A Breath of Fresh Air

David vs Goliath and its representation of characters

It’s no secret that the past couple of Survivor seasons have received their share of criticism. Chief among them, their penchant for highlighting specific people while discarding the rest of the players by the wayside. Is it because production felt like some people just didn’t “pop” on camera? Did they want to make sure that the key players were made known to the audience so that we could feel like the stakes mattered? Whatever the answer, it’s clear that the fan reception wasn’t all that great.

So far on Survivor: David vs Goliath, the editing of characters has not been a problem, but a revelation. We are getting almost unchartered amounts of coverage between both tribes. In the premiere, every single player got at least one confessional. In the second episode, only Bi and Alison failed to register a confessional.

Despite not getting a confessional, Bi featured prominently in the challenge, as the person who failed to get the David tribe going, and as a locked vote for the side that being ended up being blindsided at tribal council. That leaves only Alison, who was decidedly invisible in episode two but had a big role at the mat in the premiere, as the primary detractor to being called a Goliath and participating in the challenge that Christian smoked. She was also part of an idol hunting scene where she was shown rolling out her female alliance strategy that she had talked in the pre-game.

Part of what makes old-school Survivor so memorable, at least to me, was because production really wanted the audience to know its characters. Go back to the early seasons and look at the challenges they were doing. Nothing elaborate or complicated. The challenges were simply a means to an end and they got them out of the way quickly to focus more on the social dynamics back at camp.

If you feel like this season has a difference ambiance to start the season, I think that it’s because they’ve been editing everything like it was an older season. Don’t get me wrong, we still get the requisite idol scenes and the bigger challenges. That is part of Survivor’s modern identity and won’t just go away because some of us wish it would. Still, around those constant factors, we are getting so many more character moments… and between a multitude of combinations.

Take only episode two for instance. We know from the premiere that Natalie has been getting on people’s nerves. A more modern season might continue harping on this issue using the same characters who have already complained about her behaviour, in this case Angelina and Natalia. Instead, we were treated to a montage of people getting annoyed by Natalie’s actions, culminating to her conversation with Jeremy, a person who got very little shine in the premiere.

I don’t know how the public at large felt about their conversation but to me, it was an all-time great. In Survivor, you have players you love because they are big personalities and some because they are good at the game. The best characters are those who are both of those things simultaneously. There is also a separate category, one that occurs much less often but on this season, we’ve seen it. Through two episodes, Natalie has been a unicorn that is both a big personality and simply terrible at the game.

Seeing Jeremy clock Natalie, to her face was amazing. Especially because Natalie simply refused to accept that her tribe was not feeling her vibe. Everybody wants her out but in Natalie’s mind, she’s integrated as part of the tribe. Jeremy’s speechless disbelief as he tried to reach through her lack of self-awareness was incredibly fun to watch. Consider it a breakout episode for him. If Bryce Izyah, the sassy purple pants badass, had managed to gain equity within his tribe, he would probably be a little like Jeremy.

Sticking with the Goliath tribe for now, we’ve seen so many dynamics in so little time. You have Jeremy having an unspoken bond with Mike White, and I am… as twitter would put it HERE. FOR. IT. There’s the weird one-sided showmance between Dan and Kara. There’s the women’s alliance between Kara, Natalia, and Angelina who believe they have Dan, Alec, and Johnny Mundo in their pockets respectively. John Morrison is trying to forge an alliance with Natalie, and that seems to be going poorly. If the premiere is to be believed, there is also Alison lurking in the background, trying to create a women’s alliance on her own but she might be a little late to the ball.

That’s all 10 members of the tribe present and accounted for. All of them have had their own small moments where we get inside their heads and are told what they might be thinking. We don’t have to draw assumptions to what kind of alliances are real or fake because the editing has done an amazing job of showing it to us. So rarely does Survivor prescribe to “show don’t tell” but I am thankful that they have so this season.

Then you go over to the David tribe who had two members engage in another all-time great Survivor conversation. It’s clear what role Christian was cast in but for the first time since the actual Cochran, Christian is believable as the nerdy super fan. I get no sense of portraying a character from Christian, that’s just who he is and his line to Gabby when she asked him to play with her was one of the best Survivor moments in its 30s. Sure, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic but come on. Who replies, “in the sand?” when asked to play with them on Survivor; Christian, that’s who.

Where the Goliaths seem more clustered into smaller groups, the Davids looked like they were mostly unified as a tribe. The loss of Pat made it imperative for them to keep their stronger members to have any hopes of competing with Johnny Nitro and his cronies in competition. That sort of bunched everyone together and Lyrsa at the bottom. In a lot of seasons, that means an uncomplicated vote and the editors trying to jump through hoops to give us a false sense of surprise only to disappoint us when the vote goes exactly as predicted 10 minutes into the episode.

On Survivor: David vs Goliath? Not quite. Credit is deserved where it is due and Lyrsa did not lie down to die when she heard her name being thrown around. She swallowed her anger towards Carl, who originally mentioned her as a potential boot, strategized with her closest partner Elisabeth, and decided on a target of her own, Jessica.

Honestly, I did not believe what the edit was showing me. I’m not new to this cat and mouse game and I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. Of course, Christian is going to talk about being undecided and how happy he is that his trio with Nick and Gabby gets to decide the vote but… Lyrsa is as good as gone. You’re not fooling me production!

As it turns out, Christian wasn’t just giving the editors what they wanted, he went through with a blindside. Not often am I fooled by production’s tricks but tonight I was fooled because there wasn’t any. They just told us the story of how Jessica got voted out and that by itself made for good enough television without the need for added fireworks. And that’s when Survivor is at its best.

After the dust settled, Bi, Carl, and Davie found themselves in the minority. We have an incredibly intriguing alliance of Elisabeth, Lyrsa, Christian, Gabby, and Nick. But how tight will that fivesome be if they keep losing challenges? Arguably the three strongest physical players form the minority. In the majority, Christian seems like the lynchpin, controlling two votes who do not seem all that attached to each other in Gabby and Nick. The idol is in the minority with Davie, which in an ideal world is always where you want it to be as the audience. This tribe has major potential for some drama.

In terms of telling a good story, I find that consistency is extremely important in Survivor. From the preview, it sounds like we are not getting a swap at 18, which is the worst time to swap tribes if you ask me. That’s great. We have very specific storylines being plotted out in both tribes and allowing the players to stay with their respective teams will let production continue a very natural line of storytelling. The less they need to manufacture the plot of the season, the better its outcome will be.

For now, I remain cautiously optimistic about season 37. Sure, Ghost Island had a fire pre-merge that fell off post-merge but a lot of that was because of production’s own doing. They focused so much on Dom and Wendell that there was no way for us to believe the winner wouldn’t be one of them. The difference between that and David vs Goliath is the expansive reach that the edit has stretched out so far. I couldn’t give you a top three right now like I might have felt confident giving you for the past few seasons. The mystery is what will keep the season firing at its best.

Maybe by the end of this, the biggest David will have been the season itself for rising out of what might be called a second Survivor Dark Ages.