The One With Survivor 15 (Gasp!): China

A few years back, I remembered myself watching this totally exciting and new genre of TV shows called ‘Reality TV’. And it was truly amazing how people are totally into watching other people’s lives on camera through their TV screen, expecially when you take 16/20 random people, throw them to some isolated place with minimal contact with the outside world, and let them stay this way for 39 days. And yes, this winning formula is called… ‘Survivor’. (click HERE to know all about Survivor).

I remember myself, as a kid, following this show avidly and almost religiously as it airs on our local cable TV. The show’s concept is simple: Outwit, outplay, and outlast the others to win the grand prize of $1,000,000 bucks and the title of ‘Sole Survivor’.  When the show kicked off with it’s first season in Pulau Tiga, around the areas of Sabah, Malaysia, the whole idea of the show was… fresh. Unique. Fun. Exciting. Nothing beats seeing a group of people backstabbing one another, gossiping around, trying to form alliances to take out the others, watching how some of them actually develop some sort of a fling or romance, and bla bla bla. Basically, it’s a money-generating formula for the brains behind it all, Mark Burnett (click HERE for info). The man who almost single-handedly became the father of all-reality TV shows, with the exception of The Amazing Race, missing from his belt of other famous reality-based shows like The Apprentice, The Contender and so on.

The first ever Survivor: Pulau Tiga logo. Brings back memories…

And so, the show is definitely expected to generate more than one or two seasons after the success of the first one. And then comes the second one:

It was still good. Still new, the crowd’s getting in… got a lot of hype and attention as well. And then came:

 

…  I have to say, at this point, it was still okay… as in, yeah it’s the same old thing again and again… BUT, it was still good. I enjoyed watching this season a lot in the end. It certainly provided more drama than the previous two. And just when you thought you had enough to swallow… in comes:

Okay, I have to admit, if it wasn’t for my interest and love for reality TV based shows last time, I would have given this a miss. But, I stuck with it, and in the end, it was just a regular Survivor season. Had it’s ups and downs. Oh yeah, during that time, the whole joke of Survivor achieving unimaginable number of seasons like ‘Survivor 20’ or ‘Survivor 237’ surfaced then. And suddenly, this came up:

Okay… it was starting to become a little bit of an overkill already. I mean, before you can even finish eating your cheeseburger, in came another one. It might be a good thing for some people who can gobble up their food in an instant, like myself. But to some, it’s starting to become annoying already. But… but… the Thailand season was good. I could not remember why I liked the show, but it was good somehow. And the winner for that season is a former soft-porn actor. How ‘!@@#!$!#@!’ can that be??!!!? And before you can finish saying your ‘!@@$!#’, this popped out:

I remember this season as the season where the winner is so obviously gonna be Jenna Morasca. Even from day one, it was that obvious. And plus, she’s a model, and a very hot one. What makes the other girls in that show think that they can compete with her? And let’s not mention the guys, cuz they were all floored by her charms. And here I thought, well, the season ain’t half bad. Let’s just put things to a rest… and let it boil down for awhile… but no!! Here comes:

This is where I go ‘What the !@#!$@#!$!!!!’. Not another one!! But I was wrong. In fact, this is my second placed all time favorite Survivor season. The show became a bit more livelier, with the whole concept swinging towards some pirates kinda thing. What’s not to like, Survivor plus pirates theme makes a good combination. This season ended up on a high when this was announced:

The all stars season is the best season that I’ve watched so far! It was highly entertaining, highly conniving, and more bitch-slapping and backstabbing was involved. And plus the fact that the whole game was controlled by the manipulative Rob and his partner-to-be at that time, Amber, makes this season so enjoyable. Such a good timing and a perfect ending to end the Survivor series in my opinion, it is, as a matter of fact, an overkill already, having already spurned 8 seasons of the same old thing.

However…

They will not stop… yes I gave up watching that show after the All-Stars season. It was just too boring and too dull already. While some were totally against it since the first day itself, myself, for one came from where I absolutely loved the series until I totally hated it!

And then they went on and on… to some more peculiar locations with lesser and lesser stuff to further torture the contestants…

I’ve not watched or bothered to know about the previous seasons of the show, and it has stayed like this for the past few years or so. Until I saw this on some random website I so happened to clicked on:

… … … … I asked myself, is this for real? Am I seeing things? How could it be that they have gone so far??? And so I went and searched for more info about it… and this latest Survivor installment is their 15th season!!!

Ok… lemme say it again… 15th SEASON!!!!!

And I thought I could not stomach another season of Survivor after the 8 seasons which I’ve so faithfully followed and watched. Until my itchy fingers went to download the Torrent file for one of the episodes of Survivor China.

And then I downloaded another episode… and another one…

Yes friends, the ‘Survivor’ in me came back. Now, I could not go through my week without my weekly dosage of Survivor China.

Okay, okay… you might be wondering, why the heck am I posting about this?

The answer is simple…

Which is….

I’LL FOREVER, AND EVER…. BE A SURVIVOR FAN!!!! MUAHAHAHA (insert ‘Survivor’ theme song : eh eh oh eh oh eh ah ah eh eh oh eh…. ).