Why Survivor Should Redo the Opening Twist of Philippines

At the beginning of Survivor: Philippines, the new contestants learned that three players who were medically evacuated in previous seasons would be playing again. That twist lead to a wonderfully great Survivor season. Could redoing the twist lead to another great season? Even if it doesn’t, shouldn’t medically evacuated players be brought back? What better way is there to bring them back? You might not have the same people to pick from again, but there are still some good players that can be brought back to play Survivor again.

We all know just how devastating it would be to be pulled from the game. It could be any number of bad things happening. Maybe you get an injury that just gets too serious. Maybe a sickness gets too serious instead. But these people didn’t do anything wrong. They weren’t voted out due to mistakes that they made. They were forcefully taken from the game simply because of medical reasons beyond their control. Do we really think that most of the players would leave the game without being pulled from it? Could some of the players really not reach the end on their own? All you have to do is bring back three of them. You can’t say that you wouldn’t have interesting picks.

Let’s first look at Bruce Kanegai. He was an entertaining player when he was in the game. He created a rock garden and proved to be a vital part of his tribe. Before he was pulled from the game, one might have thought that there would only be one evacuation ever in Survivor. Is he the type of player that you think should never play again? Even if he wasn’t medically evacuated, he would still be a person who should return to play the game again.

Next we have Gary Stritesky who was always on a winning tribe. Only one other person besides him has that distinction. Can you imagine not being able to compete in the game anymore even though your tribe has won ever challenge in the game? That wouldn’t be fair for him not to ever play the game again. Why is he even considered a quitter? He clearly left for medical reasons and he should be brought back, even if he might lose his perfect winning streak.

Different players who were medically evacuated had different amounts of success in the game and Joe Dowdle made it all the way to the merge. He knew loyalty to a fault. He helped lead his tribe to the camp when they first got there. All that freaking went wrong in his game was a knee that got infected. While hardly the first person to fall victim to this, he certainly would prove that he’s good a second time since he did so well the first time.

Sometimes players are taken from the game for dumb reasons such as what happened to Mike Borassi. The challenge that got him medically evacuated has now been banned from ever appearing on the show again. Isn’t that unfair? If you don’t think that is, imagine that you recover quickly after being pulled from the game. Not even the camp’s next tribal council had even happened yet. Sometimes you’d think that the rules regarding medical evacuations should be changed and since they aren’t going to change them, then you should at least bring him back to play again.

Speaking of medical evacuations that are unfair, Kourtney Moon was injured in another poorly designed challenge. I know that she had cancer in the past. I don’t know much about what happened afterwards. But she should be healthy enough nowadays to return to play the game again. I mean, she didn’t even get to finish the first challenge she was in. Even Jonathan and Wanda from Palau technically did a challenge. Poor Kourtney got just half a challenge that was messed up because she was pulled.

Now sometimes whether or not someone was medically evacuated is debated by people. But if you remember in Philippines, someone sadly did have to leave the game. And this was a season already devoted to bringing back players who were medically evacuated. So shouldn’t you bring back Dana Lambert? She had a lot of potential as a player that we never got to see. And if she really was a quitter, than why wasn’t her torch laid down on the rites of passage? She should probably return to play the game again because it just makes sense.

Sometimes productions messes up and they need to right their wrong. There were problems that lead to Shamar Thomas’s evacuation that were seemingly caused by production itself. But this poor person was pulled from the game when it probably never had to happen in the first place. He had a hand injury that caused a staph infection. You should bring him back to play again as his problem only got worse due to a lack of help until he eventually had to be pulled from the game itself.

Then we get to Erik Reichenbach. The first time he played, he made a really dumb move that got him voted out. The next time he plays, he does really well again despite some blunders here and there on the way to the end. But then a leg infection pulls him from the game right after someone else was voted out. It’s a shame that bad things keep happening to him. But that could end on a third appearance.

Another contestant has a debatable status as to whether or not he really was medically evacuated. Terry Deitz played in Cambodia (a season about second chances) and was told by Jeff Probst basically that he had to leave the game. The way Terry left was actually a new way, but it shares something in common with all the medical evacuations: he left because production forced him to. They shouldn’t have actually told him this information when you think about it. You go to Survivor knowing that you won’t receive any updates about your family until you are voted off. But they probably made an exception due to how serious the condition was. And thus Terry had to leave.

Only three contestants can be considered for most serious medical evacuation. One accidently fell into a fire. Another passed out at a challenge that was then cancelled and left incomplete. But at least Russell Swan was able to speak and say something as he was pulled from the game. When Caleb Reynolds was getting pulled from the game, he basically was unconscious the whole time. They had to air something immediately after his departure that said that he was okay. (Honestly though, if he wasn’t okay, they wouldn’t have aired the season when you think about it.) There was a lot of potential still in his game that we never got to see.

Now we get to another poor contestant who we know had a terrible overall Survivor experience. Poor Neal Gottlieb was medically evacuated after a specially ordered doctor’s visit in one of the most unusual ways of ever leaving the game. Since when do doctors just randomly visit the island? I know that he wasn’t the only one looked at, but he was the only person who had a serious enough problem that he had to be tearfully pulled from the game. And that’s not even the worst thing that happened to him. A twist that was highly unfair got one of the final three to vote out a member of the jury and he was the victim of that vote. How messed up is all that? They owe it to Neal to have him brought back.

Last is the most recent medical evacuation as of this blog post (although, since Cambodia was filmed after Koah Rong, Terry is actually the most recent if you count him) named Joe del Campo. He’s an old contestant (one of the oldest, actually) and his removal was sad that it was after he had won a challenge that caused his medical problem. That challenge was messed up in the rules and could have had a different winner had the rules made sense. Once again, a dumb decision with a challenge leads to a poor person’s medical evacuation. Like every contestant on this list (which is everyone I consider medically evacuated except those who have already played again), I believe that he should return to play Survivor once again.

Well, I wasn’t entirely sure what this post would be when it started out. But I guess that I can’t make the case for reusing the twist where three medically evacuated players are brought back without making a case for any of those players returning too. I’m not sure when they should redo the twist. They have overused returning players a lot even when this twist was introduced the first time. There have since been three more seasons with returning players since. I just hope that if they ever have to do the one returnee per tribe twist again that they will have the decency to do this again. I at least hope that they will consider it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.