I have been rewatching a couple of some old school seasons of Survivor and loved watching again some of the great blindsides of the show's history: the John Carroll blindside in Marquesas, the Burton F5 blindeside in Pearl Islands, the LeAnn blindside in Vanuatu. And while watching, a thought came to me, Operation Italy is actually a like for like old school blindside.

No advantages, just straight social manipulation and some great and bad game awareness. It's actually incredible how they pulled it off in the new era! Great move all around, but some thing feels off about it.

Like the move itself is very old school, and I love it because of that, but I don't know, the editing of the move, the edit of the players doing it, just something that makes it feel not as important as it should be. Maybe it's because the people doing the move don't win? I guess so but there have been blindsides where the people doing it didn't win but it still felt big. Like the Kelly blindside at F9 in Africa or the Hunter blindside in Marquesas. Like it just didn't do it for me.

Imagine if Genevieve and Sam were like the power people and maybe Rachel and Sue did Operation Italy, in my opinion it would have been unanimously the best move in the new era, and probably one of the best blindsides in Survivor history. But it's not and the people doing it are just people I don't care about or I don't actively root for.

To add to my point, the edit of Andy and Genevieve just killed me in my interest of rooting for them. Like the first two episodes just made Andy so unlikable in my eyes, I couldn't root for him, even if I wanted too. Like getting clips of his other tribmates saying hes like a scary ex boyfriend of just clips of other people dissing him. It's just not kind at all. Even Kathy in Marquesas gets a little bit of positive soundbytes from his fellow Rotu tribemates when she was stikingin it up socially in the early game.

For Genevieve, they just removed all possible early game social content from her. Like she just pops up in episode 4 and goes Terminator on Kishan. Like out of nowhere! And even when she gets some emotional content late in the game, I felt it was too late. The damage was done. The edit made her out as a heartless robot killing machine, and that's a damn shame. I actually liked her in the season, but I just couldn't help to root against her because the edit just set her up as being the villain.

The edit has never been perfect on the show, but they used to show people in a three dimensional lens (well, most of the time). You got their input about everything and you heard as much as possible in their everyday camp life. Not everything is about the game, the focus should be about the people. And let people be people.

Merry Christmas as well!!!