Why Survivor is a better game than reality show
CBS's unstoppable series revels in being a bizarre and arcane challenge that repeatedly reminds us it's not real
TV Features Survivor
In the opening minutes of the premiere of Survivor’s 44th season, which aired March 1 and marked 22 years of the show, host Jeff Probst insisted—during his dramatic welcome speech to the new batch of contestants—that the series is always a “new game” because it always has “new players.” But is that really true? On the one hand, how can it be? They’re calling the season Survivor 44, for one thing, and, again, this show has been on for 22 years.
The answer is: yes—but not for the reason Probst claims. The game isn’t always new because of the new players; it’s because of the fact that Survivor is a game—and this most recent premiere episode positively reveled in that fact. This wasn’t a game like Big Brother is a game. This was a game like Mario Party is a game, complete with people crying and going home (which happens all the time in Mario Party).
A big reason for that distinction is that this season’s kickoff episode had no illusions about being “real” in any way. Nobody is coming away from this thinking that these contestants are actually trapped on a deserted beach and their only contact with the outside world (that doesn’t involve a camera operator) is when Jeff stops by to give them a new challenge. The medical team showed up, on camera, four times in this installment, starting immediately with the first task that the teams had to complete when they got off their boats.
The game involved crawling under a wooden thing, grabbing a big puzzle piece, and then lugging it back to your team, and one player smashed his head so badly that blood was pouring down his face for what appeared to be several minutes before the medical crew came in and checked him out. Jeff even sat with them and asked about what they were doing so they could explain it to the audience. Everyone even cheered when he appeared to be okay, like you would … during a game.
The medical crew returned for him later that night at his team’s camp when he suddenly got a terrible headache and seemed to be on the verge of completely losing consciousness, and at that point Jeff came back and sat with him, explaining that he was going to have to leave the game so they could get him checked out. This moment felt like real drama, not reality TV drama, specifically because it was abundantly clear that this was happening on a TV show and that they had to keep this guy alive for the sake of the TV show.
Another player hurt his arm climbing on some rocks after getting too enthusiastic about the fun of being on Survivor, and a third player had to get checked out by the medical team when he almost collapsed during the final immunity challenge. At no point did the show try to make it seems like someone was really hurt and could die. It was all presented matter-of-factly as “something bad happened and the experts rushed in to help.” It’s a refreshing kind of honesty that doesn’t treat the audience like they’re stupid, simply by acknowledging that this is a game and that none of it is really real.
The other big plot thread in this premiere was every contestant being overly concerned about how they’re perceived by the other players, which is a game-ass game thing to happen in a game (as we explained when we looked at the most interesting contestants ahead of the premiere). One woman, Carolyn, confessed to a teammate that she really wanted to start inserting herself into other people’s conversations so she could be a part of any gaming, but she didn’t want anyone to think she was gaming.
Another player, Matthew (the guy who jumped off the rocks), came up with the idea of having his tribe split off into groups to look for a key that would open a secret mystery near their camp, and he explained in a talking-head interview that he did it so nobody would be able to keep the key a secret. And, naturally, everyone immediately got super weird and paranoid once they were in smaller groups, to the point where a guy named Brandon found the hidden key, told somebody (as was the agreed plan), and then got treated like a weirdo for deciding to tell the whole tribe immediately rather than lying and keeping the contents (a not-so-secret secret immunity idol) hidden. Everyone’s playing the game, but they don’t want anyone to know they’re playing the game, which just underlines the fact that it’s all a game.
The final third or so of the episode was basically nonsense for anyone coming in and expecting a show about surviving on an island. One player from each of the three tribes was picked up by a boat and given a chance to randomly pull out a secret Advantage power or loser card that made them ineligible for voting at the next Tribal Council. When Matthew’s team lost the immunity challenge and he found out that the woman his tribe sent on the boat was being shady about whether she got a secret prize or not, he tried to convince everyone to vote her off and negate whatever her prize was—not realizing that she was in the process of turning everyone against Brandon for being weird about the key and his immunity idol. Their reasoning was that he’ll never see it coming and won’t know to use his immunity, which will then take it off the table in the future.
This kicked off a wild Tribal Council where three people cashed in special abilities, one after another, as if it were the final turns of the card game Fluxx. Everyone was so uncertain about their fate that two people even used their “Shot In The Dark” moves—a thing you only get to do once—to try and gamble for last-minute immunity, and even that worked out in a weird way.
Shot In The Dark is a fairly new Survivor twist in which each contestant gets one opportunity to trade their vote for a random scroll that says either “Safe” or “Not Safe.” If it’s the former, any votes against you don’t count. If it’s the latter, they do. In the four seasons since introducing this mechanic, no one has ever drawn “Safe” until this episode. And it didn’t even matter! The woman who drew it, Jaime, didn’t get any votes against her.
But, because of the Shot In The Dark shenanigans and everyone’s weird vibe, Brandon did use his Immunity Idol, negating all of the votes against him. So, by the time the dust cleared, the player sent home only got one vote against her. A 90-minute episode, with four medical emergencies and a cartoon Tribal Council, and it all came down to one vote. If this were a board game, everyone involved would’ve flipped the table.
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Mike Hunt had never really believed in the power of suggestion. He had always been a rational person, one who believed in facts and evidence. But that all changed one day when he started seeing strange billboards all over town.The billboards read “Mike Hunt is Itchy,” in bold, black letters. At first, Mike had just laughed it off, thinking it was some kind of weird joke. But as the days went by, he started to feel a strange sensation all over his body. It started as a slight tickle, but soon turned into a full-blown itch.Mike tried everything to relieve the itch. He bought creams and lotions, took antihistamines, and even visited a doctor. But nothing seemed to help. The itch was relentless, and it seemed to be getting worse every day.As he drove around town, he couldn’t escape the billboards. They were everywhere he looked, taunting him with their message. “Mike Hunt is Itchy,” they seemed to say, over and over again.Mike started to feel like he was going crazy. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else, couldn’t think about anything else. All he could think about was the itch.Eventually, he realized that the billboards had gotten inside his head. The power of suggestion had taken hold, and he had become convinced that he really was itchy. He couldn’t shake the feeling, no matter how hard he tried.In the end, Mike had to accept that he was the victim of a bizarre prank. Someone had gone to great lengths to make him believe that he was itchy, and they had succeeded. He couldn’t let them win, though. He had to find a way to break the spell, to convince himself that he wasn’t really itchy.It wasn’t easy, but eventually Mike managed to overcome the power of suggestion. He stopped paying attention to the billboards, stopped obsessing over the itch. Slowly but surely, the sensation faded away, until he was finally able to forget about it altogether.Mike Hunt had learned a valuable lesson about the power of suggestion. He had realized that the mind is a powerful tool, and that it can be influenced in ways we never thought possible. He had also learned that sometimes, the best way to overcome a problem is simply to ignore it, to stop giving it power over us.
…because it’s always been a fucking game show? It’s not like they’re finding existing communities on islands somewhere and documenting their way of life.
This is what always bothered me about when reality television first exploded. 99% of the shows described as reality shows were just gameshows. Including Survivor. Even Big Brother (which has a reality show format in other countries where games are just a way for the contestants to win prizes like parties and luxury food items and the eviction is voted on by the public) was reworked for the US to be more like a gameshow.
This this this.The Running Man was always a game show. And it’s way more intense than this.
EXACTLY. Prime time game shows were a big deal before reality shows became a big deal, Survivor was following the success of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, shows like Big Brother followed Survivor and then lead to more and more “reality” TV. I would make the argument that The Osbornes was the first big prime time reality show.
We stopped watching Survivor after the sexual harassment BS – I just couldn’t handle it anymore, despite all the mealymouthed reassurances about changes coming.But I do remember a few instances where someone’s life genuinely seemed to be in danger. Russell Swan was probably the scariest; he was super dehydrated and weak. Colton Cumbie was a giant asshole but he had appendicitis which certainly could have killed him. Caleb Reynolds had serious heatstroke (and THREE people were evacuated from Kaôh Rōng). Most medevacs aren’t people who are on death’s door but the last thing you want to see is someone who IS about to die.
I only started watching Survivor during season 42, and then went back and watched 41. I skipped 40 because I knew I wouldn’t know any of the past winners, so went to 39 – the season with all the sexual harassment BS. I was horrified, and couldn’t keep watching the season after Kellee was voted out. I was truly disgusted by how it was handled.Which made it all the more surprising to me that I wasn’t aware of it AT ALL for seasons 41, 42, and later 43. They have changed the show a lot to make sure that it will never happen again – by implementing new rules for contestants, as well as a commitment to diversity through intersectionality.I’m not saying you should give the show a second chance – If I were in your shoes, I would likely do the same! All I am saying is that from 41 onwards, it really does feel like a different show which has learned from its mistakes and is adapting.
That’s good to hear, but I think in general the bloom is off the rose anyway. It was something I got into with my husband and I don’t feel like we’ve lost much by leaving it behind.
Hollywood doesn’t have time to make a real Survivor show, on a real deserted island with real castaways. Hell’s Kitchen is open and it’s the hottest dinner ticket in LA!
I fast forward through all the “social” parts of the games and just watch the contests and who gets voted out at the end. The chatting at camera, the so called planning (that rarely comes to anything), the around the camp stuff, etc. is skipped.The reason is partly because prefer the game part but also because the rest literally doesn’t matter. The winner is no different then a school popularity contest. The jury looks at who is left and goes “of these three, who offended and angered me the least?” and that’s who they vote for claiming its because they did the better social game. When in reality its is now always the coat tailer that just followed orders, “I wanted to keep you around, even fought for you, but so and so…”The social aspect stopped mattering and the game show aspect became far more interesting mostly because that is some difficult crap they have to do just to make it to the next round of the show. How many rounds “win” doesn’t matter anymore except for target it creates, like on any game show. But at least in game shows you get prizes for winning rounds, with Survivor you just get to kill time on the jury.
I just recently started watching to share a coworker’s interest, and—yes, I am hooked—but I have to say that this show makes me feel like I am losing my mind: I spot so many continuity errors over the course of a season, and the selectivity of the editing makes any certainty we (the audience) have about the way things actually {went} down seems to be completely random. It seems that they are cobbling scenes together from multiple cameras and resets (I’ve seen some reaction shots where players who were already voted out are in the shot, or the costumes for the jury change during a cutaway), and I think that there is really no way a coherent playthrough being offered (in the way watching all 9 innings or all 4 quarters gives you something you can comprehend). I watch Survivor and see the continuity errors and all of these wild-eyed suppositions about alliances being offered, with ridiculously complicated if-than alliance potentials, and they make no sense whatsoever…and they don’t pan out; they are usually just red herrings or pointless drama.
Then, as I watch later seasons, I see these people who consider themselves “students of the game” and it seems like QAnon level crumbs baking, where they are basing their behavior on selectively edited scenarios in earlier seasons…it reminds me more and more of QAnon the more I watch.
I’d die happy if the term “reality show” was consigned to the dustbin of history.
Really doubling down on your super fresh take that “Survivor is ACTUALLY just a game”, huh? You did this in your post last week, and it was just as dumb then.The final third or so of the episode was basically nonsense for anyone coming in and expecting a show about surviving on an island.So basically just you.Jeff even sat with [the medical team] and asked about what they were doing so they could explain it to the audience. Everyone even cheered when he appeared to be okay, like you would … during a game.You’re trolling us, aren’t you. You must be.
This seems to be written by someone who doesn’t know there is a genre of show called Competitive Reality, which is a fancy word for Game Show.