What they'll never be able to reproduce is the novelty. Other features of this gilded idol may be failing, but the one thing that cannot be produced (via magic or trickery or money) is any significant excitement to parallel the drawing power the show had in its first season.
As someone who has watched the first two and last four seasons of the show, I've seen the extent of their titanic struggles against mediocrity. So far as television programs go, this one has become the ghost of a dead horse the most. What's happened, in actuality, is the world has gotten older. Survivor Borneo belongs to a different era, and cannot be explained to anyone who didn't watch it. Even those who happened to see the show typically cannot physically watch it again without feeling ill. That's how much things have changed.
What used to be interesting is what we do not get to see - the most convincing part of the illusion: the survival of competing groups of castaways in an exotic place. I would be the last person to suggest that it was convincing at the time. Still, it was somehow effective, whether your imagination covered the rough bits or whether you just watched slack-jawed in a daze. Since those days, the survival aspect has been abandoned and the show has become somewhat honest enough with itself to suggest that gamesmanship is its primary quality.
This has led to a type of self-awareness on the part of the audience that the entire thing is a sham. Meanwhile the host and producers and editors and cameramen and actors lead us along. winking mischievously. It's all in good fun after all. I used to watch for the novelty, the women, and the challenges - roughly in that order. Now I watch primarily out of habit, and noticed the women have gotten more prolifically goodlooking. Compare Borneo to Redemption Island, and weep.
Since then, the novelty wore off and the challenges became pitifully unoriginal – but all of this is expected. I say all this that you might know I am not some dunderheaded blogger, sloppily opining on issues that do not matter. When I started watching Survivor again two years ago, I wondered that I had never noticed how jarringly scripted it is. This current season is uncanny, but is hardly unique for being generally implausible.
Boston Rob's game to this point indicates that even he is a little taken aback, but eager to play along nonetheless. Meanwhile for some reason there is never any way to get a sense at how things unfold, because the show is always darting away from one incident towards the next dramatic encounter. Some of these scenes are instigated, some are clearly invented, and somehow there is still time for pointless highjinks and general chicanery.
Whenever there's a competition challenge the editing is cranked up and the production looms over your head daring you to believe that this is neck-and-neck stuff. At this point the show is trying to make so many points, and doing such a sloppy job of it, that my mind generally reels. This show has a way of overplaying subtlety (mathematically unsubtle things presented unsubtly) that should be taught in our finest institutions and which may solve many of our current crises.
What really sells the scripting idea is that not all participants have to play along. Sure, all of them 'have to', but those who don't either don't fit in and get voted out or become zany eccentrics and get voted out or kept in, depending on some unknown equation between the camera lens and your television screen. And the young women stroll around looking nice, and you wonder how the scene is not as lecherous and depraved as you'd imagine.
Then there are moments, where you wonder is it just you or did things get a little creepy in that pseudo-paternalistic way that sociologists and feminists and psychologists (especially combinations of the three) are always talking about? The latest was in the last episode when Jeff added to a recitation of snacks, "...and NON alcoholic beverages, Natalie Portman's little sister." and everyone giggled. You wonder: is that the law where they're filming, or are they trying to emphasize that the cute, too-young-to-drink girl with the dancer's body is too young to drink?
Either way who can be bothered? Running a show like that must be hard enough without drunk contestants, even if you have it down to a formula.
Here's a free addendum, in case you wanted to see a larger wall of text. I have heard on various chat services that Survivor: Redemption Island's Stephanie was essentially Sarah Silverman's younger sister. I see that. It is remarkable. But has nobody seen that Natalie Portman's little sister is also in the show? She is. It is also remarkable.
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