Should a “Normal” Season be Done Again?

What is a normal season of Survivor? In the early days of Survivor, it was all of them. It wasn’t until Thailand came along that they introduced the concept of seasons that weren’t defined as normal. I’m wondering if they have become a thing of the past. I mean, one hasn’t happened since Samoa. In this blog post, I’ll make my case for why one should appear again.

Here are all the seasons that I would consider to be normal: Borneo, Australia, Africa, Marquesas, Pearl Islands, China, Tocantins, and Samoa. Those are considered normal to me because they had all new players, only two tribes, and no major twists regarding the divisions of the tribes. In simpler terms, that’s five of the first seven seasons, then after introducing returning players, only three more seasons after a seven season break. They have not done it since the nineteenth season and we are going to have the twenty-fourth season pretty soon. The new normal ain’t normal.

Why should the normal season appear again? Well, even if it is something different nowadays since they don’t do them anymore, it would be something new to add to the Survivor world simply by doing it again. I’m tired of all the different and just want something normal again. There’s just been one themed season after another. Why can’t you go back and do something simpler for a change?

A normal season doesn’t mean not having any of the twist that we’re used to. You can still have the tribe swap, the hidden immunity idols, and whatever strange new twists you feel the need to include. Just don’t have any strange way of starting the game out. Don’t split the tribes based on a theme or have the contestants pick their own tribe. You should split the tribes randomly instead. As much greatness as we get out of three tribe seasons, you should go back to the usual two tribe season just once as you do this again. And don’t let there be a returning player in this season. Let it be all new players the way it should be.

I’m not sure why they haven’t done a normal season in quite a while and am not sure if we will ever see one of them again. The classic seasons that I mentioned that all qualified as normal were pretty good season. The next three were fairly decent. And while there have plenty of good ones without it being a normal season, that can be expected with the majority of them not being that way.

So I hope that they do a normal season of Survivor again. I’m not sure yet if they ever will. But if they can do a brain versus brawn versus beauty season based on popular demand that I had no idea was what anyone wanted (was Jeff Probst full of fake hype and full of crap as a result as usual?), then maybe I could get them to do one of these again. Hopefully other fans can do this. Imagine if they take it a step further and do a back to the basic season. That would hopefully be something good. But that’s a different blog post. I hope that I made a good case for it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.