Survivor’s empty calories

As much as I love Survivor, love this game of wits and physical strength and social skills all wrapped into one, it’s still a high dollar network show that often engages in high dollar, network empty calorie production.

Like most “last-man-standing” reality shows, Survivor blatantly creates these super-annoying false moments of tension. If I didn’t have the fast forwarding capabilities of my DVR, I don’t think I’d watch. Because the way they drag that shit out is unbearable. Like during tribal council, when they force you to observe each person walk up to the ballot box and scrawl something on a parchment with that stupid jungle flute music is more than a man can bear.

Same thing when Jeff Probst draws the names out of the cask. They like you to believe that he’s randomly picking the names but really, they have been strategically sequenced in order to drag it out as long as possible and creating, in their minds, even more tension. Of course, in the long run, they lose tension, because once you know the system of how the names are drawn, you can start picking the losers before they are announced.

During last night’s final episode they did another thing that they always do to stretch out scene and create false tension that I can’t stand.

For those who don’t know Survivor, when the game is down to the final 3 players, a jury of the last 7 players who have been voted off get to choose which of the 3 finalists will win the million dollars. It’s a brilliant system because it factors in all the backhanded social plays the finalists made to get where they are.

So, first, the final three get to make opening statements about why they think they should win the money. Then the jurors each get to ask or say anything they want to the contenders to aid their decision. After the final 3 made their opening statements, Jeff Probst says to the jury, “It’s your turn now, I’ll give you a minute to think about what you want to say.”

Then, the camera to zooms in and pans the jury for about 20 seconds (an eternity in TV time) as they scrunch their faces to “think” about what they are going to say.

Ugh!

First of all, is this something the viewing public needs to see? Do we really need to sit there and watch them thinking about what they are going to say? Couldn’t all that just be removed and replaced with better content? Isn’t that alone enough to make you want to put a brick through the TV?

Secondly, keep in mind, the jurors have already had a couple of days to think about what they were going to say. This is national television with millions of viewers. I highly doubt they weren’t thinking about what they were going to say from the moment they got on the jury all the way up to this moment.

But here comes that spooky jungle flute music as the camera zooms, and pans, and zooms again as the spooky jungle flute music gets more intense and acts as if this hadn’t been the only thing they’ve been thinking about for the last 2 days, acting as if all this crap couldn’t have been edited out and replaced with actual, true, content which you know they have a ton of given the amount of stuff that ends on the cutting room floor from these types of shows.