Australian Survivor’s first All-Star season has finished its first week and through its already tragic vote offs and excellent cast as a whole, the main takeaway is that in merely 3 episodes, David Genat has pushed ahead of everyone to prove once and for all that he is nearly flawless casting.
Originally competing in the 2019 season, David filled a role not at all unique to that year of the show. He’s a smart, alpha player who’s impressive in many ways - he gets others to flip to his side, finds idols, never loses his drive. However, David’s flaws include sometimes being too overconfident, at points too aggressive, which inevitably comes back to bite him The moment came shortly after the merge when he finally loses control and his allies turn on him. Several other players even in this same all-star cast had a very similar storyline originally, but none of them can match the level of charisma, energy, creativity, and absolute absurdity to the way in which David plays Survivor.
The constant crazy eyes he had on display in the 2019 season already made that clear, but merely one week into the all-stars season, he’s reminded everyone that there shouldn’t be any doubt. To sum up the series of events, in these 3 episodes David had already secured himself a safe and powerful position in a majority alliance due to his likability and of course strength in challenges, but that alone doesn’t even begin to match the amount of control David desires. As the leader of one alliance, he goes up to the leader of the minority, Mat, and pitches a secret alliance between them where they can keep each other safe while knocking off players from both sides. Fortunately, Mat had just received an idol, which makes this idea easier to be put into action.
David tells Mat who the majority’s target is, and in exchange, Mat’s alliance will play the idol correctly and vote out Daisy. She’s someone who is in David’s alliance, but he has a past conflict with her from last season. Yet another wrinkle is thrown into this however when David’s ally Brooke finds an idol. So to ensure that the idol doesn’t save Daisy, David gets Mat to act as if David is his target. That way following Mat’s idol play, the second idol gets played on David instead of Daisy, and Daisy still goes home. The crazy thing is that this all worked perfectly and every aspect of what David was attempting, succeeded. The even crazier thing is that this all happened on day 7 of a 50-day game.
David is a character who can’t even fathom taking his foot off the gas for a second. Across all versions of the show, the only worthy comparison to him is Tony Vlachos, and even then Tony was naturally a bit slower, playing a slightly shorter game, and of course far less cocky. Because of these differences, it’s extremely unlikely that David could match Tony and actually win the game. It’s highly possible that this plan blows up on him as soon as next week, but despite his many flaws he is still a great player in many ways, so it’s also just as likely he could continue a bizarre run to the mid merge section of the game all while having no shortage of other crazy plans like this.
Regardless of how it pans out, it’ll still be a thrilling joy to watch. David is undeniably an excellent catalyst to put on any season and create situations that would’ve never happened otherwise. One of the best casting choices in Survivor as a whole, and especially one of the greatest characters to meet Australian Survivor. In those aspects, his famous cockiness is surely earned.
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