I admit it: I am obsessed with CBS's "Survivor." Every Wednesday, I rush home from my summer internship to catch the opening seconds of the introduction sequence. I get goose bumps as the "Survivor" theme song plays while newly ousted Jenna's teary face glances toward the camera as the castaways' names flash across the screen.
I cheer when Greg makes a call on the coconut phone and slam my fist on the table every week those crazy islanders decide not to vote Richard off the island. I even enjoy 3-D Jalapeno Cheddar Doritos during the show because the commercials with the chips flying and bouncing around have finally gotten to me.
This summer, with "The X-Files" and "The Practice" in reruns, "Survivor" is undoubtedly the best entertainment on television. Apparently, an estimated 24.5 million Americans decided that the show is America's new Favorite Pastime when they tuned into last week's show instead of NBC's baseball All-Star Game.
Even the media seems obsessed with the phenomenon of "reality television" -- the esteemed New York Times has had at least two articles about "Survivor" in the past week alone. But, those labeling "Survivor" as "reality television" have completely missed the point.
There's nothing realistic about "Survivor." No one actually believes that a contestant on the island might die in the Malaysian jungle. Real people stranded on deserted islands do not usually have camera crews, pre-fabricated television sets and deliberately planned competitions and challenges to keep them company.
What makes "Survivor" so ingenious is that every second of every show has been methodically calculated, plotted and edited by the show's producers to result in an almost-perfectly executed dramatic arc that could never arise out of simple raw footage of 16 people sitting around on a beach. While I normally complain about intrusive audience manipulation in movies, the fact that "Survivor" is so excessively-designed and controlled makes it great entertainment.
Sure, once in awhile the show's producers go too far. Every time the show's host, Jeff Probst, announces, "The tribe has spoken," he's asking to be punched. The fact that Jenna's kids did not even bother to send her a video-greeting card last Wednesday was heart-breaking enough without the nauseating piano music suffocating the incident. But overall, the show's cheesy competitions, attempts to spark relationships between characters and editing decisions that insure viewers will like some castaways and hate others all make "Survivor" compelling.
And, despite my initial expectations, the most impressive part of all is that the show has become more and more gripping with each episode.
How has CBS managed this? Every week, the show is completely different; there are new challenges, new alliances, and another person voted off the island. When things looked like they might start to get monotonous, the two competing tribes merged into one last week as the show passed its halfway point. Things cannot possibly get boring if CBS continues to cook up archery competitions, obstacle courses and slaughtered chickens.
The fact that shows like the painfully boring and terrible "Big Brother" and MTV's "The Real World" lack these features makes "Survivor" the unrivaled king of the genre. Few people want to listen to an exotic dancer and a racist political activist have everyday, inane arguments on "Big Brother" when they could be watching Sean and Jenna have a luxurious lobster dinner on a mysterious sandbar off the coast of a deserted Malaysian island. The well-kept secret of "Survivor" is that in reality, it's not "reality television" at all.
