Review: Survivor, "One Perfect and Glorious Episode" | Season 47, Episode 1

Survivor means community, and community means marginalized people get left behind

Photo: CBS

Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Survivor. These preambles are usually about how everyone gets the first review for free but subsequent reviews will be exclusive for paid subscribers, but at this point it seems likely any long-time subscribers would have bit on that in the previous six seasons of the show we’ve covered. But in case you’re new, and didn’t realize we review Survivor, a reminder that future reviews will only be for paid subscribers. A discounted yearly subscription will get you two full seasons of coverage!

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Remember when Survivor had themes?

I’m sure you do—heck, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve watched a season from the show’s thematic era recently. But it’s worth remembering that the show transitioned to themes because they moved away from location as a differentiation between seasons. It was a tacit acknowledgment that it’s a problem to air two seasons of a show in any given year which have nothing to distinguish them: with location no longer on the table based on budget, casting thematically gave the show narrative distinction along with built-in conflicts that location hadn’t offered.

We could go on and on about what we lost in the transition to the themeless “New Era,” but watching the Season 47 premiere there was one consequence that really stuck out for me. When the three tribes land on the beach, and Jeff Probst starts into his big speech, I was admittedly only half-paying attention, mainly focused on trying to identify each new castaway when they have their first talking head. But when I tuned into what Jeff was saying, I was struck by how inane it was. Jeff’s claim that Survivor is a game about community was vacuous to a degree that I don’t even know why they bothered, but then I remembered that it’s really simple: Survivor has to start with a Jeff Probst speech, even if there’s nothing to say in a season about nothing. Oh, humans have always craved community, you say? Then why was the final season on Yahoo! Screen? 

I’m not saying that Jeff Probst has ever been a philosopher, but the moments where he’s front and center are where the New Era starts to grate for me. The longer episodes mean our time with the actual castaways is more significant, and I’m at least open to arguments that the New Era game has its appeals compared to the 39-day iteration. But there’s no question that because he is increasingly in charge of the game’s production, and because the framing of the game has become so generic, Probst’s presence is largely working against the show in a way I don’t think was the case earlier in its run.

The thing is, this premiere is about community, because every Survivor premiere is. But Jeff underlining that isn’t helpful, and makes me more skeptical when someone like Andy outlines the same theme in his (incredibly bleak) talking heads. It’s especially an issue when the biggest problem I have with Probst’s social experiment approach to the game is how willfully the castaways replicate the part he didn’t say: that our craving for community comes alongside the ostracizing of those who fail to immediately fit into our conception of it. Gata wins the first challenge, and has all the good vibes that go with it, but the second the two queer dudes go off into the jungle alone, the remaining tribe members basically say “Isn’t it easier without them here?” Over at Tuku, meanwhile, 59-year-old Sue was completely ready to be friendless, and is shocked to find old soul Gabe wanting to work with her…and honestly, me too, and I’m not convinced it’ll last. Will Jeff be interested in telling that story of community? Probably not.

But we don’t need Jeff to tell a story. The game of Survivor generates story, and even if we think it’s become overproduced in the New Era, the show still has a basic grasp on how the twists within the game can be focused on narrative. The new “supplies” twist of a one-on-one scavenger hunt between two randomly selected tribe members, where one has to return back empty handed? Simple but effective. A Beware Advantage that’s also just a scavenger hunt, creating some reckless hunting and quick—ineffective—lies that complicate Gabe and TK’s bromance? We’re really leaning on scavenger hunts, but sure! Now that we’re through the initial “Monster” phase of the New Era, the changes feel more like game design diversification than an attempt to upend an established system, and I’m more or less content with how it’s working.

The Beware Advantage gives Lavo its narrative about community, as Rome—despite insisting that Rob Has a Podcast host Aysha was dumb to volunteer to go on the journey because she’d miss out on “strategizing”—completely ostracizes himself by searching too intensely for an idol. Does he find one? Yes, but everyone sees him do it, he—unlike Gabe—doesn’t even try to explain his behavior away, and he doesn’t even seem that concerned that he’s been dubbed “Mr. Gamer” before the first tribal council. On a tribe where superfan Teeny (who recognizes Aysha) and Aysha herself (who doesn’t want to be recognized, only mentioning the podcast in interviews) are very much interested in the game, someone with no real grasp on the social dynamics is in a bad spot.

Andy’s search for community at Gata didn’t need any intervention from producers. I’m sure that they pushed some interview questions on the subject of community to try to pay off Jeff’s dumb speech, but he seemed almost too eager to frame his Survivor experience through the lens of his lack of popularity in high school, and watching him unravel is honestly really difficult. He’s in such a bad place that it made the immunity challenge outcome a foregone conclusion—Tuku had basically no narrative to speak of, and once Lavo jumped out to a huge lead, the only other outcome that made sense was Andy’s worst nightmare coming true. I don’t know that I jumped to the conclusion that he would have a panic attack while watching the tribe lose, but it happened literally just after I typed the phrase “worst nightmare,” so it was at least in the air.

I don’t fully know what lesson Survivor should take from Andy’s mental health crisis. What did he say during casting that made them think he would be able to withstand the social experiment dynamics of the game better than he did? Jeff tries to spin this as a reminder that Survivor isn’t easy, but I don’t think that watching someone spiral emotionally with zero perspective on its impact on the game is the kind of “hard” that makes for a compelling result. Is this a case where Survivor knew that he had faced significant bullying in the past and liked the idea of a redemptive arc of personal triumph?  Was it just a lack of sleep and starvation accelerating established insecurities? He may not be as naive about the game in the way Bhanu was, but it’s a similar feeling of someone who was apparently very enthusiastic about being on Survivor balking at…the realities of playing Survivor, where he wasn’t even being bullied so much as he just wasn’t connecting with his tribemates as quickly as he wanted.

The resulting tribal council is a really consequential one, in terms of the tenor of Season 47. It’s painful to watch Jon decide—in a reflective pause during a talking head—that he should try to work with Andy to eliminate someone else, because you know it’s immediately going to put a target on his back for no good reason. It’s an admirable position, and one I’ve often thought about if I were in his shoes: knowing how often the first vote comes down to first impressions that reinforce social hierarchies, I’ve always wanted to believe I’d do what I could to keep that vote from playing out in a predictable fashion. But when you’re already marginalized yourself—by age at a decrepit 41—you’re just going to become another marginalized victim, as we see when Anika and the other youths turn it into a “vote for strength” moment in a push to keep Andy and vote Jon out instead. Would he have still fallen on his torch in his “One Glorious and Perfect Episode” if he had kept his mouth shut? Possibly, but we’ll never know.

Lovett’s exit is a bummer, not just because I enjoy seeing quasi-celebrities navigate their identities in the game, but also because he was a shrewd narrator. It’s left Gata in a pretty dire place, with Rachel the only seeming voice of reason, and it’s a decidedly down note to start a season on if you’re at all familiar with his work (but not his close personal friend who will apparently relish the chance to bully him about it). But for those who aren’t, I guess I don’t know if a tribe keeping someone who completely lost his cool over not being liked as much as he hoped over someone who at least seemed conscious of the game they were playing is ever going to feel like a positive place for a season to start, even if it’s an undeniably eventful one. If Survivor really is a show about community, I don’t know if I’m that thrilled about returning to Mr. Probst’s Neighborhood last week if this is the vibes we’re working with so far.

Stray observations

• But back I will be—welcome to another season of Survivor coverage here at Episodic Medium. Is this the show that most annoys people when we don’t cover something they watch instead? Yes. Is it the show that the most people have turned off emails for among paying subscribers? Absolutely. Is it still a show that in its small but dedicated community of readers epitomizes what Episodic Medium can be? You bet it is. Thanks for coming back, and I’m sorry that teaching commitments will have these arriving later than in the spring.

• The Nested Idol approach to the Beware Advantage is fun, and I appreciate that it immediately bore fruit with Gabe choosing the three-tribal idol over pushing for the full one. I don’t love the idea that we’re going to end up with multiple players with idols that all have different timing on them, though, so the editors better get their chyrons ready.

• “I cracked open a coconut and they didn’t cheer for me” is honestly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

• We hate episode titles that, once you hear the context in which they’re presented, pretty much spoil the result. Boo.

• I want to know how long the producers talked about the sanitary consequences of putting Lavo’s Beware Advantage key at the bottom of the well.

• “Remember Vine? I loved Vine”—this was really the Steve Buscemi moment for Lovett when we look back at this premiere, because “I’m not that old” is literally the easiest way for an elder millennial to read as ancient. Signed, someone who recently talked about Vine with his 18-year-old students who were in middle school when it shut down.

• I knew from the comments after the cast reveal last season that Aysha was from Rob Has a Podcast, and I wasn’t shocked when her status as a podcast host came up, but I did not expect they would let her just say “Rob Has a Podcast” in her talking heads? Feels like a real dog whistle for the diehards.

• As with the start of every season, I don’t look up names and instead try to keep track of everyone in my notes. And this year, there’s one member of Lavo whose name I missed, probably while I was taking notes or ranting about how boring Jeff’s speech was. Sorry, guy who isn’t Aysha, Teeny, Rome, Kishan, or Genevieve.

• Was the drone shot during the first challenge new? I know they’ve obviously been using drones in various ways for a while, like any reality production, but the tracking shot seemed distinct.

• If you watched live and saw a whole lot of ads for it, I saw the first episode of The Summit at press tour back in July, and it was…fine. It was produced by the guy who created Stranded with a Million Dollars, which I thought was a bit more stylistically interesting. But it’s definitely another case—like the New Era—where the physical demands of the game are a huge part of the narrative. (If you also saw a whole lot of ads for Matlock, let me be clear that I think you should watch Matlock. I’ll explain why once it’s aired).