50 Things I’m Dreading About ‘Survivor’ 50

I can’t pinpoint exactly when Survivor went off the rails — and I say that as someone still yelling at my TV like this show didn’t shape my personality. Was it when they ran out of theme concepts and greenlit a season called “Heroes Vs. Healers Vs. Hustlers?” Was it when they started solely casting crybaby dweebs who sleep in Survivor sheets, eliminating any compelling conflict or rootable personalities? Or was it the introduction of so many “New Era” twists that makes you feel like your eyes are glazing over while an overexuberant friend explains the rules of a board game you felt socially pressured to agree to play?

Your mileage may vary on the exact coconut that broke the camel’s back. But as the historic season 50 premiere looms, it’s clear from the trailer alone that we’ve strayed far from the halcyon days of Borneo and into a treacly, candy-coated simulacrum of its grittier original form.

Does that mean I’ll reclaim those 90 minutes from my Wednesday nights for something more fruitful, like volunteering or reading a novel? Unfortunately, no. I will still eat up every second of it like the Stockholm Syndrome sicko I am, followed by listening to three different recap pods. For those of us who love to hate, I rounded up the 50 most dread-inducing issues awaiting us in Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans.

1. 3-hour premiere episode. Longer than Les Mis. Longer than Titanic. Probably just as tedious as The English Patient.
2. The Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol. Welcome to Survivor 50, a demented brainrot funhouse designed by 64-year-old men to appeal to tweens.
3. “Uncle Jeff” and general kiss assery. I miss the early days when Jeff was hot and cranky — now he’s like a Botoxed Santa Claus humanoid. The players are way too gassed to be meeting this guy. I’m surprised no one has offered to give him a BJ at tribal yet.
4. Any singing. From the disturbing incident of groupthink that was “Fried Chicken & Waffles,” to the onerous four-minute segment of “Three Boys on a Bench,” royalty-free vocals are one of Survivor’s most potent mood-killers.
5. Multiple New Era winners appearing. Bringing back Dee is acceptable, but Kyle and Savannah just won. Their lives can’t have changed in any demonstrable way since we saw them last (in Savannah’s case, 10 days prior). I could name 75 other more interesting choices, but I’m on a deadline, so I won’t.
6. Players gleefully referencing their one big moment from their original season. “Don’t worry, America — I brought my own jacket this time! HEHEHEHEHEHE!” – Angelina, definitely
   
   Credit: CBS
7. New Era wannabes fanboying over Ozzy. Of course he seems like a God to them, because the only trees these dweebs can climb are on Minecraft.
8. A “Disaster Tribe” dominates pre-merge screen time. We’re finally blessed with a returning player season after six long and painful years, but we spend the first seven weeks only watching a third of the cast.
9. Cirie’s “off the couch” narrative. Her game is just as elite on the couch (see The Traitors, Big Brother).
10. White Lotus talk. There’s already been ceaseless pre-season chatter about whether the dangled carrot of White Lotus cameos will influence players’ decisions to protect or target Mike White. Let’s hope these contestants are as clout-hungry as I think they are.
11. Kyle. He has “Winner of CBS’s Survivor, Season 48” as a former job on his LinkedIn. Please.
12. Tribals where everyone talks like community college philosophy professors who hotbox their cars before class. “You see, Jeff, the pre-merge was like we were all in our separate circuses in separate clown cars, and now in the post-merge, we’re all under one big tent at the clown DMV.”
13. Old-school pre-merge massacre. If the history of Winners at War repeats itself, we’re gonna come full circle to the New Era all-stars season they stubbornly refused to make.
14. Jeff creaming his pants every time Jonathan lifts something heavy. We’ve seen Jeff get boycrushes on contestants in the past (*cough* Boston Rob), but his full-on chubb for season 42’s man-god Jonathan took him into Heated Rivalry territory.
15. “In the hands of the fans.” Because the fans definitely coordinated a mail-in campaign to have the final individual immunity necklace of the season determined by a game of Simon Says hosted by James Charles.
16. Kamilla. Honestly, an even worse offender than Kyle to me. Her “big move” on season 48 was literally having an alliance. She is one of the least exciting people to ever take up space on my TV screen, and I watched seven seasons of Love Is Blind.
17. The shot in the dark. Overcomplicated. Boring.
18. Players claiming they will play better this time because they’ve matured since their last season. “Ever since becoming a mom, everything’s been put into perspective. I used to be a compelling reality TV personality, but now I set a good example for my son by being nice and giving boring confessionals.”
19. Any attractive female player immediately getting compared to Parvati. If all it takes to be “a mini Parvati” is dark hair and a pretty face, does that make every guy with a dad bod the next Boston Rob? The Parv comparisons fly so indiscriminately, if you don’t get the nod, you’re basically getting called chopped.
    
    Credit: CBS
20. Inevitable “honor & integrity” alliance. The Coach-Joe linkup would be a nightmare blunt rotation, but there’s no way those guys fuck with the devil’s lettuce.
21. A convoluted production twist hijacks the game. The girl who went home after the hourglass debacle of season 41 should sue CBS under game show law.
22. The Sanctuary. Replacing rewards like helicopter rides, yacht lunches, and waterfall oases with an antiseptic hut where contestants gorge themselves on Applebee’s Mushroom Swiss Burgers is just another hollow downgrade that makes Survivor feel even less like it takes place in the wild, and more like it’s shot on a soundstage in Burbank.
23. Mr. Beast. Is nothing sacred?!
    
    Credit: CBS
24. Calling every vote-out a blindside. If your boyfriend dumped you immediately after the most romantic vacation in Milan where you looked at rings together, that’s a blindside. Not two weeks after forgetting your birthday and commenting “🔥” on Alix Earle’s bikini pics.
25. Emily opining about staying true to herself this time around. “You don’t have to change yourself to play Survivor.” Yeah, you actually do! It’s called being adaptable, hunty.
26. Obstacle courses nullified by puzzles. Let’s spend 10 minutes watching people crawl through muddy nets and push a giant boulder up a wall just for it all to come down to the same puzzle we’ve seen 478 times before.
27. R-I-Z-G-O-D. He’s honestly pretty likable, so long as the Kim K tears stay safely ensconced in his ducts. (Bonus points for troll-picking “This Is Me” from Camp Rock as his season 50 hype song).
28. Jeff’s voice. The exaggerated stage whisper has to stop. Or maybe it’s his take on a sultry radio DJ rasp? Never get so rich and powerful that your team is too afraid to tell you when you’re embarrassing yourself.
29. “Survivor Bucket List.” “Tai chi on the beach with Coach was totally on my Survivor bucket list.” — Charlie, probably.
30. Crying about feelings on the challenge mat. That sucks that you miss your kids; no one made you come to Fiji. Next time someone offers you a 1 in 24 chance at winning a million dollars, you should say no and stick to scratch tickets on Christmas.
31. Huge binge-eating rewards. I honestly think these contestants eat more than I do. They’re living off coconut for a day or two, only to be immediately satiated by an all-you-can-eat buffet of steak frites, bloomin’ onions, and Oreo cheesecake. Outwit, outplay, out-intermittent-fast?
32. The cast eating said reward meals while caked in dried mud. Is it against the rules to wash your face first?
    
    Credit: CBS
33. Embarrassing Twitter shade from irrelevant former contestants. We’re all waiting with bated breath for no-vote finalist Owen Knight’s thoughts on Chrissy’s jury management strategy.
34. Costco Christian filibusters from players during attrition challenges. This could also be Christian reheating his own nachos, or, more likely, Charlie naming Taylor Swift’s entire discography until someone drops off their pole before he gets to Midnights (3am Edition).
35. Savannah being a pick me. Speaking of, in Savannah’s pre-game interview, she said with her full chest that her least favorite person on the face of the earth is Taylor Swift. You mean in the same world as Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Ghislaine Maxwell? Promote her to president of the Not Like Other Girls Society, STAT.
36. Exhaustive 39-day versus 26-day discourse. Like the America’s Next Top Model cycles after the Js left, the 26-day game is a definitively worse product. We don’t need to waste airtime debating it!
37. Joe. Did I tear up during his scene with Eva? It’s shameful to admit it, but yes. Do I need a fire captain-shaped reminder of my lowest common denominator behavior? NO.
38. Just being there for the experience and self-growth, not the money. Mike White is the only one who gets to feel this way. The rest of you are too poor to be behaving like this!
39. The Q-Skirt. A hoodie wrapped around your waist backwards immediately claiming a spot in the Survivor canon? Pull the plug.
40. Witnessing the real-time downfall of former challenge beasts. I don’t need to be reminded of the fact that I’m inching closer to death by watching Colby twinge his hip during a relay race.
41. Ozzy OnlyFans storyline. Do you, king.
42. Aubry giving us nothing for the third season in a row. Someone please explain production’s Aubry fixation. Is there an Emmy category for boringest casting choices I’m not aware of?
43. Rizo teaching Colby Gen Z slang. Day 11 Colby’s confessional is like, “Jenna was really aura farming with that bullshit tribal council speech. She thought she ate, but the diva left mad crumbs.”
44. Zero hookups. Gamebots with no sex drive ruined reality television.
45. Rob Cesternino glazing production on Rob Has a Podcast. He was the biggest snub of the cast, but he’ll still spend eight episodes a week extolling each and every pixel of content, like a sleep-deprived new parent gushing about their daughter’s fingerpaintings of the dogs from Paw Patrol.
46. Firemaking. Let’s determine who should make their case for a million dollars to the jury by having two people fiddle with rocks and sticks in silence for fifteen minutes.
    
    Credit: CBS
47. A boring New Era winner. And the winner of Survivor 50. . .Tiffany! Cue a Jeb Bush “please clap.”
48. Or a belated Cirie win with an asterisk. She could graduate from “best to never win” to an official champion, but in the 26-day game, it’s more like being two-thirds of a winner.
49. Performative after show that’s in desperate need of Andy Cohen. Let’s spend an hour patting each other on the back and expressing our gratitude to the CBS overlords. No bad blood!
50. Season 51 trailer that looks completely indistinguishable from the past 10 seasons. And now, your first look at Survivor 51. . .nerds who spend too much time playing Catan and not enough time at the gym! Will anyone kiss? No. Will anyone cry? More than is clinically recommended.