Survivor is always experimenting. Sometimes, the results of those experiments tell you not to try this again. That’s what Jeff Probst took away from Survivor Season 49 Episode 11, which featured the return of a classic challenge but with a new twist.
Players had to spell the word “immunity” from the bottom up with individual blocks on a wobbly table stabilized by a rope in their hands. They had to keep the table steady while walking forward and backward to retrieve each block. In this episode, the challenge was changed to the table rotating instead of wobbling back and forth. The spinning was controlled by a rope tied around the players’ waists. The idea was that it would be more difficult, or at least look more dramatic onscreen, but Probst wasn’t impressed by the result. Steven Ramm made relatively quick and easy work of the challenge, as did Sage Ahrens-Nichols, who finished second.
On the On Fire aftershow podcast, Probst said he likes the old version better.
“Even though we have classic challenges, if you can find a way to reinvent them that works, that’s great,” Probst said. “We have failed a couple of times in that we have messed with a great challenge, and I don’t think it was better for the change, but the only way you know that is by trying it.”
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“You can test it with Dream Teamers and all that, but sometimes you just have to put it in the game and watch what the players actually do with it, and then you go, ‘Yeah, we got it right.’ Or, ‘You know what? Let’s go back to the original,’” Probst continued.
The Dream Team is the group of people you see demonstrating the challenges in each episode. Their whole job is to test out challenges before the players take them on. Sweet gig, right? Probst wants to get fans involved in challenge notes.
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“What I would love to do is be able to create an app where you put all of the elements from all of our challenges into the app and let fans go in and say, ‘Have you thought of this?’” the host revealed. “Because I know there are fans right now that would find a new way to create a new challenge. That’s where I’d like Survivor to go. I’d like to get more fan involvement about creating this game design of the game because anybody can do it. There’s no secret to it, and I’d love to make it more inclusive, and maybe that’s something we can pull off in the future.”
On Fire co-host Jay Wolff asked why he thinks the changes didn’t work.
“I think I like the original better,” Probst replied to Wolff and co-host Jeremy Collins. “What was interesting about this was watching what the players would do with the pace, and that is hard to predict because sometimes we do a challenge where everybody slows down, and there’s nothing you can do about it. They’re just going to do a slow-plotting sort of challenge. You’re hoping that somebody desperate infuses some life into it. But I think in this situation, I would say let’s go back to the one that we know and we love, but let’s keep trying new things. None of us are perfect in this. We continue to try things in the same way that I ask questions and then sometimes wish I had phrased it a different way. You got to try something. If it works, do it again. If it doesn’t, try something else.”
Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS
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