Survivor Season 41 - 2021

We arrive at last at the “New Era”, which as I write this is almost 10 seasons in but must have felt very fresh to contestants and audiences alike in the midst of the High Covid Era. A shorter shoot schedule (to account for quarantine), a brutal reduction of basic food and supplies, and new gameplay mechanics like the Beware Advantage and the Shot in the Dark define the gameplay here, and at the outset it’s fun to see the contestants react to the revamp. At some point the episode lengths get stretched out to a meaty 90 minutes, and I was surprised that that was not present at the outset.

The cast is good: enthusiastic, cunning, vulnerable. Evvie was an early favorite, but they played too hard and didn’t make it very far past merge. Shan, the pastor with an evil streak (I always love it when contestants provide musical cues to the composers, and Shan’s hummed “evil song” was a great addition to the score) assembled a dominant alliance centered around four black contestants. I’ve noticed that in recent seasons, there is a commendably diverse cast, but for one reason or another most of the black players get voted out after merge. This was the case here, with Deshawn opening up about the experience of being a minority contestant while also playing both sides. Ultimately it came down to Xander, an athletic App Developer, vs Erika, an unassuming marketing professional, and Xander squandered an opportunity to knock out his biggest threat and let her steal the title from him at final.

I enjoyed the production team opening things up a bit, with a blink-and-you-miss-it shot in the premiere showing the massive crew setup for the initial boat challenge. This show does such a great job of keeping a focus on its players by hiding the massive team that makes the whole thing run, and we usually only see them when someone gets hurt.