pushingjate wrote:
I'm not saying spend all the time on the survival elements, but they rarely even show tribes struggling to make fire even more. And the challenges have become so complex now. In the earlier seasons, challenges were kept simple, but interesting. I'd love to see them go back to those, with disgusting food challenge + fallen comrades making a return. Also, I love how each survivor used their luxury item for something good in the camp and that was always showcased. I don't even think they do luxury items anymore, do they?
I remember that some of the early seasons such as Africa and Thailand were highly criticized for being very slow moving with the contestants lying around and not doing much of anything. Even in Borneo and Australia the survival elements were primarily featured in the early episodes (except for the flooded camp in the Outback). Even in first 2 seasons, the contestants became to weak and lethargic to do much of anything after the tribes merged. Perhaps because of that the challenge developers were given a larger budget to develop more complicated challenges which provided more action per episode.
The disgusting food challenge crops up from time to time and was used as recently as Survivor China. Remember, Fei Long lost because Denise couldn't eat the balut. The Fallen Comrades challenge was dropped after Survivor Marquesas because of what happened in Survivor Africa. The producers realized that Jeff Probst had failed to tell the Survivor Africa Final 4 contestants that they could only answer with the names of contestants that all 4 of the them had spent time with in the game. There was a question about a female contestant not being punctured. The expected answer was Kelly Goldsmith but Lex and Big Tom answered Lindsay which was also correct but was not supposed to be a valid answer because Ethan and Kim Johnson had never spent any time with Lindsay. Lex and Big Tom were eventually awarded more money so that each of them ended up with what the runner up gets which is $100K.
Luxury items were dropped in Pearl Islands because of the stranded with only the clothes on your back twist. The contestants still bring luxury itmes and some of the contestants have gotten back them back by winning rewards. In Panama Exile/Island, a group of contestants won back their luxury items as part of a reward. Courtney got her fire dancing toys and Bruce won back his drawing kit.
