I can just google myself (always a dangerous proposition) and go find and read stuff I wrote a while back (also a dangerous proposition).

But the point is, even though I made Maryanne my winner pick way back then, I acknowledged that her victory was a massive long shot, and not just because of my historically terrible prognosticating skills.

While Maryanne had annoyed people by making like Spinal Tap and living permanently on an 11 setting, there did seem to be a general affinity for her, and she had not crossed anyone along the way.

Maryanne just made a huge power play that was 100 percent her own, and it culminated with a big, showy exclamation point at Tribal Council.

Maryanne didn't just flip the script on a vote; she took down the season's master manipulator, and did it even though she encountered massive resistance from her own alliance members who were too scared to make the move.

Last time, it was because she was just so likable.

Okay, we better get through everything else that went down in the penultimate episode of Survivor 42 because we also have our updated season rankings to get to.

For those new to the club, I always present my season rankings in the next-to-last episode because the finale recap is already way too busy as is, but rest assured (before you complain) that rankings certainly can move up or down depending on what happens in the final episode.

I love when two people in the game have to sit there and take part in a completely phony conversation that they both know is total B.S., yet have to go through the motions anyway.

Both me and my inner psyche know I can't pull it off, yet I have to go through the entire charade of an internal conversation that it might actually be possible before discarding the idea completely.

There's just a certain joy I can't quite explain in watching randos spend extended periods of time in hot dog costumes and getting pooped on by a large animatronic pigeon.

Survivor occasionally trots a version of this classic out, but with nowhere near the same fervor nor regularity of a program that also features a sassy wisecracking robot that shows up to insult the contestants for no good reason other than it is just so damn easy to do?

I guess it's a twist on the Loved Ones reward, only this time instead of a relative coming out to see you, Probst just starts having a one-sided conversation with your Loved One that is delivered through a television screen approximately a year later.

This particular challenge forced players to race over obstacles and then across a bridge with puzzle steps that had to be used to build a staircase that then had to be climbed to where a table maze awaited.

All the editing has been on fire this season, like the scene earlier in the reward challenge where we were treated to a montage of dropping puzzle pieces and the sounds they made along the way.

And in a season that has felt so similar to the one that proceeded it in so many ways, those little production wrinkles go a long way!

Her decision not to use the idol on Omar because she did not want a new idol to go into circulation may seem absolutely insane on the surface, because it would have guaranteed his safety — creating a 40 percent chance (two out of the remaining five people) of getting an idol if it is even replaced.

Sure, he has two individual immunity wins (same as Lindsay), but one of those was against just one person, not a full field.

He would take information (and sometimes misinformation) and use it to prod players into the direction he wanted them to go.

He played hard, gave entertaining confessional interviews, and, like Maryanne, just seemed to exude joy out there on the island — mischievous joy, perhaps, but joy nonetheless?

But she and Mike both are already guaranteed final four, and the question with Mike is whether people will judge him by his social game (strong) or strategic (less so, especially if people hold it against him for lying so stridently to their faces about being with them before voting them out).

I don't see Jonathan winning just because people don't see him as the guy who was ever pulling the strings… and maybe, even worse, see him as the guy pulling them in the wrong direction!

And it's time to find out right now where season 42 lands in our updated season rankings.

And the greatness just kept on coming.

Filled with huge memorable moments like Tyson voting himself off, J.T.

Quite simply, the best Survivor season ever with all new players since the very first one (which is only better by the fact that it was the very first one).

Cayagan was an intoxicating mix of terrific and terrible gameplay in which the big personalities (Tony, Spencer, Kass) weren't just personalities — they actually were there to play the game. (Maybe not well at all times, but at least they were playing.) The casting was killer, the challenges were solid, the boot order was completely unpredictable, and the creative twists worked (although I was not a fan of the return of the post-votes read idol; thankfully that never came into play).

The fact that Woo inexplicably brought Tony to the end with him added one last great "WHAT THE HELL?!?" moment to a truly exhilarating season.

And it's not just Christian, who was one of the most universally loved contestants of all-time.

Just look at this slew of other players and personalities that created great TV: Angelina, Nick, Davie, Gabby, Mike, Elizabeth, Natalie Napalm, even wacky Jeremy.

They experimented with new techniques that served to freshen up the franchise in its 37th season.

They cut back and forth between players and stories in ways they never had before?

This season, they all paid dividends.

What's so great about Pearl Islands is the way the entire season embraces the pirate theme, especially the way it is incorporated into all the challenges, something that never happens anymore.

A season filled with pure joy, and that feeling of joy and celebration permeated the entire season starting with a collection of incredible players and personalities.

Some people, like Ben and Michele, had something to prove.

Others, like Yul and Kim, were revered folks who hoped to show their first dominant runs were not a fluke.

There were also unforgettable moments like the log carrying contest, which — from a television production standpoint — is one of the best produced segments in the show's history.

I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have a great winner on such an important season.

Yes, there were demerits for the season, the most obvious one being the existence of Edge of Extinction, and not just because people that are voted out should stay voted out, and how it's not fair that the earlier you are voted out the easier it is to get back in, and how people that are voted out always bond together against the people that voted them out so that's not fair either.

The other problem is there were several times where viewers were completely lost as to who was aligned with whom in the game and why, and that is something that might have been cleared up had we had more time on the actual tribe beaches and less time watching people talk about how much the Edge sucks.

But the producers also made one key excellent decision: to not just treat this season as a regular competition, but also act as a celebration of the entire franchise and its epic 20-year run.

They leaned into making the season feel special, starting with a champagne toast and the announcement that they were doubling the winner's prize to $2 million.

Palau is a season that proves you can still have a truly great outing even without twisty bells & whistles, and with a super predictable boot order and winner.

I love the way the players started the game completely clueless on an island together with no instructions and no tribes.

(A lot of viewers and players felt it was really unfair to vote out two people on day 2 before tribes were even formed. I totally disagree. If you didn't work hard enough to create early bonds to get picked, that's on you.) One of the best creative decisions Survivor ever made was not panicking and reshuffling the tribes once Koror started dominating.

China has Such a great, deep cast — even beyond the obvious returnees of Amanda, James, Peih-Gee, and a positively hilarious Courtney.

It just looked absolutely miserable.

But as bad as the camps ware, the season otherwise did a great job of incorporating Chinese culture into the theme of the season, challenges, and rewards — including an overnight on the Great Wall and a kick-ass trip to the Shaolin Temple.

With the exception of Caramoan, I've never had a season rise so much through the rankings from week to week.

What seemed like a so-so cast at first ended up giving us a fair number of breakouts: Michaela, Zeke, David, Adam, Jay.

The returning contestants playing with/against their loved ones twist added new dimensions and forced players — and us — to think about the strategic elements of the game in an entirely new way.

(However, I still can't figure out why they went with three-person duels — a.k.a. truels — and they definitely should have stopped RI at the merge.) Yes, there was a bit of a lull just after the merge, but all in all, this was a super solid season from top to bottom and a nice change of pace.

Because the casting and storylines that developed gave us people to root for and against — something every great Survivor season needs.

An underrated season that saw the first totem pole shake-up: where people on the bottom got together to overthrow those on the top.

Plus, just look at all the great first-time contestants (Parvati, Penner, Ozzy, Yul).

It is pretty painful how much of the season is based around dudes being horny AF.

And the producers clearly encouraged this horndoggery as much as possible, even in a high-stakes immunity challenge with questions like "Who would you most like to see pose nude in a magazine?" I also forgot how mediocre the challenges were, like the one where they had to walk around a fake Amazonian home, or the time they actually played a game of Go Fish.

The same way it is more important for a sports team to play well in the second half of a game as opposed to the first, a great season needs to build momentum, and Caramoan definitely did that with six fantastic episodes in a row.

It's much more important to finish strong than to start strong, so I definitely put more weight and emphasis on post-merge episodes when doing the rankings, and this season made a remarkable comeback.

Should I push it down in the rankings due to the lackluster Reunion show that followed?

I like this season a lot more than most people, but Russell's controlling of the game (especially post-merge when his side was down 8-4) was truly a work of art.

Ah, just writing the word Panama gets me daydreaming about Survivor Sally and her intoxicating knee socks.

Because Survivor 42 followed the exact same format with all the same twists from Survivor 41 (Prisoner's Dilemma, goofy phrases, Hourglass twist, Shot in the Dark, Do or Die) along pretty much all the same challenges, the entire season often felt like a rerun.

Unlike season 41, which featured a few episodes that almost entirely revolved around twists, producers titled the focus back to the players themselves showing them reacting to each other for a change rather than reacting to a bevy of artificial objects and obstacles put in their way to disrupt the game.

And while the Hourglass twist is still the worst creative decision in the history of the game (sorry, Medallion of Power), it at least was marginally less terrible this time since players were at least informed this time thatthe person sent to Exile would be given a power and the winners of the challenge would have the opportunity to send one of their own instead.

Like season 41, Survivor 42 had a stellar cast with folks like Hai, Drea, Daniel, Omar, Lindsay, Jonathan, and others all creating great story.

So when all is said and done, why does 42 just barely edge out 41.

That was the nadir of a first half of a season stretch that placed waaaaaaay too much emphasis on manufactured twists at the expense of showing us a naturally evolving social game develop.

The goofy phrases players had to say to win an idol were super fun, I didn't mind the Do or Die since it was a level-playing-field twist in which everyone had the same opportunity to make a decision, and I actually really dug little flourishes like Probst sharing secrets with the audience before the players would walk into a challenge.

It's just that the sheer volume of twists was overwhelming, which was too bad when we had an overwhelmingly good cast capable of carrying the action and intrigue on their own.

I generally really liked this cast — but I do feel all the early tribe swaps made it difficult for viewers to connect with many of them.

("Guess the Bamboo" was about as riveting as watching an Adam Sandler movie as part of a South Pacific reward. My suggestion at the time was to have contestants have to win mini-challenges — like, say, solving a puzzle before all the sand poured out of a bottle rather than just picking right or left. This idea was used a few years later on Survivor South Africa: Immunity Island.).

I still do not like the fire-making final 4 twist because it is an arbitrary out-of-format rules change specifically designed to get perceived better players to the end.

Like I said, a hard season to rank.

It's hard to put your finger right on it, but it felt like this season lacked a consistent flow.

That means we did not get a lot of bang for our buck when it came to the biggest players in the cast.

That was always my big fear about this season — that as exciting as the early episodes were, those high-profile exits were diluting the cast and leaving us with players that we, as viewers, were not fully invested in.

Some may have loved the insane drama of having five out of six people immune due to idols and advantages — but I found watching someone be "voted out" even when zero votes were cast against her to be a case of a season run amok by simply too many bells and whistles.

Here's another one that I like more than most people, which is curious considering how much it has in common with the season that aired directly before it, which I didn't like: the same twist of two returning players, Redemption Island, the predictable vote-offs, no real water challenges, etc… But there is one thing I really did dig about this season, and that is the cast.

I was invested in the players and their fates — the ones I wanted to do well, and not so well.

They also forced contestants to make decisions on those advantages — like whom to help or hurt from another tribe — that played dramatic dividends.

To me, even though there was not any funny business at play to help Ben out, it still was not in the spirit of a game in which players are supposedly given the power to vote each other out?

Working against this season is the fact that there simply were not enough transcendent players in the cast!

All that said, there were legitimate moments of glory — like when Tai turned on Scot and Jason — that elevated the proceedings and turned this season into a solid, if unspectacular, entry.

It certainly was entertaining at times watching Rob strategize (the most dominant showing ever) and Phillip philosophize (the craziest showing ever), just not very dramatic

Rick Devens was the only true breakout from the cast (unless you include Reem bitching everyone out at Extinction Island … and you probably should), but that may also be because so much of the attention early was spent on the four returning players. I'm not a fan of folks sticking around after being voted out, so clearly, the Edge of Extinction twist was not up my alley, especially since it mostly consisted of people just kind of staring off into the distance pensively for no apparent reason. And while the producers who make the show may consider having someone voted out on day 8 winning the game as proof of concept, it left a sour taste with viewers who could not help but overlook the massive advantages associated with befriending the jury in a non-game setting.

I don't blame producers: The battle of the sexes seemed like a fine enough concept. This season just never took off.

The cast was for the most part boring if not boorish, and when you look back on this season, does any one big moment even stand out? Anything? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? I will say there were a few strong post-merge episodes, and it definitely got better over the last few weeks thanks to Natalie's strong play. That counts for something. This is not a season that inspires anger or rage, just apathy, which is maybe the worst indictment of all.

Look, I have total respect for Kim's game. Like Tom in Palau and Rob in Redemption Island, she excelled strategically, socially, and physically. Unfortunately, that is really the only good thing I can say about this season. And that's too bad because I do think the "One World" concept was a solid one. But, man, what a thoroughly uninspiring cast. Colton was more a horrible human being than a classic villain, and the rest of the players were mostly either completely forgettable or people you wish you could forget. I worry I am being generous by putting it even this high, but out of respect for Kim, it goes here.

Yau-Man and Earl were great, but this entire season was sabotaged by the terrible "Haves Vs. Have-Nots" twist, which has to go down as one of the worst creative decisions in Survivor history. Speaking of awful creative decisions…

It's way down here for a few reasons. 1) Splitting the tribes up by age and the Medallion of Power were both enormous flops. 2.) Nicaragua had just too many unlikable players. 3) Two people quitting with only 11 days left. 4) No big memorable moments

And, unfortunately, due to the events surrounding the inappropriate touching — and the way it was handled by both production and the other contestants — the ultimate feeling when it comes to this season is sadness

And so even though there were several things and people worth celebrating at various points in the show's 39th installment, the end result is that this felt like the least entertaining outing in the franchise's history

So there you have it: your updated Survivor season rankings … at least until they are potentially updated again in another week depending on what happens in the finale

And I'm sure there are other things you have to do as well, I just don't have access to your entire schedule