It was a close call between Patagonia and Egypt for spot #4. But Egypt beat out Patagonia because of some unfortunate circumstances that went on half way through Patagonia, which we'll touch on a bit later.
Season number 5, I was so excited about while planning. After season 4 had wrapped in March 07' I took a brief break to concentrate on Midterms and the end of that semester. In May iSurv1vor came back and I was psyched!
Sad Fact #1 - Egypt had the least amount of applicants since iSurv1vor 2
, which I guess is a reason why it's lower on my list. I didn't have a lot of variety to choose from when picking the cast, so I went with what I thought was best. I had about 20 applications - a handful which were complete garbage. It's a reason why I convinced Sammy and Conny to come back for another go'round. Then I knew at least two people would entertain me.
Sad Fact #2 - Egypt's lack of girls really made the season a bit stale. Dakota/Zoe was out in a blink, and Conny soon followed. This left Morgan, Jennifer, and Torah - and the only one I enjoyed watching during the season was Morgan..who was the next to go. No offense to Torah or Jennifer...they were just allied with the Heqet boys and I always root for people in the "non-dominant" alliance.
Moving on...
I enjoyed how Egypt started, with 4 tribes of 4. There was no room to hide on any tribe. If you were weak in challenges, it was going to show - if you didn't get along with someone it was going to surface. Good thing was - it weeded out the sucky. Scott, Dakota, Robert, Michael were the first four to go. I was thrilled to see the less active, interesting, and competitive people voted out first.
Then came the Slaves vs Pharaohs twist. I actually liked the idea opposed to what other might say about it now. Yes it screwed over some great players, but what would a twist be if it didn't screw at least one person over? ;D Tom mentioned it during that season, Why didn't I start that Salves vs Pharaohs from the beginning? - That is one of my regrets, not starting it from the getgo with that twist. At the time I wanted to see how castaways would interact and react with only three other people around. I wasn't 100% satisfied, or 100% dissatisfied. I'm in the middle. *shrugs*
Onto the cast...
Besides like 4 or 5 people, the rest of the casting was failure in itself. There were people in the game who I am sure had great personalities in real life, it just never came across while they were in Egypt.
Andrew: I don't want to boost his ego too much, but he was the standout character of the season. He was smart, had a sense of humor, was active, and exuded tons of personality everyyyywhere. He made up for a few of the duds in the season..sadly he alone cannot boost the ranking of Egypt
Morgan: Now that a lot of people have finally met Morgan, I'm sure you could understand why she was memorable. She was smart and knew how to play the game..not perfectly, but she had the jist...make alliances, trust no one, go for the win...it was great to watch. She was emotional about a lot of things in the game, you could tell she was putting her heart into it - its what I loved about her. In Egypt, Morgan shined bright next to a lot of dead bulbs.
Torah: Now a lot of people love Torah, I do too. She wasn't my favorite in the game, but the fans opinion means a lot more than mine. During the game I thought she had no chance of making the finals when she aligned with all the people in the Heqet tribe - Clayton, Kyle, and Jennifer. Then a bit after the merge she started playing with a little bit of sass. I appreciated the sass, but she wasn't very careful or smooth in her operations. I knew if she had made the finals she would never win. Half the time in the game I asked myself "What is she thinking?" However, she did do something right..she made the final two after all.
Clayton ended up winning the game against Torah which wasn't a shocker. Clayton was liked by everyone, he was older than most people in the game (besides Jennifer), he had the most advantages given to him from being sent to Exile..the list goes on. As the story unfolded in Egypt, you can see it was crafted for him to win. The layout of the game just worked completely in his favor. His original tribe was the strongest, and they lasted the longest. He was a Pharaoh and kept close allies with Kyle (who was in love with him and did anything he said) and Torah because of it. He avoided almost 3/4 of the Tribal Councils somehow. As you can see I can just continue, and continue, and continue...
Clayton's win was by no means undeserved, he deserved it 100%, but it was not at all surprising.
I know I mentioned a lot of negative things about Egypt, please forgive me my lovely Egyptian cast...I am very, very critical I know, please don't hate me. I am happy with those castaways who enjoyed the game, it was fun to host most definitely...just looking back on how it played out and all, it's just nothing "special."
At least I'm not like Jeff Probst..."We wish we could just erase Fiji." lol.
Never would I want to erase Egypt <3