A Love That Survives

“Shhhhh, it’s starting!”

I plopped down in the corner of the couch, eyes alight with excitement as they always were on Wednesday nights. Michelle followed me into our TV room hesitantly, a look of curiosity on her face as she sunk into the corner armchair. I was here for what would be my weekly ritual from February to June. She had come in with mild interest after a mutual friend’s birthday dinner, looking for an hour and a half to burn.

Like every season, this one refitted an old formula with new faces. This season, eighteen clean American faces stared broodingly over the sides of the trucks barreling them through the jungles of Nicaragua. I had already read up on them from the Entertainment Weekly and Xfinity Online profiles, already picked my favorites competing on Season 30. There, on the third truck, I saw them. Tyler, the former Cal football player and current TV writer. Shirin, the quirky Yahoo executive from San Francisco. Max, the Media Studies PhD best known among hardcore fans for teaching a class at Northwestern on this very show.

“I seriously had no idea this show was still on,” Michelle said, still eyeing the TV with some apprehension.

I resisted rolling my eyes, as Michelle and I were not close and I wanted her to think I wasn’t an asshole. Instead, I just responded in a single breath: “Two seasons a year for 15 years.” I did not avert my eyes from the TV. I did not say anything more. I wanted her to watch. I wanted someone else to understand — someone other than my father, whose perpetually muted excitement over text message didn’t satisfy my need to gab excitedly about this show immediately, vigorously, constantly. I needed someone outside of Reddit to get why Survivor was the greatest reality competition show in the history of always and forever.

I was five when I first toddled into the family room and saw my parents sitting in front of the TV, watching strangers stranded together on the island of Borneo as they attempted to form a new society while competing to win a million dollar prize. I probably asked curiously about it, and they probably did their best to explain the new concept of reality television to their kindergarten kiddo. But I was young. I don’t remember the phenomenon that was Survivor’s first season. Back then, the idea that 51 million people watched the that season’s finale meant nothing to me. I just enjoyed the little things — the characters I thought were funny, the awesome challenges, the game my mom would play with my brother and me where we’d hold up our fingers on each hand to count the votes cast at Tribal Council.

Years of watching the show together went by, but family traditions don’t always last. As my parents’ marriage disintegrated, my mom would increasingly forego Survivor nights to catch up on Desperate Housewives in her home office. It became a me-and-my-brother-and-my-dad thing, then a me-and-my-dad thing. But as I became older, I lost interest. Tweenaged, socially desperate me wasn’t interested in anything that wouldn’t help me stay hip with my eighth grade BFFs, and Survivor didn’t give me the social currency that Disney Channel shows could. One by one, our tribe had voted ourselves off the island. My dad was left to his own devices, watching what had once been our family show all by himself. He would tell me about the goings-on, how the season’s new mad villain had done something-or-other, how the old-school player we’d watched when I was a kid was now making his comeback. I listened, but without any real interest. It wasn’t cool anymore for me to care about a show I’d watched with my parents when I was still learning to read.

When I was a senior in high school and much more willing to revisit the nostalgia of my youth, my dad tried again. “You remember Jeff Kent from the Giants?” he asked. Of course I did. Baseball was a religion in our household. “I saw him on the preview for the next season of Survivor. Kinda cool, huh?”

It piqued my interest, but just ever so slightly. When I sat down with him that night with the mildest of curiosity, I did not expect to be on the edge of my seat.

But it was as if I had never seen the show before. I was immediately enraptured, engrossed by these characters, the alliances they built, their drive. I was immediately caught up in the different storylines, all weaved together seamlessly — the unlikely friendship between the young stud and the middle-aged sex therapist, stuck together on a failing tribe; the divide between men and women in a sea of trust games and psychological warfare; the manipulation of a friendship between two hot-headed women that would eventually turn their tribe of six into rubble.

By the fourth episode, I was in too deep to back out. My favorite pair — the aforementioned young stud and middle-aged sex therapist, Malcolm and Denise — had lost three consecutive challenges and found their tribe of six, named Matsing, reduced to three. They were stuck with Russell, who had been evacuated from the island in a prior season after pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, and was now more desperate to prove himself than ever. So far, he had been ridiculed after stepping up as a leader of his tribe, failed to find a Hidden Immunity Idol despite having a clue to one, and watched his tribe fail miserably. Going into the fourth immunity challenge, things were not exactly looking up.

But suddenly there was a moment of wild hope, as Matsing took the lead in the challenge for the first time that season. However, as physically fit as they looked, Russell’s smoker lungs and Denise’s 5’2” frame simply couldn’t keep up with the competition as they high-kneed over obstacles, carried giant pots to pedestals, and crawled in the mud. When Malcolm ran to smash their six pots with a wrecking ball for the last stage of the challenge, he was desperate to protect their evaporating lead. Eventually, the Kalabaw and Matsing tribes were each down to their last pot.

Then…

The slow-motion shot was tight on Kalabaw’s last pot. The wrecking ball glanced off of it on its journey skyward, then vanished from view. A tiny crack appeared, but it wasn’t enough to break the ceramic pot. It seemed that Kalabaw had missed the shot — Matsing was still alive.

But just as the breath caught in my chest settled back down, the wrecking ball swung back down and to smash Kalabaw’s final pot — and Matsing’s hopes — into smithereens.

Kalabaw erupted into cheers of relief as Malcolm angrily chucked the wrecking ball away. I watched the other contestants celebrating, gathering back together while Denise looked around in exhaustion and despair. Jeff Probst congratulated Kalabaw for their huge comeback —

SMASH.

The music stopped abruptly as all of the contestants looked around at Russell and the pieces of the pot he had thrown to the ground. He walked away from it, pacing and yelling at noone. “Same old crap. Same old.”

There was silence from the group as he looked to the sky, voice still loud. “Lord, I don’t know what happened.” He was panting, still pacing wildly, moving his arms from his sides to his hips to his heads, closing his eyes. “You gave me another opportunity…I don’t get what’s happening, Father. You gotta help me understand. I just can’t take this.”

When Denise and Malcolm voted out Russell that night, he left in disgrace and despair, betrayed by both the tribemates he had trusted to be honest with him and his blind belief that he might find some form of redemption. As he disappeared, shivering with cold, down the path away from the Tribal Council, Denise and Malcolm looked at each other with a mixture of relief and fear. They might not know what was coming for their tribe of two, but they were in it together.

The emotion of it all slammed me. Russell’s distraught breakdown and Malcolm and Denise’s uncertain future felt so raw and human in a way that reality shows seldom were. The contestants were compelling thinkers and adventure seekers whose willpower in the face of adversity inspired me, and I felt compelled to watch their story unfold. I had to know what would become of Matsing and if anything good could come for Malcolm and Denise as they stood upon the ashes of Russell’s redemption narrative. And as I continued with the season, I appreciated the show for more than the fun characters that had entertained me as a younger child. I saw the complexity of the strategy required for success, the stress of the elements, the depths of human nature that harsh conditions often unearthed, and the masterful editing that tied together short-term and long-term narratives into a fourteen-episode epic adventure.

The rest of that season — and the two years that followed my re-introduction — turned me into a maniac. As the seasons progressed, I began second viewings of episodes only days after they aired. I sought out post-show recaps and contestant exit interviews. I bought a tribe buff (the colored, multi-purpose bands the contestants wear to show their tribe designations). I started rewatching full seasons I had missed or had forgotten from my youth. I was a woman quietly obsessed. But no matter how engaging the show was in its melange of action, strategy, and nostalgia, truly delighting in the show still felt like a guilty pleasure. Watching it was a feverish high of manic excitement that no one in my college life would ever really understand. I knew people would write it off as a trashy broadcast reality show, and I feared judgment. There just didn’t seem to be a good way to convey just how gripping and complex Survivor could be and that it was less contrived than most imagined it to be. That it could be honest, comfortable, real.

The briefest period of relief came when I discovered the Survivor fan community on Reddit. Suddenly, there were people everywhere who understood my excitement, who nerded out and talked strategy and analyzed the construction of the show’s edit and the narratives it showed. There were people to predict with, people to make in-jokes with, people to get excited with. I was not alone in my love.

But as fun as the post-episode discussions were, they just weren’t enough. Faceless usernames and page refreshes didn’t gasp with me at the latest blindside or cry with me during emotional family visit episodes. They didn’t laugh with me at the little jokes in any way I could hear. And they didn’t count votes on their fingers with me. They weren’t quite the family that I had found the show with, and while they felt like friends in a way, they didn’t feel like home.

So I let go of the fear of judgment I’d held for my obsession for so long. I struck out for my own little tribe. On the way home from our friend’s birthday party, I called out for an open invite to whomever was interested in joining in my viewing party for one, and Michelle took the bait.

As if they knew she was watching with me, the Survivor gods did not disappoint. The 90-minute premiere was gripping, with twists and turns and exciting strategy. And as the first contestant of the season was voted out of the game and had her torch snuffed by the somehow-never-aging host Jeff Probst, I could feel the excitement for the season to come bubbling up within me. Michelle — who would sit through the finale with me in a few months time, who would become my roommate for a year and a half to follow, and whom I would eventually call one of my closest friends — looked over at me. “So this is on again next week, right?”

I grinned back at her. “Damn straight.”