Survivor: Gabon, the show’s 17th season, provided us with some classic moments and some entertaining contestants. What were the most memorable moments from season 17?
Survivor: Gabon gets overlooked frequently when it comes to ranking seasons, but it’s actually a rather entertaining season. Yes, everyone is rather nasty to each other, but it’s not as brutally painful to watch as other nasty seasons like Nicaragua or Worlds Apart.
Gabon introduced some great characters and also provided fans with some memorable moments along the way to giving us the show’s oldest winner ever.
Here are the memorable moments from season 17.
Fang
Ask any casual Survivor fan what pops into their head first when it comes to Gabon and most will probably say the dysfunctional Fang tribe.
Dysfunctional is almost being too nice – Fang was a disaster as a tribe, winning just four challenges and going to all but two tribal councils. They were the first team to lose a member too, as G.C. decided to explore without telling anyone where he was going right before a challenge.
While they did have the season’s runner-up on their original tribe, not much else went right for Fang and they’re most definitely one of the most memorable aspects of Survivor: Gabon.
Awesome Challenges
New seasons of Survivor mostly have the same challenges every episode, but it didn’t used to be like that. Gabon was prime example of that, as the challenges that season were really cool. One of the coolest was when the tribes would throw big balls down a hill and a tribe member from the other team had a shield and had to try to reflect it away from their goal.
Survivor doesn’t put much emphasis on the challenges now, which is a shame, but a lot of that could be because they’re at the same location every season now. Gabon had challenges that fit the theme and this was also when the show avoided having any water challenges, so they had to get a little more creative.
Everyone hates each other
I mentioned above how Gabon was quite nasty and it really was. Pretty much everyone hated each other on this season.
Everyone hated Randy. Everyone hated Sugar. Everyone hated Susie. Everyone hated Crystal. It sounds dramatic, but that’s really how it was! At times it was difficult to follow along with who everyone hated because there was so much hatred on this season.
A good summary of the hatred of this season came during the final tribal council where Corinne Kaplan absolutely eviscerated both Sugar and Susie in front of everyone. She went as far as to ask Susie if she’d remove her vocal chords if Corinne voted for her to win the million (which if she had, Susie would have won) and told Sugar to get on anti-depressants so that she’d quit crying about her dead father. Harsh.
Fake idol
One of the biggest moments from this season was when eventual winner Bob Crowley was able to make a number of impressive fake idols and one he gave to Randy Bailey, who then played it at that night’s tribal council. This was met with Sugar Kiper and Crystal Cox laughing at him and it was a very ugly moment that Bob ended up regretting.
Randy
I’d be remiss if I didn’t give Randy his own section because without him, Gabon is a much different season. Randy came into Gabon as a cranky wedding videographer from Missouri who didn’t have many friends in real life. While he was still cranky by season’s end, he did make some friends on the show and managed to make it to the merge despite his personality.
Randy returned for Heroes vs Villains, but was sadly the first one voted off on the Villains tribe and that came in episode three of the season.
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Speaking of Randy’s return, Sugar also returned for Heroes vs Villains, but was the first one booted that season. No one from Gabon has returned since season 26 when Corinne came back for Caramoan and that’s a shame. It’d be nice to have seen Kenny Hoang or Matty Whitmore return, but Gabon aired over a decade ago, so getting people to return isn’t as easy since they’ve all moved on with their lives.
I’ll be honest that I didn’t remember enjoying Survivor: Gabon much due to the nastiness amongst the cast. When I rewatched it this summer, however, I had a much different opinion on it and it made it a lot higher on my rankings than I thought it would.
What are some of your favorite moments from Survivor: Gabon?