Review: Survivor, "We Can Do Hard Things" | Season 45, Episode 1
The "New Era" becomes the "90-Minute Era," and some struggle to last 24 hours
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On TikTok earlier today, I saw a clip from CBS News where Jeff Probst, reflecting on Survivor’s landmark 45th season, was asked if there was a particular moment or story from the show’s history that he held as the most memorable. His answer was quick: he told the story of Cirie Fields, who infamously came onto the show with barely any outdoor experience and proved to her kids and the world that she could, per the title of this season’s premiere, “do hard things.”
It’s not the first time Jeff has used Cirie, who has since gone on to win the first season of The Traitors and is currently sequestered with her son, Jared, on CBS’ Big Brother, as the epitome of what Survivor is about. But every time it’s happened, I’ve been struck by how his framing fails to respect the depths of Cirie’s gameplay—yes, her ability to outlast the physical dimensions of the game was a great story, and Jeff loves that moment from Game Changers where she crossed the balance beam. But her reputation as a player is primarily about her impressive social game, which was how she overcame her inability to “compete” physically and do so well in her seasons. But that’s not a feel good story, and that’s obviously what Jeff believes Survivor is about based on how he’s framed the events of the past few seasons.
It’s also, based on the early press around this season, how he intends to use the show’s new 90-minute episodes. It’s not unprecedented for the franchise—although I’ve yet to get to the Australian version of the show despite y’all’s comments, I know it has longer episodes, and Survivor has obviously had premieres that were extended in the past. But there’s a definite difference when you know that every episode of the show will have 90 minutes of story to work with, and Probst’s comments have reminded me that my trust in his ability to use that time effectively is…well, I’ll try my best to be optimistic.
Survivor premieres are, by their nature, about two tasks. The first is establishing—or, more often, reestablishing—the parameters of the “game” of Survivor, while the second is introducing the castaways who’ll be playing it. Now multiple years into what I’ve referred to as the “Monster Era” of Survivor but the players are now pretty consistently calling the “New Era” in interviews, there isn’t a significant amount of reinvention here. The biggest shift is that rather than giving each tribe an opportunity to earn tribe supplies through “Sweat vs. Savvy” upon the losing teams’ arrival at their beach following the first challenge, the losing tribes instead chose two representatives who were tasked with completing both sweat and savvy in order to earn those supplies. It extends the competitive dynamic of the challenge deeper into the episode, and also comes with a guarantee that one tribe will be without supplies. And Probst gets an extra bonus when the task—which the players had no way of anticipating would involve both sweat and savvy—proves too challenging for both Belo and Lulu, leaving two tribes confronting opening days of limited shelter and no fire while Reba settles into camp life with a pot, machete, and flint.
Here, as we switch into the player side of things, Cirie’s story echoes as Lulu’s Hannah and Brandon struggle to motivate themselves in the wake of their circumstances. In the scene that gives the episode its title, the two players make clear that they’re not built for this part of the game. Brandon is coming off a panic attack during the opening challenge where he struggled physically, while Hannah is stressed about water in her shoes and worried about a lack of sleep. Hannah explains that she’s not “Survivorly,” and this is the type of player that Jeff’s narrative desires feed off of—people who are deeply ill-prepared to play the game, but whose enthusiasm for the game can be leveraged to convince them to carry on. It’s part of a larger shift to “relatable” contestants and superfans who better reflect the viewers watching at home on their couches, and who create potential Cirie Moments down the line.
But to my point above, the whole thing about Cirie is that she didn’t approach the game as a superfan—she understood her limitations, played within them, and created an archetype that served her. Jeff is right to note that Season 45’s tribes seem particularly “hyped” to play Survivor, and that’s…something I don’t care for. I’m not against the idea of superfans playing, and don’t want to judge anyone for having feelings, but I do think that my preference for the strategy dimensions of the game makes me wary of emotional players like Brandon who cries talking about this being his dream since he was 11. Because as much as I respect that feeling, and I know this makes me an asshole, I am of the opinion that anyone who’s been dreaming of this since a young age should also come into the game with a better (any?) strategy for managing the mental and physical dimensions of the game. I realize self-awareness is in some ways detrimental to reality casting, but combining it with players ill-suited to the physical side of the game pushes the show into treacly narratives that I don’t find really enrich the narrative (even if Brandon, to his credit, becomes very self-aware once reality sets in).
“We Can Do Hard Things” seems like it’s heading into a battle between two different “liabilities” early in the game: Brandon, whose stress leads to physical breakdowns in both challenges, and Emily, whose acerbic demeanor and focus on long-term game strategy make her an island on her low-stakes tribe. It feels like a litmus test of sorts for the vibes of the New Era, as two players who were equally lacking in self-awareness—Brandon before arriving, Emily once landing—see who can best fit themselves into the tribe dynamics at Lulu. But in the end, neither has to really make their case—Emily’s wrecking ball performance at tribal trying to break up Caleb and Sabiyah’s “alliance” likely would have been her downfall, but none of it matters once therapist Hannah decides that while she could do hard things if she wanted to, she’d rather have a cigarette and sleep on a mattress. Instead of a Cirie Moment, Probst negotiates the tribe’s response to her intention to quit, allowing her the dignity of a unanimous vote and a torch snuff.
In her exit interview, Hannah expects that America will judge her for her decision, and emphasizes she now has so much respect for everyone who’s done this before her. Whether or not you or I judge her is one thing, but I’m more interested in how little judgment there is within the episode itself. Probst is no stranger to judging the players (read: women) who struggle with the physical dimensions of the game, but the increased emphasis on perseverance and overcoming obstacles does make this a somewhat complicated position to be in. When Brandon fell during the immunity challenge, there’s a moment where Probst is on the verge of putting him down, effectively saying “this is what you signed up for.” But that’s not really a story he wants the show to be telling overall, which is why he focuses more on the Lulu tribe’s teamwork trying to get caught up in the challenge (just in case they made a miraculous comeback, at which point Brandon’s disastrous challenge would have been a triumph). And it’s also why, when Hannah quits on her tribe, Probst doesn’t call her out for her ill-preparedness or her lack of toughness. Instead, he lets her leave with dignity, because you can’t have a feel-good trend of couch-to-island players like Cirie if you come down hard on someone who tried and failed.
In this way, “We Can Do Hard Things” captures the contradiction of the “New Era.” On the one hand, a faster-paced game and fewer resources mean that players struggle more physically, emphasizing the “outlast” part of the game even with the shorter span of the competition. However, narratively speaking, the show has no real interest in holding players accountable for failing to have prepared for that reality, because it comes alongside an increased focus on personal stories and emotional dimensions of their gameplay. And while I don’t hold contempt for Brandon or Hannah for their lack of preparedness, or Emily for her complete inability to modulate her intense gameplay, I do feel like a critical part of a Survivor premiere is judging the players’ ability to navigate the dimensionality of what it means to play Survivor. And it’s therefore a bit jarring to see the episode pulling some punches in allowing Hannah to leave on such solid terms—she should have been forced to quit outright instead of being allowed to guilt her tribe into voting for her, so that at least the record would show how she failed at a core part of Survivor’s core motto.
It’s a bit of a bum note for a premiere that otherwise offers some perfectly solid if unremarkable Survivor gameplay: Austin, one of Reba’s two grad students, finds the new Beware Advantage (now a series of tasks that we don’t see play out), while Sifu gets stuck with the reputation of the “player” by getting caught Idol hunting. We also have two lawyers—Julie and Katurah—hiding their profession while a Grandma’s Boy from Boston loudly proclaims it, and we get enough glimpses of the returning Bruce to remind us that, heartfelt as his return might be, he actually didn’t seem like that pleasant a dude. Astrology has also made its way to Fiji, as Libra Kendra tries to align the stars to help build alliances at Belo.
And yes, in the end, I agree that the future of Season 45 will be better if everyone who’s there wants to be there. But I do feel like I’d have been more in tune with this premiere if they had been more willing to hold Hannah responsible for her inability to last, yet alone outlast.
Stray observations
While longer episodes theoretically could let them tell clearer stories, ultimately they’re still trying to create tension, so I wasn’t shocked that we got no real sense of how Hannah had been discussing her potential self-removal at camp after initially bringing it up to Brandon. The way it’s presented, it seems like she never brought it up with everyone—someone even insists that they know she’d never quit—so it’s possible that she never brought it up again, but it’s always hard to know when we know how much they’re not showing us to keep us in the dark.
Look, I can never support someone like Emily who plays the game this hard early on given how terrible it is as strategy, but I did appreciate her pushing back on Bruce’s claims that he had no advantage. Even if he didn’t get to experience the game as a whole, he still went through the interview stages, and the initial sequestering and isolation before they start playing. And as Brandon’s anxiety/stress-fueled physical breakdown shows, that’s a huge part of acclimating to the game, and pretending otherwise is a lie. We’d stan if she had followed that up by keeping her strategizing to herself within her tribe.
School principal Sean doesn’t have a story yet, but his initial introduction said something about being able to live his life honestly gave strong “out of the closet” vibes, and a check of the bios—which I never read before seasons—confirms it. Will be interesting to see when that story emerges with the new 90-minute format.
I realize that including it every week probably wouldn’t be necessary, and that they kind of need the extra real estate in a premiere, but I still wish they’d have given us a full opening title sequence just for nostalgia’s sake.
As you’d expect, the winning tribe ends up with the least narrative: I have almost no sense of either Dee or Jane on Reba, while Belo only has Kellie that’s a bit of an enigma. It will be interesting to see how the smaller moments of characterization play out in 90-minute installments once we leave a premiere space where this episode length is more typical.
I allude to it above, but some great montage work by the editors after Bruce claims he doesn’t want to be a leader or father figure and then immediately starts bossing everyone around. This is the type of storytelling I hope we see more of with longer episodes.
And thus begins our coverage of Survivor 45. This is the fourth season of the show that we’ve covered here at Episodic Medium, and while this is far and away the show that draws the least views (and is the most disabled newsletter, which as a reminder you can adjust in your settings), I really appreciate it as a community space to engage with something that generates such strong feelings. These reviews will be arriving later in the evening again this fall with my teaching schedule, but I’m hopeful we’ll continue to see dynamic discussions in the weeks ahead.
Disappointing ending aside, I thought this was a pretty solid premiere. Hopefully the entertaining messiness of the cast should be enough to overcome the overabundance of young superfans.
All the "I love you" and "I love you so much" as Hannah's torch was snuffed bugged me to no end. You've known each other for 2 days! Sure, they were very intense days, but I bet in another week the other players will have experienced so much more together they'll struggle to remember the one who quit.