The last person to leave the game, the person so close to the end they can taste the money but has their opportunity to plead their case taken away at the very last moment. That person becomes ingrained in their respective season as the final recipient of “The Tribe Has Spoken” and earns a place in a very special group in Survivor history: The Day 38 Club.
Inside Survivor contributor Ian Walker returns with an updated and revised countdown of his Day 38 Club rankings. The list takes into account the strength of a player’s game, character, and the power of their story.
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No. 40 – Angela Perkins (Ghost Island)
The sea slug slugger! Angela Perkins prided herself on being a tough competitor during Ghost Island, and while making it to Day 38 is undoubtedly an impressive feat, Angela had a quieter impact on her season compared to the many others on this list.
This army veteran kept her head down in the Survivor trenches, seeking cover by moving between a couple of different alliances, forming solid relationships to take her within sniffing distance of the million. Often, that’s a solid game plan for players to make it deep. And who’s to say that without the Final 4 fire-making twist, Angela wouldn’t have been brought along to the Final Tribal Council?
Unfortunately, without a big move, strategic control, or strong narrative to point to at the Final Tribal, it would have been unlikely for Angela to gain votes in the end regardless.
Early on, Angela had a pretty close call at her first Tribal Council. During the early days of the game, she aligned herself closely with Chris Noble, a polarizing member of the Naviti tribe. Chris was already butting heads with another strong alpha male on the tribe, Domenick Abbate. That conflict looked like it was going to come to a head at Angela’s first Tribal, occurring after a tribe swap with several members of the opposing Malolo tribe having since joined Naviti.
However, through a twist of fate, Chris got sent to Ghost Island, removing him from the Tribal Council action. Dom and his crew decided to put the votes on Angela instead. It looked like certain doom for Angela until the ex-Malolos chose to execute a cunning plan to take out one of Dom’s close allies, Morgan Ricke, instead, thereby saving Angela in the process.
That close brush with death probably impacted Angela’s approach throughout the rest of the game. She clung onto the alliance in power for most of her remaining time, especially after her buddy Chris got clipped at the merge. At the Final 6, Angela was presented with her first real opportunity to shake things up. Momentum was building on a plot to take out Dom, with one of the other tribe members, Sebastian Noel, having an extra vote ready to be deployed to take him out.
Upon learning this plan, Angela’s response was to relay all she knew to Dom, allowing him to stop the move from gaining any real traction and forcing Sebastian out of the game instead. A curious move for sure, and an indication of the group-first mentality that Angela had been playing with the entire post-merge game. Again, a great way to get far, but maybe not the best to win the game as it left her with limited options.
The one thing Angela can celebrate about her Survivor experience is her utter dominance in the gross food eating challenge. Undeterred by any specimen she was forced to gobble up, Angela dusted all the other competitors on her way to victory. Most notably devouring a sea slug like it was a Twinkie, astonishing Jeff Probst, the other players, and all the viewers at home.
More than her gameplay, this gross food moment best encapsulates who Angela was as a Survivor player—a tough-as-nails woman determined to bust through any obstacle sitting in her way and doing it with a smile on her face.
Stay tuned to Inside Survivor as the Day 38 Club rankings continue over the coming days.
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Angela is a prime example of how modern Survivor editing doesn’t even pretend to care about anywhere between 25% and 50% of its cast in any season. I can’t imagine how much it sucks to go through an experience as taxing mentally and physically as a near-full season of Survivor and end up with almost no screen time to show for it.
On a more positive note, I was thinking about how much I wanted to see the Day 38 Club revised just the other day, so this is very exciting.