15 seasons? Has it been 15 already? We're all getting older. And yet, Jeff Probst stays the same age. How does that work?
The flagship reality show has done a great job of not so much reinventing itself as tweaking things enough every season to keep both participants and viewers on their toes. It doesn't always work--almost everyone now concedes that despite a pretty good cast, Fiji was weakened by its big twist, the luxury v. poverty division that rendered the first half of the season drama-free.
Whether due to some concern about the signs of age in the show or simply excitement about the fact that they're in China, CBS seems to be pulling out the promotional stops this go-round. The CBS home page provides some videos that answer some longstanding fan questions, giving a glimpse of the production base camp and showing the work of the "dreamteamers," who test all the challenges beforehand to make sure they're suitable for the show (I assume the ability to retrieve and put together puzzles is the key to getting hired as a dreamteamer).
As for the cast itself, there haven't been many recent editions of Survivor to begin with only 16 players. That makes for a fairly predictable 13-week season--12 weeks to get down to the Final Four, and then a finale--but I assume it won't quite work out that way. The larger casts seemed to make it harder to get to know everyone early, so I give a thumbs-up to this development.
I've learned from my years of following Survivor that trying to predict winners by looking at cast bios and preview videos is a fools' game (although it is often very easy to predict which players will be utter disasters). But I'll offer a few ill-informed opinions anyway.
At least early on, I'm pinning my hopes on Aaron, a surfing instructor who unaccountably grew up in eastern Ohio. Aaron is an Ohio State graduate, and frankly that's all the info I need to pull for him. While I don't know that she's going to last too long in the game, I look forward to seeing Denise, a school cafeteria worker who named her dog after Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi and has one of the most extreme mullets ever seen on television. Courtney has an interesting bio: she's highbrow enough to have named her cat after the poet Catullus, and yet she's had a succession of lowbrow jobs (she's currently a waitress). She shows a few indications of being the comedian in the cast, and if there's anything better than a pretty girl with a sense of humor, I'd love to know what it is.
I have no idea what to make of Steve "Chicken" Morris, who appears to be an attempt to revisit the magic that was Tom Buchanan (he's even from the same county as Big Tom). He has dogs named Zek, Cluck, Poke, and Eli...of course he does. Jaime is a native of Florida who describes herself as a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan, and there's no way that's a good omen. Todd is described as an "openly gay Mormon" (he's not the first one Survivor has had), and I'm going to describe him as quite likely to be the biggest tool in the cast. Someone who says shopping and drinking coffee are among his hobbies, calls himself "fantastic, amazing, awesome and super-original," and says "the Spice Girls are the most significant historical event of the past 100 years" is someone I'm not going to like, I'm pretty sure.
This edition of Survivor is unusual for casting some people who are semi-famous already, and unlike the situation is Guatemala, where ex-quarterback Gary Hogeboom hid his status from everybody, I think at least a couple of these folks are going to have problems staying hidden. Amanda is a former Miss Earth, and since I had never heard of Miss Earth before hearing of Amanda, she might not qualify as famous. But Ashley Massaro is familiar to anyone who follows professional wrestling, and Jean-Robert Bellande is a big deal in the world of poker. I'll be interested to see if the qualities that go into being an excellent poker player are transferable to Survivor, and whether the others decide to gang up early on the (presumably) wealthy celebrities.
The biggest difference between this edition and the most recent versions is that there is no more Exile Island, which didn't seem to provide the drama the producers had hoped for. The individual immunity idols are back, though, and maybe this cast learned something from the Fiji cast in terms of how to use them optimally. We'll find out, starting tonight.
