Walking Off The Island: Why I Finally Quit Survivor

This fall, CBS’ hit series Survivor will be marking a milestone- an incredible 39th season. In a remarkable feat of television longevity, the island survival and strategy game has endured through nearly two decades, four Presidents administrations, hundreds of contestants, and seemingly just as many imitators in the reality TV genre it helped spawn- one of said imitators even helped a certain New York real estate mogul become one of the aforementioned Presidents. Although there have been countless changes in the format, the basics remain the same- a number of contestants are “marooned” on a new “desert island”, where, through a series of popular votes, one by one they are eliminated by the group- until a jury of eliminated contestants has to pick the winner from the final two remaining contestants, who likely both had a hand in their ousters. I came to the show fairly late, but became a fairly devoted observer and fan, having seen each of the first thirty-five seasons at least once (and some several more times than that). I even, at one point, participated in a Survivor fantasy league with my cousin and his fiance, picking contestants to survive each week like one would pick running backs to start in fantasy football. But I have not seen the series after the thirty-fifth season, and will not return for the thirty-ninth. I left the series behind once and came back, sticking with it through many new casts of varying entertainment value, and countless format tweaks and changes- but it was one final twist at the end of season thirty-five that proved to be the final straw.

Although I was aware of the series’ existence for years before I started watching, I first came to the series during the airing of its fourteenth incarnation, Survivor: Fiji (which would turn out to be the first of many seasons filmed in Fiji). I watched the season finale with only the “previously on” segment for context, but I was hooked- the idea of a game of wits incorporating quasi-political strategy among a group of contestants was like catnip to a teenager with a burgeoning interest in real-world politics like myself. Over the ensuing months and years, I went back and watched all of the preceding seasons while watching new ones- to make things even better, it was one of the few shows at the time that I, my parents, and younger sister could all enjoy together. However, during my college years my interest in the show waned. Part of it was time, with more going on in my young adult life than ever (and many more TV shows to watch as my college years coincided with the rise of endless streaming outlets for entertainment), the show somewhat got lost in the shuffle. Part of it was that the series’ iconic twentieth installment, Heroes Vs. Villains (one of many seasons to feature a cast of all previous contestants), felt like it was so good that it would never be topped by anything that would come after. But it would not be the end for me and Survivor, after all.

I came back to the show by complete coincidence. Arriving in Los Angeles fresh out of college, I began hitting the networking circuit looking for a job in the entertainment industry. I was introduced to someone who ran an email list of available jobs and internships, and as it so happened, this person also happened to have been a contestant on the most recent Survivor season. Intrigued by knowing a cast member personally, I tuned in, and was hooked once more. Despite even more format changes over the three years since I had seen the show last, the core product- social strategy playing out in small groups of people- was still there, and thus I was still entertained. Until the final episode of season 35, when, sparing the details, a twist at the final four stage of the game essentially guaranteed Ben Driebergen, who had lost the final immunity challenge and was set to be voted out, a spot in front of the final jury, where he easily won.

I had long rolled my eyes at the “purist” fans of earlier seasons who dismissed any twist as “ruining the integrity of the game.” A reality television series is not the Olympics, the objective is to entertain. And no TV series, reality or otherwise, lasts for nineteen years without significant change along the way. Even as I bemoaned how the show had been “rigged” for Driebergen to win, I knew that far more serious rigging accusations had been raised with the show before- after the very first season, it had been subject to a contestant lawsuit alleging unethical producer manipulation (for legal purposes, Survivor is classified as a competitive game show and is therefore subject to tampering restrictions that were passed into law following the Quiz Show scandals of the 1950s, famously depicted in the 1994 film of that name). I strongly suspected based on things I had heard and read online that in every season, even and perhaps especially my favorites, that production put their hand on the scales in subtle ways, within the letter of the law if not the spirit, to ensure their desired contestant won, or at least had the best possible chance. So what was different about this?

Reality television (especially shows like Survivor)is similar to professional wrestling in the sense that the audience is watching a competition that it knows is scripted to a very large degree, but yet they are still captivated by the drama of it all because the illusion is intact- the keyfabe, to use the wrestling term. What Survivor did was the equivalent of a wrestling announcer saying “just a reminder that these guys are actors and in real life they are very nice people who like golf and adopt rescue dogs” very loudly over the PA system during a match. To know the hand behind the curtain is there is one thing, it is quite another to have to watch the show while seeing it pull the strings.

I still don’t regret having spent so much time in my life watching Survivor- I have been entertained by it, bonded with family and friends over it, and for that I am always grateful for its existence. But the “game” has gotten to a place, thanks to this latest twist, where it feels like the essential thing that brought me to it- the social strategy and interaction- can now be made completely irrelevant, in a way that all of the many previous twists never did, for me. It was a signal that it was time to move on, and I haven’t looked back. Though seeing an announcement about the impending fortieth season, featuring all previous winners, was the slightest bit intriguing. Who knows, there may be one final trip to the island in me yet.