By episode 9, the Villains had been to four tribal councils and four men had been voted out. Looked to the Heroes like Russell was next, so J.T. decided to give him his immunity idol to ensure that Russell would play it and be safe at the next tribal council, then flop to the Heroes side at the merge. Now this was actually a pretty brilliant idea on J.T.'s part, since, if he had been right about the women's alliance on the Villains tribe, this plan would have ensured that the Heroes and Russell were the final six. But Russell is lucky enough to have not had his season air, because no sane person would have done this having seen how he played in Samoa. So even though J.T. really helped ruin the rest of the season with that, I don't consider it the dumbest move ever because it could have worked out brilliantly. So now Russell has an idol and a bigger ego than ever, goes into the merge and gets rid of J.T. with his own idol.
The last lucky thing to happen to Russell was Candice flopping at the final 9. At this point Sandra was totally willing to work with the Heroes and systematically take out the remaining Villains. Unfortunately Candice was being stupid and refused to vote against the Villains, so this screwed up that and essentially gave Russell a free ride to the final five. And from there he didn't have to do s*** to get further along.
Now, I hate Russell here not only because he got lucky and fans think he was actually skilled, but also because he hogged screen time. Again. And this time I'm a little more unforgiving of that because it was an All-Star season, where everyone is supposed to get fairly equal airtime; instead it became The Russell And Nobody Else Show Part 2. But I am forgiving of the fact that he actually made for a pretty entertaining Reunion show this time. Instead of last time where he just spend all of his time bashing Natalie and getting Probst to agree with him, this time he was just so pissed off and everybody was so sick of him (see Parvati in the above pic) that it was actually pretty funny. Even Jeff, who usually has a huge boner for all things Russell (hence the fact that every season since Samoa has either featured or mentioned Russell, [a bit of S25 and S26 speculation ahead] and it's not looking like that pattern is going to change for S25 and 26), was telling him to shut up.
So basically, the people who say that Russell should have won Samoa have absolutely no idea of how Survivor works and just got caught up in Russellmania, but I can at least forgive them, for they know not what they've done. But the people who say he should have won Heroes vs. Villains are just plain wrong, end of f***ing story.
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