“Survivor” Is Still Compulsively Watchable

First, a quick and crucial fact that might come as a shock: the reality-TV series “Survivor” is still going strong. Another fact that might come as a greater shock: the show remains a consistently well cast and an immensely pleasurable viewing experience. In an attempt to capitalize on the wave of quarantine binge-watching, CBS licensed two of the show’s most beloved seasons to Netflix in 2020, breathing life into the franchise and drawing in a new cohort of fans eager to learn how “the tribe has spoken” or who has earned the million-dollar prize. Now the show is casting for contestants to appear on what will be its forty-third and forty-fourth seasons. For most viewers of its groundbreaking early seasons, “Survivor” is a pleasant and distant memory, but the show has become one of the longest-running and most influential enterprises in television history.

Those who haven’t been tuning in all these years might also be disoriented to see how the show has transformed. It’s rare that a well-established franchise makes room for genuine evolution, but the latest season of “Survivor” is a unique document of an institution attempting to change—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes triumphantly. It’s a season in which the show fumbles with its past and grapples with rapidly shifting social mores in real time. In the première, Jeff Probst, the show’s longtime host, confronts his cast with a question that sounds both absurd and vital. For twenty years, he’s been using the same phrase every time he invites the contestants into an arena to compete in physical challenges: “Come on in, guys!” But now, Probst explains, “I, too, want to be of the moment. . . . Is a word like ‘guys’ O.K., or is it time to retire that word?”

One of the contestants, a charismatic woman named Evvie who is earning her Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard, steps forward to reassure him. “I, as a queer woman, do not feel excluded by ‘guys,’ ” she tells him. But later, a silver-haired flight attendant named Ricard admits that he has a grievance with the word. “I don’t agree that we should use the word ‘guys,’ ” he says. “The reality is, ‘Survivor’ has changed over the last twenty-one years.” Probst is enthusiastic about this interjection. “I’m with you,” he says. “I want to change. I’m glad that was the last time I’ll ever say it.” In its forty-first season, “Survivor” wants to telegraph a message: it’s having important conversations, it’s reading, it’s learning. It’s doing the work.

Conceived of by Mark Burnett before “The Apprentice” or Donald Trump was a glimmer in his eye, “Survivor” débuted in the year 2000 with a simple and tantalizing premise: sixteen strangers would be marooned on an island in Southeast Asia, where they would attempt to survive—physically and socially. They would be divided up into two competing groups, or “tribes,” each with its own camp. They would participate in demanding physical, mental, and emotional competitions in order to earn supplies or be protected from being sent home. Each week, the contestants would engage in a quasi-ritualistic gathering known as “Tribal Council,” where one member would be voted “off the island”—a phrase that would become part of the national lexicon. At the end of the journey, the voted-off cast members would form “the jury,” a group that would decide who among the remaining finalists was most deserving of a million-dollar check.

Reality TV was in its nascent stage, and the concept proved highly entertaining, and highly influential, to the suite of competition shows that have cropped up in the last two decades. (“Survivor” walked so that “The Great British Baking Show” could run.) Whereas other reality shows, such as “The Real World” and “Big Brother,” engineered petri dishes of human melodrama in small spaces and used editing sleight of hand to create story lines, the very premise of “Survivor”—strangers learning to find sustenance and cohabitate in the wild with zero creature comforts made available to them—was already melodramatic enough. The Season 1 winner, a Machiavellian corporate trainer named Richard Hatch, set the blueprint for the entire “Survivor” enterprise by treating it, first and foremost, as a game. He was not there to make friends. Other cast members piously hemmed and hawed about voting one another out and refused to lie or strategize; Hatch had no scruples about social maneuvering. More than fifty-one million Americans tuned into the season finale. “Survivor” contestants became bona-fide celebrities, appearing on the cover of national magazines and on morning talk shows.

The program has since evolved from a national treasure to a niche bastion of superfandom, complete with its own Reddit obsessives, a number of fan-created recap podcasts, a suite of former contestants selling merchandise and thriving on Cameo, and a crop of college “Survivor” clubs. The show frequently invites old cast members to return for specially themed seasons, and spends plenty of time reminiscing about its past. Much like the relentless stream of reboots and never-ending sequels that have overtaken Hollywood, “Survivor” is about its past as much as its present or its future, and its new contestants are often committed and knowledgeable fans looking to model their games after well-established archetypes of the show. Probst, ever skilled at delivering wry remarks, has stuck around, growing slightly more grizzled each year, adding a potent layer of continuity to the series. Even the million-dollar prize remains the same, inflation be damned.

And yet, in spite of all the nostalgia “Survivor” has for itself, the show has been committed to its own evolution. The early seasons billed themselves as social experiments, and had the lackadaisical pacing of nature documentaries, but as time wore on the showrunners must have decided that watching people become thinner and dirtier on camera wasn’t sufficiently exciting. Each season, new twists, themes, and challenges were introduced to amp up the strategic component of the game, and the pure survival aspect receded into the background.

These days, there are so many surprise twists, so many complex game advantages and novel voting configurations layered onto the original premise, that the social-experiment element has been usurped by pure game play. Some later seasons, with their conceptual gimmicks, can have the feel of people playing “Survivor: The Board Game” or visiting a “Survivor” theme park. The strategic elements have been so amplified in Season 41 that a basic understanding of game theory is required to fully comprehend the show—multiple episodes feature a twist that involves the prisoner’s dilemma, a complex matrix of decision-making. And Probst has finally decided to break the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly, as though he is conspiring with us.

Circumstances have also forced recent seasons of the show to evolve along different, more complex social dimensions. In the past, any political differences among the cast could be edited out; major discussions about gender, race, class, or sexuality could be left on the cutting-room floor. But as these issues have captured the public’s attention “Survivor” has been forced to contend with them, if a bit reluctantly. In 2017, a trans contestant was outed by a fellow-castmate, which led to a public outcry and a condemnation from Probst, and, in 2019, a male cast member was ejected from the show for inappropriately touching female contestants, prompting a discussion in the show that might have never seen the light of day fifteen years ago. This year, however, these sorts of conversations have shifted to the main stage of “Survivor.” As with many shows, the pandemic halted production in 2020. When the world was safe enough to resume filming on location, in Fiji, in early 2021, the show faced a number of new constraints. Quarantine protocols meant that the usual thirty-nine-day filming period would be reduced to twenty-six. And, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the widespread cultural reckonings over race, CBS announced that it would commit to casting people of color in at least fifty per cent of its slots on unscripted television.