Stephen Thompson

You're looking at a final three and you're like, I don't care about any of these three.

This season does not have that problem.

And I think that helps make it one of the all-time greats for me.

He loves to see alpha dudes going at it.

Well, once again, I picked a season that has, I think, a very flawed core concept, but great gameplay.

A great bunch of stories kind of interlocking and unfolding throughout the course of the season.

A very satisfying winner.

A lot of kind of Survivor myth-making.

I picked Survivor Heroes vs. Villains, which is Season 20.

Now, Survivor has a very weird...

description of what constitutes a hero and what constitutes a villain.

And in the write-up that's going to go up on NPR.org, I have a long kind of breakdown of how weird it is and why.

Like, there are several people on this season whose heroism seems to be rooted primarily in the fact that they found women on their season annoying.

You have Colby Donaldson and James Clement, who have never been seen doing anything heroic on the show in

except sort of proclaim themselves to be heroes and they're annoyed by the women around them.

But I think one of the interesting things about the season is I found myself rooting for a mix of people who are identified as heroes and people who were identified as villains.

The kind of fungible nature of what constitutes a hero and a villain is,

kind of affects people's arcs in really interesting ways.

I think this is a season that has a bunch of really interesting gameplay and is kind of sits at this perfect fusion of what I like most about old school Survivor and what I like most about new school Survivor, where it feels like an advanced game.

It feels like it is full of people who are largely playing well, and in several cases, people making spectacular, terrible moves that blow up in their faces in super interesting ways.