re: Survivor Season 49 - Premieres 9/24

frick Cirie. Especially since her and her dumbass son ruined Big Brother that Summer.

Damn sure too many food rewards.

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Off hand I would put it above 39, 41, and 42 for sure.

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44 and 48 had to be the worst of the new era for me. Outside of the Tika 3, there was NOTHING interesting about 44. That orange tribe was a total snooze.

48 was a snooze-fest, as well. 41 (hourglass twist aside) and 46 were by far the best in the New Era. Genuine drama and people not liking each other. Not everyone kumbaya talking about how much they like each other haha

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Survivor loves talking about how hard the game is now because they give them no food (rice) to start. Yet, they're on beaches with tons of coconuts and get nonstop food rewards, especially starting at the merge.

Might as well get some cots set up on the island and bring them some tents..

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They all gain weight now while on the show

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And recently they've had fishing gear but, rarely if ever used it to catch fish.

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It always bugs me when they celebrate this reward challenge win. Everybody knows this is going to do nothing for the tribe.

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In the old school Survivor, people thought they’d be safe if they were a provider but people have given up on that.

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One the merge hits, because of the reduce number of days along with the nonstop food rewards makes trying to be a "provider" fairly useless.

I still love Survivor because it's Survivor, but the show is essentially Big Brother or Mafia outside nowadays. I love Big Brother, but part of what makes me like Survivor, specifically, is the outdoors element. Africa and Guatemala (Season 3 and 11) are two of my favorite seasons because of the outdoors elements to those seasons.

On season 11, they had to go on a GRUELING hike through the Guatemalan jungle just to get to the camp and the heat seemed much worse than this year.

I still like Survivor, but it's a much different show from the first 40 seasons. More of a lottery-based game show (i.e. which of the 10 different advantages will I stumble upon) than a survival show where you're voting out people you truly have a connection with, like in the first 40 seasons.

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- 26 days, not 39 really takes away from the Outlast portion of the game. As a viewer, you don’t get as much camp life material even with episodes being longer.

- Casting used to be all about all walks of life. Now it feels like it’s all “Theater Kids” or ppl from the Ivy Leagues. Even the oldest dude this season was a Hollywood producer. I need a grizzly blue collar guy working with a corporate VP. That’s interesting.

- Jeff himself said it’s all about entertaining the kids. So, everything they do is to get new young viewers. This leads to too many dumb advantages and now stupid cameos from YouTube celebrities.

- Can’t think of any other way to put it, but Jeff is cringe. He used to be tough on contestants and now just cries alongside them. So, tired of sob stories and Jeff encouraging it.

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You're spot on with a lot of this.

I sometimes hear "Well, if you didn't know it was 26 and not 39, you would never know the difference." That's false. You can tell based on the depth of the relationships formed and just how comfortable everyone looks out there nowadays. There's a clear lack of desperation seen in earlier seasons that makes Survivor compelling to watch.

I totally agree about casting and I think part of it is that the show isn't paying enough where leaving your job, if you don't have a ton of money saved up, is worth it anymore. And this includes the 1 million dollar prize staying stagnant. I think another reason for this is, if you cast a bunch of homogenous white-collar players, you don't risk social media firestorms, as much.

I found it interesting how we've increased the racial diversity on the show so much while actually rapidly decreasing diversity in terms of types of jobs people have/socioeconomic class.

When I saw that Mr. Beast crap in the Survivor 50 promo, I almost threw up. It's clear the network doesn't feel like the show can stand on its own anymore. We need Mr. Beast, Zach Bryan, Billie Eilish, and Jimmy Fallon to drum up interest, I guess.

I could write a whole post on Survivor 50 casting, but for some reason, you're bringing back fairly dull players, entertainment-wise, like Tiffany/Charlie (season 46), Joe/Kyle/Kamilla (season 48) instead of Jerri Manthy, Johnny Fairplay, Abbi Maria, Russell Hantz, Rob Cesternino, etc.. Even from the New Era, I couldn't believe that Shan, Ricard, Omar, Jesse, and Cody somehow missed the cut but a rando like Tiffany made it on. And so I guess that helps contribute to why you need these outside people to drum up interest in the show.

Jeff is cringe and is trying toooooo hard to make the New Era seem tough to the point where he's actually doing the opposite, as people start realizing/noticing how easy they have it nowadays.

Amen to all of that!