On the Factory Line

Survivor and its slide into the formulaic product we see today

If you’ve ever met a Survivor fan that’s been watching since day one, you’ll have heard this before: the show isn’t what it used to be. Though there are less and less of us as the years go by, day one Survivor fans still exist and continue to lament the show’s extended evolution into its current day incarnation.

Allow me to make myself clear before I continue on. I still love Survivor. I wouldn’t still be watching 18 years later if I didn’t. Every season, I can find something to enjoy and hold onto. For me me personally, current Survivor is better than no Survivor at all.

That said, this most recent episode had a moment that I feel was the perfect example of why many OG fans feel like the show is a shadow of its former self; the scene of Wendell, Domenick, and Laurel enjoying their reward with the Fijian children.

To help illustrate my point, allow me to take you back to Survivor: Africa and what I’ve talked about being my favorite reward on any season of the show: Ethan and his goat.There aren’t full versions of this reward from what I can find online but thankfully, because Mario Lanza made a great Funny 115 entry about it, we have some video of it to refresh people’s memories.

This scene focuses solely on Ethan and Lex absorbing their surroundings. They meet the African villagers and get to see the town. We see them establish a real rapport with these people (and the goat, RIP). For a moment, they are ripped away from the game they’ve been playing and get to revel in another country’s culture.

Post-show, Ethan has talked on many occasions about this reward and how it changed his life. He got to play hackey sack and soccer with the village’s children. By no means were these children monetarily wealthy but despite that, their joy and laughter endured. Children are children no matter what, exactly how Domenick described it on this week’s episode. This truly marked Ethan’s life and he would vow to make a difference in the world because of it.

Here I am in the middle of this cultural game of Survivor, and I had this real-world experience.It was at that moment that I decided that if this was my way, if I win a lot of money or whatever happens, I am going to use that money to do something good.

While that quote comes from an interview far after the game was over, that very feel of personal change within Ethan is conveyed on the show through this reward. The viewers could tell that this specific experience was something very meaningful for a young man trying to find a new direction in his life as his professional soccer appeared to be over.

This is not just a single example either. In Africa alone, there was also the reward that had Lex delivering AIDs medicine to a local hospital, and Brandon and Frank bonding over their obvious differences over the course of an Out of Africa screening. The early days of Survivor are littered with scenes from reward challenges that really showcase the experience these people were going through.

Did these scenes matter significantly in the context of the “story” of the season? Not particularly. But it made us feel a closer connection to the players in the game and humanized them on a very basic level.

Contrast all of this to last night’s reward, which fundamentally, could have been the same. Domenick, Wendell, and Laurel get to bring school supplies to a school for Fijian children. I’m sure that those 3 players felt an experience somewhat similar to what everybody on those early seasons did too. It would be hard to experience such a different reality and not feel impacted by it in the long run.

The only difference between then and now is that, short of that Domenick confessional talking about the similarities between kids and New York and Fiji (as if we needed more evidence he was going to win), we didn’t get to see any of the players’ reactions to the experience. In fact, the producers decided what we needed to see was some more strategy talk about their final three deal. God forbid we get to see these guys enjoy a potentially life altering moment without the threat of strategy talk rearing its head.

I understand that we can’t always get the same thing over and over. It would be foolish of me to wish that the show had stayed the same way from Season 3 through 36 but I can’t help but feel that along the way, the show has lost a lot of its heart.

After 36 seasons, everything has become formulaic. What differentiates a Survivor 36 episode to a Survivor 33 or a Survivor 31 episode isn’t very obvious. It’s a known product with a very consistent audience that understands said product. After a while, it becomes hard not to fall into a routine when it comes to producing the show that keeps everything at the same standard but never deviates from the norm.

Speaking of formulaic, it becomes harder and harder to show cultural aspects of the country when Survivor insists on staying in Fiji for perpetuity. Part of the beauty of the early seasons was the different environments. We got to see places like the Australian Outback, parts of Africa, and China among others. Every place felt different because they were literally different places. At this point, we’ve seen the same 3 beaches so often that I’m beginning to feel like I’ve spent 39 days on them myself.

By this point, there are more than 300 episodes. Look at the Simpsons at that point in their timeline. Principal Skinner had long since been revealed to be a completely different person, Homer had been Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger’s assistant, Maude Flanders was dead, and most fans of the show’s early days had long since stopped watching.