posted: 2024-09-19
Survivor Enters its Late 40s, Accepts It's Not the Show it Once Was, and Now I Have Deal With It
Oops, maybe I never told you all here, but I'm a stupid huge Survivor fan. I've seen every season multiple times. I've aplied every cycle since I was first able. I literally spent my teenage years playing Online Reality Games (ORGs) where the winners won social captial only. There are people out there who play ORGs for REAL MONEY and I DID NOT. What a way to spend your teenage years. But I'm a Survivor fan, some might even call me a superfan, and one of the ways I've always marked the arrival of fall is with a new season of Survivor. So here we are, more than halfway through September of 2024 with a brand new Season of Survivor, Survivor 47. Yes, really, 47.
Like most people entering their forty-seventh iteration, Survivor is only getting older. It can still hang with the kids so long as the kids are willing to wait for it to catch its breath every once in a while. Of course, Survivor isn't stupid, Survivor knows that it cannot hang with the new hip and trendy prestige TV shows that win Emmy awards and warrant discussion around the watercooler. Not unless, of course, the people talking are superfans of Survivor. So let's not kid ourselves when we remark that from the premier of Survivor 47, Survivor's new era (seasons 41 onward) finally has a character to it: Survivor is old now. Survivor is no longer the earth-shatteringly popular television series it once was. It does not have the mass appeal to be featured after a Super bowl anymore. It is old, and it will very likely never go radically out of its lane to take risks ever again. The show has accepted that it is a TV show for a very select subset of people, and has decided that it would rather cater to those people than try to branch out anymore. Its glory days are behind it, and the show knows it. So rather than reject the aspects of its fandom in the way it once did with its admonishment of superfans, to stay alive it has thoroughly embraced them. With Survivor 47's premier, we see that the reason Survivor has managed to keep going for as long as it has is by leaning into the "gameshow on tv" aspect more than anything else.
The cast of Survivor 47
At the risk of invoking that one stupid right-wing meme about "jobs today versus jobs back then", I must admit, Survivor has cast a lot of podcasters this season. This isn't a bad thing, look, make your bag, I do not care how so long as you're not doing harm to others and society. But it is a little jarring to have one of these podcaster contestants, Aysha Welch, a be a content creator about the show itself. The fact that the show has canonically referenced a podcast about itself, feels very surreal to me. It's like the show has finally accepted the fact that it's always going to enable this niche hyper-focused microcosm of society focused on itself. I know the show has long since jumped the shark, but this feels like a new turning point for the show: it has acknowledged that there is media about it. It acknowledges that people go out of their way to make media about it, and that this podcasting community in itself has birthed an entire EVEN SMALLER subcommittee. Survivor is literally a grandfathered media franchise at this point. It's made even more bizarre when Aysha's tribemate Teeny confronts her about knowing who she is, and how Teeny will not blow up Aysha's spot on the tribe since it would only make Teeny appear more threatening for being hyperknowledgeable about a niche internet microcelebrity. I don't listen to Rob Has a Podcast (RHAP), I haven't voluntarily spent my waking hours listening to people talk about Survivor since 2015. I am a fan, some might even call me a superfan, but I don't need every waking moment of my life spent listening to talking heads talk about a TV show I watch a LOT. If I ever start listening to nothing but Survivor podcasts, please shove me into a locker. So honestly props to Teeny for being self-aware enough to know that they shouldn't talk about RHAP on the island, if I were there, they'd immediately skyrocket to the top of my list of threats. I wouldn't have recognized Aysha, and honestly probably wouldn't have cared. She seems nice, I would've loved to work with her if I were out there.
If it sounds like I'm jaded and cynical abot this TV show, it's because I am. The show has rejected its entire original "story" premise in the first place now in order to establish that this is more of a game than a show about people surviving together. This, of course has been true since the mid 2000s at this point, but it's now so painfully obvious. Within the first three minutes of Survivor 47 Jeff says in his inaugural pontification "people will say it's fake, that they're not REALLY abandoned on an island and they're right, we've got cameras everywhere", and I threw up my hands. Yes, they made it VERY clear in Survivor 41 for the sake of shocking the viewer in the "new era" that "hey we actually have cameras everywhere!", but now it just feels like it's an accepted fact. The show has accepted it new stance in life, that it is just a gameshow that happens to take place in the jungle. "It's chill, dude". Survivor leans so casually on the fourth wall and we have to ask ourselves, is it even worth it anymore? They stay in the same place, they run identical challenges, and there's been three starting tribes of six for the past seven seasons now all with basic two syllable fijian word names. It's a small point, but when you had tribe names formerly named after famous pirates (Morgan and Drake) or Mayan gods (Hunahpu and Coyopa), and now you're met with yet another season with a similar sounding tribe, Tuku, following on the heels of other tribe names like Nuku, Luvu, Tika, Taku, and Vuku, forgive me if I struggle to find a compelling reason to remember them all.
But of course, I care. I care immensely. I've literally watched this show for more than three-quarters of my life. I've looked forward to every Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then back to Wednesday night for as long as I can remember. Survivor has its hooks in me and they know it. I will continue to watch each season with the same amount of interest and intrigue because in the end, I am a fan. Some might even call me a superfan. I will talk shit about this show as much as I can on my silly internet platform, but defend the show with my life the moment anyone accuses my favorite TV show of being fake. But MAN, it's really hard to do that now that Jeff Probst himself has outright admitted "no yeah, this isn't real, you aren't stranded" (a paraphrase but you get the gist). The show's fake, it knows it's fake, and it has grown tired of pretending otherwise. And that's a real shame because the fake parts of the show were some of its most fun. Whatever. I'm still watching. Good job, Survivor.
So whatever. Why am I still watching if, for all intents and purposes, I should hate it? It's because the show has gotten REALLY good at making me care about its people. I somehow manage to come into every season with barely even passive feelings about eighteen strangers, and thirteen weeks later I am absolutely electrified by the things about half of them end up doing. I cannot say in good faith that these new era seasons at all stack up to the older seasons in any capacity, and yet, they're not bad either. They're compelling stories about people thrown into extremely taxing circumstances and fored to make difficult decisions about each other. They're trying to "survive", sure, but the show's focus these days is far more about people surviving each other, rather than surviving the elements. It's always been like that, but here in the new era, where the show's old creaky legs prevent it from leaving the sunny beaches of Fiji, this mindset is on full display. And it's compelling as hell. I am so fascinated to watch what happens amongst these people that leads to one of them eventually winning one-million dollars from a subset of the rest of the cast. I watch for the people reacting to each other, which is somethings the show has slowly started to re-recongize here in the last few seasons.
I'll yammer more about this season as it goes along, but right now I want to let it rest. There are plenty of storylines I'd like to watch develop over the course of a season. I am NOT a reality TV correspondant, I am NOT going to make a column entirely dedicated to recapping the events of a TV show from the night before. You don't need to read my piss-poor attempt at explaining how difficult it was to watch Andy Rueda have an anxious breakdown at the challenge, go watch it for yourself. For better or for worse, it was real, and the human spectacle was on full display (and man I hope Andy is doing alright). No power rankings, no attempts to make sense of the show for people who stared at their phones reading Survivor twitter posts instead of actually watching the episode, no attempts at trying to pick the winner. I'm writing this for myself and you're along for the ride :].
So here's to yet another new season of Survivor. Another season where a now twenty-six year old dude plays armchair quarterback and says "If I were Jon, I would've asked Andy for a name and then immediately gone back to the girls and told them because Andy is a sinking ship", despite not having 90% of the information of what actually happened on the beach. Put me on the show Jesse Tannenbaum, so that my genius Survivor intellect won't go to waste. I want Sue Smey to win.