Fri, September 19, 2003

This is why I want to work in marketing for the entertainment industry. This season's Survivor has been constructed to have lots of twists on the patented Survivor formula, because Mark Burnett gets bored easily and likes to shake things up. (Also, because Mark Burnett's mama didn't raise no fools. In a crowded reality marketplace made up mostly of Survivor imitators, the Survivor formula starts to look stale if you don't tweak it.) So, the show is being marketed as 72% twistier than past seasons, and the main twist that we're exposed to (since it's the first one in the show) is that the contestants (Burnett calls them "castaways" with the same rigorous commitment that Target uses to refer to its minimum-wage stockboy drones as "team members") are tossed overboard a few days before they think the competition is set to begin, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. (As in the third grade, the first sentence of this paragraph is the main idea sentence – let's get back to that, shall we?) Successful marketing works by zeroing in on an icon (word, phrase, image) that incisively represents your message in a distinct and quickly readable way. If your message is "We're shaking up Survivor and – hoo boy! – one way we're doing that is throwing people into the ocean with naught but the clothes on their backs!" then a perfect icon to illustrate that is a guy in an expensive suit and necktie jumping off a ship into the water. The Survivor people knew it, and featured him heavily in the promotional footage. The same image shows up in the posters promoting the show as well. Watching the show tonight, I was mesmerized by how perfectly that image fit the footage it was culled from, speaking for the whole scene in a short second or two. It's exactly the shot I would have pulled if it were my job to cut the Survivor ads. When you see it in the context of the rest of the sequence, it just jumps out at you, plain as day. The ladies in their dresses make an impact, but for some reason the guy in the tie just nails it. I wouldn't be surprised if he asked to remove his tie and put it in his pocket but the cameramen said "hell no." It's really perfect.

Okay, enough, enough. As a result of that image and the fact that the two teams of contestants are living on two separate islands this time, I've decided once again to go against my better judgment and give Survivor another chance. Why is it so hard for me to want to watch Survivor any more? Well, yes, lack of Colleen is a big part of it. But what was fresh and fascinating the first time faded rather quickly by the second, due in no small part to the fact that everyone on Survivor 2 through the present has seen the show before. But also because the audience has seen the show, and the producers feel that for some reason that's a factor they need to counteract. A teensy excerpt of my oft-repeated manifesto about Survivor 2, in the Australian outback:

While it's fun to have to try to figure out what will happen at the end of each show, it's important for each show to still tell a story. The way they're editing it now, it's like their first objective is to throw us off. Which is fun if it's the preview for next week's show, but once you're watching the program, they've got you...why torture us more?

[...]

I just think it's unfortunate that you can't really just sit back and enjoy the show. Everything you see must be viewed in the context of "this is just to trick me." Which is fine if you're not thinking about the outcome at all, but otherwise frustrating. It's like watching the first 50 minutes of one episode of West Wing, and then the last segment is from a completely different episode.

It remains to be seen whether one of the new features this season will be to tone down the red herrings, but I'm in for the present, so I may as well follow suit with every other TV-addicted geek blogger under the sun and write my Survivor recap/strategy review/bitch session.

First, I like the twist about the contestants being kicked off the boat early. I guess I've burned through 700-odd words making that point. Moving on.

I find it astonishing that this year's show has a pirate theme right after one of the summer's top movies was Pirates of the Caribbean. There's no way Burnett could've glimpsed the script for Pirates, seen through its Disney dreck and Bruckheimer sheen, and prognosticated that it would fill the hearts of moviegoers from coast to coast with delight. Is there?

The first thing that happens after they "walk the plank" is that they end up in a small Panamanian village, shopping for supplies with a little purse full of coins that host Jeff Probst handed them. Okay, this immediately dulls the cutting edge of that whole "just the shirts off your backs" thing. But, interestingly, it manages to present a game element, in that one team has their act together along with a Spanish-speaking teammate, while the other team is in full chaos mode, refusing to slow down long enough to be in the same place at the same time, much less talk to anyone or think anything through. Which team do you think ends up with dinner for the night, armloads of supplies, and money left over? I still don't know how you get to the point where you're on Survivor but you still have no concept of the importance of teamwork or strategy. How long would it take to gather everyone together and figure out a game plan?

Anyway, they get to their respective islands. (Did I mention I like that? For one thing, the show just seems better – maybe "truer to form" – when it's an island rather than a chunk of desert. Also, placing them on separate islands for the first half of the show adds an undefinable element of showmanship that I just plain like.) Once again (thank you, editors, for distilling everything into simple easy-to-follow story lines!) the crazy team is running in all directions and having personality conflicts. This is team Morgan, named after a pirate, presumably the same one that Captain Morgan rum is named after. (Drink!) The other team, Drake, is remarkably on task and quickly building a hut. One of them even goes on camera to prove me right by remarking on this. (Team Drake is named after a pirate, too, and not Rebecca's rich boyfriend on Cheers. Although I don't suppose there's any law that says it can't be both. No, wait. Here it is. There's a law.)

Edit, edit. Bitch, bitch. Drake is by far the cute team, despite the fact that they have a giant bearded guy who looks like a Harry Potter character or that guy in the Onion article entitled "Morbidly Obese Man Recommends You Read 'The Hobbit.'" His name is Rupert, but some of the hunky guys are already calling him Blackbeard because they think they're funny for so quickly coming up with a pun on "beard" that fits the show's pirate theme. Also because reducing him to a one-note physical description makes them feel better about the fact that all they have to offer in terms of character are chiseled pecs. If I were on the Drake team, I would have a hard time not acting pretend-exasperated at Rupert all the time, just so I could say "Rupert– Gee!" Anyway, this is the team with Michelle, who is by far the cutest girl this year (Are we liking those sassy librarian-style reading glasses? Indeed we are!), and reminds me of Elisabeth from season two. Drake also has the cute blonde girl and the spanish speaking girl as well as the spunky older chick who I almost like even though she's the older chick (because she's so spunky). This is in contrast to the Morgan team (Drink!), who have only the sexy mortician and the Girl Who Seems Cute Because She Doesn't Have a Bra Under Her Strapless Dress, But Becomes Less Cute Every Time She Says Anything going for them. The Drake interaction is so compatible as to be boring, so we see relatively little of them.

On the other island, the team's hastily assembled shelter doesn't fulfill its purpose well (surprise!) and they're doing some bickering about one guy taking a leadership role. This always seems to come up with the teams early on, and I don't understand it. Everyone seems to think that acting like a leader – or acting like you would be okay with being a leader if the group dynamic naturally produced that result – is some kind of grave strategic error. I don't think that's necessarily true. Richard Hatch spent a fair amount of time acting like a leader, and he's got a million more dollars than I have today. (Also, one more Pontiac Aztek, but I think I got the long end of the stick on that one.) I think it's more a matter of how you lead than whether you lead. Inevitably, someone is going to emerge as a decision-maker because otherwise nothing would happen. Being that person does not necessarily doom you to failure in the game, you just have to be sure that you do a good job of steering the team in a successful direction and treat everyone equitably. The Morgan team (Drink!) praises their leader guy (I think his name's Andrew) despite the fact that I don't think he leads very well. After they lose the immunity challenge, he's immediately bitching about people.

Since nobody thought to buy clothes in the Panamanian village, the contestants are still wearing whatever they had on when they left the ship. In Osten's case, this is a pair of burgundy boxer briefs with a waistband not powerful enough to keep them in place when they're soaking wet. His teammates notice this slippage a lot, and a couple of the guys decide that if his drawers should fall down during the immunity challenge, they'll remove theirs, too. Needless to say, it happens exactly like that, so after the challenge, we're treated to a segment about the nudity. Contestants are talking about how shocked they were or how strange it was – not exactly indicating much preparedness for the challenge ahead. These people will be eating bug guts on their way to the million, and they can't handle a few penises in their general vicinity? The show tries to assert that the naked penises created a distraction that cost Morgan (Drink!) the race – that girls are squeamish around "boy parts," so they got freaked and couldn't push the heavy cannon through the sand. I would think that the average girl in her mid-twenties has spent more close-up time with strangers' penises than the average guy, so the argument seems fallacious. [I know. I saw it, too.] The producers of Survivor, because they're... well, producers of Survivor, spend all their time on interviews with women, so we don't really know if this is a case of the sexist assumption being true or simply assumed.

I'm all for doing the challenges (and any other part of the show) naked, but I am not a fan of their stupid excuse. The other guys were going to strip down as a show of solidarity? Please. If you want to get naked, get naked; don't make up reasons. Besides, if it's all intended to solve the problem of Osten's undies coming off, all the time spent devising that plan could've been spent fashioning a crude drawstring out of island reeds. Since there was so much talk beforehand, I assume that the other Morgan teammates (Drink!) were aware of this plan in advance. (Whether they actually expected it to happen or not is debatable.) I certainly hope it was cleared with everyone, because while I think it's silly to allow a naked penis to become a distraction during a race (unless it's mine and it's getting caught in a cannon wheel), I can see where some of the team might have been caught off guard by it. I think nudity is fine (did I mention that?) but you're in a race, here; if it's going to hurt your team, bad form.

After the loss, the show focuses entirely on voting strategy, which means another respite from team Drake. Nicole (Strapless Dress Girl) goes atomic bitchcakes fast, strategizing and backstabbing with reckless abandon, which is not an approach I would necessarily advise. Considering she's the first person voted off the show, I don't guess she would either. I mean, it was Shii Ann-level fast. Maybe for some people who have watched the show on TV, it's hard to adjust to the fact that things unfold more slowly in real life. In any event, she would be well suited to wait until she has built sufficient trust with people before trying to play them against one another, because at this early stage, they all just consult each other afterwards and realize she's a psycho.

Speaking of the Tribal Council ejection ceremony, Probst was recently on TV talking about how it takes about 45 minutes of conversation to edit down into the two-minute Tribal Council segment on the show. (This begs the question, that's what they leave in?) He evidently asks every dumb question under the sun and, by the end, the editors have enough to make it seem like he's talking about specific things that happened during the episode. In this case, since Leader Andy has been sniveling about the contribution of Ryan S., Probst gets in his face about whether he's pulling his weight. Ryan S. starts talking about his contribution to the group, and I'm sure we're in for another round of Ted Does Percents. ("I am a hundred and fifty to two hundred percent devoted to my wife.") Instead, Ryan does as well as could be expected, by comparing his 120% effort to the 110% that was expected of him. (Meaning that Ryan only gave 9% more than the 110% that his team was counting on, for an aggregate of 109%. Not exactly giving 110% there, Ryan.) I'm increasingly convinced that the Tribal Council segment could be left out entirely, and dumber viewers who can't keep up without the halting, forced recap could send away for a pamphlet that puts things in perspective. Nothing said in that interview is ever going to change someone's vote, so why bother?

All in all, so far so good. I'll have to continue to keep my eye out for editing tricks, because this introductory episode was too full of other things to have any time for that. I'll definitely be back for Michelle. (Those glasses make her look studious but sexy in the same way they do on that girl in Jake 2.0.) It's good when my favorite people are on the smart, successful team, because usually that team wins immunity for a while and more of them get to stay. Here's hoping that plays out, because at this point I'm even starting to like Rupert.

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