It’s been a minute since I’ve written a Survivor post (okay, only two seasons of the show, but still)… and since season 46 just ended this week, I thought I’d spill some random thoughts on the season overall as well as the finale and results.

The season had a rough start, and honestly, I teetered on the edge of abandoning ship during the early episodes, largely due to poor casting. One participant, Bhanu, came close to totally tanking the season. This is someone who described himself as a super fan, but had no business being anywhere near the island. He had no game, and his outbursts and unpredictability were disastrous for his teammates, who had to resort to intensely coaching him to try to keep him from spilling their strategies (and that didn’t even work). The early episodes were just awful to watch because of Bhanu — there’s just no other way to put it.

Some of the issue comes down to the basic setup of teams: Now that Survivor starts with three teams of six instead of two larger teams, one bad teammate can doom the entire team. Bhanu’s team (Yanu) seemed on the verge of disintegrating completely. The episode edits focused so heavily on Bhanu that we saw very little of other teams, and the main focus was constantly Bhanu’s impact on the Yanu tribe. I felt bad for his teammates, and in terms of viewer experience, this wasn’t a fun or good mess — just bad TV.

Things did pick up with Bhanu’s departure finally (he lasted much longer than he should have). Still, until about the midpoint of the season, I found very few contestants to care about, and many of the early vote-outs left zero impression. Jem who? Moriah who? (Oh, right, Moriah was the person who seemingly didn’t know how to jump.)

Fast-forward to the latter batch of episodes. Yes, post-merge, more interesting characters got more screen time and there were some fun elements, challenges, etc. But it was an uphill slog, not entirely successful, to regenerate any energy or sense of excitement after the terrible beginning.

Several decent players made it past the merge, although my favorites (Tevon, Hunter, Tiff) all got voted out earlier than I’d hoped for. And a couple were just so plain odd that they stole the spotlight, but not in a good way. In particular, let’s talk for a minute about Liz and Q:

• Liz claimed all the way to the end that if she made it to the final tribal, she’d beat everyone. And all I can say is… huh? I know some viewers found her entertaining. Not me. A weird vibe, heavy on entitlement. After a challenge that she didn’t win, she screamed at another player for not choosing her for reward, and everyone else seemed to feel a need to comfort her. Why? Why would she feel that she deserved the reward more than anyone else? (She claimed it was because she was allergic to everything on the island and hadn’t eaten… but girl, you knew what would be available to you before you signed up to play. Maybe make better choices to start with.) She was not a good player, and was memorable only for her outbursts.
• Q, agent of chaos: He claims that it was all part of his gameplay, but Q upended all strategy at multiple tribal councils by asking to be voted off, but then stating that he wanted to stay. He became totally unpredictable after initially appearing much more strategic. Still, he did provide a few unexpectedly entertaining moments. Shout-out to Q for organizing a game of hide and seek — his teammates thought they were just having fun, but Q viewed it as a chance to analyze each person’s psyche. Hilarious.

Some of my frustration with this season comes down to frustration with the show in general. 46 seasons in, some pieces just don’t work very well. Enough with the hidden immunity idols! Which (LOL) were continuously found this season, yet never used. Every person who found an idol ended up voted out with the idol still in their pockets. Use your idols, people!

I also don’t love the starvation element. Host Jeff Probst really drills into contestants having to earn everything, including a flint to make fire, but I think that skews results in an unpleasant way. As of the “new era” of Survivor, teams earn their flint by winning challenges, and forfeit their flints when they lose — but then the losing teams seem to end up in a downward spiral. They lose, they have no fire, they get weaker than the other teams… and as a result, they’re less likely to win the next challenge, so they still have no fire, and still get weaker… on and on. I say start the teams with the basics — a flint, a cooking pot, a machete, even (gasp!) a bag of rice. It was a tough game even back when teams started with the basics. Where’s the fun in watching people become so incapacitated that they can’t speak in full sentences? (Yes, that happened this season too.)

Many of the challenges have been seen before, and still seem to skew toward rewarding those who can solve puzzles. Game rules need to be clearer — Kenzie (who ended up winning the season) won a crucial challenge in the final episode, defeating the biggest threat to win it all (Maria), because Liz helped her with the puzzle. Liz didn’t just cheer her on or offer hints from the sideline — she actively ran back to get Kenzie the item she needed to win the challenge. Seemed unfair to me, but Jeff allowed it. So, officially not cheating… but it doesn’t quite smell right to me.

In my posts about previous seasons, I’ve talked about how much I dislike the final fire-making challenge. And yup, that’s still the case. As has been established, whoever wins the final immunity challenge (out of four remaining players) chooses one person to take to final tribal, and the remaining two compete at fire-making for the 3rd spot. But who cares? Why should making a single fire make a difference? There’s got to be a better way to set up the finalists.

Personally, I’d rather the show go back to a final two. In so many of the past few seasons, at least one of the final three has absolutely no shot at winning, and is just there because they never posed a big enough threat to be voted out. What’s the point?

I’d rather see a final battle between all three of the people who didn’t win immunity at the last challenge… or do one more tribal, then a final challenge at three, and the top two finishers make the finale. I don’t like one person getting to decide who to bring, just because they happened to win a key immunity challenge. (Maybe some combination of this suggested approach — still have a final challenge at four, but the top three finishers become the three finalists, period.)

Okay, jumping ahead to the final tribal…

Fine, the three finalists were Charlie, Kenzie, and Ben. Of the three, Charlie was the person most clearly shown to be using strategy, partnerships, and cleverness throughout the season. Before the voting, he was my prediction to win. I liked Kenzie a lot, and she made a good impression overall, but I didn’t see her building her gameplay in quite as thoughtful a way. Ben never stood a change — he came across as a likable person who got brought along as a number for most of the game.

The key to winning Survivor is supposed to be: Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. And these are the touchstones that supposedly help the jury determine who to vote for.

Except not.

Because this time around, two jury members ignored gameplay and based their decisions on what the finalists said they’d do with the prize money. Q explicitly asked this question during final tribal, and stated that whoever gave the answer he liked best would get his vote. After a shocking voting choice (more in a moment), Maria later explained that it was Kenzie’s answer to Q’s question that convinced her to vote for Kenzie.

What does this have to do with the game? I’m still baffled, days later. We’ve seen occasions in past seasons where contestants have talked about who does or doesn’t need the money… but making the finalist’s plans for using the million dollars the key factor in how to vote? That’s just ridiculous. They could have saved 26 days of dirt and hunger and just found this out on day one.

As for Maria… she and Charlie were rock-solid allies throughout the entire game. Even when they reached the point where they had to aim to take each other out, realizing that they were each other’s biggest competition for the win, they were committed to voting for one another to win at the end. And yet… Maria voted for Kenzie instead, based on Kenzie’s plans for the money, and by doing so, handed her a million dollars that most likely would have gone to Charlie.

With Maria’s vote, it was 5-3 to Kenzie. Had she voted for Charlie, it would have been a 4-4 tie, and Ben would have cast the deciding vote. Since the finale, Ben has stated in interviews that he would have voted for Charlie. So there you have it: Maria took $1 million from Charlie and handed it to Kenzie.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Kenzie a lot and I’m happy for her. But in terms of gameplay, it feels like Charlie got robbed, specifically by Maria, who has bitter jury syndrome written all over her. I don’t have a problem with my predicted winner not actually winning, but the circumstances of this vote really leave me with a bad taste when it comes to this season.

On a final note, I’ll repeat the complaint I’ve been making ever since the post-pandemic era of Survivor:

If I wanted to dwell on a #2 complaint (which has nothing to do with gameplay), I’d say ditch the immediate reading of votes and the afterparty. Granted, it must suck to be a player and have to wait a year for the reunion show and reading of the votes, as they used to handle this pre-pandemic. Still, how can the finalists — especially the two who didn’t end up winning — get into the mood of the party when they literally JUST found out they lost, and they’re still sitting there unwashed and tired after 26 days? Let them at least take showers and put on clean clothes first!

Overall… this season was more or less a bust, certainly less satisfying and enjoyable than the previous two. I do feel that the format has become stale — the twists, idols, challenges, etc are all so expected at this point that I think production needs to do a bit of reinventing or going back to basics. Get rid of the gimmicks!

Oh, and is anyone else absolutely over the Sanctuary as a reward? Remember the good old days of being flown by helicopter to a private retreat? Or even the amazing one where the people on reward got to visit a local children’s school and deliver supplies and toys? Mix it up, Survivor!

After all of this complaining, will I continue to watch Survivor?

Yes. Yes, I will.

Hope springs eternal, and I think there’s enough that (mostly) works about the show’s core concepts that will keep me coming back for more. And as I mentioned last time I wrote about Survivor, I’d still like to go back and watch some of the earlier seasons that I missed when they originally aired.

Let’s see what happens when Survivor returns in the fall. Will anything have changed? Will the production have adapted in any meaningful way, or will it just be more of the same? We’ll find out in September!

Here’s the official trailer for season 47: