'Survivor 45' is Looking Like the Season That Will Finally Kill the Franchise
If there's one consistent through-line that's existed around here since that day in the mid-2000s when I sat across a table near Fenway Park with Dave Portnoy and he explained his vision about going from a printed newspaper to a daily blog, it's that none of us has ever been able to post about Survivor without the comments section filling up with people saying, "Is that show even still on? Who the hell's watching it?" Missing the obvious point that, if no one was watching, it would not still be on. It's not some Public Service programming that CBS runs just to take a tax write off. Even though it might not be the ratings juggernaut it once was, they've shortened the seasons and use the same location in Fiji year after year, they still get enough eyeballs on enough screens to turn a profit. You don't make it to Season 45 of anything unless it's popular.
Personally, my own exotic Irish Rose and I have been watching all of the previous 44. I can safely say the number of episodes we've missed of this particular guilty pleasure we could count on one hand. And last year, she discovered Jeff Probst's podcast, recapping every episode and listens on her way to work. Why? Because at it's best, the show is a fascinating sociological experiment. Set in a gorgeous location. With people of various backgrounds put into bizarre, completely unnatural situations that test their limits. And we get to watch as they navigate their way through them. Or fail to. That's the appeal.
I have no use for anyone who isn't fascinated by human behavior and what motivates us to act the way we do. I mean, what else could be more interesting than human beings interacting with each other? Survivor provides that. It's part psychology, part anthropology. And all it requires is a cross section of moderately interesting people to make the magic happen.
And one episode in, it's pretty obvious they failed to come up with any this year. Either by design or the fact they've simply run out of compelling individuals we want to see compete, this season's tribes have already retired the trophy of Worst Castaways in Survivor History. That's a conclusion I reached:
... before I realized my EIC was thinking the same thing:
It's not about looks. If you put a bunch of swimwear models of both sexes on a beach somewhere and made a reality show about them, I wouldn't last to the first commercial break. In fact, it's been done in varying iterations on different networks over the years and none of them have lasted. Never mind running for 45 seasons. But that doesn't mean we're looking for an entire season where everyone looks like they work the Fried Twinkie Booth at King Richard's Faire.
There's not one physically imposing Alpha who draws good attention because he can win challenges, but also bad attention because he wins challenges. There's not one Femme Fatale type who's dangerous because she knows how to wield her sexuality like a weapon to take out her enemies and reward her followers like Parvati Shallow or Brenda Lowe:
No diabolical mastermind like Boston Rob, Tyson or Russell Hanz. No charming, quiet assassin like Cirie, who manages to make everyone believe she's their best friend while quietly controlling the game and harvesting souls as she goes.
Instead, we get this guy. Brandon. Who burst into tears on the deck of the boat upon seeing Probst in the flesh. And revealed in the first five minutes he's a grown man who is incapable of climbing a fecking ladder:
And even he looked like one of the Expendables compared to the two teams that couldn't complete a challenge that involved carrying logs across a beach and untangling a rope through a puzzle made of rebar:
And yet even Brandon, useless though he was, was by no means the biggest waste of space. He had competition for that title. It's just a matter of who you believe fought harder for it. In this corners, you've got Emily. Who immediately started talking shit to the only returning player Bruce who was being given a second shot because on his season he bashed his brains in doing a physical challenge and was medically eliminated:
But I think the Loser Championship belt was wrestled off Brandon's narrow, doughy shoulders by Hannah:
She made Survivor history by quitting at the first Tribal Council. She simply volunteered to go home, without a vote. What was her reason for dipping out on a show whose entire premise is living outside and having to do without creature comforts for 28 days or so? She wanted something to eat:
And back here in the real world, can't understand why anyone would have a problem with her rationale:
I've seen some estimates (make of them what you will), that for every cast member who makes it onto the show, 40,000 have applied. And this chick lasted 48 hours before it struck her she'd rather not have been selected. Because she wanted to be back on the couch she never should've gotten off of in the first place, ripping lung darts, sucking back Macchiatos, and unhinging her jaw like an anaconda to consume a five dollar footlong.
Absolutely brutal. I don't know if this is by design, coincidence, or a larger societal problem. If it's what's become of us after however many months of lockdowns and people being hold up in their apartments subsisting off of Door Dash and Tiger King. If we've become so, to use the Letterkenny term, 10-ply soft as a people that CBS can't find anyone capable of performing physical tasks or subsisting on a low calorie diet for 48 hours.
All I know is that as show that used to be a fascinating study into human behavior is now simply answering the question "What would happen if you put 18 boring, untalented, unlikable simps on a beach for a while?" And that's a question nobody ever asked.
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise." - C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man