Many Survivor Fans Are Using The B-Word To Describe Season 49, But The Solution Isn’t Shortening The Episodes

The response to the first episode of Survivor 49 was not the strongest. Many fans felt it was yet another cast full of enthusiastic, happy-to-be-there superfans and that it was yet another example of New Era tribes of six desperately trying to form a quick majority four alliance based on nothing but shared desires not to be voted out first. The second episode was received a little more positively in the community, especially a key change to how the journey worked, but even so, many fans still described the episode using the dreaded b-word: boring.

I’ve been a little more positive, but I get it. Thus far this season, we’ve gotten two boots that felt really obvious before Tribal Council started. We’ve also gotten our one hundredth camp story about the families of various players overcoming hardships, and of course, what feels like every single castaway sharing how freakin’ amazing it is to be on Survivor (or “inside the TV” as one put it). I get why a lot of viewers haven’t been blown away, but I don’t love the proposed solution going around.

There have been a ton of tweets about how the show might be better off going back to 60 minute episodes. Survivor moved to 90 minute episodes during Season 45 to help CBS fill more space because of the WGA strike, and initially, it was a change a lot of fans loved. It allowed the show to spend more time showing the players interacting at camp, and it let viewers linger in particularly fun or interesting moments longer than usual. Instead of a highlight reel of what happened during the few days the episode covered, the episodes became more of an in-depth chronicle that featured more extended moments.

I’ve loved the extra breathing room (as has Jeff Probst), but to a lot of fans who are frustrated with the current state of Survivor, it has been an easy source of blame. I get it. When an episode drags, it drags, but to me, going back to 60 minutes means we’ll be deprived of 30 minutes during the better episodes in which we actually want more time. Instead, I’d rather the show address the root cause of why some fans are bored, which to me, is a casting issue.

Survivor has largely moved away from casting villains, and it has largely moved away from casting people who are unfamiliar with the show. Producers have said they’ve done that in order to improve the game play and include more players who could, in theory, win. That has definitely led to a lot of chaotic gameplay, especially in the post-merge, in which many players desperately look to make their own “big move” and eliminate whoever they perceive as the biggest threat.

Unfortunately, the side effect of that has been that most of the people on any given season of Survivor have seen the game in the way a superfan would. Their happy to be there attitudes have caused them to seek common ground and acceptance, rather than do things like yell at their tribemates for being lazy and not providing around camp. Their love of Survivor has caused them to be happier about being there than trying to win the million dollars. It's made them prioritize big, legacy-making moves over careful gameplay.

It's caused them to coalesce around the same strategies. Even if the show has looked more diverse and factually been more diverse from a racial and sexual standpoint over the last several years, it has never been less diverse from a personality standpoint. Survivor is a popular show that's been on the air for decades, but people who watch it are a tiny minority of the overall population.

I love Survivor. To me, the show is almost never boring, but there are times in which it is less exciting, and these first few episodes have been less exciting. I get the impulse to wish the runtimes were a little shorter, but I think the best solution is to improve the casting. It’s to find more people who aren’t obsessed with the show. It’s to find more disadvantaged people who really need the money. It’s to be okay with casting people who aren’t happy-go-lucky. It’s to get back to a Survivor that more accurately represented America, at least from a personality standpoint.

Thankfully, these boring issues shouldn’t be a problem next season. Survivor 50 will feature some of the most notable players in the show’s history, and while fans are still up in their feelings about who wasn’t cast, the list they settled on still features a ton of legends that know how to make good television. I can’t wait.