially. Colby's lionized for his relationship with Jerri even though he treated her much worse than she ever did, and once she was gone he had to redirect his moodiness at someone else and it was Keith for pretty much no reason at all. Tina wasn't much better, constantly preaching about how the Good People deserve to win and using her sketchy morals to unite everyone against a common enemy, but as gross as it is it's part of the reason why she deserved her win (think Maggie in BBUS6.) Colby really had no reason to follow Tina's skewed moral compass, other than that he's a temperamental brat and viewed Tina as his surrogate mother (this becomes very clear once Colby's mom visits and we see their Oedipean relationship.)

Also, it's pretty easy to think that Jerri's villainy is overstated when watching this season 14 years after the fact, but if you watch with your parents it really throws you back to 2001. According to my mom, Jerri's an annoying jerk who sexually harassed Colby by screaming about chocolate and saying that their trip to the Great Barrier Reef was a honeymoon without the sex, and she only voted for Tina to win because she's a woman scorned, even though Jerri clearly explained that Colby taking Tina to the end made it clear that she was the real mastermind, which is entirely true. Even a fact as trivia as Jerri living in Germany for 12 years is annoying, somehow.