Survivor. Once upon a long ago time, twenty-four seasons ago to be exact, it was the ultimate game played by a diverse group of people intent on outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting their way to the ultimate payday in the realm of reality TV. Those people were marooned with nothing but the clothes on their backs and given nothing but rice and water. Filthy and desperate to stave off impending starvation, they dragged their emaciated, crusty bug bite ridden bodies through the jungle to scrounge for rats to eat. A Reward Challenge winning tribe received canned goods and a candy bar and were ecstatic to get it. An individual Reward Challenge winner received a single slice of pizza that he shared with his starving tribe. Those people fought hard for every scrap of food that they could get, and we cheered them on. Why? Because they were Survivors.
Twenty-four seasons later, no one seems to be cheering. The contestants (I can't make myself call them survivors, no matter how hard I try) are, for the most part, a motley collection of the most unlikable characters ever assembled for a reality show. The only things that could have made this group more detestable would have been yet another appearance by that troll Russell Hantz or for some brain-trust at CBS to allow that vile woman, Rachel Reilly, to wreck another of their reality shows with her borderline personality disorder and intensely annoying whiny teenage girl voice.
As a fan since the Tagis and the Pagongs ate live beetle larva for immunity in Borneo, I am bitterly disappointed that I haven't been given a Survivor I can root for. Instead, I have HBIC Kim Spradlin, shamelessly channeling Rob Mariano, and her sheep: mean girl Alicia Rosa, desperate to belong Christina Cha, freeloader Sabrina Thompson, and constantly suffering from diarrhea of the mouth to the point of blabbing alliance secrets Chelsea Meissner.
Really? This is what I'm stuck with? Four of the five people who formed an alliance on their way to camp on Day One because they had seen it work on a previous season are present and accounted for going into Finale Night, and I wish I cared.
No one else seems to care either. Certainly not the fans who have been vocal, verbally and in print, about their need for their favorite reality show to return to its former greatness. We don't want contestants who simply follow a declared cookie-cutter leader and hope for a free ride to the end as they all feast every third day. We want Survivors who think for themselves and devise original strategies to get themselves to the end. They need to be hungry for a victory and willing to "dig deep", to borrow a Probstism, to make it theirs, not laze about camp waiting for someone else to hand it to them wrapped in pretty paper (or a yacht, as the case may be).
Speaking of Jeff, he doesn't seem to care either. At the beginning of this wretched season, he seemed to be challenging those poor examples for women who were content to bargain with the men (and then break their word once they had gotten what they wanted), pitifully attempt to use the men by playing the helpless female card, and outright steal fire from the men because those dimwits signed up to do a reality show where, as everyone that doesn't live under a rock knows, the ability to build and maintain a fire is essential to the game...and not one of them could do it.
Jeff also seemed to try to take the guys, who pretty much treated a survival game like an extended frat party minus the beer, to task for stupidly surrendering their immunity idol to the girls and marching their foolish looking selves into Tribal Council to vote out one of their own. Every single one of those idiots got what they deserved.
But at some point Jeff seemed to give up trying to salvage this wreck. He has not been Enthusiastic Jeff at all this season, but a Snarky, Ready To Call People Out Jeff was, at least, an Entertaining Jeff, and the only person on that island worth watching. Now we have Going Through The Motions Jeff, who referees reruns of challenges past when he bothers to show up at all. If what I've read is true, and he was off getting a pedicure during one of the Reward Challenges, I can't say I blame him.
And that brings us to the contestants, who don't seem to care either. Not one of them has fought hard for anything. Kim will probably get the most votes tomorrow night for doing nothing more than what actual Survivors have done before her, but, lucky for her, was more than anybody else was willing to do. I think she might have thrown a few challenges so that she "wouldn't be perceived as a threat". If so, she needn't have bothered. No one was paying attention.
Season 24 ends tomorrow night, but Survivor, the game that so many have loved for so long, is already over. I won't be watching the finale or the reunion tomorrow night. I'll be waiting for Season 25 and hoping that I'm wrong. Unfortunately, when the most interesting thing there is to remark on over the course of a season is Jeff's footwear, the end is clearly here.
So, tell us what you think. My day would be made if you could point to at least one thing that has made this mess worth watching, or to any signs I've missed that Survivor will be (hopefully in the near future) the show that it once was. You've seen it. It's fair game. Let's talk about it.
