Fixing the Reunion Show

It is no secret that the quality that the reunion show used to have has fallen by the waist side. Even in a part of the show that might have at one point just seemed like an extra part to it, it still had a good point to it and it seems to have gotten worse as things went along. What can be done to fix the reunion show and restore it to the good that it should be again?

We should start by talking about just how the reunion show came to be such a terrible thing versus what it was before. This might relate to the rites of passage. Or it might have nothing to do with that entirely. But once they got rid of that, Jeff Probst started doing these prereunion show bits and ended up taking time out of the actual reunion show in question. I believe that San Juan del Sur was the first season that showed what a problem this would be. It hasn’t gone away and has only gotten worse.

Some may disagree with me on this, but I think that the first reunion show that started the thread of bad ones was Caramoan. That’s not me saying that there were no bad ones before Caramoan, because there were. But after Caramoan, things were different forever. Sure, Blood versus Water and then the next season of Cagayan had reunion shows that weren’t bad. I’d have to reread my blog posts on the season finales to know for sure what I thought about them.

Of course, this blog post isn’t dedicated to complaining about the reunion shows. It is wondering how we should fix them. There should still be an hour devoted to them like they have in the past. But what is the best way to address the problem at hand?

Maybe this problem has to do with Jeff Probst himself. He didn’t use to host the reunion show. This makes sense in terms of the first season as the reunion show was done while he was in Australia filming the second season. Jeff didn’t host the reunion show until Thailand, something that he thinks was due to the overall poor reception of that season, meaning that they couldn't find someone else who was interested. Only he was good at hosting the reunion show at first. What could have changed?

Whether or not it was Jeff’s fault that things changed or not, there might be a problem in general with the producers of the show that the reunion show gets short shafted. You can tell sometimes if someone gets more airtime than another at the reunion show. Look at the Redemption Island reunion show. They turned that into the Boston Rob show. Did we need another reason to know why Rob was so great by their reasonings even more that season? Plus, they can also tear a contestant down like they did to Dan in the Worlds Apart reunion show. I still don’t know why people think that proved his idea that he got a bad edit was wrong.

Again, complaining about the problem isn’t trying to find a solution to this. But what can really be done by us fans, though? It’s not like we can find jobs easily with Survivor production, can we? Besides, I think that the only job that they want people to apply for is contestant since they will always need more. So maybe all we can do is complain about hope that things change as a result. But would that work? It hasn’t made them bring back one of the sixteen players who originally played Guatemala. Although, I don’t know who else complains about that.

What should be done to fix the reunion show? For one, make sure that there is nothing shown before the show begins from the finale place except for maybe an introduction. Anything else about the finale can be discussed after the winner reveal in the reunion part of the show. Of course, if they just want to keep messing this up time and time again, it might be better if they just do away with the reunion show entirely. I’d rather not see it then see them mess it up time and time again. And I do think that Jeff, if not the problem for the string of terrible reunion shows, should still do a better job at hosting them. The most important thing they should do is get rid of those prereunion show segments.

Well, that’s all that I can think of for this post outside of this closing paragraph. I hope that this post didn’t get away from me, like they do from time to time. But I did enjoy some reunion shows in the past and I wish that we would see better ones again. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.