This post isn't going to be a very positive review of Survivor 48. And before I dive into those reasons, I feel compelled to frontload some praise. This is an amazing time to be a Survivor fan. Seasons 45, 46, and 47 were all amazing. The new era has finally caught its stride, we have 90 minute episodes, and the casts are incredibly fun. Survivor 48 is the worst season since 44, but I'm not saying the new era is bad here, I'm almost saying the opposite. I'm disappointed with Survivor 48 because of how high quality the show has been recently.

When you boil it all down, a Survivor season only needs two things: a good cast and a good boot order. Throw in any bullshit twist, any location or any theme, if the cast is good and the good characters stick around, the season will be good. The new era is stellar at casting, Survivor 48 included. But God, when you reflect on the boot order, it's terrible.

Pre-merge we lost Stephanie, Kevin, Justin, Thomas, Bianca, Charity, and Sai. It's subjective whether they were good characters or not, but these guys were here to play. I mean, maybe not pizza man Justin, but I digress. Imagine Thomas and Bianca at the merge together, the games trajectory would be entirely different. Sai, Kevin and Stephanie would have been huge characters had they stuck around longer.

The obvious point that I'm getting at is that the post merge players were senile. It's been a while since Survivors seen such stagnant gameplay. The underdogs like Mary, Mitch and Star were completely ineffective at playing the game. The dominant alliance, Joe, Eva, Kyle, Shauhin, were all perfectly happy kumbayaing their way to the end. Nobody around to spark chaos, nobody around to sow dissent.

I am not discrediting their gameplay by the way. I literally have a blog post about Joe's strategy being the optimal Survivor strategy. Frankly I'm thrilled to be proven right again. The huge issue is that if you want good TV, these dominating players have to be charismatic and entertaining. I personally found Joe and Eva to be extremely tiring and not very eloquent narrators. Amazing people, good players, not entertaining TV.

Who wants a counterexample? Everyone loves a good counterexample. Season 45 was dominated by the Reba Four. Their opposition was quite honestly pathetic. Dee and her gang basically had the win handed to them. But I loved 45. I loved Drew's abrasive personality and insightful confessionals. I loved Austin and Dee's showmance. I loved Julie's bizarre outbursts. This dominating alliance of four people was constantly bickering, backstabbing eachother, and all had their own games as their number one priority. It doesn't matter that they're dominating, their personalities made good TV.

Survivor 48 has a lot of high points. The Kyle and Kamilla duo is so fun. I'm a sucker for a dynamic duo and Kyle and Kamilla deliver that hard. David was also an extremely bright spot in the cast and was consistently hilarious. Kyle is a fantastic winner, probably the best winner in the new era, and it'll be interesting to see him play in Survivor 50.

Overall, Survivor 48 is on the bottom half of new era seasons. Not really because anything bad happens, but because basically nothing happens for like 4 episodes in a row post merge. I rarely find Survivor episodes boring and I was feeling that bit with this.

Here's my new era season rankings up to this point, cause why not, I've never done this before:

1. 46
2. 47
3. 45
4. 42
5. 43
6. 48
7. 44
8. 41