In honor of Survivor, and more importantly Survivor’s first season’s 14th Anniversary, I’m going to tell you why I think Borneo is some of the best TV ever to exist.

Borneo is made in the realm where it isn’t about strategy because strategy isn’t exist. In that way, it isn’t really Survivor as we know it because the intent of the game and the method it was done by wasn’t established yet. Survivor is fascinating because the game rules and mechanics, while aided by production, are all created by the players. Idol splits were envisioned by Cao Boi, flip-flopping was mastered by Rob Cesternino, toppling a power alliance was kickstarted by Neleh, Paschal, Sean, Kathy, and Vecepia, and alliances were eventually created by the Tagi 4. And in this season, we watch as the show has to change upon itself as it runs.

Survivor starts off as a show about people and a show about nature. It’s all about watching the people interact on a deserted island, and democratically taking out the weakest link so they can Survive. At 10, they all become one tribe, where the same process continues. We get to see a strong gay man on a tribe with a salty, homophobic old Navy SEAL legend. We have a showmance between two counterculture young adults. People of different races play cards together, and people from different social classes build shelters together. And we’re getting a front row seat for perhaps the only time in Survivor of “what will it be like for these sixteen people to have to cooperate to survive on a deserted island, and when they have to remove weak links, who will stand as the strongest?”

Strongest. It’s not a strategic mindset, or who can bat their eyelashes the most, or even who can lift the most weight. The Brains/Brawn/Beauty idea wasn’t one that was even considered. It was a mindset of being a team player for physical survival or else you’ll be voted out for lacking. It’s fascinating to watch people like Gervase survive despite voting wrong every single time after B.B., making sexist comments, and being physically weak solely because he was fun and charming. Likewise, it was expected to see Gretchen survive week by week because she was a great team leader who treated everyone with respect and did the most work.

However, it’s far more fascinating to see the people react to the Survivor as we know it only halfway through the season. If the show had continued being judged by pre-merge standards throughout the rest of the show, it’d have been great, but not unforgettable. Instead, though, we get to the Final 10, and you have 6 people who are deciding they’ll vote however they feel like according to personal terms deciding the most deserving to stay, and you have four people who are deciding to vote together for selfish reasons completely. And just like that, the six others vote for six different people and the other four pile all their votes onto one person: Gretchen Cordy. Out of nowhere, the best ever player of old Survivor was voted out brutally for no reason other than “she was too good at Survivor.”

Then, we see the other contestants react to the new world they’ve been suddenly thrust into. Kelly of the Tagis has to deal with the guilt of systematically voting good people out, Greg watches with amusement as everything falls apart, Jenna tries too late to scramble a strategy together, Colleen can’t believe the game took such an immoral turn, Gervase finally finds himself in an element fit for him all too late, and Sean tries to sneak into the alliance by cheating the system, but doing it so obviously that no one respects him.

Meanwhile, you have Kelly trying to appeal to the personal aspects of the people she’s sending to death, Rudy not caring as long as he gets ahead, Sue, who is happy to deceive others to get ahead, and Richard, who just wants to constantly be in control. These four elements embody four bold strategies that are used in Survivor.

Survivor: Borneo is a documentary on how Survivor was created. We saw the world before Survivor, the moment Survivor was created, and how people adapted to Survivor as a new ruler rose into power. You get a sense of every single one of these unique characters and how they’re going to live in a shifting world. I believe every single one of the ten who make the merge are top 100 characters of all time in Survivor, and I believe the story, as simple as it seems, is told with so much depth that it is well worth watching. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. It’s good TV no matter who you are.