~92. GRETCHEN CORDY~
There are certain Survivors (especially from the older seasons) who have a sort of mythology surrounding them, and Gretchen is one of those people. The OTTP, good-at-everything victim of scheming blindsided at F10, and for these people you just have to sort of tolerate their fanbases because you can't argue with a myth. Well NO MORE. Gretchen was a strong woman and was good at outdoorsy stuff, whatever, she was a massive moron and doomed Pagong with her asinine refusal to play "unfairly" and have an alliance. What a complete and utter retard this woman was to a) refuse to play hard for a million dollars and b) to cite her values and principles as a motivation as if winning is somehow unethical. I'm glad she was the first boot at the merge for being such a complete FOOL and the legend of Gretchen is so nauseating, honestly.
On Gretchen's personality: Gretchen was a very boring, constructive, nice person with boring, nice, constructive things to say. Her only real flaw is her false sense of moral superiority which made her outright refuse to consider a voting bloc strategy. She also said in her voting confessional when voting off Joel that he probably needed the money the least of anyone which
On Gretchen's gameplay: If the game of Survivor were a meritocracy (aka a completely different game) Gretchen might have had a shot! But it was the first season so I am perhaps being too hard on her.
On Gretchen's placement: Gretchen is this low because of the idea of Gretchen, which has permeated Survivor lore to the extent that actual events don't even matter anymore. Gretchen herself was a self-righteous but well-intentioned and useful woman with strong leadership qualities, but she was also built up to be so perfect that she came off boring as shit. She would've been higher if she weren't so well-regarded and wasn't exalted by the edit while at the same time being so willfully ignorant. Plus: those BANGS. Sweet Jesus almighty...those bangs.
