They say that two isn’t enough for a pattern, and while technically this season of Survivor has had only two episodes, it has been a total of three hours. So let’s call it three episodes and make a few assumptions. Three good episodes means we’re in for a good season. I’ve watched most seasons of Survivor, occasionally they can be a little boring; when you have two seasons filmed a year, it’s easy to be iffy on quality. So far this cycle of Survivor seems pretty interesting, and not for the regular reasons.

The show loves its gimmicks, and this time it’s (supposedly) all about Brawn, Brains and Beauty, which Jeff Probst contends (a bit incongruously) are the key traits to winning Survivor (Beauty isn’t really needed to do well in Survivor, although charisma and manipulation are certainly helpful). Admittedly, I was a bit fatigued by the two hour season opening, which dragged in the second half. It was, however, marvelous fun watching the Brains tribe fall apart; J’Tia’s terrible “Is she trying or trolling?” was a particular standout. I mean, she threw away the rice! That’s something that played into the latest episode, when she talked about wanting more rice to the astonishment of the others. That’s why I’m standing behind my troll theory. I don’t think she’s trying (for now), because she’s furious that the tribe doesn’t like her. In the water throwing challenge, it was almost shocking how terrible she was doing; though to be honest, Tasha wasn’t portrayed as doing so well either.

The truth is that casting this season has really been excellent. Sure, the brawn tribe is mostly dull, but we get the great bits of “Tony, Secret Cop and Survivor Spy!” This guy’s strategy includes pretending to not be a cop, revealing that he’s a cop, spying on others, finding the idol, and always staying super paranoid. When the tribe finally has to go to tribal council, it’ll be great to see him scramble for real. The Brains tribe still has a fascinating mix, with J’Tia the troll leading the charge of awful playing and Tasha the overly aggressive player right behind. Did you hear her say “Whatever I did was perfect?” And it wasn’t like she was subtle about threatening Spencer, “practice or you’ll be voted out!”

I have also found the production work and editing, as per usual, to be some of the best on TV. For example, whoever came up with the idea to play The Blue Danube Waltz while they were tossing water at each other deserves a raise. It was the funniest part of a very entertaining episode. It’s becoming evident that Kass and Spencer are the only actual “Brains” of the team, and seemed solely responsible for their immunity win. They also are thankfully the more balanced and low-key of the team, as watching a team entirely filled with personalities at odds would be annoying (cough cough). It’s almost shocking that J’Tia tossing the rice wouldn’t cause her to be voted out, but that didn’t take into account Garrett’s almost-worst-ever performances. That’s the sort of scene you love to see: the train wreck you never see coming. You feel bad as he’s inevitably voted out, because you wanted to see him further self-destruct.

That leaves us with the “Beauty” tribe, which does provide plenty of eye candy … not that the other tribes are necessarily hideous, of course. The producers take every opportunity to lech over Morgan, but hey, that’s what the show has been since the beginning: blurred bathing suits and amusing confessionals. There really aren’t any duds, entertainment-wise, on the Beauty tribe either. Jefra and Jeremiah are the least interesting. Jefra had some solid moments of empty-headedness, like her mentioning “strategies I ain’t never heard of before,” fascinating because the complete lack of historical Survivor knowledge it implies. Jeremiah is at least scheming around, much like everyone on that tribe, which was also a lot of fun to watch. Coming to that tribal council, I really wasn’t sure which way the wind was blowing (no pun intended).

The storm itself was fascinating in this latest episode in that it was such a non-event, at least not in any obvious way. Nobody quit, although LJ tried to see if anyone wanted to (a technique I don’t believe I’ve seen before). It certainly caused a serious drain on everyone’s capabilities. The teams seemed very close at the challenges, despite Jeff lovingly lambasting the Brains tribe as “bad as usual” before finally saying that they were “working together for the first time!” That it was Kass and Spencer working together certainly didn’t go unnoticed. But I wondered if they were the only team that had gotten such a well-written clue — is it possible they got it only to help them not lose so badly? Not that the practicing helped, considering how terrible they were seemingly doing. And yet, they were not that far behind, so are they the result of tricky or truthful editing? Hard to say.

At this point, LJ is playing the best, although it’s hard to tell in such an early part of the game. His thinking out loud and actually finding the idol seem to support that. Spencer and Kass are the most levelheaded on the Brains tribe, which might bode well if we see another Malcolm/Denise “forged in fire” thing (although in the case of this group they didn’t lose every time). Tony’s a tough call, because he seems to be playing a bit too hard. Making up stories about Cliff, lying and then going back on the lie, it’s a bit off kilter.

I’ll be watching, hoping this time it doesn’t disappoint. Looking good so far!

Dear Survivor. We’ve been together now for 26 seasons but I think you’ve finally tested my limits with season 27, Blood vs Water. First of all, the title is just ridiculous. Blood versus water? What in the heck does that even mean? I know, I know, it’s supposed to be a reference to “blood is thicker than water,” but blood versus water doesn’t make a lick of sense. Besides the title, I’m just not happy at all with, yet again, bringing back a slew of former contestants … one in particular for the fourth time, and another whom Jeff Probst proclaimed would never be asked to return because of his vile behavior. I guess the only thing to be thankful for is that there are no Hantzes in sight.

But come on, Rupert again? He was great the first time and endearing the second, but he wore out his welcome the third time. And three returnees from One World, which was the least favorite show among fans (and Probst) and the lowest rated, and one of those happens to be the “he’ll never be asked back” Colton Cumbie! The guy whose one black friend is his maid! Colton would have been right at home on this season’s Big Brother, but I can’t think of anyone who really wants to see him back on Survivor. It is nice to see Gervase back, and as much as I like Tina Wesson, this is her third time back. The only seasons accounted for here, besides One World and didn’t include returning cast members, are Tocantins, Panama, Pearl Islands, Cook Islands, Samoa, Borneo and Australia. Five of the returnees appeared on either Heroes vs Villains or All-Stars … or both! If we’ve really scraped so far below the bottom of the casting barrel that only past contestants can be brought back, perhaps it’s really time to give the show a rest.

But there is a twist (actually many): each returnee is bringing along a family member or significant other, a la The Amazing Race, and they will be competing against each other. So I would assume then that the returnees are the “blood” and the newbies are the “water.” But you have to wonder how hard they’ll really be competing against their loved ones. Don’t you think that they’ll end up splitting the prize money after the show … unless they really, really hate each other by the time it’s over. In the commercials, Rupert’s wife says she’d screw her husband over to win, but isn’t a win for her a win for him as well?

So now we’ve got ten returnees and ten loved ones (not all are family members) and the return of Redemption Island to boot! Not a lot of people like the concept of Redemption Island since it almost defeats the purpose of Tribal Council, but I don’t mind giving someone a second chance to get back in the game. What I do have a problem with are all the new twists that come with it this season. A tribe member who is voted out will go to Redemption Island … or not if the loved one decides to take the bullet for them. Which seems to me like trying to give the stronger of the pair a chance to come back so they can win and split the money. Duels to get back in the game will actually have three people playing after the first week, and then partners have the opportunity to swap after they’ve seen what the challenge is, giving each pair a chance to put in the more skilled player. Then the winner of the challenge is able to give any player a clue to a hidden immunity idol. You need a scorecard to keep track of all this, and it sounds utterly, overly complicated and detrimental to the game.

Probst says they will also screw with the players’ heads at the beginning by letting the pairs all spend the night alone in the jungle so they will think they’re playing as a pair and then will split them up on the first official day of the game, creating the Blood versus Water tribes … or whatever silly names they give them. It all just sounds like they’ve run out of ideas and contestants, but on the plus side they didn’t just cast a bunch of pretty waiters and wanna-be actors off of Hollywood Boulevard like they have in the past. But I am just tired of seeing the same people coming back time and time again. The pairs idea could have been a good one with completely new people, but with the likes of Colton and Rupert in the mix, I just have no desire to schedule this season on my DVR. Heck, even The Amazing Race is going with all-new teams this season, and Big Brother didn’t have any returning cast members this summer either.

Why does Survivor — and showrunner Jeff Probst — feel the need to keep going back to that well? Do they not trust the strength of the game any more? Are familiar faces now more important than the game? It’s no longer a real social experiment when you have a group of people who have done this before. All it is now is a competition to win money amongst people who pretty much know each other either through personal relationships or from seeing them play the game on TV. I enjoy watching the tribe members try to feel each other out, form alliances, screw over their alliances, and play physically and strategically to get to the end. But you don’t really get all that with seasoned players. Survivor has come a long way in 13 years, with some changes for the good and some for the worst. Season 27 is about as far away from season 1 as you can possibly get, and for the first time I am going to have to say goodbye to a show that has, in hindsight, been pushing me away now for several seasons. Maybe we just need a little time away from each other and season 28 will get back to basics. One can only hope, right?

Let me preface this with the statement that I am a Survivor fan. I have watched every season from the beginning, I’ve seen the good and the bad, and I’ve stuck with it hoping that somehow, some way it can have a season that lives up to the best of the best. What I’ve seen over the past couple of year, though, is a downward spiral that is taking a great game dangerously into the realm of conflict reality TV (i.e. the Real Housewives franchise), putting the personality clashes among the tribe members above the actual game.

It also doesn’t help that a majority of the players are now cast — off the street, in a club, from a modeling agency — for “types” (or stereotypes) instead of being culled from viewer submissions (I personally know a couple of people who have applied several times and have never been contacted). What’s worse, the producers then reinforce the stereotype by selecting what that person wears on the island! If you’ve ever wondered why someone would wear a suit, high heels, or a sweater vest to a tropical island knowing that they’re about to play the game of Survivor, now you know (even Phillip’s awful pink underwear were selected by the producers). The show has gotten so enamored with the “conflicts” between the tribe members that they’ve forgotten about the challenges, most of the time combining a reward and immunity challenge just to give the “story” more screen time.

And yes, there is a story that is constructed from the footage — and a lot of the time what we see and what actually transpired on the island are two different things. Sometimes the tribe members are so boring that storylines will be created and dropped after a couple of episodes because there’s just not enough footage to sustain the plot the producers want to construct. And don’t even get me started on the “Next time on Survivor” previews. These “highlights” of the next episode are always showing some explosive behavior, and then when you see the episode there’s nothing remotely similar to that (the “Hurricane Na’Onka” preview is one of the best examples of that). I know we’re in the 26th season of the show and perhaps things are getting a little stale (we’re seeing more and more recycled challenges, for instance), but probably the worst thing Survivor has stooped to is relying on past cast members to play the game. Especially when they call them “Favorites.”

That term, especially this season, is pretty laughable. Who decided exactly who the “Favorites” were? They certainly didn’t ask the fans of the show to vote. It seems more like the producers just picked a few former players who made for “good TV” regardless of their game play (Phillip, Brandon) with a mix of recent players who they felt could have gone to the end but didn’t (Malcolm, Dawn) … with some people you don’t even remember being on the show (Corinne?). The only time this concept has really worked was the season Boston Rob came back and totally schooled everyone on how to play Survivor. He knew how to play the game, and he played it superbly (even if you hated him, you had to give it up that he did a great job) but instead of real game players, they keep giving air time to members of the Hantz family, not because they can play the game but because they bring conflict … and presumably ratings.

We’ve already had to endure Russell Hantz on the show three times. It’s obvious that no one even wants to play with him now because he can’t be voted out fast enough. But will that stop Jeff Probst (who basically runs the show now) from bringing him back? Probably not. This season, Probst thought it would be a great idea to bring back the obviously unstable Brandon Hantz, who basically had a nervous breakdown after his first appearance on the show … and got a verbal smackdown by his uncle on live TV for his terrible game play (a moment that was uncomfortable and unpleasant to watch). This season, Brandon has obviously been studying Uncle Russell’s superb gamesmanship (that’s sarcasm) — and possibly his uncle Willie’s Big Brother meltdown — to go from boy to man in the game. Except all it’s done is make him look even more unbalanced.

Pairing Brandon with another unbalanced player, Phillip, must have seemed to be a great idea on paper but it’s been a disaster for the show, and last week’s episode demonstrated how bad things have gotten, not only for the viewers, but for the rest of the people who are trapped on that island with them. Granted, we only get to see an edited version of the events the producers want us to see, but poor Dawn looked like she was about to have her own nervous breakdown when they got to the challenge. Because of the turmoil, they didn’t even get to play for immunity, sacrificing the game for the drama. When Brandon flipped out and dumped out the tribe’s food supply (allegedly because he knew they were going to throw the challenge), he should have been removed from the game right then and there instead of forcing the tribe to publicly vote him out at the challenge-turned-Tribal Council (which kind of ruined the integrity of the secret voting that comes with Tribal Council). At that point, I would have preferred the tribe — the stable ones — to simply say to the producers that they were all quitting unless both Brandon and Phillip were removed, because Phillip was obviously as much to blame for the turmoil at camp as Brandon was.

Regardless of who was at fault, the whole episode was unpleasant and the reliance on this type of drama to keep viewers entertained has taken Survivor to a new low. It probably doesn’t help that to keep costs down, the show films back-to-back seasons which doesn’t give anyone much time to recuperate or cast new people who really want to play the game (a similar criticism that The Amazing Race faces). Let’s face it, Survivor is not the ratings bigwig it used to be. It does well enough, but it is showing its age. I believe that CBS needs to look at giving these shows a rest. Big Brother failed miserably when they tried to add a winter season (granted, one rushed into production to fill vacancies left by the writers’ strike), and all of the reality shows that air twice during a regular TV season have suffered due to the overkill. These shows aren’t “events” anymore. Why not let Survivor and The Amazing Race air once during a season; The Amazing Race could air in Survivor‘s time slot in the fall and Survivor comes on in February. Is the network afraid viewers will lose interest if the shows are off the air for a year? It doesn’t seem to have hurt American Idol (or any of the scripted shows on cable … how long has it been since the season two finale of Game of Thrones?).

As it stands now, Survivor is limping to its death, collapsing under the weight of producer mandated stories that have corrupted not only the game play, but the real social experiment that the early seasons were. That’s partly because everyone knows how to play Survivor now, but keeping the focus on the challenges could ultimately keep the players focused on strategy that doesn’t involve seeing who can be the most mentally unstable person in the game. Start going through those submissions from real people who want to play and pick the best people for the game, not the most dramatic. I’d rather see two tribes of strategic, strong players battling it out instead of a bunch of pretty faces who would rather sit around and pick off the one or two strong players who want to be there, leaving us with a bunch of people who can only be interesting after the final edit (and most of the time, not even that helps). And stop bringing back former players every season! This should be an exception, not a rule. And, seriously, if they ever bring back Russell and Brandon together — as they would both like to do and are actively campaigning for the chance — they will have finally lost this faithful viewer.

Survivor has been around for a long time — from a television perspective anyway — over ten years and twenty-five seasons. It rose to fame as one of the first “good” reality game shows that many people watched and even won a few awards. There have been good seasons (Samoa), bad seasons (Gabon), and great seasons (Heroes vs Villains). I’ve seen most of them, although I didn’t watch much between seasons three and twelve because season three was so boring. But after thirteen, I haven’t missed an episode. So that makes me a “sort of expert.”

So why has this season been so phenomenal?

Archetypes That Want to Win

The typical winning strategy for most winners seems to be:

1) Survive any way you can until the merge
2) Maintain majority, backstab, or luck your way until the finals
3) Win/find as many immunities as possible
4) Bring terrible players with you to the end

That last one’s harder than it seems, especially in a season like this one, filled with both unstable presences and actual lovers of the game. The former are ruled by emotions and could vote arbitrarily, while the latter tend to be more likely to vote for actual good gameplay. And gameplay becomes more convoluted and interesting when the dynamics are interesting…

Three Tribes Actually Works

There haven’t been three tribes since Survivor: All-Stars, which I’ve been meaning to watch, but by all accounts that too was a great season. It really works better than the more common two tribes of eight to ten people, because all the combinations are basically played out by this point. There were two seasons with four tribes, but neither worked that well — in the Cook Islands season, tribes were split along racial lines which was questionable at best, and momentum decimated three out of four of the tribes. They never tried that again.

Redemptive Arcs

This is a combination of luck and casting — you can’t predict how well people will do at challenges really. Different seasons of Survivor tell different stories; last season was the utter domination by Kim, while Samoa was about how not to win the game (because Russell Hantz was hated so much). But it’s almost shocking that the five out of six of the remaining players this season have had an actual story on this season that makes you interested in how it ends.

Abi-Maria (or Chaotic Player Ruled by Emotions) has made people very mad and could never win, but she really wants to — and to prove to those who have attacked her that she won’t be crushed. In the most recent episode, Abi managed to do some interesting strategical moves and stayed in the game when everyone wanted her gone. She’s already proved herself in some ways — but what’s next?

Carter (or Athletic Mute) has said nothing of importance, for the most part — so his main story is “what’s next for this guy?”

Denise (or Older Lady who Over-analyzes a Bit Too Much) survived the death of her tribe with Malcolm, so they both have that arc of redemption. But Denise is also a smart, canny played who may be a bit too trusting. That may be her downfall.

Lisa (or Conflicted Between Desire to Win and Desire to Please) started a pariah in her own tribe, but now basically is choosing who goes home and who stays. But she can’t take that responsibility, or so it seems. Can she overcome herself?

Malcolm (or Subtle, perhaps Too Subtle) began by seeming to be a highly impressive player who then made a stupid mistake by cuddling with Angie. But he recovered from that and stepped out of the wreck of his former tribe with Denise, whom he’s closely allied with and yet worried about. Malcolm seems to be thinking more about the endgame than anyone else, but he hasn’t played many “big moves.” So will he? If he doesn’t, can he win over the jury?

Mike (or Returnee with Something to Prove) was medically evacuated in season two and was quite injury prone this season too. He’s been working the game from below, managing to stay afloat despite a lot of people trying to vote him out. Can Mike overcome his own limitations and other people’s frustration to win the game?

Hard to say. This game might end up with a winner everyone hates, but that seems unlikely at this point. Right now, only Carter would be the boring choice to win. And five out of six chances for a great ending are excellent odds for a great season.

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