Survivor 43 Finale "Snap Some Necks and Cash Some Checks" Gameplay Analysis

 "I've been doing my Wordle."

-Owen Knight

Sigh.  What the hell?!  Freakin' Mike Gabler won Survivor 43.  What the hell?!  This show needs to get its editing game under control.  I have nothing agains Gabler, but with how his game was presented, he is not a satisfying winner.  That's the most important element of a Survivor season for me.  Does the winner makes sense and give a satisfying conclusion to the season?  That isn't the case here and it's very frustrating.  We should not be learning why Gabler won during the After Show.  Whatever.  Let's get into who played well and who sucked.  Starting with the Final 5!

Who Played Well:

I think all of the players who survived this round did a good job.  Karla was absolutely the right person to take out, so good for them.  Owen and Jesse were the two that got a little more to do.  Owen won Immunity and Jesse put on a show for the Jury with his Idol reveal.  

As for Karla, I think she did pretty much all that she could do.  She did win the challenge advantage and tired to throw both Cassidy and Jesse under the bus.  It just wasn't enough.

Verdict:

Best Player of the Final 5 goes to Jesse Lopez.  I think putting on a show for the Jury helped Jesse's game more than winning Immunity helped Owen's.  They were both great, but I'm ultimately going to go with Jesse.

I'm not going to give out a Worst Player of the Final 5.

On to the Final 4!

Who Played Well:

Cassidy won Immunity and was given the choice to decide who went to the end and who made fire.  On paper and how the show presents it, it seemed like Owen should have gone up in fire against Jesse.  It seemed like he was the better fire maker and you have to get Jesse out.  However, I suspect that Gabler was pretty elite at fire-making, but we just weren't shown it to ramp up the suspense.  The fact that he set the new record seems like solid evidence to me.  I'm going to give Cassidy the benefit of the doubt.  And obviously Gabler did a fantastic job at fire-making and took out the biggest threat in Jesse.

We really didn't get anything substantial from Owen here.

As for Jesse, he did all he could, but he was just too big of a threat and not good enough at fire-making.

Verdict:

Best Player of the Final 4 goes to Mike Gabler for his incredible fire-making performance in front of the Jury.

I'm not giving out a Worst Player of the Final 4.

Final Tribal Council:

Gabler did a really great job at explaining his game and sounded the most confident in his answers.  He certainly seems to have had the best social game of the finalists which I think made the Jury more open to his explanations.

Cassidy also did a really solid job and I think I would have voted for her.  She only had one bad answer where she said she was behind the Ryan vote, but Cody, Jesse, and Gabler revealed it was actually them.  Was that all it took for her to lose or was there more to this story?

Owen also did a good job considering how bad of a hand he was dealt.  His argument required him to admit to all of his mistakes.  That's a tough way to win the game, but it was the only way he could go.  I think if Gabler had done a worse job, Owen could have won.

Verdict:

Best Player of the Season goes to Jesse Lopez.  I think all of these players were really flawed, but the fact that the Jury seemed so sad when Jesse lost tells me he would have won if had gotten to the end.  He had a solid strategic game and a great social game.

Worst Player of the Season goes to my winner pick, Ryan Medrano.  He seems like a really nice guy, but the provider strategy simply doesn't work.  I think he may be too nice for Survivor and his strategic game was borderline nonexistant.

And that's Survivor 43.  I really hope the show can figure out how to edit properly.  It feels like the show was trying to blindside us with Gabler's win and we're not the people who should be blindsided.  I want to understand why things happen the way they happen.  Hopefully the show can figure that out by next season.