When Survivor premiered in 2000, it was an instant sensation that helped usher in a new era of reality television.
Now it's an institution that's airing its 50th season.
So we thought this was a good time to look back on the show's five greatest seasons, as chosen by some weird nerd.
It's me.
I'm that weird nerd.
You sure are.
I'm Linda Holmes.
It's just the two of us today here at NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.
It's a reality competition in which a bunch of people are marooned in a theoretically exotic location where they vote each other out one by one until a single winner remains.
But the game has evolved substantially from its roots as a survival competition.
Now it involves complex social strategy, ever shifting alliances and so many twists, gimmicks.
Immunity idols, advantages.
This is sort of what has alienated me from this show, which I'm sure we will talk about.
Survivor is currently airing an all-star season.
It's called Survivor 50 in the hands of the fans.
That's the last thing we need.
The last thing we need.
Stephen, you used this round number milestone correctly.
As an excuse, and I want to stress, I didn't make you do this.
Nobody made you do this.
This was voluntary, I promise.
This was voluntary.
You used this milestone as an excuse to write a full, exhaustive ranking of all 50 seasons that will go up on NPRorg later this month.
But we thought it would be fun to talk about the five best seasons as you ranked them.
They are all available right now via Paramount+.
Let's kick it off with the season that you have at number five.
Well, I didn't intend the ranking to work this way, but it has worked this way.
That in fifth place is a season where I think, if you were Survivor curious, but maybe you haven't watched Survivor since that first season, maybe the first couple of seasons.
The first episode of this season, I think, is a perfect place to start.
In fifth place, I picked Survivor Pearl Islands, which is the seventh season of the show.
It is, I think, the best of the kind of early iterations of Survivor, kind of old school Survivor.
You get several iconic characters.
We'll be right back.
You have a kind of all-time survivor villain in this guy who calls himself Johnny Fairplay and envisions himself as kind of a pro-wrestling style heel.
Some very notorious gameplay.
One of the first major season-altering twists happens in this season, so it's kind of setting the table for a lot of Survivor to come.
And it really does kick off with, I think, one of the best individual episodes of Survivor ever.
The stage setting that goes on in this season, I think, is really excellent.
It's very interesting that this is the first one we're talking about because I cannot stand this.
I thought this season was so not my speed for this show.
Interesting.
You know that I do not like Rupert.
You know that I find Rupert's entire shtick exhausting.
I find Johnny Fairplay's shtick exhausting.
To me, this is the season where the show begins to circle.
The we're going to make it all about self-defined bad guys and self-defined heroes.
That to me has always been deeply and profoundly boring.
And I will say the episode that you are praising the opening episode where Rupert I think it is decides to steal everyone's shoes.
Like what?
Why?
Why?
Why?
It's like a pirate theme season.
And he takes being a pirate like very seriously in this kind of self-important.
I'm a pirate now.
I can't stand this season.
Wow.
Can't stand it.
Well listen, I may not agree with you, but maybe I'll agree with you on something later in the list.
Let's go to your number four. season of Survivor.
What is your number four?
Well, I think this one is one of the most polarizing seasons because of its very unfortunate core concept.
But I think it is an all-time great season.
It is Survivor Cook Islands, which is the 13th season of the show.
This is famously known as the season of Survivor in which tribes were divided by race.
Now, The notion of a season of Survivor where the core concept is essentially Survivor race wars does not seem like it would lend itself to particularly enjoyable television.
But the effect of it, first of all, they shuffle the tribes after two episodes.
So they kind of abandon that concept right away.
And they're not necessarily like wrestling over the course of the season with which race is best at Survivor.
The effect of it is you have one of the most diverse casts in the history of Survivor.
Because Survivor producers don't want viewers at home to be like, ooh, I hate that Asian tribe.
They don't stack the cast with unlikable people.
It's not that everybody on the season is super likable, as I'm sure you would agree with me there.
But you just have a lot of people who are fun, who are interesting, whose stories haven't been told on Survivor before.
And this season happens to launch the kind of career Survivor arcs of some all-time famous characters, in some cases great Survivor players.
It's your introduction to Parvati Shallow.
It is your introduction to Ozzy, who is in Survivor 50.
It is the introduction of Jonathan Penner who Linda, you and I, I think, agree that he is one of the all-time most enjoyable Survivor players.
There are like weird boots kind of throughout this season.
This has one of the most memorable second boots in the history of Survivor.
And so it's not that every single player on this season is super memorable, but there are a bunch scattered throughout.
And it also introduces Yul Kwon, who is another one of my favorite Survivor players.
Somebody who's kind of calm, strategic approach to the game demonstrated another path to success in Survivor.
That I think has been really good for the game.
Now, I will give you good news, buddy.
I agree with you about this one.
I know you like this season.
This is probably my favorite season.
And it's for the reasons that you said.
Like I think it was very well cast.
It has a couple of really satisfying turns of fate for different people.
There are some moments where I think people who are very smug and unpleasant suddenly find that things are not going for them as well as they thought they were.
People who appear doomed turn out to not be doomed.
And, as you said, I think Yule, as a strategist and as a player, is a super interesting and appealing guy who, I think unfortunately the show immediately decided.
We don't ever want somebody to win that way again.
It started loading it up with more advantages and twists and shifts and stuff like that to try to avoid having people win as much on strategy and steadiness as he did.
But yeah, that's a really fun season.
Very good season.
I am not an Aussie person, but I am, I'm not a Parvati person, but I am a Yule person.
And you're definitely a Jonathan person.
Definitely a Penner person.
That's a fun dude and i think penner is kind of a historically significant survivor player in that.
There are certainly other fairly early seasons where this happens but where a player is able to become kind of a fulcrum of the season in realizing that he's not necessarily in a great position in the game but that he can decide to kind of throw the game in favor of people he enjoys more.
And honestly, what a favor that is.
Exactly.
It's kind of like I'm not well positioned anyway, but at least I can make sure these dopes are not well positioned either.
I love that season for that.
So that is Survivor Season 13, Cook Islands.
I agree with you.
The opening concept of that season is ghastly.
Yes.
But the ripples of it are actually not as bad. bad as you would think.
So that is your number four pick.
What is your number three pick?
Well, my number three pick is it's somewhat similar to Cook Islands in that I think the core concept of the show is somewhat unfortunate, but also doesn't particularly matter to the outcome of the game.
I'm And when I tell you, Linda, I don't know if you've seen this season.
I think I've seen them all.
Okay.
This season treats being a member of Generation X like being a member of the greatest generation and not the generation that literally personified the term slacker.
Essentially, the conceit of the season is like Survivor slightly older people versus slightly younger people.
But they talk a lot about these generational divides that are just incredibly standard to any generational split, where the older people are like the young people don't know what they're talking about with their Pokemon cards and their participation trophies.
But then the actual gameplay is excellent.
And like with Cook Islands, the concept is weak.
The cast is terrific.
Even a lot of kind of survivor archetypes that are typically filled by not terribly nice people here are filled by nice people.
And so you have a bunch of people who are playing a hard game, strategic kind of sophisticated game.
They're assessing all the game theory stuff and the alliances are shifting constantly.
But it's easy to follow, it's good natured.
You don't have the kind of.
It is one of my favorite kind of new era, new school seasons of Survivor.
You know, I will tell you the truth.
I know I've seen this season and yet I don't know a thing about it.
I don't remember any of these.
I mean, that's not true.
I remember a couple of them.
Yes.
Boring.
Yes.
So I can't take issue with anything that you've said.
So we're on a roll that is very interesting in the sense that we have one that I don't like at all, one that I really love and one that I don't really remember.
So we're kind of covering the full range of Survivor seasons here.
Let's move on to your number two.
What is your number two pick?
So my number two pick is season 31.
It is Survivor Cambodia Second Chance.
It is an all-star season, as the title suggests, but it is, I think, one of the best ways to do an all-star season, which is to specifically bring back players who have not won and who have not played three four, five times, the way some of these all-star seasons kind of keep bringing the same players back over and, over and over again.
I think often with all-star players.
All-star players are typically kind of their most interesting, their most hungry and their most sophisticated as players in their second go-round.
And I think this season really demonstrates that.
I think also the structure of how they brought people back really proved beneficial in terms of who wound up on this cast.
They picked 32 former players who had never won the game threw it open to a fan poll.
And I know we were joking about how in the hands of the fans is always a bad idea, but they had a fan poll where they whittled 32 people down to 20.
And what that largely did was Was weed out people Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor and executive producer of Survivor, thought were interesting that nobody actually wanted to see.
And so, no, we're not going to get Troy Zahn.
No, we're not going to get Brad Culpepper.
We're going to get actual fan favorites and people the audience was most excited to see back on the show.
There were a couple of kind of early players I would have liked to have seen in this cast but largely had very few complaints about it.
And then you get a bunch of really hungry, aggressive, thoughtful people.
Players, a mix of people I really love and a couple of people I really don't love.
And just the way the game plays out winds up being enormously beneficial.
There is an episode of this show where one of my favorite players absolutely pantses one of my least favorite players in kind of spectacular fashion.
And unlike a lot of seasons of this era, you don't necessarily get as much of the problem where All the threats get taken out between the merge and the final three, which is a really frustrating issue with New Era Survivor for me.
I have more of a problem with that.
I don't think there's an easy solution to it, but I have kind of more of a problem with that aspect of New Era Survivor than I do with 8 million twists.
Are there seasons with way, way, way, way, way too many twists?
Absolutely.
The biggest problem is when you get down to the end and all of a sudden you're looking at a final three and you're like I don't care about any of these three.
This season does not have that problem.
And I think that helps make it one of the all-time greats for me.
Yeah, this is one where I really like the concept of it.
I really like the idea of bringing people back, particularly since they did reach back pretty far.
In some, They reached back all the way to the first season.
Yeah.
In some cases, they reached back pretty darn far.
And I was happy about that, because one of my complaints about all-star seasons is that they tend to suffer from a lot of recency bias.
Yeah.
And so they'll announce an all-star season.
It'll be 90% people from the last five seasons or something.
Totally.
So I never liked that.
I was happy that they reached all the way back.
However, having said that, I didn't care that much.
And I remember kind of watching this and being like, I don't care that much.
It was fine.
This is on my list of seasons that like are fine.
As you said, there are some people that I really really like who are in this season, who I enjoy watching.
And now a lot of people that I didn't care about and a couple people that I can't stand.
I think you're right that the fans helped to tip this away from Jeff Probst favorite players, who are almost always an exact reverse of my favorite players.
He loves to see alpha dudes going at it.
He really does.
And like legitimately, there's only a couple kinds of ways that women play that I think he has any respect for, which is crazy probably my biggest beef with him.
So I don't care for that.
But as you said, came up with an okay cast in the end.
Okay.
It's a good cast.
People want to watch this season.
That is fine with me.
It's not one of my favorites, but it's also not Pearl Islands.
All right.
After the break we are going to reveal the number one best season of Survivor, according to Stephen and probably not me.
We will see you in a second.
All right.
Welcome back.
It is time for Stephen to reveal what he considers to be the best ever season of Survivor.
Stephen, drumroll, what did you pick?
Well, once again I picked a season that has, I think, a very flawed core concept, but great gameplay, a great bunch of stories kind of interlocking and unfolding throughout the course of the season.
A very satisfying winner.
A lot of kind of Survivor myth-making.
I picked Survivor Heroes vs. Villains, which is Season 20.
Now Survivor has a very weird description of what constitutes a hero and what constitutes a villain.
And in the write-up that's going to go up on NPRorg I have a long kind of breakdown of how weird it is and why.
Like there are several people on this season whose heroism seems to be rooted primarily in the.
You have Colby Donaldson and James Clement, who have never been seen doing anything heroic on the show except sort of proclaim themselves to be heroes, and they're annoyed by the women around them.
But I think one of the interesting things about the season is I found myself rooting for a mix of people who are identified as heroes and people who were identified as villains.
The kind of fungible nature of what constitutes a hero and a villain kind of affects people's arcs in really interesting ways.
I think this is a season that has a bunch of really interesting gameplay and is kind of sits at this perfect fusion of what I like most about old school survivor and what I like most about new school survivor, where it feels like an advanced game.
It feels like it is full of people who are largely playing well.
And, in several cases, people making spectacular terrible moves that blow up in their faces in super interesting ways.
This to me is just a fun season.
And, you know, one thing when I talk about like, What makes a really good season of survivor?
It often just boils down to a cast made up of fun people who play hard.
And to me, it's not that I like every member of this cast.
Several of my least favorite survivor players of all time are on this cast.
The fact that they're kind of hoisted by their own petard over the course of this season is part of what makes it so fun.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting.
I mix this season up always with fans versus favorites, which is a season with a bunch of the same personnel.
Yes.
And Kind of a similar feeling, although obviously, And a similar reputation as an all-time great season.
Yeah.
One of the things I realized as I listened to you say this is that some of these seasons are populated by people who in retrospect and sometimes they have been on Survivor or other reality shows so much now, even after these seasons, right that when i look back at this season, i look at some of these people and i'm like, oh god, parvati.
I'm so sick of looking at parvati, but that's partly because the things she's done since this season right okay, like i can understand how if you just took this season in isolation although i did not enjoy her at the time, i will say that but With some of these people, it's like I can't watch this person again.
I've watched this person a million times.
They keep shoving this person in my face.
That is how I feel about somebody like Russell Hance.
That is how I feel about somebody like even Boston Robb, who I did used to enjoy in his early iterations.
Which is funny because I enjoy him more later as kind of Work-a-day girl dad whose day in the office is playing Survivor.
I think that's right, but I've also had enough, right?
Sure.
I've even had enough of some people I really like, like Seri Fields, who I really like.
I will never have enough Seri Fields.
I am a Tom Westman was a jerk at the end of his original season truther, if I can put it that way.
There's a lot of people here that I just didn't need to see again.
But now even more feel like I wouldn't want to see again.
But you don't like to see J.T. face planting as hard as JT face plants in this season.
I do, but you know, I'll tell you this, buddy.
I, at some point, reached a level where...
No matter what happens to someone, there's just people I don't want to watch on television anymore.
So I get to the point where, unless I really find it fun to watch you, I don't even care if I dislike you and you're going to fail miserably.
It's like the limitations of comeuppance as an attraction to reality television.
At some point, I'm like, You know, the best comeuppance of all is zip it.
The best comeuppance of all is not being on television anymore.
Stay home.
You're not going to be on television anymore because I'm bored with you.
That's enough out of you, coach.
Like, what do you think really constitutes comeuppance for some of these people?
For some of these people, it's not getting to play anymore anymore.
And if you still believe in comeuppance man, give me a live feed of them sitting on the couch going.
I would have been better than this.
I would have been more interesting than this.
They should have cast me.
I think the other thing I will say is that as they go more and more into all-star seasons.
You get the feeling more and more that it's very influenced by relationships that you didn't get to watch and don't know anything about because they take place out in the world.
That is a factor in a lot of all-star seasons, including season 50.
Classic sort of first example of that.
Where I saw it, where I thought it was fascinating, was in the first all-star season they ever did, which involved Rob Mariano and Lex and some other people.
And I thought it was really interesting there because I hadn't seen it before.
But now you feel like, I want to feel like what I'm watching is the result of what I've been shown.
And when you don't know who goes to whose house and who drinks at bars with who...
It feels like, oh, well, I would not have anticipated that because I didn't have the information.
And so the more they go down this hole of essentially it's not a matter of all stars.
It's a matter of casting a bunch of people who already know each other.
I don't care for that as much.
And that started to show up in seasons like Heroes versus Villains and even, to some degree, Fans versus Favorites.
So anyway, I think this is not a bad pick.
It wouldn't be my number one, certainly.
What would be your number one, Holmesy?
Probably Cook Islands would be my number one.
I am also a big defender of Fiji.
Oh, the first half of that show is impossible to watch.
I hear you, bud.
But there is some very good material in that.
See, comeuppance.
Comeuppance is fun.
Also, great winner.
Great winner.
Also, some hilarious.
I mean, speaking of face planting, there's a classic face plant by a person I did not like.
She was fine.
And so that is one that almost nobody likes.
And there is some stuff late in that. season that I don't like.
There's some weird... There's some stuff with dreams in the truck.
There's some stuff with dreams in the truck and all that that I really don't like.
I'm uncomfortable with how that all gets talked about from a couple of different angles, but I am a defender of that season as containing a lot of good elements that I enjoy and having a winner that I very much enjoyed.
I'm a defender of that season, even though I'm well aware of many problems.
The bullying in the first half of that season is like unwatchable.
So if you're going to try that season, start at the merge.
I think that's perfectly fair.
And I suspect you know, one thing that happens is When you do what you did and you go back and you insist upon rewatching the entire thing in every case, which I'm not trying to harp on it buddy, but my goodness, what a thing to decide to do with your precious life.
I think you did an amazing job with this list.
Despite picking some of your choices apart.
You are definitely picking seasons here that I think you have made a very good case for.
And despite the fact that I find this entire endeavor somewhat quixotic.
On your part?
Holmesy, it's my favorite sport.
Somewhat specific?
Survivor is my favorite sport.
I don't know if that's true, man.
Why not wallow in your favorite sport?
And it's just interesting.
It's interesting to watch the way the show has evolved, the way society has evolved around the show, the way the show has and hasn't reflected that society.
I find it super, super interesting.
Well, I'm glad.
It sounds like you put in the work.
And definitely put in the work.
I cannot wait to read the entire thing.
Wait until you see it.
It's like 30,000 words.
Okay.
Okay.
I cannot wait to read it.
I am sure it is wonderful.
And I am sure I will agree and disagree with it only with the utmost respect.
Make sure to check out Stephen's full ranking of all 50 that is indeed five zero seasons of Survivor later this month to see where your favorite season stacked up.
Sign up for our newsletter so you won't miss it.
That's at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter.
We'll also have a link to sign up in our episode description.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here and for being you.
Thank you, buddy.
Unbelievable work on your part.
Unbelievable.
This episode was produced by Hufs of Fathima and Mike Katzeff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello, Come In provides our theme music.
Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.
