You would think the big fanbase takeaway from a Survivor episode that prominently featured a castaway getting bitten by a snake would be about, well, that, but a couple days after the scary moment aired, the conversation has mostly shifted to a more structural concern. In short, fans have had it up to their buffs with watching yet another season start with one tribe losing over and over and over again.
Now, you’re probably thinking, but that doesn’t happen very often, right? Well, it does. Survivor Specialists host Phil Wood ranted about it in this week’s post-episode stream, and I looked up the data.
The first four eliminated players from Survivor 49 have all come from the same tribe. 48 started with three players being eliminated from the same tribe before they did a swap. Three of the first four players eliminated in Survivor 46 were all from Bhanu’s infamous tribe, and the only reason there was any break was because Randen, who was on another tribe, had to be medically evacuated. 45 featured arguably the worst tribe in Survivor history, the disastrous Lulu, which lost four of its players in consecutive order. That’s four of the last five seasons, and I’m not even counting Survivor 44, which had one tribe contribute three of the first five eliminations.
Clearly, there’s a recurring problem here, and I think it has to do with how the game is structured. Right now, the show starts with three tribes. If you finish last in an immunity challenge, your tribe not only loses a person but also loses its flint, which means you don’t have fire, which means you can’t boil water and cook hot food.
Once a tribe starts going on a losing streak, they get weaker and weaker, which makes it harder to compete in the challenges, which makes it more likely they’re going to lose. Throw in bad vibes, as the younger Survivor castaways would say, and it gets really hard to climb out of the hole.
It’s not just a small minority of Survivor fans that are noticing this recurring trend either. Most of the places fans talk about Survivor are filled with posts complaining about how this is yet another season of watching a tribe lose over and over again. People are just getting sick of it, and rightfully so. The show needs to admit the current format isn’t working.
That format starts with having three tribes of six, rather than two tribes of nine. That’s been a recurring source of frustration among fans, as the pre-merge tends to turn into each tribe quickly forming a group of four and picking off the other two. That can be really repetitive and annoying to watch, but it’s a secondary concern compared to this issue of one tribe losing over and over again in all the recent seasons that weren’t Survivor 47. The show could solve that by just letting each tribe have flint or other sources of food the entire time, but personally, I’d rather see them go back to two tribes or at least change it up each season.
I love Survivor, and I’m not nearly as down on the show as other fans. That being said, host Jeff Probst and the producers need to look into making some changes after the much-hyped Survivor 50. The New Era has run its course, and it’s time for the show to take some bold new swings with different formats, different types of contestants and anything else that might prevent one tribe from getting decimated almost every season.