Survivor: Redemption Island — The Twists

The next season of Survivor is apparently titled “Redemption Island”, and it comes at you with all the dick-punching fury of not one, but two insane game twists.

When I first learned what these twists are, I did in fact feel as though my dick had been punched. But then I’m like, “Dude, you watch Survivor. What exactly were you planning on using that dick for?”

So I’m trying to keep an open mind about these things. I feel like I’ve reached a place where I can argue for or against either of these twists. I like to think that makes me a reasonable person, but really I think it just makes me a Survivor apologist. Of course, everyone already knew that about me.

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Twist the First: Redemption Island

I don’t yet know the specifics of how this is going to work, but the theme of this season appears to be that getting voted out of the game doesn’t mean you leave the game. My initial response was to vomit and gnash my teeth. I mean, if tribal council doesn’t have that sense of finality to it, what good is it?

We already did this twist once, actually, albeit on a smaller scale. Way back in Pearl Islands we had this Outcasts twist, where the first six people voted out of the game showed back up as a third tribe. They got to compete for immunity, and if they beat either of the two normal tribes, they would be allowed to vote someone back into the game. As it happens the Outcasts came in first place, enabling them to put two previously-eliminated players back into the game.

All of the drama, scheming and hardship that eliminated those two players in the first place? Pointless. Burton and Lil were back and ain’t wasn’t nothin’ nobody could do ’bout it.

What ended up happening, though, is that both Burton and Lil went on to have  huge impact on the remainder of the game. Their playstyle upon returning was an evolution of having been voted out before. In fact, we see this exact same thing happen in every season with comebacks. Great players like Parvati, Boston Rob and Stephenie would have never made an impression on Survivor history, if they hadn’t had the chance to play a second time.

The sad truth is, not every player gets removed from the game fairly. It’s not always because you couldn’t land on an alliance, or because you didn’t do enough around camp. Sometimes you make all the right moves, then get voted out because a tribal shuffle sticks you somewhere you have no chance. Or because the bag burps out a purple rock.

Or sometimes you’re just eliminated before you find your bearings in the game. That’s how games work in real life, after all; you fail the whole time you’re figuring things out, but then once you get some practice in you’re ready to start playing “for real”. In Survivor you have to play “for real” right off the boat. One slip and you lose.

Looked at in that light, a mechanic that allows people to recover from mistakes might make sense, as long as the rules governing it are neither unfair nor obtuse. If they can streamline it in such a way that it just becomes a footnote in each episode, I think it’ll work well and create some interesting players. (The Outcasts twist in Pearl Islands ate up three tribal councils spanning almost an entire episode.)

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Twist the Second: Rob and Russell

Russell and Boston Rob are coming back to play again, having had an outing just last year. Anyone who has read my blog posts about the past four seasons of Survivor probably know that these guys are some of my favorite players ever. I love it when someone steps into the show and goes all STRATEGIC MASTERMIND on everyone, which is exactly what I got from these players in All-Stars, Samoa and Heroes vs. Villains.

But I don’t want them back. I’m tired of them.

It’s not that I don’t love the way they played the game, and it’s not that I don’t think they could win under the right circumstances. And it’s certainly not because I don’t think I’ll love watching them again.

It’s just… I don’t think they’ll do anything new. They’re just going to be Rob and Russell. It’s going to be the soulless sequel to their mini story-arc from Heroes vs. Villains.

Comebacks are an important part of Survivor, and have been since All-Stars. It’s a lot of fun throwing a bunch of favorite players into a pot and seeing what happens, but there’s also interesting things that can be done with the idea, like we saw in Guatemala and Fans vs. Favorites. This ties in to what I was saying before about the value of a player failing the game and then putting that experience to work for them on their next try.

So I’m definitely not against the idea of just plugging two former players into a season with all new people. I do believe, though, there are diminishing returns in play here. When a player comes back for their second round, one of two things happen. Either they’ve learned some valuable lessons and then go on to play a different and very interesting game, or they’ve learned nothing and they go on to play the same game as before — and lose.

In Heroes vs. Villains we finally saw our first batch of players coming in for round three. None of these players had anything to offer. Not a single one. Steph ran her mouth, just like we expected. James grew arrogant and threw his weight around. Rob was cocky and complacent. Rupert was mopey and tried too hard to be a nice guy. Parvati was devious. Amanda was pouty. I don’t even want to discuss Colby.

In all honesty, I would have much rather them brought back a couple of Nicaragua players. People who have played the game only once, and perhaps could bring what they learned into a game where failure won’t eliminate them immediately. Could Marty learn to cool it and act as smart as he is, rather than as smart as he wishes he were? Does Fabio have anything in him other than blind dumb luck? Is Jimmy Johnson really the leader everyone expected he was? Could Naonka —

Oh god, Brick, don’t say her name! She might appear!

Sorry. Point is, Russell is going to be the Russell and Rob is going to be Rob. Here’s hoping they’re both gone really, really early.