Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Should I boycott Survivor?

I was a big fan of Survivor during the first season. It somehow wasn't what I expected, but after the first episode, I was hooked. A few weeks later, I was pretty sure that Richard was going to win, but I was pulling for Sue. Sue was not quite my hometown girl, but she was from Oklahoma or someplace that I could identify with.

I was so into this show that before the first season was over I was planning to audition for the second season. I was mentally writing a script for the tape I would send in. I was thinking up things that would get me noticed if I could audition in person.

Not that I did any of that. I was on the road all of the time. I wasn't home long enough to even make that audition tape.

I watched the second season with almost as much interest as the first. After about three episodes I guessed who would win. She did.

The third or fourth season there was someone on the show who went to school with one of my English professors. It is good luck to know my English professor if you're going to be on one of these shows. The woman on survivor got to the final four that season. And my English professor was a big fan of our college's wheelchair basketball team, so she also knew that one-legged guy who won the first season of Big Brother.

And then I started to lose interest. I had about given up watching the show when they found Rupert. On the first episode that season he started the game off by stealing all the shoes from the other team. Cool. He didn't win that season, and he didn't win the next season which was the All Stars, but he did win a million dollars anyway. Right after the All Stars, the audience voted for the person they thought should get a million dollars, and Rupert won that.

Okay, Rupert winning a million dollars was great, but I was still losing interest with the rest of the show. And then I was noticing a lot of things that I didn't like. There's been a couple of incidents that I would call sexual harassment, and they both ended with nothing being done to the man and the woman leaving the show soon afterwards. I don't think that should be part of outwit, outplay, and outlast.

I've also noticed a lot of people having serious injuries. Sometimes, people will get hurt, and that's to be expected. But most of the time, these people are getting hurt during challenges, mostly group challenges, and there's no need for it. The group challenges should be stopped. Now that I think about it, the group challenges are dangerous. It's like if you were playing pro-football, without a proper field, without safety equipment, with people you had just recently met, and without being allowed to practice. So people get hurt.

There's no need for this. They don't really have to have the team challenges like that. They don't have to rig up this stuff made up on the spot from bamboo and coconuts. They could use better quality materials and then have it made up to look like bamboo and coconuts later. They don't really even need the team challenges to be stuff that the whole team has to do together either. They can have stuff more like the individual challenges, but keep team scores, and that would be a lot safer. An occasional relay race might be okay, but the stuff where the whole team has to push or pull a cart usually ends up with someone falling and getting run over by the cart.

And it wouldn't hurt to maybe have people wear a team t-shirt or other uniform during the challenges, and have everyone put on some safety gear.

Anyway, I won't be auditioning to be on the next Survivor. I'm wondering if maybe I should even stop watching the show til they deal with some of these problems.




4 comments:

dmarks said...

I've seen a few "Big Brother" episodes, and don't like it at all. We watched "Apprentice" for a few seasons, and got tired of it. We liked the Richard Branson one a lot, until he chose the wrong person at the end which ruined the whole show.

We've really not given "Survivor"
a chance yet.

A friend who was a fan described a Rupert bit that sounded fun. I remember the description as something like this. There were teams (two i think) in some sort of pirate-themed competition. The teams had beached their boats and went ashore to do a challenge. Rupert's team had appointed Rupert to guard the boat. The other team did not appoint a guard. So Rupert said something like, "We're pirates. What do pirates do?" and he walked over and took all of the important supplies off the other team's boat. This really set the other team back and was a big victory.

DD said...

I just can't watch these so-called reality shows, they're edited & manipulated to be as sensational as possible.

There's nothing real about them.

They could show more sci-fi programs instead :)

laughing said...

Actually, I was thinking of posting something about the realism of the last Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie. But the post will have to wait until next week, as I see that my out-of-town husband is now reading my blog, and he hasn't yet seen the movie.

But all when the first season of Survivor was about to come on, I was expecting something more along the lines of Stalking the Wild Asparugus for TV, but with a million dollars going to whoever was the best stalker. They hardly show that part of the game anymore. It's all about the alliances and the gossip and such.

Anonymous said...

I am disgusted that this program is still going on. People tend to be so doggone disrespectful towards one another and sometimes are rewarded for bad behavior. I remember seeing promos for Survivor Blood vs. Water when Gervase was trash talking and luckily at the end of the season, nobody voted for him due to his behavior (even though I thought he should have been eliminated for how he treated the females and his own niece.) And don't forget Colton from One World and Blood Vs. Water-he was just as worse with the fact if he cannot get his own way, he'd quit.
The program does not need people like that.
And I find it unacceptable that the premiers and finales are 2 or 3 hours long. Why don't they just break that in half like ABC did with Dancing With the Stars for some time. Why doesn't CBS get a clue that no one wants to rot their brains for a whole night. But the other networks will get viewers and CBS will be the LOSER in this ratings war for the day Survivor airs.