If you glanced at Survivor Twitter at all during Season 44, you probably saw a lot of comments about how spectacular the cast was. And rightfully so. I’ve watched every season of the beloved reality show, and I’d put this last one in the top ten for sure in terms of player likeability. Carolyn and Yam Yam are two historically fun castaways and a handful of others could easily come back and play again. It was a delight to watch a lot of these people play.
But if you dig a little deeper and get past all the positivity about certain players, you would notice all is not right or harmonious with the Survivor fanbase. In fact, there is a fair bit of negativity, and that undercurrent of frustration is only getting louder. Despite enjoying specific players and random moments, there are many that are down big on Survivor, and in my opinion, host Jeff Probst and the producers need to start listening. Because while there have been a ton of great castings in recent seasons, the show is also beset by some larger problems that need to be addressed.
I could probably come up with 10 or 15 things I’d like to see Survivor alter moving forward like casting more villains and going back to 39 days, but there are two changes that a really high percentage of fans seem to agree on. So, l’ll put some of my personal feelings aside and focus on those. Here are 2 really obvious changes Survivor needs to make moving forward…
1) The Producers Need To Back Off
If you go back and watch the first season of Survivor, you’ll notice it hardly even feels like the same show. As much as I love Richard, Sue, Kelly, Rudy and everyone else, that’s a good thing. Lots of the advantages and scenarios we’ve come to love about Survivor have been slowly added over the years. It’s important for the show to continue innovating and trying new things, but there is a difference between innovating and over-tinkering.
The point of Survivor is to watch the contestants strategize and overcome. It’s to watch them scheme their way through votes and set themselves up for short-term, medium-term and long-term success, but in recent seasons, the producers won’t back off and let them do that. In a desperate attempt to be exciting and unexpected, they bombard the castaways with new wrinkles almost every single week. At one point during Season 44, there were like three Hidden Immunity Idols and 3 fake Hidden Immunity Idols all running around. That might be a good way to manufacture a viral moment, but it’s a terrible way to figure out who the best Survivor player is, to the point where former castaways were loudly complaining on social media.
I like the occasional wrinkle. Some change is good, but producers need to remember that fans are tuning in to watch people play Survivor, and the show’s best moments come out of that, not shocked reaction faces because some impossible to predict gotcha scenario got dropped in everyone’s laps. From the rightfully hated and illogical hourglass twists in Season 41 and Season 42 to producers essentially handing contestants tools to make realistic fake idols in Season 44, those behind the scenes have been way too involved to the point of manipulating the game. They need to back off.
2) We Need Greater Challenge Diversity
There are a lot of challenge-related issues right now. First, the pre-merge challenges overwhelmingly prioritize physical strength or at least are perceived by the players to prioritize physical strength. As such, almost every season, we see more women than men voted out early on as tribes usually focus on maintaining strength. It has happened often enough and the data is clear enough that something needs to change.
Second, there are way too many total puzzles and of those puzzles, way too many are repeated from previous seasons. Many of the challenges are set up in such a way that teams or individual players need to complete a series of physical tasks and then solve a puzzle, but some of the castaways are so good at puzzles and some are so bad at puzzles that it doesn’t really matter how far someone gets ahead of falls behind during the physical part. If someone can solve a puzzle in 10 minutes that takes everyone else an hour, they’re almost certainly going to win. And the problem has gotten even worse since players started making their own versions of classic puzzles before coming on. Jeff Probst seems to think that’s an earned bonus of being a Survivor superfan, but it’s frustrating to watch and also, kind of stupid. Learning how to make fire is a survival skill wannabee players should practice. 3D printing a tree puzzle ahead of time is not the same thing.
The goal here shouldn’t be to make every challenge exactly equal for every player. The goal should be incorporating a really wide variety of challenges that prioritize different things. There should be a challenge or two every season that’s won via brute force, There should be a challenge or two every season that’s won via puzzle solving skills. But there should also be more memory challenges, balance challenges, basket-weaving challenges, fishing challenges, plant identification challenges, bow and arrow challenges, map reading challenges and other stuff I haven’t thought of. Right now, the pre-merge strength is usually defined by the physical and post-merge is usually defined by the mental (with good balance often playing a role too). It shouldn’t be so clear cut.
To Sum Up
I love Survivor. It’s the greatest reality show in the history of television, and I will continue to watch every season, but there are times in which it can be quite frustrating to watch as a viewer. We all have our own individual opinions as to what little wrinkles should change or what new twists the show should try, but when it comes to the above two issues, most of the fanbase is in agreement.
Producers need to chill out and let the players actually play the game. A twist here or there each season is fun. Changing up the game and incorporating some giant surprise during half the episodes is stupid and betrays the spirit of the game. The referees shouldn’t be a post-game storyline in sports, and the producers shouldn’t be a post-episode storyline on Survivor. Back off and trust the players and the game itself to create good entertainment.
After that, bring in some new consultants to look at challenges. The show is in a rut. It repeats challenges way too often, and that repetition has a huge effect on voting patterns pre-merge. I like watching people solve puzzles or climb up walls, but I’d also like to see them try different tasks we don’t see as often or haven’t seen before.
