Which Survivor are you?

The only thing bigger than you this "Survivor" season is your heart—and maybe the rhino that keeps wandering through camp. You are a study in selflessness, most likely to donate your ration of rice to the sobbing, homesick tribe mate.

As a skilled athlete, you know how to be competitive, and your jacked physique will certainly come in handy when you need to raise the roof— literally—after it has blown down in a storm. Camouflage face paint is your luxury item, so you can play the intimidation card during the intertribal challenges (as if 6 feet, 5 inches, and 200-plus pounds wasn't enough).

hmph, this is completely wrong.

I never watched Survivor. Is this a good or bad thing?

Brett, from this past season's Survivor, was my friend's RA at college and apparently did really well on the show, which is what I'd expect because he was one of those painfully nice and guileless guys you meet on occasion. You know the kind of person that is such a great catch and a cool guy that you are kind of - half-jokingly - thankful your girlfriend wasn't around when you met him?

yeah that guy was cuuuuuute

He's a prayer warrior, if I'm not mistaken.

He's a big Christian and I remember him being involved in good causes and stuff of that nature on campus (I recall him talking to this girl I was crushing on a.t.t. about this charity or cause he was involved in, and I remember it being like Owen Wilson, in Meet the Parents, when he talks about becoming a carpenter so he could follow Christ's example for treating others)

When I told my friend that his RA was on the show we both laughed because we were both thinking "How can you vote such a nice guy like Brett off the island?"

He is like a church-going teen girl's fantasy of what guys will be like in their early 20s, while my friend and I, and almost everybody else we know, are the horrible compromise.

I mentioned him on a post that died out

I saw a guy from survivor at Saks 5th Avenue - he was from only 1 season behind at the time. Me and my sister just googled our eyes at him as we walked by. I wonder how many celebrities remain unscathed by paparazzi whom are too dumbfounded to say anything.

I only saw one episode of Survivor this season, when the Prayer Warriors lost the coconut challenge. I think God may have found intercession in a Reward Challenge insultingly beneath him.

Except the female Prayer Warrior ended up winning. GOD HAS THE LAST LAFF.

once again immunity... back up for grabs.

there's a smattering of season-specific threads from the show's early years, seems like this is the original and most general so i picked it for the revive: anybody else out there still watch this ridiculous show? i was a superfan from season 1 on, but eventually fell off after season 12 (panama) partly because i went off to grad school and partly because i was very alarmed by the godawful "tribes divided by race" theme of season 13 (discussed in its own thread: Survivor: Cook Islands, Post-Colonialism Colonialism Ratings Grab )

just before quarantine started last year, on a whim i loaded up season 1 episode 1 for me and my partner, and when she got hooked and lockdown began, it became basically a yearlong distraction project to watch all 40 (count em) seasons to date, not entirely in order. lotta highs, lotta lows, plus a smattering of truly painful incidents along with problematic casting and problematic edits/storytelling. but having gone through it all we're already dipping in AGAIN because it's such good comfort TV: every episode has action, drama, gorgeous locales, usually comedy, strategy to puzzle over... a very complete junk-TV meal. as we wait on the much delayed season 41 - rumored to be a short 29 days to accommodate contestant quarantining, and verified as the first in a new era of guaranteed 50% BIPOC casting - I just gotta know if i'm the only survivor nut here on ilx.

i'm a fan, and my wife is a nut whose seen every season and regularly listens to rob cesternino's survivor podcast. i started watching with her during natalie's first season (blood vs. water, don't remember the season number) and every season until that nonsense with ben dampened our enthusiasm. we have revisited old seasons together (africa, marquesas, pearl islands, all-stars, fans vs. favorites, and we're working through heroes vs. villains) and watched winners at war.

agreed that it's excellent comfort tv, and watching it is basically as close as i can get to convincing my wife to watch sports with me lol

we also watched the first season and it's amazing how much of it i absorbed through cultural osmosis even tho i never actually watched when it aired. it was really a phenomena, and my reaction to my wife's obsession was initially "people still watch this?", but now i totally get it.

*a phenomenon that i associated with that particular time (summer 2000, along with the x-men movie and "who let the dogs out?")

sports connection is real. i've always said that I only "got" what people love about sports - at least the social/discussion/fan/lore aspects - only after i got into watching this show with friends in college.

we actually just rewatched Natalie A's first season! aka S29/San Juan del Sur. there had been a prior BvW season, #27 - half returning players, half their loved ones. also a pretty good one! similar mix of really memorable personalities and neutral/dud characters. you just have to put up with the terrible return of the terrible Colton from S24, surely one of their all-time worst casting decisions. his loved one Caleb was unbelievably nice and lovely; very sadly, he passed away in an awful workplace accident not long after the show aired. that casts a shadow.

fyi, S21 thru S24 are widely regarded as the show's nadir, so if you stall out after HvV, consider doubling back to the run between All Stars and FvF - lotta "underrated deep cut" seasons in there.

lol "that nonsense with Ben." sadly, Final Four Firemaking remains a constant. it's so cheap!!!

I think I stopped watching this when it became unavoidably apparent that the producers are willing to let contestants with mental health issues onto the cast because their resulting meltdowns made for arresting TV.

That is exactly why I stopped.

speaking of the sports connection, one of the fun parts of recent seasons was learning that former nba goon scot pollard is just as much of a dick off the court as he was on the court (and he almost lost a basketball shooting challenge lol)

in general the "former pro athlete" category of survivor contestants has a pretty sorry track record, lol.

i'd like to say they've done a better job over the last couple of years in terms of exploitative casting of people who should not be on the show. and certainly nothing like the Brandon Hantz incident in a long time. unfortunately S39 also included a seriously botched handling of complaints about a contestant not respecting women's boundaries. (not the first time the producers clearly thought they were doing a great job of Addressing An Important Issue, and weren't.)

and then this was followed by basically a full year of past contestants coming forward to describe their poor experiences as people of color (in various respects) and the lack of mental health support coming *off* the show. the former led directly to the new casting diversity commitments, but progress on the latter remains to be seen, and of course there's a big difference between casting a more diverse group, and supporting them/telling their stories/etc. one of the more damning things to come out last year was Julia Carter from S38 revealing how a major thing on her beach was a returning "star" white golden boy castaway using the N-word multiple times (quoting Tarantino movies and South Park), her being affected by it, other ppl being silent, one lone white guy standing up for her, a lot of big talks, and NONE of it made it to the show and in fact her story basically didn't exist. :-/

tbh one thing i found very fascinating binging the whole damn thing is the window into changing Heartland Middle American Cultural Values from 2000 to 2020. unfortunately the trend towards convoluted strategy prompted by the proliferation of weird game advantages tends to eat up airtime that used to go to "camp life" and getting to know people. but still.

a returning "star" white golden boy castaway using the N-word multiple times (quoting Tarantino movies and South Park)

damn, i didn't hear about this. i'm pretty sure i can figure out who that might be and that's extremely disappointing

dunno if it helps or hurts but the same dumbass is also a trumper who in recent months has posted StopTheSteal stuff, QAnon stuff, etc.

no wonder mark burnett likes him lol

sad but true. thankfully i do think he's gone beyond the pale and will not be back on the show.

the Julia Carter blog post, btw, is here.

I just wanna say that as somebody who watched 5 seasons of this at the beginning, enjoyed it, but had enough, I'm happy there are deep students of the entire corpus like you guys

haha. it is weirdly the area where i think i might have the most comprhensive knowledge of any random hobby thing of which i'm a "fan." my knowledge of Beatles lore in my teens probably could compete but a lot of that has faded big time.

season 5 (Thailand), btw, is an extremely common point at which to bail! routinely shows up in the bottom 3 of many people's lists to this day, for a variety of reasons (speaking of problematic incidents and problematic handling by the show). when it was not ugly and uncomfortable, it was also just plain boring and unsatisfying. possibly the only highlight is the "quirky old lady" type, Jan, who occupied her island time not with strategic scheming or conserving energy for challenges, but with establishing a small burial ground for local wildlife. i guess it was cool when psycho shithead skater dude Robb got taken down by a stingray. otherwise easily one of the most DUD seasons ever.

should you find yourself at all hankering for that old-school Survivor flavor, S7 (Pearl Islands) is widely regarded as the best of that whole period, with a very strong cast, interesting story arcs, and a brilliant use of a pirate theme, to which they have oddly not returned. it's on Hulu missing only one fairly inconsequential episode early on. of course all seasons are on Paramount Plus but who has Paramount Plus??

Pearl Islands was fantastic, yeah

a bunch of seasons are available on hulu, i think, though not all of them. netflix, weirdly, has heroes vs. villains and cagayan (the first tony season)

yeah, hulu has everything up thru the early 30s. a bunch are missing episodes, some of them more crucial than others. Marquesas is missing like the first three episodes, boo!

the netflix season picks are sooooooo bizarre to me. we hated the outcome of cagayan but, ok, it is generally a very popular season and certainly lively. but HvV is all about returning player fun, like seeing formerly great players make all-time blunders, or seeing one legendary "character" develop an unrequited love for another. the final showdown is super satisfying on its face but even moreso knowing who those people are and how they understand their own positions in the game. sigh.

found my pen and paper list of all the seasons from early pandemic, when i was just trying to figure out what was missing on Hulu. i'm posting it here for posterity, now elaborated with some super nerdy RECOMMENDATION INFORMATION for anyone who reads this and is thinking about digging a little deeper into the show. to be clear, overall most of the seasons are overall 'good,' so lots of ones i really like have no markings here at all. just trying to narrow down.

♥: start here! ideal for newcomers/non-obsessives. great cast, good antics, some interesting moves, and generally compelling Survivor.
◘: overall fantastic seasons that are just not "starters" - either too many returnees, or you have to know the game to 'get' it.
♫: fine wines/deep cuts. maybe some dull stretches or flop ideas, but lots to appreciate and sink your teeth into if you love the show.
▲: awful. do not watch. these are in a lot of "bottom" lists AND have ugly, objectionable content.
■: pretty bad, and again, in a lot of "bottom" lists. if you got HOOKED, and yet were still looking to cut a few out of the queue, these are the ones.
†: is missing episodes on Hulu. seasons 35 forward are not on Hulu at all.
( ): contains returnees from these seasons

if i were helping mentor your Survivor journey, I would start with the ♥ seasons in any order. if you get through those and are like "this is fun, i'd watch like 2-3 more," then go to the ◘ seasons (just being mindful of returnees). if you get through the ♥ seasons and are like "i'm definitely hooked," then you honestly should just start at the beginning and go chronologically, skipping the ▲ and ■ seasons. (it helps that 1-7, while slow by modern standards, are GREAT reality television, really interested in their characters and their storylines.) i'd only do the ■ ones if you get finished and are STILL hungry. or in some cases you might want them to prepare for a returnee season.

with returnees, i really think you wanna see all prior seasons of anybody there to appreciate what's going on. this can mean watching an entire bad season just to know what's going on, but usually not. it's tough to write a list like this without being way more specific about WHO'S coming back, because that can be a major spoiler. so this list has the weird conceit that for any returnee season, you look backwards in the list and if any of the referenced seasons is itself a returnee season, wellp, gotta deal with those first. if this all sounds like a headache, it is - so just do what i said above and start with the heart seasons and then go chronological. it's a blast.

01 Borneo ♥
02 Outback ♫
03 Africa ♫
04 Marquesas ♫†
05 Thailand ▲†
06 Amazon ♫†
07 Pearl Islands ♥†
08 All-Stars ▲† (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
09 Vanuatu ♫†
10 Palau ♥†
11 Guatemala †
12 Panama/Exile Island
13 Cook Islands
14 Fiji
15 China ♫
16 Micronesia/Fans vs. Favorites ◘ (7,9,12,13,14,15)
17 Gabon ♫
18 Tocantins ♥
19 Samoa ■
20 Heroes vs. Villains ◘ (2,4,7,8,10,11,12,13,15,16,17,18,19)
21 Nicaragua ■
22 Redemption Island ♫ (4,8,19,20)
23 South Pacific ■ (13,16,18,20)
24 One World ♫
25 Philippines ◘ (2,13,16,19)
26 Caramoan/Fans vs. Favorites (16,17,21,22,23,25)
27 Blood vs. Water ◘ (1,7,8,12,13,18,19,20,24)
28 Cagayan / Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty ◘
29 San Juan del Sur ♥
30 Worlds Apart / White Collars vs Blue Collar vs No Collar ■
31 Cambodia / Second Chance ◘ (1,2,7,12,15,18,19,25,27,28,29,30)
32 Kaôh Rōng - Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty
33 Millennials vs. Gen X
34 Game Changers ■ (2,7,12,13,16,18,20,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,30,31,32,33)
35 Heroes vs Heroes vs Hustlers †
36 Ghost Island † (all new players, but see note above)
37 David vs. Goliath ♥ †
38 Edge of Extinction † ■ (29,31,32,33,34)
39 Island of the Idols ▲ † (all new players but see note above)
40 Winners at War ◘ † (2,3,4,7,8,11,13,16,18,20,22,23,24,25,27,28,29,31,32,33,34,36,37)

NOTES:

* All-Stars is the one real "problem" season: a bad time in SO many ways, but also really important to the mythos and to certain players' arcs. also key to the shift from Survivor as a groundbreaking TV phenomenon, to Survivor as just another show, and a 'game' with a growing history/lore/strategy playbook. one option would be to JUST watch the postmerge, which lets you avoid the ugliest parts of the season, and will more or less set you up for the future. i would say definitely watch at least that before you watch Heroes vs. Villains.

* Pearl Islands is truly great, and missing ONE early episode on Hulu which has a great challenge and some character development.... but you can get away with skipping that one. otherwise, though, the Hulu deletions are unforgivable.

* Ghost Island has only new players, but the gimmick is that people go to the titular island and encounter important artifacts from past seasons; since they're supposed to be tied to legendary moments, the explanatory flashbacks spoil those moments. helpfully, this seasons is pretty middling so you're not gonna want to skip there anyway.

* Island of the Idols ALSO has only new players, but the gimmick is that people go to the titular island and receive training from legendary players, spoiling their legendary past performances. i'm not listing out their seasons because this season also has a massively, massively problematic incident right at its center. so despite a few fantastic casting discoveries, i can't really recommend it until you're running out of seasons. by which point you will know the "idols" anyway.

doc c, i'm curious to hear more about your negative reaction to all-stars. i mean i kinda get where you're coming from, but i definitely didn't think it was the absolute worst season

great question! it's a few things... spoilers behind hidden text... in terms of the game, the premerge is fairly interesting (though it's a bummer when several very big names get targeted only because of their big-nameness). there are some great moments, and a few people get memorable character development. it's especially fun to see former nobodies or merely "colorful" characters find their strategic footing, while former fan favorites character screw up challenges and build comically inept shelters, etc. but then strategically, very little "happens" in the post-merge. the Chapera alliance is SO locked down and it's not that fun to see underdogs repeatedly struggle unsuccessfully to get any of Rob's pawns to realize where they really stand.

meanwhile there are SO many unhappy ugly moments. like really "not my idea of a good time" things. at the end, the jury is in an extremely unhappy, ill-tempered headspace; whether that's justified or not, it means the final tribal council is a big negative hatefest, not a fun way to finish a season. much more important: an incident that i think today would be reasonably characterized as sexual assault and would lead to a player being pulled from the game. here it's treated almost like comic antics, and you have to watch the victim pull herself from the game in a visibly distressed state - her suffering and anger is REALLY raw and painful to see - as other players and the show react in almost a "gee, what's HER problem?" manner. basically a repeat of the situation in Thailand, which was also handled incredibly poorly. that's the worst part by far.

another player also pulls themselves out of the game because one of their family members is dying from cancer. and a beloved fan character complains that this person is a "cancer" in the tribe. probably just a sloppy choice of words but again, like.... this is downer shit, i don't wanna watch it again.

and then because of all that, i also experienced the season back then as a crushing disappointment --- the gulf between "omg this amazing cast! omg for the first time people are coming back!" and the season we got was just really jarring, and kinda deflated the show for me.

an incident that i think today would be reasonably characterized as sexual assault and would lead to a player being pulled from the game. here it's treated almost like comic antics, and you have to watch the victim pull herself from the game in a visibly distressed state - her suffering and anger is REALLY raw and painful to see - as other players and the show react in almost a "gee, what's HER problem?" manner.

ah yes, i nearly forgot about that. that was very gross, and i'm surprised that it didn't elicit more of a negative reaction from probst and the contestants even at the time.

with regards to the jury being angry/unhappy, i'm not as troubled by that, and i enjoyed watching the power couple gleefully burn bridges, even if it was frustrating to watch supposedly smart people like lex get hoodwinked.

i do totally agree that it was a major step down from pearl islands, and isn't nearly as good as other returnee seasons like fans vs. favs, heroes vs. villains, and second chance.

re: the finale - I think it was just so weird and jarring to see outside-the-game relationships come into the game in SUCH a negative way. like genuinely "we had a meaningful friendship that meant a lot to me and now it's fucked" vibes. it clearly took the players by surprise too. hardly anybody had any fun out there! those later returnee seasons - which i agree are all classics - don't seem to have this problem; i feel like people adjusted their sense of what "it's just a game" meant to them and it all settled down a little.

it was a bit annoying that so much outside-the-game stuff made it into the finale, sure, but since i came back to that season after watching several more recent seasons, my feeling was more along the lines of "what the hell did they expect?" lol.

it can't really be overstated how much boston rob changed the game–he was really the first to think of the show as a competition to be won, not just an ordeal to, well, survive.

huh, i don't think i agree with that! plenty of people from the previous seasons fit that mold imo!

maybe he was just more ruthless, or better at giving confessionals lol

all-time confessionalist. spoilers for S22, it's worth watching Redemption Island JUST for him owning the camera for like a third of every episode. when he throws what would normally be a critical game item *into a volcano* i'm basically on board for him completely steamrolling the entire season and blocking out half the other characters from existing, which otherwise is unforgiveable editing imo. also has a pretty enjoyable long-term arc, between the cocky kid in Marquesas, who gets taken aback by how much he hurts people in All-Stars, settles down with his dream girl, returns as the determined young father and team player of HvV, learns a few lessons, comes back in S22 and finally wins.... and then when we finally see him again in 39 and 40, he's settled into his mature, middle-aged cockiness.

update: seasons 41 and 42 have now both wrapped up filming. 41 to premiere this fall, i think sometime in september. you can find cast photos/names/professions for 41 on sites like insidesurvivor. really really nice to see the 50% BIPOC casting standard changing up the mix, feeling cautiously optimistic for the season despite the expected shorter time on the island (under 30 days according to all the rumors, none denied by production).

mark your calendars! season 41 premiere is Wednesday 9/22, 8-10 pm on your local CVS affiliate! worth playing for???

the season 41 cast is now official! the one thing they seem to have in common is that nearly all of them sound like survivor super-nerds, just from the name-checks in their interviews. or maybe filming in the quarantine era meant they had a lot of time to binge-watch before they did their pregame interviews.

i may be the only one who truly cares but the premiere is TONIGHT at 8 pm eastern!

doctor casino i'm right there with you brother

J0rdan is right about the preview, so it looks like we won't get down to 2 this time. But FYI they've played the wiped-out tribe a few different ways. No spoilers for specific seasons but:

* one time (wayyyy back in the day), they once let it just. play. out. got to two people left, they did a fire-making challenge and the last one standing merged with the dominant tribe after one spooky night alone.
* one time (in the middle years), they've let it play out down to 2, and then those two then each joined one of the other two tribes for a couple rounds.
* one time (very recently) they've let it play out down to 2, and then they just went to the merge

More typically, there's a swap before the numbers get that lopsided, but it's hard to say whether those swaps were just pre-ordained, or if there was a line in their flowchart that said "if any tribe gets down to 3, activate the swap contingency."

did anyone watch the season that just ended? i really enjoyed it

great season. kinda weird final episode!

i'm not sure i really understand why charlie didn't win, it just seems like they wanted to give it to kenzie. he seemed really mad and i understand why. maria in particular just seemed to want to spite him

i wish they had asked maria and Q about trying to take charlie out by working w/ liz, kenzie etc instead of letting the votes be put on Q and playing his idol to take out charlie. i'm still stunned that didn't happen. the energy between charlie and maria still seemed very strained

he was pisssssed. which is kinda awesome cos usually after the winner is announced everyone is gracious and loving, so it was nice to see some real emotion. i thought they bombed the reunion by not pressing her more and digging at that. her reasoning was so bad, "i saw the fire in her eye when she made fire"????? after promising C a vote??? straight to villain status.

also not much talking from Q and zero from Venus. they whiffed on not doing a quick poll to see if anyone wouldve voted for Liz who for some reason thought she was the main character and a real threat in the game.

i thought there were so many dumb players this season. like 4-5 in a row sent home with an idol is crazy.

Liz's freakout is one of the all time top 10 survivor moments for me O__o

Charlie and Maria had real Avon and Stringer energy

lot of big egos on that jury, which is maybe why the vote was so weird.

Tiff was mad for no reason. that pointless 30 second timer lmaooooo

obsessed w/ this drama...

Let's stay on the Maria train. What was the secret sauce that led you two to work so well together for so long in the game? And did you always have the intention of taking her out before the end?

I mean, we did work well together. I would say we had a lot of trust. It was really interesting. We did trust each other a lot in the game. By the same token, I think we did see the game very differently, at least [in] who to work with, who to trust, and what was a good strategy to get to the end. Which is ultimately, I think, why I started to put things into place to diverge from her. Just for an example of the difference, when she got into the Six, and was telling me about the Six. I was invited into this glorious alliance; she was all hyped about it. And I was like, "This kind of sounds like it sucks. What are we talking about here?" Also, I'm like the substitute, so that's lower than the bottom of this alliance. And they just voted out someone. So I just saw it a little bit differently.

And I think that's sort of where I started to at least put my brain to work of, not necessarily putting words into action, but [thinking], "Maybe I need to play a little bit differently than her." Because I felt like I was having to sway her a lot into what I wanted to do. And I think when you do that enough, it's going to diverge naturally. That's to say, we obviously had a great relationship out there all the way to when she left the game. So, very strong strategic relationship, despite all of that.

Now let's go from strategic to personal. Because we saw that ominous scene on the boat where you talked about being friends long after the game and meeting each other's families. But I would imagine her not voting for you may have complicated things. Where do the two of you stand less than a year after playing?

It's really interesting. Honestly, I think up until the last couple of days, I would say we had a pretty good friendship. You know, as good as you can get. It never would be the same as it would have been. It's a pretty heavy thing. We've obviously talked about it quite a bit. But yeah, literally, in just the past couple of days, she sent me a text about what she was going to say in her exit press. And it was totally inconsistent with everything we've talked about for a year and everything I heard from Pondy and everything she said in the aftershow. And that definitely stung a lot.

There's been a lot of switching up in terms of her reasoning. And I've given her a lot of grace, including her telling me that she regretted voting for Kenzie weeks after the game, and then telling me after that that she couldn't have any regrets. So she didn't regret that anymore. So I did my best to understand and be a good friend. But, just the last couple days, I think it's just a little too deep. [I'm] not going to put the effort into into that relationship just the same. So no ill will towards her at all. I don't want any internet ill will towards her. But in terms of our relationship, we don't have to be friends. I don't dislike her. But it definitely won't be what it could have been.

https://parade.com/tv/charlie-davis-survivor-46-runner-up-finale-interview

agreed that this was a great season with a slightly "off" finale. Charlie was an excellent player IMHO and him winning would certainly have been cleaner, narratively. but i'd had Kenzie as a possible winner since the first couple episodes... granted she kinda lost the strategic plot a bit post-merge, but it was clear she really did make strong connections with almost everybody out there, which is probably the most important thing at the Final 3, and yet the thing that the show consistently has the hardest time conveying.

Yah Kenzie was great and in a not so normal way.

which is probably the most important thing at the Final 3, and yet the thing that the show consistently has the hardest time conveying.

― not the one who's tryin' to dub your anime (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, May 28, 2024 8:38 PM (two days ago)

for sure, and if you read the rest of that charlie interview he talks about how he actually felt closest to ben on the island, and had a whole deep bonding arc w/ him, playing a similar role to kenzie w/ his panic attacks. but they chose to play his storyline as maria based for obvious reasons

Operation Italy episode was so great

best ep so far i think

very fun ep, agreed! loved getting the very clear breakdown from Genevieve just before Tribal, articulating all the things that would need to go right for the plan to have a chance.

overall 47 isn't landing quite as strong with me as 44/45/46. which i think just comes down to me not having as many people in the cast that I'm especially excited to see each week. but the gameplay has been generally coherent and interesting to follow! the longer eps (starting in 46) have definitely been a net positive in being able to tell clear human stories and show strategic thinking despite all the gimmicks and variant vote setups making the game much more of a week-by-week crapshoot. just wish they'd strip a little of that stuff back out.

at this point I'm rooting for Rachel, who's been thinking clearly the entire game. i'd also take Genevieve. Andy, amazingly, could probably take it if he sits next to the right people, tho i could also believe the jury's perception of him could be too firmly set by now. i'd be okay with an Andy win after last night. i loved Teeny early on; i think they have no shot now, but mostly I'm just bummed out by the vitriolic fan reaction to them last week. Sue would need to do something miraculously clever with her idol to even remotely have a shot. Sam is doing his best but has just never resonated with me at all.

I wanted the person that went home two back so now I’m indifferent, just want maximum drama is all

I am enjoying this season more than 46, which had a lot of emo histrionics in retrospect. most of the top 10 this season are good at strategy and at articulating the strategy (like Genevieve last episode). I still can't believe they pulled Operation Italy off.

I don't know the spoiler tag rules we are abiding by...Andy seems really well positioned to win, Rachel and Genevieve are seen as the top threats and the first priorities for expulsion. Andy's affect rubs me the wrong way, but I figure there must be some payoff for him dominating the edit and camera time throughout the season.

i mean we probably don't really need to do the spoiler tags, I'm just carrying over the protocol from the subreddit where everything is spoilered for a few days after the episode to protect accidental habit-clickers.

i think Andy has come a hell of a long way... just can't tell how much it's reaching the jury. his whole gameplay story is from his own POV, and that's giving me Xander/Carolyn vibes. if his affect isn't clicking with the folks out there, then he could absolutely play his ass off, and the perception might still be that other people were more in control of what happened.

in his favor: getting Sam and Genevieve on the jury soon, which he has to know is the next smart move anyway, would help get the word out about Operation Italy...

hot damn tonight's episode was edge-of-your-seat TV!

great episode. nice to see my prediction immediately go kaput

love how hard everyone is playing

Season 48 is simmering pleasantly, four episodes in. the cast is generally very likeable and I love how much of the story really is driven by character relationships ---- though the game-mechanic gimmicks have unquestionable gone awry in a couple of places, including one case where the "get an advantage" quest truly amounted to a forced coin-toss. almost everyone is interesting and smart about the game, which means you get great tribal councils like last night's, where nobody's being dumb, it's just a question of which group's smart play and attempts to read the situation will outfox the other.

looks like we didn't discuss the end of 47 but i found that quite satisfying also! there's a fundamental sameyness to these "New Era" seasons, over and above the sameyness of the Fiji Era, but there's also a pretty consistent quality level. The 90-minute episodes definitely make a big difference over the "who is that and why did they get voted out" seasons like Ghost Island and Edge of Extinction.

Have really enjoyed Mary generally thumbing her nose at her silly tribe for the first few episodes. Loved last night's manoeuvre too, but sad to see the victim go.

same on both counts!

season 48 kinda sputtered through the merge, though the last couple episodes mostly redeemed it. overall, slightly below average for a modern season.

season 50's all-star cast made official this morning and it's... a mixed bag. contrary to most returning player seasons, there's not much in the way of wtf rando picks. but they seem to have split the difference between "all-time names who haven't been on in a minute," "people who popped in the New Era," and "people from the 30s who got screwed by the long gap in returnee seasons." as a result, it doesn't serve any of those concepts particularly well, and what looks larger is the sense that any fan-faves in those groups who DIDN'T make the cut are now pretty much out of luck forever.

count me among those who would have preferred they do "Second Chances II" for 48, helping to clear the rolls of untapped potential and to build up some resumes for a real pan-era All-Stars in 50. oh well. meanwhile season 49 was always doomed to be sort of lost in the middle. tho two 50 slots are reserved for yet-unknown players from that group, at least.

i have dipped out of survivor but will probably watch season 50 to root for cirie (who at least won the traitors, which is good because she is gonna be booted from this quickly)

i thought this last season was okay, prob the least interesting of the last handful -- you really felt them straining to make kyle an interesting figure ("i made it thru the hardships of being arrested for public intoxication as a youth"), and the big alliance/move of the season being kyle/kamilla did not have the wattage of past seasons. the joe/eva/david "we are playing a loyal and honest game" crew was a snooze. bringing back joe, kyle and kamilla for 50 really feels like overkill

Yeah, Kyle's a classic case of choosing a smart, viable path to winning that just does not happen to be very exciting to watch on TV. But given the people he was playing with, and the alliance structure that had formed, standing pat until the last minute was 100% the right call.

I'm happy to have Kamilla back. Joe is a boring pick but it'd be fun to see what happens when his honorable-guy schtick meets a group that's not buying it (or Coach, who invented it). Kyle (like Dee) will be a sitting duck... Jenna Lewis is even there to revive her "winners gotta go" campaign from the first All-Stars! I'd swap the winners for, say, Owen and Shan, or Jake and Karla, or Jesse and Carolyn, etc.

bring back my guy Kaleb! I ran into him last year at a culture crawl thing, he is the nicest dude

The Kamila/Kyle inside/outside game was very clever and not something I've seen before, but not exactly enough to make for 90 minutes of compelling TV each week

does Joe have any chance in challenges vs giant Roy Moore bodyguard Jonathan? (I'm going to say no)

I am in the middle of watching S1, which I managed to miss out on when it originally ran. It feels like there's no edit, alliance moves are not telegraphed and I can't figure out what's happening in most challenges. Jeff acts like he's about to cry whenever anyone gets voted off, lampooned by a dude doing big fake tears when he went out in the last ep I watched. It's Survivor before they figured out how to shoot and produce it, but I guess it was good enough to turn into a huge phenomenon.

Season 1 is soooo fascinating, precisely because they don't fully know what they're making. It seems like the producers intended something like a fly-on-the-wall documentary, like Hands on a Hard Body, about people embarking on a survival adventure, which the producers had also put together. Obviously, with the voting mechanic and cash prizes, they intended things to get competitive, and for personality conflicts to develop, but they wanted Lord of the Flies; not numbers-game strategy. The seal can't be unbroken, so they'll never be another season like it, of Survivor or any other show.

I personally love the observational way it's shot and edited, and the concern with things like building shelter, finding food, and killing time, which have all gotten wayyy downplayed over the years. Agreed that the lack of challenge narration is very jarring now... we just accepted that you'd have to rely on techno music and "TAGI LEADING" chyrons to understand what was going on! It's crazy that it takes them 4-5 seasons to say "hey, maybe the host could be doing play-by-play?"

On the other hand, I think of all the bad ideas they didn't have... Like, what if they'd never hit on the jury format, and had victory come down to points accumulated across the challenges or something? Or what if Jeff had played a character, some guy in a tuxedo welcoming the contestants to his mysterious island? Etc.

sue's speech in the finale is still one of the great moments in survivor history

re: Joe vs. Jonathan - depends on the challenge I think! Looking it up: Jonathan was a beast in the big tribal challenges, rolling giant rocks around and lifting things up. But individually he only won two of the endurance/balance challenges, and struggled with dexterity and puzzle elements. I think Joe is more well-rounded in this sense, like he won the "stack the blocks on the little teeter-totter while keeping it steady with the rope" challenge, which Jonathan lost. But Jonathan probably beats him in the "grip this winch holding up a heavy bucket" challenge, etc.

yeah s1 makes some attempts to play up the American culture clash and integration element - crusty navy man and big city gay can work together despite the constant expressions of casual homophobia! some eps are like The Real World on an island, like the full episode about one dumb sexist comment and a guy being booted for mansplaining before the term existed.

anyway I'm not at the finale yet so no spoilers plz, this is still anyone's game

maybe they wanted an observational look at what happens when a purportedly representative sample of Americans get marooned, but accidentally included the greatest strategy game mechanism in existence. it's funny how many s1 contestants have contempt for the idea of alliances, or of basically making any effort to win the money. slacker generation in action.

fortunately this was the last time that Mark Burnett's great TV show ideas had any impact on American history

maybe they wanted an observational look at what happens when a purportedly representative sample of Americans get marooned

i think they did! one of my fav things i've read about survivor is this article about how each contestant's wardrobe is supposed to convey something about their profession

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/style/survivor-clothing.html

“The idea is, what if you were shipwrecked with a group of strangers?” Mr. Probst said. “A lawyer’s clothing should look very different from a nurse, who looks different from a pizza maker.”

i think, over time, this dynamic has sort of been shed as players more so think about themselves in terms of what archetype of survivor player they are as opposed to who they are out in the real world and what that means on the island. i think the show still tries to be a bit social experiment-y but, you know, they're not doing race war seasons anymore

indeed, thank goodness they aren't!

but i know what you mean about the clothing. really peaked with season 7, the first time they did the "jump off the boat in the clothes you thought you were wearing for a cast photo" thing. tie-dye, Armani suit, douchey polo, scoutmaster uniform... all very handy shorthand for characterization, even if they weren't always for straightforward "types."

Mary in this last season had the greatest island wardobe, excellent tribal council outfits.

I was unaware of Rupert's 2012 Indiana libertarian gubernatorial run.

Season 50 so far: the cast remains a frustratingly motley bunch in terms of splitting the difference between "all-timers" and "New-Era Second Chances for characters who popped." So it doesn't really do either of those things in a way that feels satisfying. And Jeff is drifting further and further into cringy enthusiastic grandpa (or maybe Michael Scott) territory.

BUT... The first three episodes have been extremely entertaining! The storytelling is putting character interactions and conflicts front and center, thankfully not completely swamping them with game mechanics, and just letting a ton of human comedy unfold from these familiar people thrown together in unlikely combinations. It's working for me! I also always really love when people come back after a LONG time and you can see the years on their faces; it cancels out a lot of the "them? Again? Really?" feeling I had just looking at the list of names.

I'm enjoying this season! Hubicki is fun to watch. Rappin' Jeff Probst is doing his thing but is thankfully not the focus, unlike with some of the low-on-charisma recent casts

I really liked Rick Devens speaking for the audience bitching about how boring Joe's supposedly honest gameplay is. Now Coach and Joe can form their own honor and integrity caucus, whose first act is of course to tell a woman to tone it down.

i nearly cringed to death during probst's rap.

rooting hard for my girl cirie, wonder if she will do some jedi mind tricks to make it to the merge.

loving this season many lols

that Coach/Chrissy scene was sooooo awful omg. he even did the "yap yap yap" hand gesture!!

I found myself liking Coach more in recent seasons when he's demonstrated some level of self-awareness, but he was such a condescending sexist prick in the original Tocantins season.

... Okay, the celebrity guest appearance last night was a bit much.

It really did go on forever