I decided to start our offseason by doing another ranking! One idea I thought of that I haven't really seen done is debate the best merge episodes ever. Since merge episodes most of the time determine the dynamics of the rest of the season, I feel they're a good representation of the season overall.
There are a few factors that are going to go into how I rank each season's merge episode. The first will be the set-up going into the merge. Was it a clusterfuck, a flipper, 2 sides with a line in the sand, a typical pagonging immediately or what? The second will be the significance of the person voted out. Was it a big loss for the losing side, for the audience and for the season? Did that person's presence missing change the game? Or was that person insignificant to the overall game bad enough to be a joyous occassion to be voted out when they were? The last factor is the impact on the rest of the season. Did that boot help set up any major blindsides and/or power shifts? If it did, the merge episode will get a bump up. If it just led to a pagonging, it might be marked down a little.
With these factors, keep in mind the 2 merge episodes (Tocantins and SJDS) where there was a med-evac and quit may not autmoatically be the bottom 2 because of the impact those had on the rest of the season and continuing to set-up the merge battle in the next episode.
For those that don't remember or aren't clear about when merges took place on certain seasons, I'm not counting fake merges. The episodes I rank will be when the tribes officially merge. These cases are Thailand final 8, All Stars final 9, Fiji final 9, Gabon final 9, etc.
JayBee394 If that's the case, I still think I'm going to use the f9 episode because I don't want to count any episodes that still involve the players being tribes. I look at that f10 situation like Gabon. A set up for a merge but the players get divided into tribes for a challenge and then only the players on the losing tribe vote. I understand the circumstances were a little different but I don't feel that should be the representative episode.
