Survivor Season 40 ended last night with a runaway victory from Tony Vlachos. Tony dominated most of the game and will deservedly get a lot of praise for how he played this season, the first “all winners” season in the show’s history. This post will not be included in the list of praise pieces on Tony, because I want to talk about Ben.
Ben was one of a few controversial winners featured on this season. Ben’s first season, season 35, he made it to the end of the game with few allies. Ben’s strength was his ability to find hidden immunity idols, or as some Survivor fans would say hoping to get lucky. In the final three with Ben was Chrissy, largely perceived to be the most strategic player on the season. With that information, one would assume Chrissy won. However, Ben, a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, had a story that was too captivating for the jury to overlook and ultimately pushed him to victory.
Fast forward to this season. Ben was somebody who fit the profile of a show stealer who had something to prove in a season where few other cast members had anything left to prove. At a minimum, it seemed like a safe bet Ben would play a pretty aggressive game. Instead, he may have put together the most bizarre season the show has seen since Jonny Fairplay made up a story about his grandmother dying in order to gain sympathy (yes, that really happened). Ben had strange feuds with cast members like Jeremy, and seemed completely befuddled that he was on a season with somebody as good as Boston Rob.
Ben declared early in the season that he was uncomfortable with how cutthroat his game was in his previous season, and wanted to think of people on the show more so as friends than competition. That’s a perfectly reasonable approach, and I think it is the same strategy that won the season for Tony. Ben’s idea of being nice was essentially to not play Survivor though. He had an alliance of himself, Tony, and Sarah. It was extremely obvious to anybody watching if that three ended up as the last group standing, Ben would be receiving no votes as he had almost no relationships outside of the alliance and objectively poor gameplay. In other words, Ben was just out on an island while 19 other people played Survivor. Naturally, the typical move in that “stealth” position is to turn on your own alliance in order to put yourself in the power position. However, as Ben has proven he is not afraid to go off course from what is typical on this show.
Ben was sitting in the final five on the doorstep of being, well, third place barring some strategic move that would appear unavailable. That said, still achieving a goal many Survivor players have to make it all 39 days. That would be something to look back on as an achievement, and it is usually not uncommon to see a weaker player get brought to the final three as a non-threat to the other two players chance of winning. Instead, Ben decided to tell his ally Sarah to vote for him so that she had a vote that Tony was not apart of and could make a stronger case to the jury. While an extremely kind and loyal gesture, when you put it together with the rest of Ben’s season it makes his entire game one of the strangest ever. He decided to go out on Survivor and admittedly it was a personal journey more than a competition. I really hope Ben got what he needed, and he really does seem like a good guy. However, the show is about pushing to achieve the ultimate goal, not to have a vision quest. Ben’s humanity was admirable, but in the context of the game it was completely bizarre. Ben came on this season as a polarizing figure. In a season where he could have rewritten the story of his last season, he instead decided it was not in his interest to play the game before he even decided to get himself voted out.
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