The Best Game Show of All-Time is Now On Netflix

Yes, the best of ALL TIME. Unashamed, I spent the past 48 hours of this weekend watching seasons 20 and 28 of Survivor, the only two that were released on Netflix last week.

Survivor began its journey in 2000 and in the past 20 years, they have had 40 seasons of the show. In my 21 years, I’ve seen TV game shows come and go. Take a show like Deal or No Deal or Wipeout— both shows were wildly popular but fell off. Survivor has never fallen off in its 20-year history.

For those of you who don’t know what Survivor is, stop reading now. How lame are you? Just kidding, but seriously you have no idea? I’ve been watching this show since I can remember. I used to beg my parents to stay up later so that I could watch with them. I was always so fascinated by the way the contestants teamed up and how they would eventually clash. The show is essentially a social experiment to see how groups of people will get along when thrown on an island with limited resources and controlled competition in place to cause drama. It’s really a genius idea.

Contestants of Survivor pack up and head to an island for 40 days and try to survive. To start, the contestants are broken up into tribes. In season 20 there are two tribes which consisted of the Heroes team, staffed with past fan favorites from the show. The other tribe was the Villain tribe which was staffed by players that the fans disliked.

The two tribes live separately, but they compete in challenges that grant them rewards to make surviving in the wild easier. These ‘award’ challenges are vital because winning them can help you earn things like a shelter for your camp or tools to make a fire which goes a long way when you are stranded on an island.

Then there are the immunity challenges. Immunity saves your team from having to go to tribal council, where one team member is voted off based on how the team votes. Winning the challenge grants your team immunity and safety from being voted off at least for a few days.

Once there are 11 people remaining on the island, the tribes merge into one conjoined tribe and play until there are two players remaining. The last nine players to be voted out serve as the jury and they vote who they think should be the winner. At this point in the game, there are no longer team immunity challenges so everyone must go to tribal council. Instead, the contestants play in individual immunity challenges to win immunity from being voted out. If you do not win, you face being voted out.

Winning a challenge is not the only way to win immunity, although. Throughout the game, tribes are given clues in the form of a riddle. These clues hint at the location of hidden immunity idols. These idols allow you to block any votes against you and stop them from counting. But here's the trick: you need to play the idol before the vote is read. The trick is that if you suspect you might get voted out then you have to use it before you know. This can lead to a false assumption that you will be voted out leading to wasting an immunity idol. This is a common occurrence on the show and one that has led to swing the momentum heavily.

The hardest part about Survivor is that you need to make alliances within your own tribe and within the final tribe. Although, if you are wanting to win the game show and it’s one million dollar prize, you must be willing to break alliances and tell lies. This can lead to jury members disliking you and voting against you in the final council. This is why you need to play your cards right at every step of the game.

If you want to watch the seasons without knowing the winner, STOP READING NOW.

I mean it this time.

In season 20, Heroes vs. Villains, one of the contestants originally on the Villains tribe named Russel, screwed himself out of victory for that exact reason. Russell was by far the best survivor in the game. But unfortunately, he did not play his cards right and he burned too many bridges along the way by sabotaging members of his alliances. In the end, no one wanted to vote for Russell because he was too much of a backstabber and not discreet about it. He wasn’t sneaky enough and blatantly burned bridges to get to the final. I do believe Russell played the best game in terms of deceiving his opponents and making the right strategic moves to get to the end of the game. It just so happened that his style of play was not what the final tribal jury decided to be worthy of a million dollars.

In season 28, the winner Tony Vlachos did an amazing job of burning bridges and playing his cards to keep himself in the game. He made a lot of strategic lies that were not viewed as backstabbing, which is what lost Russell season 20. Moreover, it definitely helped that he was able to locate two immunity idols which would prevent him from being voted off. One of the idols Tony found had special powers which allowed him to use it after the votes were read, but he could only use it with five players remaining. Tony used the idol to bluff the tribe so that they wouldn't vote him off when four players remained. Tony knew he couldn’t use it, but the rest of the group thought he would use it so they did not vote for him. This move was exactly what Tony needed to win and he got the job done.

If you’re looking for something to do over winter break, I suggest cozying up on the couch and watching Survivor. Hopefully, more seasons will be released but I think that they only released two seasons to see if people would watch. I think that the feedback will be great and a lot of people will head to Netflix to watch Survivor. I mean, I really hope that people do because if I don’t get to watch a new season soon, I might go crazy.