Survivor Top 100 Gen3 Moments - #3. Brandon's demise, Pt. 2
- 7 years ago
Season 26, multiple episodes.
The favorites-tribe spectates in horror as Brandon Hantz — the only castaway to make it to the top ten of this countdown twice — spirals to a deep, dark place in his mind, and it all boils to a confrontation between him and the other one of the top two most colorful characters of the early 3rd-generation, Phillip of the Sheppard's. The results are what those two sentences you just read could imply; an explosion where a camp's food supply is totally ruined in broad daylight as a demonstration, and real threats of violence occur for the first time in 13 years of the show (thus far).
A lot of factors, internal and external context-wise, work into making this one of the more unforgettable moments ever in the show — a must-have for a list like this — but I can tell you, personally, I never ever liked how exploitative Jeff just asks, all sensation-driven, if this behavior "is in the blood", just to promote these mean-spirited, abusive people who happen to be of blood-relation. It was the culmination of all reasons I thought casting Brandon to the show was a mistake that would/could ruin some things regarding about its' authenticity. After all it's always been a show for 16-20 complete strangers, stranded in the wild.
But now, with the two great Blood vs Water seasons happening after this moment — both very possibly partly inspired by the Hantz-relation that was such a nuisance to many fans at the time — I'm a little torn on how I feel about that specific part of this moment. Maybe it's not as awful for the show as I liked to dramatize it to be in the past. It's still cringey, but it serves a purpose given the circumstances. And it does look like Jeff said it to get Brandon to think about something else than wanting to knock Phillip's bitch-ass head off.
Where was I? Oh yeah, they also had to do an impromptu tribal council because of the magnitude of this moment.
The favorites-tribe spectates in horror as Brandon Hantz — the only castaway to make it to the top ten of this countdown twice — spirals to a deep, dark place in his mind, and it all boils to a confrontation between him and the other one of the top two most colorful characters of the early 3rd-generation, Phillip of the Sheppard's. The results are what those two sentences you just read could imply; an explosion where a camp's food supply is totally ruined in broad daylight as a demonstration, and real threats of violence occur for the first time in 13 years of the show (thus far).
A lot of factors, internal and external context-wise, work into making this one of the more unforgettable moments ever in the show — a must-have for a list like this — but I can tell you, personally, I never ever liked how exploitative Jeff just asks, all sensation-driven, if this behavior "is in the blood", just to promote these mean-spirited, abusive people who happen to be of blood-relation. It was the culmination of all reasons I thought casting Brandon to the show was a mistake that would/could ruin some things regarding about its' authenticity. After all it's always been a show for 16-20 complete strangers, stranded in the wild.
But now, with the two great Blood vs Water seasons happening after this moment — both very possibly partly inspired by the Hantz-relation that was such a nuisance to many fans at the time — I'm a little torn on how I feel about that specific part of this moment. Maybe it's not as awful for the show as I liked to dramatize it to be in the past. It's still cringey, but it serves a purpose given the circumstances. And it does look like Jeff said it to get Brandon to think about something else than wanting to knock Phillip's bitch-ass head off.
Where was I? Oh yeah, they also had to do an impromptu tribal council because of the magnitude of this moment.