The 46th season of Survivor has been an absolute mess. There was Bhanu, the simpering do-nothing who was eventually put out of his misery but shouldn’t have been cast in the first place. There was Q, who seemed to shift his entire strategy and betray his alliances based on stray comments. Not a single member of the cast executed an idol or advantage successfully. We’re now five years into Survivor’s “new era,” and few of its tricks and twists are still working. The great experiment has overstayed its welcome, and it’s time for a few changes. I’m proposing the biggest one today: Jeff Probst has to go.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Survivor, and I think Probst was an excellent host when the show began two and a half decades ago (except when he was yelling at women for trailing behind in physical challenges). But as of 2010, he’s also served as executive producer and showrunner. Probst isn’t designing every challenge or reading résumés to hire cameramen, but he’s signing off on every twist, every casting decision, every major format change. He’s also deciding the overarching strategy, whether that’s approving Tyler Perry idols or vowing to never cast a villain again. If there are problems with the show — and I think there are several — then the person at the top needs to get his torch snuffed. Sadly, that means it’s time for the 62-year-old to pack his knives and go. Wait. Sorry. Wrong reality show.
Since its 41st season in the fall of 2021, Survivor has been operating in a “new era” featuring smaller tribes, a condensed filming schedule, and so many twists that even Chubby Checker would be sick of them. There have been some good differences in the game since then (fewer dominating alliances, more women and people of color finding idols, players not getting complacent), but I think that has more to do with CBS’s casting initiative that 50 percent of the players be non-white than Probst and his crew’s meddling.
Take for instance the “shot in the dark” advantage, where a player can give up their vote for a one-in-six shot at safety. Usually, the person using it has no chance at staying anyway. It’s only been deployed successfully twice, the first time by Jaime Ruiz during Survivor 44 (no one even voted for her) and the second by Kaleb Gebrewold to negate a unanimous vote against him. It was an exuberant moment — but Kaleb was gone the next week. Once the advantage has been used so successfully, the show should retire it. It will never work quite as well again, and now that all incoming players know about it, many have strategies in mind to counteract it.
Then there are the immunity idol Beware Advantages. In the “new era,” there are consequences to finding an idol. These days, that means solving a bunch of puzzles to get it; if the player can’t figure out the puzzles before tribal, they lose their vote. However, this season, everyone got their idol without missing a vote, which is essentially like having immunity handed to you. The puzzles become busywork rather than tools to build suspense. Plus no one used an idol successfully all season. That’s because Probst makes people think they won’t survive without one, so players hoard them and end up leaving the game with an idol in their pockets. Remember when Parvati Shallow played two at one tribal and upended the game? We’ve never seen anything like that since because Survivor no longer allows for such complicated game play.
That’s the thing about this “new era” — the edicts put in place by Probst & Co. seem stuck here. The game used to be more experimental, with great twists like Exile Island or Blood vs. Water going away once the stunt got old. The problem is the old stuff is no longer getting washed out with the surf. Starting with three small tribes is a mistake; we’ve seen several seasons where two tribes dominate a third, so we end up spending a lot of time with one group of unlucky losers. Probst says that having small tribes means there’s no place to hide, but I think it means there’s no room to maneuver. There are only two possibilities at tribal now because there are only six people to vote for. Season 46 has seen several places where the larger merged tribe has broken into smaller factions. What was great about old Survivor was seeing how those on the bottom could find a way to survive through a combination of politicking, vote counting, and strategy. Now, instead of gameplay, the idols, advantages, journeys, and other gimmicks that seem made up on the spot control the cast’s trajectory.
Look at the final fire-making challenge. Sure, if you’re going to survive in the wild, you should be able to make a fire, but the fact that one skill now determines who makes it to the final three is ludicrous. It’s “outwit, outplay, outlast,” not “outkindle.” Probst has said he came up with this because he hated when a “likable character” didn’t make it out of the final five. Okay, sure. But if that likable character wanted to make it to the end, maybe they should have, I don’t know, played a better game rather than mastered the flint?
Lately, the show has taken to casting only superfans, which is fine when they play well, but we don’t need one more scene of people telling us how Survivor is the greatest game in existence. The viewers don’t need convincing — we’re already tuning in. These contestants are showing up having built challenges and replicas of puzzles at home to practice on. First of all, this should be an indication that the show needs to change up its challenges. Secondly, it rewards a certain type of feverish obsession with the game, one that is most fun when it’s subverted rather than indulged.
But Probst loves these changes. It’s funny that for someone who has spent 24 years and 46 seasons working on the show, he’s managed to be wrong about it at almost every turn. Way back in 2005 he said, “I honestly thought Richard [Hatch] would be the first person voted off” — the player who famously went on to win the first season. Back in 2012, Probst said that there are more male returning players than female because “there just aren’t as many colorful women characters in Survivor history.” Meanwhile, two-time winner Sandra Diaz-Twine is [checks notes] a woman. It seems to me that Probst had no clue how the game worked back then and he has just as little clue now.
Look at what tribal has become: In recent years, Probst encourages paranoia and back talk, frantic whisper sessions and utter confusion. He even took to bringing popcorn and licorice this season so that he could watch the theatrics. I’m glad Probst is amused, but those of us at home aren’t. Tribal has become impossible to follow, the subterfuge and whispering nearly obfuscating the reason the person who leaves got voted out in the first place.
I’m not saying Survivor needs to go back to what it was. (If you want that, just find a way to watch Australian Survivor, which is nearly perfect.) But it needs to be creative and it needs to get back to focusing on gameplay. All of the advantages and idols are hemming the players in rather than setting them free. Jeff seems bored and he’s certainly adverse to fan criticism, as documented by Andy Dehnart at Reality Blurred. The game seems stuck, which is why it needs someone new at the helm. Survivor has an aura of sanctity around it, like its integrity needs to be protected. Kill those darlings! Kill the immunity idol altogether! Give fans an experience they didn’t know they needed.
Sure, Probst has indicated he has no intention of leaving, but I have the perfect exit strategy for our Jeff. He recently announced the 50th season would feature returning contestants. What if there was one contestant who had never played the game before amongst the returnees? What if that contestant was … Jeff Probst?
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the beginning of Survivor’s new era and misidentified Chubby Checker.