No, because in 2000 people were more interested in players like Greg and Gretchen. They were two of the stars of the season. The only thing that a vast majority of people were disappointed in with the first season was that Richard won. Not everyone hated it, of course, but if anyone claims that he was a popular winner, they are rewriting history. Most of America thought that Pagong was the much more worthy of the two tribes. And that's not in spite of because Greg and Gretchen, that's because of Greg and Gretchen.

Now if you want to go back with 20/20 hindsight and say that Borneo would have been more competitive without Greg and Gretchen in the cast, then yes, they would be considered disappointing players. But at the time that's not what 50+ million viewers really cared about. Survivor has changed a lot in the past 8 years. There's no way you can judge that first season by modern standards. It was a totally different show.

Joel was just ahead of his time.


Sensei, are there any transcripts left of what former castaways wrote at SurvivorCentral? Just asking for posterity reasons.



Absolutely. Just go to the Internet Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) and type in survivor-central.com. You can get a snapshot of what S-C looked like at any point in time between 2002-2005. Almost all of the old columns and articles (including my own) are still there. Archive.org is one of the coolest sites on the internet.