Coach claims he set out to change the game in Tocantins. I can't say he succeeded, but he certainly provided a lot of laughs while trying. That statement alone showcases his delusion. His lies and hypocrisy are definitely an acquired taste, but once you reach the point where you can't take him seriously anymore, he becomes just that: a joke.
Nobody can tell a story like Coach. His campfire tale about his adventures in the Amazon is one of my favorite moments in Survivor history. Nobody really bought it, but you can't say he isn't creative. According to Coach, he's been in a hurricane, attacked by a shark and had a run-in with a crocodile. And who can forget this moment, from the episode 8 reward challenge?
ERINN: Your team's a little stacked, I think.
BRENDAN: We're throwing underhand breaking tiles. None of us have ever done this before in our lives.
COACH: I have.
Of course, Coach has. It's the quintessential Coach moment, really. A spurious claim. A pointless brag. A ploy for attention. Witness another classic Coach moment - his spiritual journey on Exile Island, where he seemed to gain a messiah complex.
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| The Martyr approach: Coach receives enlightenment |
The "dragon slayer" shtick is probably the most famous of all of Coach's idiosyncrasies. This time, you were literally watching a grown man live in a fantasy world. It was just wonderfully bizarre. And it certainly left an impression.
What doesn't leave much of an impression is Coach's strategic game. For someone who claims he wanted to change the game, he ended up having very little impact on it from Tyson's boot onwards. He was only really kept around because he just wasn't a threat. Stephen summed it up best: Coach is a predictable player and that's exactly why you want to keep him around.
Coach treats Survivor like a competition about finding the best warrior. And its a game he's only half-good at. When Coach struggled to win challenges and live up to the name he'd built for himself, Probst mocked him, saying that "all that life experience, not helping you". He did win one immunity challenge in Tocantins though, of which his celebrations were suitably entertaining. But Coach's greatest moment in challenges probably came in the first episode of Heroes Vs Villains.
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| The Colby Slayer |
Typically, that was followed with a self-congratulatory confessional later in the episode claiming that "everyone was still talking about it long after I'd forgotten it". Haha, oh Coach, I don't believe that for a second.
Second time around, Coach demonstrated much more self-awareness, but still embraced the character he had created (this time he opted for a Knights Of The Round Table theme). He even showed a more sensitive side, breaking down after Sandra attacked him at tribal council and needing to be comforting by Tyson.
But his gameplay still amounted to little. Caught in the middle between the Rob and Russell battle on the Villians tribe, after pledging his loyalty to both, Coach bottled it and sat on the fence, resulting in Rob being voted out, calling Coach a "little man". Coach was now expendable, and Russell voted him out next for being flaky.
For Coach to do well in South Pacific, he will need to avoid rubbing the other players up the wrong way, and prove himself to be an asset. In his pre-season interview, he seems to be on the right track, claiming "when I get on that beach, I'm just gonna kill them with kindness". Best case scenario for Coach is that his tribe feel no need to take him out because he isn't a threat. I don't think Coach can win. Then again, that isn't really the point for him. I think he just likes mugging for the camera.
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