Review: Survivor, "Music to My Ears" | Season 45, Episode 4
An uncontrollable tribe swap creates chaos for the Survivor editors to get under control
Survivor, as a game, is defined by the producers’ ultimate lack of control. While we could all point to moments—cough, Ben and the fire-making at final four, cough—where the production has inserted itself, and there’s no question the producers are constantly trying to push certain narratives to players during interviews, there is ultimately no way for them to make the game play out a certain way. Tribe swaps are a perfect example of this: a random draw of rocks ultimately decides how the remaining fifteen castaways reorganize in “Music to My Ears,” and it’s entirely possible that the subsequent tribes will be an atonal mess from a storytelling perspective.
Survivor as a TV show, however, is defined by the producers’ absolute control. For instance, the comments in previous weeks discussed post-season interviews which revealed that Kendra visited the Lulu tribe after the first immunity challenge, and actually had a vote at tribal council, but because that vote never happened, the product…