2. Survivor: Borneo
"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire."-Aristotle
"Everything I think, Terry, has to do with its enormous appeal. I'll establish a context before talking about what I think it means later on. I just
think this is as bad as television can get, indeed, as bad as a show can get. You had several unappealing, uninteresting people being watched by millions of
other people with nothing better to do in a kind of faint-hearted voyeurism. I watched the whole thing last night, and I thought it would never end; it was a
nightmare. Just when i thought it was over, Bryant Gumbel came on with the same people, this time cleaned up and shaven, and their mothers and their fathers
and their pets and talking about the thing again and again. I've never seen such devotion to superficiality."-Roger Rosenblatt
It is especially disheartening to give a cold hearted analysis of something you have been weaned on for nearly half your life. When all is said and done,
Survivor is just a TV show. One that I think highly of and am fond of without any reconcilable reason, but ultimately television is bound by certain
restrictions which only hinders the creative impulse. In simpler terms, TV rarely produces something that is truly worthwhile(the Polish movie "The
Decalogue, which aired on television there, is one of the exceptions). Survivor has always been heavy handed editing wise, and frequently wastes opportunities
to become more than just captivating storytelling. There are also "backstage" dealings which cast a dark shadow on the show which makes many people
wonder if it is real at all. Based on the ultra secrecy of the Survivor casting process and the gag that CBS puts around the contestants mouths, those
suspicions are certainly warranted. Nevertheless, I have watched at least a partial episode of the show almost every day for the past nine years, and through
all the muck and obloquy, I love it dearly. As great as other seasons may be, the first season is the one that stole my heart. It's not nostalgia, I find
it not only superior as a season on its own, but I honestly believe that it is better then every other season, in almost every way.
