100 Most Entertaining Survivors #78: Ethan Zohn (Africa)

Ethan Zohn was the winner of Survivor: Africa. He also participated in Survivor: All-Stars, but this post is solely for his appearance on Survivor: Africa.

This is Ethan. As I stated before, he was the winner of Survivor: Africa. He was the first winner who, I believe, was well-rounded on all aspects of the game. His social, strategic, and physical games were all equally strong. Until Africa, we hadn’t seen such a contestant.

One of the reasons that I loved Ethan so much was because of his alliance. His alliance included four people: Big Tom, Lex, Kim, and himself. The fact that Ethan was able to put up with this alliance is astonishing. He had Big Tom, who didn’t say one discernible sentence the entire game. He had Lex, who made decisions with his heart rather than his head and almost cost their alliance the game. And finally, he had Kim. The invisible one who seemed to just be along for the ride. However, these four together made for incredibly entertaining television.

Now, one of the moments that, in my opinion, made Africa entertaining was Ethan and Lex on a reward trip. This, in my opinion, is the most entertaining reward in ANY SURVIVOR SEASON. For those of you who don’t remember, Ethan and Lex won two goats and a trip to a nearby town (of course, in the middle of Kenya, nearby means about 3 hours away). They could barter these goats away so they could buy various goods from the town. This became one of the best scenes in the first three seasons. We had Lex talking about pooping. We had Ethan talking about butchering his goats. And they even ended it with an inspirational moment where Ethan gives his luxury item to some of the local kids. They need to do more rewards like this nowadays. As opposed to “go have a meal on a boat”.

Eventually, Ethan became the “nice guy” winner of the first 9 seasons. Eventually Tom did also win that label, but Ethan did it first and some say best.

This win wasn’t without its moments, however. Ethan provided us with laughs and inspirational moments along the way. As I’ve said, I honestly believe that he is one of the most well-rounded players to ever play the game. It is unfortunate that he is fighting cancer right now. However, everyone in the Survivor community will always remember his long, curly hair and his fun attitude.

Thanks for reading, please rate and comment. 

Jeff

Clue to #77: Karma doesn’t work so well in Survivor.