It’s more likely that Sea Bass wins Survivor: Ghost Island than it is you have enjoyed the post-merge of this 36th season.

Despite a fantastic pre-merge, Ghost Island has turned into the worst season of Survivor since at least World’s Apart.

After three consecutive well-received seasons in Cambodia, Kaoh Rong and Millennials vs. Gen X, Survivor has slumped a bit in its last three seasons. Game Changers and Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers weren’t standout seasons, and Ghost Island has been a major letdown.

The season falling apart can be chalked up to several things.

First, extremely passive gameplay by most of the cast has allowed Domenick and Wendell to skate to the end. Many of the stronger strategic players like Stephanie J, James and Bradley went out in the pre-merge, leaving Dom and Wendell to run the show unchallenged. There’s not much the producers can do about that.

But here’s where extra time could make the show better — the lack of development of so many characters in the post-merge. After so many characters received personal content in the pre-merge (a lot of which came at Ghost Island), that aspect has disappeared in the post-merge.

Players like Chelsea, Sebastian, Libby, Jenna, Desiree and Angela were largely ignored. There’s always going to be characters who get less screentime, but the post-merge turned into the Dom/Wendell/Kellyn/Laurel show, along with Michael before he was snuffed and some Donathan sprinkled in.

Even the main characters feel underdeveloped. What do we know about Dom, the odds on favorite to win the game? That he does construction and lost some weight? He has one of the most compelling backstories of anyone on the cast, having made some bad choices in the past, but we haven’t really learned anything new about him since the first episode.

Or Wendell? He decided to forgo law school to become a furniture maker, and he has a girlfriend. Again, we learned those things early in the season, but personal content has been swept under the rug for strategic content, despite this being the most uneventful strategic season in recent memory.

For christ’s sake, Desiree was homeless and it wasn’t even mentioned until her boot episode.

Of course, an extra 30 minutes obviously doesn’t guarantee more personal content.

2017’s Australian Survivor is one of the most popular seasons of Survivor of all-time and it runs longer than the standard hour, but there were many “purple” players. Even many of the stars of that season didn’t get a ton of personal content, with the show instead focusing on showing more of the complex strategy of the season.

More time for strategy is definitely necessary in the U.S. version, especially in the post-merge. There have been several things that weren’t properly explained by the edit, like why Sebastian is all of a sudden ride-or-die for Dom and Wendell, why Desiree wanted to target Kellyn, and what the hell Angela’s been doing all season other than deep throating slugs.

We know Dom and Wendell have been playing everyone like a fiddle, but have we really gotten the full picture of how two guys can be in total control? Why Laurel feels so comfortable that she refuses to make a move on them, why Angela and Sea Bass are sitting back and doing nothing?

There are alternatives besides adding an extra half hour. They could cut out reward challenges, or add many more secret scenes. With CBS All-Access, Survivor could add much more content while enticing fans to pay for the subscription, but in recent years the secret scenes and confessionals have been lacking. But I think it’s fair to say as the game has rapidly increased it’s intensity in recent years, there needs to be more content for the fans to get a fuller picture of what’s going on.

Ghost Island shouldn’t cause fans to panic about the state of the franchise. The show is fine — fans were loving the season up until Chris was booted.

But like the game itself, the show should always be evolving. Just like how the hidden immunity idol forever shook up the game, expanding the length of the show would add development to make the characters richer while also giving more time for the fans to understand the gameplay.

The show already does an excellent job of fitting three days worth of footage into 42 minutes. Just imagine what an extra 20 or so could do.