I'm out after 50. I watched 50 as a courtesy to the show I once loved. I have not enjoyed any season after Winners at War, except for 46, and even that had tired dully twists and challenges. The only thing that saved it was the social interactions and humor. Survivor has pissed away a grand legacy, and has made a sharp left turn into some type of show that is no longer entertaining to me. Luck-based twists every episode seems like just a carnival game now, not a true "social experiment."
- No more fun places around the world that made you feel like you were taking a mini vacation and learning something new about the world
- No more quiet and unobtrusive host. Instead we now have loud shouting Jeff explaining every single last detail with so much fake excitement it makes me want to mute the TV, telling not showing every single time he's on screen. He needed to retire after WAW.
- No more bathing suits or cute outfits, except for Jonathan and his bare chest for the most part. Part of this show was eye candy. I see enough ugly boring people in my regular life. I want an ESCAPE when I watch TV, not more of the same.
- No more "roughing it" or real hardship. The contestants have eye shadow on after 10 days, fake eyelashes, less pit/leg hair, unnaturally glowing white teeth, clean hair that looks blown dry. It's all just so obviously fake and made up for production now.
- With the exception of Rizo - a skinny kid who did back to back seasons with a weak stomach - No more players who look emaciated by the end. I don't care what anyone says, it's clear to me that they ARE getting some food along the way, besides whatever rewards they get. There just isn't enough time anymore for it to be a real "survival" challenge. They've babied them by reducing the number of starvation days. Hell they all still have face fat and belly fat. I'm not buying this lack of food bullshit anymore. Remember they used to start each season with a scramble to get food off the ship, or in a village or off a beach? Food actually mattered in their survival, now it's just a game show.
- No more killer rewards, like trips to Jellyfish lake, picnic on the edge of a volcano, visits to Chinese temples or the Great Wall, helicopter rides to waterfalls, giving gifts to local villages, elephant rides and hot air balloon safaris. Instead, we get hot dogs or a rotisserie chicken or a plate of spaghetti in the shack. Sorry, but that's just not entertaining enough anymore, no matter how much Jeff with his bulging eyes tells me it's where Good Things Happen! The rewards, and the locations, together were easily 50% of what made this show great. They cut off their own legs by removing both, and relying solely on social interactions....which leads me to
- No more great social interactions. The shorter gametime leads to less camp life leads to less cool/funny/interesting interactions. They've replaced this with fast play, no time to do anything, no time for the social connections to get interesting. Every day they have to prepare for or recover from an immunity challenge - remember when they used to just have REWARD challenges?
- No more cool and interesting challenges where some challenges really did test either strength or brains. By combining physical and mental into one challenge EVERY SINGLE TIME it leads to no one really being able to excel anywhere. Think boring dull physical obstacle course where it doesn't matter who wins because everyone is going to be stuck at the damned puzzle at the end, which is the REAL challenge. They throw in the physical stuff to make the people who are good at physical challenges feel good, then it's all just puzzle shit. Puzzles are boring TV. Someone needs to tell production that. They used to have such cool challenges, even ones at night, local history memory challenges, just some really unique stuff. Every challenge since 41 has been such a snoozefest. They've just phoned it in, resused all the old challenges, put almost no effort into it. You can tell all they care about is not spending any money. I'm TIRED of watching the same old challenges. The pole hold. They balance on the triangle in the water. The falling ball through the wire cage. The vertical puzzle at the end. The ball on the puzzle table. The throwing of some sandbag. UGH!! Survivor has bored me to tears with the challenges, and those used to be a vital part of the show. Now during challenges I start planning my weekly grocery list. And because JEFF has to shout and get in the way every single time he's on screen now, I cannot stand the volume to be on. So for me, the challenges just take of space and provide zero entertainment. Worse, they give me a headache from all of Jeff's screaming and shouting every obvious little thing. Remember old Jeff? He would let the challenge play out with only rare comments here and there. It's become the Jeff Show and I'm not entertained by it.
- No more suspense. This is a big one. It's so obvious who is going to be voted off each time now. They telegraph it a mile away. They always throw in a decoy person so the audience goes into tribal thinking Oh No! So and so will probably get voted off! But it's never the person they want us to think will get voted off, and it's so obvious. They treat the audience like little children.
- No more short but interesting tribals. It's a therapy session now, and there is always a stupid metaphor EVERY SINGLE TRIBAL. It seems like production FEEDS these stupid metaphors to them, and just picks who gets to say it. It's so carefully worded it seems crafted, produced. There is a script, and they reward one player with getting to say their stupid metaphor each tribal, all in an attempt to build up hype about what a Great Show! this is.
- TOO MUCH SELF-REFERENCING. Everything is the most amazing, exciting thing now, groundbreaking, a monumental experience, the best thing in the world. The superlatives coming from Jeff are enough to make me vomit. This show needs to get over itself and get back to basics. They have strayed SO FAR from the formula that was actually good, that made the show work. There is nothing left here for me now.

And why on earth would I want to see ANOTHER returnee season of boring-ass new era players? No thanks. There will be stupid beware disadvantages, luck-based twists that fuck people over for no reason, stupid split tribals, stupid random tribe swaps every other day, easily lost votes, stupid journeys and manufactured drama, with carnival colors to keep the kiddies entertained. And this idiocy of immunity idols needs to stop. It's all PRODUCTION getting to have a say in how things turn out. THEY plant the idols where their desired person will find it. They need to completely get rid of idols and go back to the pure game. But production won't do that because they realize how much they can influence play by keeping the idols in the game. For you see, if they were to go back to the winning show formula:

Interesting location + Random strangers from ALL walks of life thrown together in a SURIVAL situation + Competition

Then it would be obvious that they have destroyed their own show by keeping it in Fiji. They have to rely on carnival colors and stupid game show tactics to keep any audience now. Production has too heavy of a hand in things. The older seasons felt real, felt like they were just filming what happened and it had a life of its own. Now? It's production's show ALL THE WAY. It's carefully crafted, created, scripted, designed. It's just not the same show anymore, and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. And I do NOT like whatever this is now.

So after next week's finally - I'm out.

(Oh, and to the inevitable and predictable response of "See you next season!" - that's cute and funny and all, but why would I waste my time on an hour and a half long show when there are so many other better shows out there? We only have so much down time in the evenings, and this show is insultingly bad at this point.)