How All-Stars Affects this Blog

There will be a lot of changes in this blog over time and some of the past seasons can affect this blog more than others. If you know of why I like to blog about specific past seasons, then there isn’t too much to add about why this past season in particular stands out more than others.

 

Basically, with only the first season something that I’m able to watch again by my own rules, I will get a lot of future watches on the season to cover the players from Borneo who I haven’t already covered. Basically, that’s anyone who isn’t Sue (as she’s already been covered) with Rudy going next after the next regular look back and poor Kelly now with the lowest priority of all of them.

 

And that’s all that I really need to cover for this post. All you really need to know is that All-Stars will affect this blog in ways that other seasons won’t be affected yet. There will be a lot of seasons that will be covered in the future. Only future seasons will be covered in this blog as long as I keep doing this blog in the future. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

The Blood versus Water New Player Problem

I thought something that I still wonder a bit now. Ever since they did the 27^th season where they paired returning players versus their family members, I was wondering if any of the new players that we could have gotten that season would appear on their own in future seasons. Now that the 41^st season is set to start in the future, we still haven’t seen any of these potential new players on their own yet.

Was this a onetime exception? Will we never see any of these people as new players? I’m not even sure that I should be bothered by this in the end. There are a lot of new players in seasons that we don’t have to worry about specially going after those who have connections to existing people who have already played the game. If we only went after them, there would be issues when a lot of people play the game or want to play the game.

It is worth noting that, to date, only one person outside of the 27^th season has had a connection to one of the previous players in the game. That player is the infamous Brandon Hantz, the nephew of Russell Hantz. With a player originally from the 19^th season now having a connection to a new player from the 23^rd season, it is possible that this lead producers to the idea of having returning players effectively bring in a new player that is related to them not that many seasons later.

But why not have any of these new players related to previous players come in for a future season on their own? There have been plenty of future seasons and not one of these people that could have been on the 27^th season have yet to appear on their own. You’d think that they would be known in some way by producers and be able to work their way into a future season with a bit of an edge. But maybe none of them want to take away the limelight from their loved ones that they are related to. Maybe they are okay with Survivor just being someone else’s thing.

I doubt that anyone else is bothered by this or even cares. I might do more posts related to this at one point in the future as I want to cover more of this in the future. I still feel the need to write more and more of this blog and the others like it. I will see you back next week as usual, probably. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

We are Losing Reward Challenges

In recent seasons, it seems that the reward challenges that we were so used to for quite a long time have gone away. They just aren’t around anymore doing much of anything. What’s up with that? Why are there no more reward challenges?

Here’s the rub: there are reward challenges still. We just don’t see them as they are constantly being edited out. There was only one reward challenge edited out for a long time. It was sadly the very first one that ever happened. Another one was also taken out of the first season, but included in the special that comes with the DVD of the season or on VHS on its own.

But it happened in more recent seasons that rewards in both the tribal stage and possibly some in the individual stage are on the cutting room floor, not effecting the season at all apparently. Why do they even have them if they are just going to be taken out time and time again?

Honestly, the problem, at least in the last three seasons, was all of the tasks or whatever that was going on that took away too much time from other aspects of the game. This is why we don’t see the rewards. The game is focused on whatever other gimmicks they want to that I complained about in the post that I did here last week. We don’t need the gimmicks.

If we don’t need to see rewards, should they still happen at all? What’s the point of having something that is constantly never shown? It doesn’t make much sense to me. While I’d still like to see reward challenges, if they are going to have them but not show them, then I’d rather it just not be part of the game at all in the end. It makes more sense to do it that way. 

I won’t know for sure what the next season of Survivor will be like. I’m hoping for more of a back to the basics season. They can keep the hidden immunity idol (because they’d do that anyways) and ditch a lot of the new gimmicks like other advantages. But what we do need for sure is the good reward challenges that we are used to in the past. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Gimmicks

While there is still so much still unknown about Survivor 41 at this point in time, what we do know about the past few seasons of Survivor is that something about the show has become quite well known and a bit of a problem. They are constantly using gimmicks over and over again. 

What do I mean by that? Well, after the 40^th season has aired, you have to wonder what the most recent season was where it had 1- no returning players, 2- only two tribes that were randomly divided, and 3- no major new theme to the season such as Ghost Island or something like it. I believe that if we are all remembering correctly, that was the 19^th season, Samoa, when this happened last.

Why does Survivor need to have gimmicks? Are there really that many people who won’t go back to the show or people who won’t get into it for the first time if it didn’t have these gimmicks in the end? Does it always need something new in order to keep lasting?

After one twist island after another, Survivor could use a season again without gimmicks to it. Maybe they are filming one right now or already have one in the reserve. I hope that there can be something done in the future that can bring in a good group of players without relying too much on the next big twist or advantage or gimmick. It would be nice to see a more bare bones Survivor again, especially after we would have seen old seasons during our long break from new ones. Here’s hoping to a season in the next three years without gimmicks. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Is Survivor Skewing Towards Younger Casts?

This will not talk about the most recent season as I don’t know much about it. All that I know is that we have seen a lot of casts in recent seasons where the cast has a lot of younger players with not that many older players seen. Even then, the older people aren’t as old as they used to be.

The first season had the oldest contestant who broke his own record when he returned and then the record has not come close to being beaten as far as I know. Meanwhile, it seems that we haven’t stopped having a new youngest player as whoever played at the age of 18 automatically counted even though they were just tying the record over and over again.

Of course, this post may not make the most sense now as the most recent season, Winners at War, had much older players than what we are used to seeing with new player seasons as we had what I think was the oldest season in terms of age in it. And I don’t know offhand what season is second highest in terms of oldest general age. I just know that this was the oldest. I have no idea what the youngest one was offhand yet either.

That’s all that I can think of for this post as there isn’t much else to say that I care about saying in this post at hand. There will be an update about this blog and how it will relate to another blog in the future, but I will get to that in a different post such as maybe the one on Survivor 41’s premiere. I hope to see you then in the future with that. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.