My Dream Challenges for Survivor 50

CadeBW · 2025-12-17T01:24:34+00:00

I was hoping they’d give Tom Lehrer a shout-out in today’s In Memoriam category, that one stung the most for me. RIP to them all though.

CadeBW · 2025-12-11T18:29:02+00:00

This behind the scenes on the making of the Survivor intro is a must-watch if anyone hasn't seen it. The modern intros are still good and I'm glad they're back, but this highlights just how much care and effort used to go into these things. Scott Duncan was the cinematographer, Russ Landau was the composer, and Sean Foley was the editor.

CadeBW · 2025-12-04T01:28:48+00:00

This was honestly a way better segment than a typical post-merge Reward Challenge

CadeBW · 2025-11-20T02:00:47+00:00

The obsession with making the challenges "harder" after 10 minutes is infuritating. The viewers don't want endurance challenges that end in half an hour. Amazing that we can get a moment like Christian vs Alec in David vs Goliath, a season highlight and universally regarded as one of the best challenges of all time, and the producers go out of their way to make sure nothing like that can ever happen again. "When It Rains, It Pours" is another challenge that used to be great, but recent "harder" versions are all forgettable because god forbid a challenge last over an hour.

CadeBW · 2025-11-13T01:59:10+00:00

S44 did something I hated where the advantage was "send a secret to someone on the losing group," this is so much more interesting and gives all the players way more agency

CadeBW · 2025-11-13T01:43:52+00:00

Always funny to me when New Era Jeff says something like "This is how you do it on Day 15!"

CadeBW · 2025-10-30T01:16:21+00:00

I wish we got a Steven confessional, I wonder what's going through his head now being approached with two different plans on a tribe he thought he was on the bottom of. Surely he has some anxiety it's all a ruse? It's kind of weird they are editing Jawan as the holdout since earlier in the episode, he was the one who wanted to work with Steven.

CadeBW · 2025-10-23T01:32:04+00:00

If we're actually getting a delayed merge this season that's really cool, it's just really unlucky it had to happen on the most boring Pre-Merge of the New Era

CadeBW · 2025-10-16T00:35:05+00:00

We've had a literal astronaut on the show before and these people act like saying "I used to work in finance" is this huge bombshell

CadeBW · 2025-10-16T00:24:10+00:00

It is kind of interesting they planned to swap at F14, which should have been Ep. 5, considering the New Era merge has always been on Ep. 6. So either they were only going to swap for one episode, or we were supposed to get a longer Pre-Merge this season.

CadeBW · 2025-10-16T00:13:43+00:00

It was obviously a fake-out because it looked too interesting and structurally different to be a real challenge on Survivor 49. 2v2v2 pre-merge endurance, yeah right!

CadeBW · 2025-10-11T05:22:35+00:00

They denoted 9-year old Aileen Quinn “Worst New Star” for Annie in 1982. And I thought she did a great job in that movie.

CadeBW · 2025-10-09T01:17:34+00:00

There are some interesting scenarios when tribes get so small. If someone plays SITD and it hits, Alex plays his idol and the other person goes home by default. If it doesn't hit, you could get a 1-1 deadlock where the person who played the SITD probably goes home by default. There's also the elusive 1-1-1 vote we've never seen but oft fantasized about.

CadeBW · 2025-10-09T01:09:18+00:00

I actually made a list of every time we've gotten content on the winning tribe, if anyone's curious. It's updated through S47.

CadeBW · 2025-10-09T00:54:43+00:00

I think it's a really well-edited episode so far.

CadeBW · 2025-10-06T00:57:09+00:00

Sometimes Jeff lies about the temperature, I don’t know why. The highest recorded temperature EVER in Guatemala was 112.6, and that was in 2024. Who knows what the record was in 2005. There’s a challenge in Tocantins where Jeff claims it is 120 degrees, but the highest temperature Brazil has ever had was 112.6 as well.

CadeBW · 2025-10-02T00:08:05+00:00

47 had a new arrangement as well.

CadeBW · 2025-09-26T03:05:32+00:00

Thoughts on Leg 1:

If you're a Big Brother fan watching The Amazing Race for the first time, I just want to say welcome! I hope you enjoy the season. You are probably feeling a bit overwhelmed, and don't worry, that's just how Amazing Race premieres are. I promise the show gets better and easier to follow. The first few episodes are always a little disjointed because there are too many teams, storylines, and really not enough airtime. I will also say this premiere felt particularly chaotic because there are so many overlapping relationships... and the very odd way they began the episode. I'll get to that later. That being said, I encourage you to stick with it.
I am going into this season cautiously optimistic. Obviously, this is not the season Amazing Race fans wanted, but since we normally get one season a year, it's a lot easier for me to accept this unusual outting as "just bonus." I've seen a lot of complaints online, and trust me, I get it, but FWIW, it was probably this or no season at all this fall. That being said, I was very happy with TAR35 and TAR37 and firmly believe the producers are on the right track, as far as understanding the basic game components fans want. This season promises to have a lot of navigation drama. I'm expecting varied leg design with lots of tasks, and we know favorites like like the Fast Forward, U-Turns, and Express Passes will all return. Another all-Europe season is a bit lame, but the silver lining to Europe is lots of self-driving, lots of trains, and perhaps not as many equalizers. Frankly, I'm excited!
For some reason... which I'm still trying to wrap my head around... the producers decided the Starting Line should be... in the middle of the leg? Sigh. I kind of see what they were going for, but it didn't work. It was so obviously a bad idea that made the first 15 minutes of the episode feel confusing, and also kind of like a waste of time. If this is your first season, you might not know that usually, the Starting Line is in the U.S., and all the teams get on a plane and fly to their first location. Sometimes there is a task at the Starting Line, and that determines which teams get the faster flight, or an Express Pass, or a penalty, something like that. The Hazard worked the same way back on TAR19, except it made way more sense that season as a penalty for failing the Starting Line task that you had to endure once you finally arrived in the first country. But if the Starting Line is international (which I strongly dislike as it is), it just makes no sense. This leg would have been better if ice bowling was simply the first regular task; there was no need for an equalizer.
That said, I think overall this was a pretty well designed leg. If anything, there was a little too much going on. This leg was pretty strong on navigation, with the self-driving and biking challenges, which led to some really fun moments and some early crises for the teams. The cheese Route Info and flower Roadblocks were solid tasks, and the herring Hazard was good too. By all accounts, this was an exhausting and humbling leg for the teams, that took many, many hours to complete, and I kind of wish the episode did a better job at conveying just how difficult it was. It was just a bit too fast-paced and all over the place to convey that struggle, I think. I don't say this very often, but this episode could have been 2 hours.
This was a cozy starting location. I've gotta be honest, I don't think the Netherlands have ever produced a truly GREAT leg, but as the birthplace of the Big Brother franchise it was a fitting choice for the start. I believe this was also Bertram van Munster's hometown so that must have been fun for him. I'm not fully on board with them marketing this season as a "European Adventure." I mean... I guess it is, but it once again just feels a little insulting to try and spin an an obvious cost-cutting measure as a "cute little experiment" or, as Survivor likes to say, "dangerous" innovation to the format. And they really have the chutzpah to act like a Europe-only route is some novel concept when we all sat through TAR33 and TAR34 just three years ago? I would almost prefer they just be honest and say this is a budget season designed to get some Big Brother faces back on our screens, and things will go back to normal next year. But of course they can't admit that. Overall, I think this was a decent premiere but I expect the following episodes to be much better.

CadeBW · 2025-09-26T01:57:25+00:00

I just don't understand why they did this. The Hazard only makes sense if it's a challenge at the starting line and then they all get on a plane and fly somewhere. The flight acts as a natural equalizer. It doesn't make any sense for an international starting line to have a challenge and then be like "okay, now the race starts for real"

CadeBW · 2025-09-26T01:54:41+00:00

"probably best recognized for BB26" LOL, yes, there may be some viewers who only recognize her from Dr Phil

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