The Disadvantage of Advantages

Lately, so much of Survivor has been about one advantage or another. They put so many in there at once that it is hard to tell what they all mean, how they will work and indeed, if they will work, why there are so many, and just if the game really needs all of this.

I think that a lot of people can agree with me that there are too many advantages in the game and it is normally not a good thing to overdo things like this. Island of the Idols has to have all of its idols. The edge of extinction brings in a lot of advantages to the main game that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Ghost Island tried to fix the problems of bad advantages by putting them back in the game, but this was all for naught as they wound up sucking again. We don’t need so many twists going on at once to the point of the game becoming as hard to keep track of as it is now.

You’d think that after Game Changers had all those idols at the final six tribal council, that they would think better of having all these immunities going on at one point in the game. Instead, they love to keep having all these idols in the game at the very end. Look at the edge of extinction and how we had to deal with whatever idols were still in the game with a new one that would work at the final tribal council that idols could be used with, creating even more immunity possibilities than people need. It is bad enough that the final four is now permanently missed up. Now, production is ensuring that there will be too many issues at the final five and final six as well by making sure idols or other advantages are still in the game and causing chaos at the cost of the great players we lose as a result.

Maybe the issue is that idols and advantages cause too much drama which makes for too good TV that not doing them would just seem like a waste. The game wouldn’t be the same without them and they cause a whole lot of issues as a result. If you brought up great tribal councils that you liked, you might not have any in there without including an idol play or something like that as a result. Because they make the game more interesting, they keep thinking of more to put in the game.

Still, they should be able to see that there are problems with this as a result. Too much of what has to be shown and devoted to on the show relates to idols and advantages. We thus miss out on a lot of what else could be going on during this game in order to keep track of who has what advantage, what all it will mean, and how it could blow in a player’s own face much like not throwing a bomb soon enough in Super Smash Brothers. We always have to know who is dumb for doing what and why or not doing what they should have with their advantage.

Survivor worked and lasted for ten years before idols were introduced. After they were, it was even longer before various other advantages were put in the game and they were here to stay as well. Would we want them to do a season without idols or advantages? Would it work? I’d say that it might be worth a shot at some point, but know that it might never happen as a result. I plan to do a more detailed post on that later, so we’ll see if it ever comes. Was the show too boring before advantages? Did it just not work as well then? Or were people too sure of them working that they wouldn’t ever want to try to do the game without them in the end? Were they forgetting how it used to work well without it?

I don’t think that there is too much else to say outside of this post. I feel that they could tone down some of the advantages that they do on Survivor because too much at once just doesn’t seem to work to me. It can put Survivor at a disadvantage in the end, even though they are meant to do the exact opposite. Maybe it is just the real recent seasons that have gone too crazy with it. I’d argue that they should tone it down or maybe not even do it at all just once for a change. Would there be too much harm in that in the end? For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.