It’s time to close the book on Survivor 48. Similar to my Midseason Vibe Check, this will just be my thoughts on the season as a whole with some edgic included but it’s not going to be the only focus of this post.
Kyle was crowned the winner of this season and I think it’s deserved and I’m happy with this outcome. What I’m not particularly happy with was the storytelling of the season. It felt clunky in multiple respects. Around Episode 9 or 10 I remember thinking that if Kyle wins the season, they could have propped him up as one of the truly great New Era winners but throughout the season they portrayed him as overconfident, volatile, and clumsy. I think these negative qualities were toned down as the season continued and by the end of the season he was portrayed as strategic, emotional, and complex pretty consistently. I also personally don’t feel like the show handled his personal content regarding family, race, or law enforcement bias very well. Granted Rachel got almost no personal content, but in my opinion, if you’re going to bother using this kind of nuanced content at all I think it needs to be treated with more respect.
From an edgic point of view, I felt like these moments fell a bit flat because they often actually felt like ways in which to bolster Joe’s personal, emotional content rather than Kyle’s. From a human point of view, it felt like the show wanted to use the content but needed to make sure it was digestible for kids and network television and thus did not do the topics much justice. From an entertainment point of view, the edit felt clunky and like they were clearly trying to cut around certain parts of the conversation so as to not disturb the status quo and it was confusing to watch. Despite Joe’s almost constant positive, emotional content, I actually felt like the show dropped the ball with his domestic violence storyline too. It’s just plopped into Episode 12 out of nowhere. Obviously you can argue that it was the Family Letters episode and that’s what brought it all out, that’s the story the show wanted to go with. However, from pre-season press and per Mike Blooms reporting, Joe mentions this “why” for playing Survivor on the mats on the very first day. I feel like this easily could have been a throughline for Joe’s story in Survivor 48 with him talking to his sister on the beach kind of being the culmination of his story. For me personally, it felt like the show handled Mitch’s speech impediment and Eva’s autism a lot better compared to these more “controversial” topics. There were moments where they felt kind of OTT but overall I thought they did a pretty good job of explaining while also letting the audience feel the full weight of their struggles.
Returning to Kyle, though, I feel like his winner’s edit and story could have been handled with a little more care. I thought he played an excellent game and seemed like an interesting and cool person. I’m just not sure why they wanted to show him blundering when they didn’t really need to. Of course Yam Yam, Kenzie, and Rachel (these are the only other New Era seasons I’ve watched) found themselves in difficult positions throughout their seasons, but I never really felt like they were portrayed in ways where I was smacking my hand against my forehead. Maybe Kyle breaking the jug in the first episode made the editors feel like they needed to carry that thread through the entire season? Kyle does mention this in his Final Tribal speech, but I don’t know. Kyle’s premiere and general pre-merge was the reason why many people had written him off pretty early to the point that they didn’t think he could win even has his edit was good for a winner in the post-merge. Kyle started to consistently pop up in my contender rankings starting in Episode 4. From that point on he never drops out of my list. In hindsight I think New Vula was meant to be the Complex Tribe to pay attention to for the rest of the season. He has a pretty strong turn in the right direction from the Thomas boot onward. Overall, it felt like he pretty deftly managed the game in front of him and clinched the win, but his story didn’t feel that way.
In hindsight, it seems like the two most important themes were “attacking the game” and duos/partnerships. There was discussion of “honor and integrity,” “humble traits,” fathers and daughters, and a couple others but they seemed a little more secondary to the other two at best, red herrings at worst.
Attacking the game is the mechanism by which players won or lost the game. Below you can find a table of all of the players in Surivivor 48 and which side of the line I feel like each fell. Kyle is the player that embodied this theme both in spirit and actual game moves, so it makes sense that he ended up emerging the winner.
Tracking the duos told us throughout the season who was important to the story and who wasn’t. Other than Thomas/Bianca, it also maybe showed us who had some longevity in the game. Obviously we have the two duos that made the Final Four, Kyle/Kamilla and Joe/Eva. Mary held on for a long time by finding herself in various duos throughout the season. She partnered with Stephanie and David. Even though it was love/hate, Sai/Cedrek made it to about the same point in the game together. Of Mitch/Charity obviously Mitch made a much deeper run, and it’s impressive considering he never really found a new partner in the post-merge. Whether his partnership was important in the end, though, it made us pay attention to and keep our eye on Mitch early on.
Overall I think this season definitely falls below Survivor 47 and Survivor 46 for me, but maybe above Survivor 44 in terms of enjoyment. The pre-merge was a lot of fun but the post-merge was kind of a slog. Unfortunately, a lot of the players I really liked went out early. The season might be better on a binge. The storytelling felt a bit clunky in my opinion and there were some parts of the season that were downright corny, which I really hated. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get past the fried chicken and waffles chant. I think the story of this season may have benefited from Survivor not needing to be a “family show” or not needing to show a “blindside” every episode. If this season really was to come down to the big dogs fighting it out at the end, make the audience invested in the competition between them. Flesh out more of the relationships between all of them rather than making it seem like each individual is just following Joe around like a little duckling with blinders on to the other players in similar positions; garner some sympathy for the players that never had a chance of breaking into that group rather than making it seem like they’re idiots.
I’ve seen some people drawing comparisons between Joe’s edit to Russel Hantz’s edit in Survivor Samoa and speculating that he might be a returner for Survivor 50. While I personally do not need to see Joe again, I think if he really is coming back, the edit revolving so heavily around him to the detriment of the players around him makes sense. We’ll have to wait for Wednesday to find out for sure.
Well Survivor 48 even if I didn’t exactly love you, it’s been fun! Now it’s time to get back to some older seasons in preparation for Survivor 50 while we wait for Survivor 49.