One World a Letdown So Far

To be fair, this season of Survivor has a lot to live up to. The brilliance and poignancy of last season’s Good vs. Evil (or whatever they really called it) is gonna be hard to top. Battle lines were drawn with audience members, but I am (and was) quite firmly in the “religion is cool in a reality show context” camp.

I loved Brandon, I loved Coach, I even loved the eventual winner. It was all wonderful for me, almost from the first frame.

This season, dubbed, “One World,” um, not so much. In fact, almost exactly the opposite for me. The beginning of last season, sure we had a bunchy of new people, but we also had Coach’s smiling face. And Ozzy’s. And Cochran’s. And people we’d come to know and love.

“One World”? Um…  The people are uninspiring.

Then there’s the game. There is no more Redemption Island, which could be good or bad, we shall see. There are more immunity idols. OK. Good news! If you find one, you can’t necessarily keep it, which makes it more interesting.

What I had hoped for with One World is more of the promise of last season: people learning how to work together. They took steps toward that by having both teams share one beach. The teams are also divided into Men and Women. Not sure how that’s going to play out, except that so far, both sides seem really selfish and out for themselves.

It’s quite jarring to watch, after last season’s moments of peace and beauty.

Also, there was no “virtual living room” tonight. People were stupid, doing stupid, selfish things. Not sure how much more of it I’m going to watch. It’s certainly not Must Watch TV like last season was.

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