TV Time: Survivor, Season 46

Posted in Pop Culture by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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:

27May2023

TV Time: Survivor, Season 44

Posted in Pop Culture by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Another season of Survivor has come and gone — and color me surprised, but this was a good one! While I felt fairly unenthused during the early episodes, by the back half of the season, I was all in.

Mainly, I think this is due to particularly good casting this time around. While the players eliminated in the first half have already completely been erased from my memory, the players who made the merge and beyond were, for the most part, interesting, entertaining, and full of surprises.

For the most part… there were still a few in there who made zero impression, but overall — great job, casting team!

*Cast from SURVIVOR Season 44. — Photo: Robert Voets/CBS ©2022 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.*

Survivor has been around a LONG time by now, and while the show continues to add new twists, some basics remain. There are challenges, there are alliances, there are players making overly orgasmic sounds when Jeff mentions food…

Fortunately, some of the most annoying gimmicks from past seasons were not included this time around — fire tokens, redemption island, the prisoner’s dilemma option. One fun new element this season was the appearance of locked bird cages with advantages inside — seeing the players frantically try to find keys, figure out their options, and either conceal or reveal their advantages was goofy and silly entertainment.

By the end, there was a core trio who worked their way from underdog status, outnumbered by members of other tribes, to running the game, and I loved them. Carolyn, Carson, and Yam Yam were delightful — solid alliance, really interesting and quirky people, and great game play.

Unfortunately, Carson lost the fire challenge, making him the final jury member rather than earning a seat in the final three. I would have loved to see these three (#TikaStrong #ThreeStooges) battling it out at final tribal, but sadly that was not to be. Instead, a player who I never particularly noticed, Heidi, ended up at the final, and the win went to Yam Yam.

I was mostly okay with the end results. I was a Carolyn fan all the way, and can’t believe she didn’t get a single vote. I liked Yam Yam, and had he not been up against Carolyn, I would have been excited for his win. I can’t quite figure out what the the jury was thinking, except maybe they didn’t see the amount of strategy Carolyn was applying day by day. The TV edit made it clear that behind her outbursts and kookiness, Carolyn was super smart and was on top of every element of the game, but who knows? Maybe the jury just didn’t get that from the tribal council sessions.

My main complaint about the current Survivor format remains the fire challenge — once it’s down to four players, the person who wins the final immunity challenge picks one person to make it to the final three, and the remaining two have to compete to see who makes fire faster. And that’s just a dumb way to have people get to the end.

In this season, Heidi won the last immunity challenge, and made the decision to give up immunity and build fire against Carson, giving Carolyn and Yam Yam seats in the final three. Heidi did this, apparently, to build her Survivor “resume” and show the jury what a great competitor she was. A couple of problems with this: She played a really lackluster game throughout — I never particularly paid attention to her, or noticed anything special about her strategy. She also chose Carson to go up against in fire building, and it was clear that all four of the remaining players knew he was weakest at fire.

So yes, you could call it a risk to give up immunity and do the fire challenge, except I’m sure she realized that Carson wouldn’t have much of a chance. If you want to really go big, battle Carolyn or Yam Yam!

As expected, Heidi won the fire challenge, and then was declared to have set a record for making the fastest fire in Survivor history. But… who cares? She kept bragging about it at the final tribal, but how does that matter? It’s one fire. What about the rest of the season?

Fortunately, the jury ultimately wasn’t impressed enough to vote for her (except for Danny, who was her closest ally all along), and the win went to Yam Yam. He’s terrific, and like I said, I’d be happy for him in any other season.

Funny, all of my real life friends who watch Survivor were Team Carolyn all the way to the end, and we all were shocked at the outcome. I hope they bring her and Carson back for future seasons. Justice for Carolyn!

See the bottom of this post for more Carolyn love and some great news!

Re Carson, I loved his enthusiasm, his nerdy dedication to the game, and how much he blossomed playing the show. This is the engineering student who 3D-printed past Survivor puzzles at home prior to playing, so he killed it every single time he had a puzzle to do. Good for Carson — he was smart to give himself every possible advantage — but I hope Survivor now retires all past puzzles and starts fresh!

My #1 plea to Survivor production: Get rid of the fire challenge! It’s been done to death at this point, and is such an unsatisfactory way to determine who gets to the final. I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll just copy and paste my earlier thoughts on this here:

There’s got to be a way that’s better than a fire-making challenge for determining the final three. Maybe when it’s down to four, you have one person win immunity, then let the remaining three battle it out for the next two spots? Otherwise, the one who wins that particular immunity challenge gets an outsized amount of power.

I hate seeing weak players at final tribal, with great players voted out (or eliminated by fire) in the 4th or 5th position. I get it — you want to win, so you try to make sure you’re sitting next to someone you can beat. But wouldn’t it be cool to have three amazing players at the end, each with a really strong argument to pitch to the jury?

The fire challenge has to go. The tribes make fire at camp every single day. So making one fire on one day, faster than your competitor, doesn’t make you more deserving of the Survivor prize. It just means you got lucky that particular day.

Anyway…

All in all, a fun season to watch. Jeff Probst’s hosting remains terrific — I love his play-by-play narration of the challenges and the way he handles tribal council. The emergencies early on added some drama, and overall strong casting made this group really entertaining to watch week after week.

I still intend (at some point) to go back and watch one or two earlier seasons that I missed. Meanwhile, I’ll look forward to whatever fresh twists show up in season 45 this fall!

And now, back to the person I truly thought deserved to win this season…

Here’s a quick scene that shows just a little of Carolyn’s personality and quirkiness:

On the #JusticeforCarolyn front, it was welcome news to hear she’d received the Sia Award! (Sia is a huge Survivor fan, and awards money to her favorite player each season). This time around, Sia gave three awards — the biggie went to Carolyn ($100,000), with two smaller awards to Carson and Lauren ($15,000 each). Great choices, no question. Here’s Carolyn’s reaction to the news, being (as always) very Carolyn about the whole thing:

And here’s an entire piece on the glory of Carolyn: https://www.vulture.com/article/survivor-44-carolyn-was-the-true-winner.html

Wrapping it all up:

Despite some unevenness early on, this ended up being one of the best Survivor seasons in recent years. As I mentioned, many of the folks voted off in early episodes are completely gone from my memory, but the second half of the season more than made up for an earlier duds.

The next season airs in September. As always, I feel pretty skeptical when I watch the trailer for the upcoming season — these always feel kind of samey. But, after the fun of season 44, I’m willing to remain open-minded and hope the casting pays off once again.

15May2020

TV Time: Survivor Season 40, “Winners At War”

Posted in Pop Culture by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Survivor’s 40th season ended this week. 40 seasons! Can you believe it? Now, I haven’t watched every single one and I in no way claim to be an expert, but as someone who watches the show week in and week out, I thought I’d chime in today and share my thoughts on the season and the winner.

First, my Survivor history: I watched Survivor season one twenty years ago, when it was new and different, when we all thought we were watching a show about actual survival that quickly became a show about alliances and social strategy. I know I watched at least one more season (Australia), but let it fade out of my life after that. I didn’t return to Survivor again until 2011, for season 24, “One World” — I was looking for something fun and different to watch with my 9-year-old son, and this worked for us! And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every season since.

Back to season 40: With “Winners at War”, Survivor brought back 20 previous winners, some who’ve played multiple times, some who appeared only once but managed to win and make a big impression. Some of these players are Survivor gods by now — who hasn’t heard of Parvati or Tyson or Boston Rob? For a lot of Survivor winners — and even non-winners who are extremely popular with fans — Survivor celebrity can be a career all on its own.

It was, I thought, a pretty cool concept to bring back all these winners and let them battle it out. There were a bunch of old-school winners (Rob, Sandra, Parvati, Yul, etc), and plenty of newer winners too. I liked the idea, and I liked seeing these Survivor icons thrown together in new and different ways. And yes, I liked the awkwardness too, like when Nick confessed that Parvati was his Survivor crush way back when.

BUT… the game design itself this time around had serious flaws, and these came close to ruining the whole season for me.

For the 2nd time, Survivor included the ridiculous Edge of Extinction twist, only this time, it wasn’t a surprise. In normal seasons, when someone is voted out, that’s it — they’re gone. Well, unless they’re voted out post-merge, in which case they become a jury member. Still, there’s a very clear distinction. Either you’re in, or you’re out. The tribe has spoken.

With Edge of Extinction, voted-out players get sent to a different island, where they basically just sit around, occasionally compete for rewards, and wait for a chance to get back into the game. Mostly, they seem bored, and spend a lot of time talking about how tough they have it. These players all form the jury, so while they’re not playing with the remaining active players, they’re watching every Tribal Council and keeping up with the ins and outs of gameplay.

And then, the EoE players get two chances to return to the game — through challenges that happen about midway through (Tyson won, only to get voted out again pretty quickly), and three days before the end. And man, do I have a problem with this! More on that in a minute.

The other twist this season was the introduction of Fire Tokens, described as a “Survivor currency”. As players win rewards, they also earn these tokens, which can be spent on luxury items (like blankets or peanut butter) or saved to gain advantages down the road.

The fire tokens became a part of the interplay between EoE players and the players still in the game. Someone on EoE could sell an advantage to an active player, or extort them by demanding payment of tokens in order to avoid a disadvantage. The absolutely worst part of the fire tokens was being able to use them to gain advantages in the battle-back competition.

Here’s why:

As the voted-out players spent time on EoE, there were numerous opportunities to gain tokens. The longer you’re there, the more chances there are. So a player who managed to last in the main game until day 30 had almost no chance to get any sort of advantage to re-enter the game, versus someone voted out early on, who spent weeks gathering tokens as rewards.

In season 38, a player who reentered from EoE ended up winning the game, and it was a controversial win for sure. This person may have lasted a long time, but did he actually play the game?

Here, in season 40, it was even worse. Natalie, voted out on day 2 of the game, the very first person voted out, spent 30+ days on Edge of Extinction. She won a ton of challenges over there and collected more fire tokens than any other player. She had all those weeks to bond with every other voted-out player, all of whom were jury members, to observe the main game from her own jury seat, and to never have to worry about getting removed from play permanently.

When it came time for the final battle-back challenge, Natalie used her token to buy herself three advantages in the challenge plus an immunity idol to bring back into the game with her if she won.

And if you ask me — that’s ridiculous! Having someone have major advantages like that at such a key moment is just out and out unfair. If I were any of the other players trying to get back in, I’d be frustrated and mad as hell. Naturally, Natalie won, and then tried to dominate the few days left by using her idol and spreading (possibly false) info that everyone on the Edge was saying Tony would absolutely win — hoping to use this as a lever to break up his alliance and get the others to turn against him.

Natalie’s reentry into the game was a disruption that didn’t seem fair or right. The other remaining players at that point had survived through challenges, social gameplay, and numerous tribal councils. I just really don’t like the concept of a voted-out player being able to re-enter so late in the game and stand a chance of winning — and especially being able to re-enter with an idol already in her pocket.

The final three ended up being Natalie, Michelle, and Tony. As I’ve said, I don’t think Natalie deserved a place there at all, and the fact that she lasted at EoE while hanging out with the rest of the jury didn’t seem like it could possibly justify handing her any votes to win.

I’ve never like Michelle as a player. I didn’t think she deserved her first win against Aubry, and I didn’t see her doing much of anything worthwhile in this game aside from lacking enough presence as a player to make anyone else want to target her. Yes, she lasted, but she didn’t actually do anything other than winning immunity at a couple of key times.

As for Tony — well, honestly, I’m delighted he won. I would have loved to see both him and Sarah at the final tribal, either with Ben or Denise. Now that would have been a showdown! This, by the way, is why I feel that the process is flawed when it comes to the end. There’s got to be a way that’s better than a fire-making challenge for determining the final three. Maybe when it’s down to four, you have one person win immunity, then let the remaining three battle it out for the next two spots? Otherwise, the one who wins that particular immunity challenge gets an outsized amount of power.

I was sad to see Sarah out of the competition — but was practically in tears myself watching Tony and Sarah hug and share “I love you”s.

Tony was the right winner. He’s a delight to watch, no doubt about it. His crazy antics keep the show entertaining and surprising. How can you not love a guy who perches in a tree for hours? And actually, one of my favorite moments was earlier on when he helped Sarah infiltrate the other team’s camp to find an advantage. They were an amazing duo!

As for Edge of Extinction, I’ve seen a bunch of speculation that the producers basically had to do this in order to lure back the big-time former winners. I guess no one wants to come back with all the hoopla around this season and then get voted out right away. Still, I think it’s a weird and unnecessary addition to the game, it eats up airtime (and isn’t all that interesting), and it upsets the game dynamic, but in a negative (not creative) way. I’m hoping they do away with both EoE and fire tokens in future seasons!

Kudos, however, to Survivor production for going all-out with this season’s loved ones visit, which usually is super hokey. This time around, they brought not just one family member, but the entire family for each player. Yup, more waterworks as I watched all the various competitors dissolve into mom and dad tears as their kids ran out for hugs! So sweet, and I loved that unlike other seasons, everyone got to spend time with their families, not just the winners of a challenge.

Overall, it was a really fun season, and it was great to see some old-time players back in the game. Of course, I did feel like I was missing out by not knowing some of the “classic” winners… so maybe I should “challenge” myself to use my shelter-in-place time to watch some older seasons.

No matter how many seasons of Survivor I watch, I always end up hooked. Here’s to many more! Hopefully, next season’s final episode won’t be hosted out of Jeff Probst’s garage.

And hey, a question for my fellow Survivor fans out there: If I were going to go back and watch an old season for the first time, which do you recommend, and why?