Survivor Themes: Lets Talk About It Live ft

0:09 So [Music] so [Music] [ __ ] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the nullifier tank where we've got the tnt takes for you on survivor i had so much fun talking to this guest of mine here that we're going to have here the first guest for the offseason it's going to be russell muscle tv i've been able to do a little bit of content with you i think i've maybe had a little bit of a cameo in two of your videos recently you've been on my podcast when survivor 42 was playing so i thought you know there's no better person to bring in and russell to talk about the topic that we're going to be talking about today which is survive the themes but before we get into it russell how's things been things are

1:29 Good any chance i get to talk about survivor you know i want to show up to this a lot of good ideas for some future themes i think we're also going to be debating some older themes what worked what didn't work what we want back it's gonna be a good night talk survivor chris yeah well and the way what i like about this because we're not coming in here recapping an episode we're not you know sort of constricted to the episode specifically or what happened we can actually just go quite broad on this one we can get people in the live also to take part of the conversation and ask their own things if they want to get you know involved and i'm excited i'm really excited to talk about it you would have seen i've had a couple of the survivor theme icons on the thumbnail for this as well there's even a few international themes that we might bring up and i'll run it past you i know international will go over your head to a big degree but you know we'll talk about it and i guess there's no better place to start than you know what do you think of survivor themes as a whole and the direction that the show has gone into recently which is basically to remove themes as a whole and now just it's survivor 41 42 43 and so forth yeah we've dropped the four and we've kept the one for sure season 41 season 42 and it looks like for the near future we're just sticking to that i'm not too sure how i feel about it actually because i think a theme can add a lot of good things to a season especially in the marketing the preseason

2:49 Getting us super fans excited and i don't know if there was much there for oh 41 42 when you get really high up in those numbers it might just get a little too repetitive i don't know what do you think i think it has a massive effect on how the game is being played right now and i think that past winners may not even have won their season if the theme didn't apply let me let me sort of entertain the idea nick winning david versus goliath at the end he had a massive spill to the jury about how he was the david going up versus the goliath at the end and that i think swayed a few people where they were like that's the theme of the season jeff really leaned heavily into the david vs goliath theme and they're like let's give you know jeff what he wanted let's let david beat goliath in the end and that's how i think he kind of made a case around that i don't think it's the only thing that made him win but i do think that we're missing that opportunity for these bigger storylines to play out going into these seasons yeah and it might be a spicy hot take to start things off but i think even though david versus goliath is one of my favorite seasons of all time everyone agrees it's one of the best seasons i think the theme of itself was a miss and it could have ended really bad for the season right away you're cutting off half the cast okay you're not you're the underdogs so then half the cast you're like the villain

4:09 You're the people we're trying to beat so like you said that was a big reason why nick won and it helped to win but it also made the goliath started off in a worse spot so we're right it kind of adds a little bit of an off balance to start of a season so there is that to it but i think there was a big part of winners at war everyone was so hyped for the marketing behind that heroes versus villains yeah you can talk whatever you want about cyber game changers that's a crazy name game changers so i think moving forward i don't know how survivors gonna do without the themes especially because way back in the day there wasn't themes there was survivor africa survivor china all these different places obviously we're in fiji now so yeah that's kind of my thoughts on that yeah no i agree with you 100 and just going into the live here we've got a few people dropping in now flynn masters got a great channel as well who covers survivor asking where you can buy the t-shirt so if you want to plug where people can buy the t-shirt let them know i got t-shirts subscribed to russell muscle i got buffs russell muscle survivor awesome right now it's just one-of-a-kind stuff but if you guys want to want to support the channel maybe i'll maybe i'll let it happen yeah i'll have to talk to you about the buff afterwards i like i really like the buff that's awesome you get the customer above dolores i promise you we will be talking about that it is definitely on the agenda she's

5:29 Asking which themes would you like to see that have not been done by any survivor network i've got a few ideas christian gal also a great support of the channel welcome back to the live stream yeah so it's gonna be it's gonna be good so i guess you know this kind of leads into you mentioned the whole you know david vs goliath it was a season that i really enjoyed i enjoyed it for the cast more so than the theme itself but the theme have has been used in international versions of the show as well it had a different name though it was called champions versus contenders and it actually came out before david vs goliath the first champions versus contenders so you can also say that maybe the u.s saw that and they thought we'd take a little bit of that idea and put our own spin on it you know no ideas are completely new these days i think different shows copy each other all the time but one of the things that's really funny for me with the international seasons champions versus contenders is that a lot of the times the champions were the favorites and were people that they brought back that were very successful in life but they were potentially previous sports stars i think like danny for the previous season people that were well known so the fans got more behind the champions than the contenders where i think with david vs goliath it ended up playing the other way around where people were wanting the underdog to win i gotta ask so for the international champion versus contenders most the time do the champions win or the contenders champions

6:50 And i might be wrong because i my international memory is not the best was russell hands on one of those seasons yes so you know the funny thing with russell is that you know he's been begging australian survivor for so long and a lot of people will listen to him because he has a respected name some people hate him some people love him it's very controversial i always i lean towards the fact that he is a legend of the game he has changed the game i respect what he's done in the game now do i think he's the best player ever do i think he should have won those seasons no but back in the day i thought so because i was still immature in my own viewing and i was a lot younger and i couldn't understand how he didn't win the season but now really understanding the social aspect of the game i fully understand why he didn't win it but yeah he has got a very bad view and i think he's been poisoning some of his audience against australian survivors saying it's not the real thing but my argument is that hey these things go on for 50 days now like which survivor's really the real survivor when you get 26 days versus 50 days but that's a debate for a completely different podcast and maybe we'll talk about that in the future but i want to go into i guess the themes that you liked and the themes that you didn't like what do you think you know survivor hit out of the park for themes so far and what do you think like listen i wouldn't care to see this theme again i guess in the future okay right off the bat we gotta say things like heroes versus villains boom

8:11 Winners at war boom brain versus braun versus beauty that's a boom those are locks those are awesome themes and then you gotta stretch a little bit farther and a little topic that not many people talk about i think is not so much the theme of a season but more so like building the atmosphere building the settings think more of a pearl islands with the pirate theme or even survivor palau with the war theme i really like that and i think that'd be a good idea for the new era where maybe keep the numbers but build the setting or the tribal council the sets around a theme and i think that would work really well yeah well you bring up a good point because for me personally i've been saying for quite a while like i'm like when it came back for season 41 i'm not gonna lie i was it was kind of really cool to see them back on fiji but i've been getting tired of the same backdrop for season and season out and again i feel like if you're not going to change the location of where the game is being played try and add something different with the theme and make it kind of feel different like there's something cool about the season that's different you know like one of the themes for me that i think people are like very 50 on this theme some people love that some people hate it i lean towards i like it because two of my favorite players got to the end it was the most dominant performance by two players ever and i think that made the season boring as ghost island i really enjoy the theme ghost island i

9:31 Think ghost island would have been even better if it was a returning season where players were out there and they had the opportunity to right the wrongs like imagine eliza finding the stick again it would have been hilarious that would have been amazing i saw something the other day you know what i do scrolling through the survivor reddit someone talked about how amazing it would have been if they saved the ghost island twist for something like winners at war now that would cause a whole another thing of problems because those episodes need to be longer but i like that idea of using the ghost island theme reversing the curse with those same players like that would break the internet that would break the survivor community my issue is like it gets to the point with a season like that it was a spooky season it got a little gimmicky can you do it something like that again like it was a really good season really one-off but do you think they could pull off a ghost island too i don't think the appetite is that high for production to bring it back in the immediate but i will say that if we reach season 50 and you've got like a legendary season with some great players coming back to play the game for me it makes sense that you want people back who understands the history of the show so that when they get something or something gets played differently like it just means that much more like i would love to see someone get the opportunity to come back and try

10:51 Again like imagine like a dream with some of the advantages that she didn't get to play or must play you know she gets back and she gets one of those things back it has a history where fans will look at it and say oh okay this might play out differently this time and in that sense i think it could happen but i kind of think there's a few themes out there that they probably would want to bring back before that just wanted to jump back here on the live flynn masters is saying that we should get you to watch survivors of africa and flynn i have been working on him off of off air before we got onto the podcaster system we need to get you into some of the international versions of the show and we've also got esteban here saying great pod jeans keep up the good work thanks esteban i appreciate it so yeah so i guess we're talking about themes you know the ones that work the ones that didn't work for me personally i think one of the themes i've always been very 50 on and if i had to say one that didn't really for me doesn't work because i feel like it's an unfair theme for new players coming into the game is fans versus favorites and i know a lot of people love fans faces versus favorites how do you feel about fans versus favorites because i kind of feel like automatically i don't care about any of the newcomers i want one of my favorites to win plus i feel like it's just so lopsided because these people have played the game once or twice before they're so far ahead of the game when it comes to winning challenges knowing what to expect from a production standpoint they know how to game the system and they're probably

12:11 Going to be less likely to play ball with production because this might be their only second chance they get well first of all if you're going to cast a fans tribe that's not really fans of survivor no throw it away right away but i agree with you a lot and it kind of is the same point i had about survivor david versus goliath that season itself is amazing that cast is amazing but i really think that theme could have been a big miss same thing with fans versus favorites we can't deny micronesia everything that happened there is crazy the second one not so much but i think a big reason why caramoan wasn't that good was because of fans versus favorites the whole theme behind that micronesia was good despite of fans versus favorites i think that's the kind of big difference there and i agree with you that's not a not a good theme i don't want to see back but what do you think about blood versus water interesting so blood versus water for me we just had to play off yeah both versions and i'll talk about that we've just had it play out also there's a third version of it that played out an australian survivor the latest australian survivor was a blood versus water season where they had four returning players i think maybe even a bit more yeah four returning players so they had centered east from the us obviously they had three other players from australia come into the game and for me again it's kind of that whole thing about it being lopsided because spoiler alert the returning

13:31 Players do extremely well even though they're outnumbered there's only four of them we see this all the time a player comes back you know they're going to do well they understand the game people are in awe of them because they're like i want to be your friend you know you know other legends of the game or other favorites of the game you know they want to hang out after the game so they've got this like aura that puts them ahead and it's even happened in big brother like in big brother we had seasons where returning players have come back and do extremely well in big brothers so i don't like that too much but to come back to the us one which most people will be more familiar with and how that played out i like the idea of blood versus water but i like it for returning players i don't like it for new cars so i'm less interested in you playing with your brother for instance if you get on their russell or your sister if you've a problem i have a brother sister so i can't do that sorry okay well let's say let's say if you had to watch me go on then and you've never known who i was and i go out there with my brother my sister who cares who cares about me who cares about my family right but seeing it play out i guess when it's returning players like for instance when tyson went to go play with his now wife when aerys came ba or iris came back and played with his brother vitas so yeah so that type of dynamics i quite enjoyed tina and her daughter like it was cool to see people that i've seen on the show before and to see how different their family members are and i also like the fact that it does bring an extra element to the game where now you've got to not just think for yourself you've

14:51 Also got to think for your family members out there so i like it overall but more for returning players how do you feel about it yeah i agree i loved the first time i think they did it too quickly for san juan del sur now obviously i can't talk in the international the big problem with when you do a blood versus water with all new players first of all you're right i don't care about you and your family i care about you chris but in general you know i don't care about anyone's family but the big thing is in survivor in any of these shows they want to cast these over-the-top personalities these people who are gonna pop on television the problem is it's gonna be hard to find two people families friends that pop on television together so you either find one really awesome player and one boring person or two kind of like mid people and that's not good tv either way so i think i agree i want to see it again maybe season 50 season 55 down the road we have like rob play with his kid all these players again but yeah that's my thoughts too i saw i saw some pictures of dom and his son the other day and i was like ah survivor in training for the future jake here my co-host for survivor saying mixing newbies and returnees is not a good idea unless it's blood versus water so it seems that he is on the same page as us sandy is saying that fans love fans favorite because of the favorite stripe and micronesia people don't love caramel

16:11 Because of the favorites are not really favorite and i think you brought you brought that point up a little bit earlier now talking about you know the themes that i love like a theme that i like personally i'm really gutted we have not been able to see this again i love yours versus villains it's my i know it's the boring answer just like tony is my favorite when people are like of course he is of course heroes versus villains is your favorite season you know up there with kargeon that's like cargill best newbie season heroes vs villains for me best you know returning season we've not seen it play out again and i've always had this sort of opinion that maybe the reason we don't see heroes versus villains these days is because we don't really have that many villains that have played the game in recent times and that a lot of people now that play the game they've got a social media following prior to season 20 social media wasn't a big thing so you didn't really care if you pissed people off that much like you know you could be this big villain it wasn't going to hurt you weren't going to get cancelled outside of the game now people have got to be worried a lot about a lot more other things that's not just game related and maybe that's taken away but 41 and 42 have given me hope because i feel like we've had some great villains play the game in the last two seasons it's been one of the positives of the new era for me personally how do you feel about heroes versus villains and do you think that we ever do get to see a second season why do you think they're holding off so long on giving us heroes versus villains too that was

17:31 Magic in a bottle i remember exactly where i was watching that promo like i was hyped like that was kind of heroes versus villains that i don't know fans versus favorites two heroes versus villains is what turned me into a survivor super fan so of course that's gonna be one of my favorite seasons as well but i think almost in a way jeff and the producers are scared to do it again it works so well it's so widely loved by the entire community that can you hit magic in a bottle twice and i really don't know if you can with that great cast probably the best cast of all time other than winners at war you can debate but that's the problem with it right can you duplicate the magic that was survivor heroes versus villains i don't think you can and that's why i don't think it will happen again i would love to see it happen again with this new era all these villains coming in omar was a great example of it season 41 you had chan you had ricard would you well we're going to talk about future themes and near the end but would you prefer season 50 to be heroes versus villains 2 or survivor legends whatever it ends up being for me personally and it's a great question i would prefer ford to be heroes versus villains too because for me to do survival legends feels like the end of the show and i badly don't

18:52 Want the end of the show to be season 50. i think jeff is doing everything in his power to tank the show with him at this point like i'm not happy with what jeff is doing with the show i just don't think he you know and it saddens me to say this because you've got to understand i'm a bit older than you i grew up watching survivor from season one and i've watched it live so my first ever episode of survivor was the merge episode for season one and then i watched it live all the way from there i was like 10 years old or something like that back then and i've loved the show since the beginning i was always a very big fan of jeff but i really feel like jeff is going in a direction that i don't appreciate currently with the show and it's got nothing to do with the diversity and bringing more people of color into the game i know a lot of people are scared to talk about not being happy with the direction of the show because they kind of feel like it's being bundled into one conversation for me it's not that i think diversity is good i don't care who they cast as long as they're good cast casting choices and that they are going to be entertaining i'll watch the show and i'll enjoy it i hate the format that he's messing up the amount of twists that he's bringing in that is ruining the show so i'm very fearful of that if legends of season 50 it is because we're just tapped out of ideas of what we can do where i feel like if heroes versus villains ii were to happen at season 50 that means that we that yeah like heroes versus villains one was season 20

20:12 So there could be another 20 seasons after this you know what i mean so for me i personally think harris's villains too should come back i'm wondering if game changes was the season that finally made them decide we can't do euros versus villains two because they were super ambitious with game changers they tried to make this big season of these are the people that changed the game forever but we had none of the players there we had a few but little players there you know they were outnumbered by players that didn't do anything and i think that maybe the backlash that they got for that season from fans and people being very critical of the choices they made in that cast may have done what you just said may have made them retract to a place where they thought okay no it's too ambitious to do euros this is villains too which for me doing heroes villains isn't as ambitious and if the second season isn't good i'm not i'm never going to hate the first one the first one's always going to be brilliant so i feel like it's a it's an easy way to bring people back as well like if you hear our survivor is doing another euros versus villain season people who've left the franchise will come back that watch the back then to see if it if it can be magic in a bottle twice and you say it can't happen tony won twice it can happen might tony's a unicorn like that's completely different i agree though one season that we haven't one theme we haven't talked about yet is survivor second chances what are your thoughts yeah so i loved second

21:32 Chances like it's for me personally one of my favorite seasons i've ever watched i like the live vote and i love the fact that they had to get people in my heart was broken for shane though i was i'm a big shane powers fan and the fact that he didn't get to play and we're probably never going to see him on the on our screens again because he said he's done after that but yeah what a great theme players came in wanting to play hard survivor south africa return of the outcasts which is the new season is being deemed as more of a second chance this season than an all-star season because there's quite a few all-stars that are not in this cast but there's a lot of people that are coming back for that second shot and maybe they overplayed too early or they did something wrong when now they get that opportunity and i like that because second chances was also the beginning of a new era of gameplay where the gameplay just sped up and everybody was playing that hard to win it was a it was a great cast what did you think of it's actually my favorite season so there you go right there i hope they do i think they'll do the vote again i saw in an interview can you did it with chelsea one of the players from island of the idols jeff said straight up maybe this answered our question he's never gonna do heroes versus villains again but he really wants to do a second chance again so like saints yeah maybe we'll see that again and i just think that live vote which is so fun for the community to get involved with it had everyone almost more invested in the season see what was going on

22:52 And the only complaint the only negative about the season is it's a lo it gets a little too game body but the strategic gameplay is insane i loved how everyone was playing so hard because it was their second chance no one had won one of my complaints with winners at war was people had already won the game so it kind of felt like they were there just for the experience that was not the case for survivor second chance people were here people wanted to use this chance for the best of their ability and they want to win yeah no it's a very interesting point you make there about winners of war because winners award definitely i'm higher on that than most i it definitely features somewhere in my top five maybe top three it's really high in seasons that i enjoyed i enjoyed the theme we always wanted to see it play out i was excited to see it play out but i do agree with you because one of the players that are not very liked online which again i do have the nullified tech for a reason the tnt takes i'm a big i'm a big ben fan from season one i was okay with ben winning that season i don't care that people don't like how he won he was still entertaining for me to watch but that season he wanted to win so he played very hard to win that season and winners of war he was there for the experience he was there to try and change his narrative which made people dislike him even more so i feel like he would have been better to just go out there and try and win the game again but he fell on a sword for someone like sarah so i do

24:12 Agree with you that at the end of the day second chances was a great theme and i wouldn't mind seeing that back talking about bean's original season what did you think of the theme heroes hustlers and healers let's throw that in the trash right away i don't want to see that ever again that was jeff's stretching a little too far we had survivor brain brawn beauty then you're like okay how can we do this again he did worlds apart good and that's a little better but heroes versus healers versus hustlers whatever it is that's a mouthful like why are we doing this why is it on the buff like just split the tribes up at that point like nah i'm done i that is one of my pretty much a hot take here too one of my least favorite seasons i'll say that's in my bottom half and a lot of people enjoy that one yeah i'm the same as you i wasn't a big fan of the heroes healers hustlers similar to that is there's a couple of interesting themes that brought up in the past that doesn't get as much airtime it's newbie seasons i'm not a big fan of the themes on the newbie season so i'm actually okay with it being 41 42 43 i'm okay with that it doesn't bother me i think it sometimes takes away from just the pure game plan but i do agree with you that you want some sort of a backdrop like i said if we stay in fiji make the backdrop different or something so maybe there is a an argument for it you kind of convince me if we stay in fiji i kind of feel like we need to bring themes back

25:33 Just to have seasons be a little bit different than just i it's exactly the same thing it's getting stale but coming back to my original point on why some of the newbie seasons probably the themes don't always work so well one that kind of was interesting and i've heard people talk about different themes that are down that line is like no collar white color and blue collar going up against each other because i like that because it brought different views because one of the problems i have with survivor right now russell is that when they bring these guys or players and girls on is that all of them seem to be very similar minded in how they view the world i want diversity and thought so i want to see middle america versus you know the coast you know like i want to see canada as well like this is canada as well there you go well you guys are a part of the franchise now but i want to see more diversity like they're bringing in diversity and how we look if you know ethnicity for instance and let's talk about one that we definitely don't want to see back cook islands dividing people by race i think we can both agree that's problematic and specifically with how things are going in america right now i think that would be like the end of the show if they did something like that but you know one of the themes i really enjoyed is the blue collar no color and white color because people think so differently and they're from different walks of life it's not just everybody like you know being one big hive mind out there yeah and glow

26:53 Off trap off topic for a second i think that was a big problem with the 41 cast looking back on it we can say 41 42 whatever i think 42 maybe the editing improved that was the difference but i think season 41 people ethnicity they look different but a lot of the same thought went into it which didn't have too much difference in thought difference in opinions which is exactly what the season we're talking about right now survivor worlds apart had and seasons when they're like that you might get some dark moments like we have the sharim bullying incident but i like the idea of splitting them up but then i'm still trying to think when the swaps were and then when you yeah when this that swap was really interesting you had mike maybe throwing a challenge protecting his alliance members i would like to see that back one season that we have not talked about yet it was one of my favorite themes to go into for this podcast what are your thoughts on survivor one world yeah i like the idea of one world when it first started like one we'll let's just put it out there one of the all-time most boring seasons that i've ever watched of survivor for me personally i just don't find the season that entertaining because i kind of knew who the winner was going to be very early on kim was just that dominant but she's also one of the best like has to be

28:13 Top five top three winner of all time right up there at the top you know if i had to like off the bat just think about it so let's talk about the theme i like the theme itself i like the whole thing about having two tribes on one beach from the start intermingling i've always thought about you know what would it be like to have a season where everybody is in the same tribe from the start everybody individual immunity from the start that you just merged day one like as a twist and i think that could be interesting and then maybe missed an opportunity with one world to do that a little bit earlier on i don't like the whole male versus female thing though like that to me similar to the whole the whole you break them into different ethnic tribes i don't want to see male versus female as a theme again as well i think we've moved past that as a society personally so but overall i'm like it's got a thumbs up for me but it's not one of the themes that i'm like i'm like holding up for it i'm like yeah i can't wait to see one world back again see i do want to see it back again i think it's just a wrong place wrong time it was right in the middle of the survivor or near the end of the survivor dark ages the casting was not the best at that point boring cast the male versus woman thing the reasoning i've heard they did that was because when you had everyone on one beach one camp together it'd be kind of hard for the audience the viewers to understand who's on what tribe

29:33 So they just made it easy guys here girls here i don't know i'm not the smartest one in the room i don't know how you would fix that but i think if you were able rebranded survivor one tribe maybe have everyone on merged all at once i really think if they did it again that it was regarded as a really bad season they probably won't but i think it has the chance that they do it again to work out way better than it did the first time and survivors known to try themes try twist more than once survivor redemption island wasn't good they were gonna bring it back right away because just the filming cycle but they brought it back in survivor blood versus water which i actually think was the best iteration of redemption island so like the hourglass twist maybe like edge of extinction i think everything deserves every twist every theme should be tried more than once to see what happens i agree with you i think that well let's not put that out well they did try twice edge of extinction and we can both be in agreement of extinction is not fun it takes away from the viewers you see a lot of what is going on the edge when you want to see people interact in the actual game and strategize and vote people out i don't care about them doing easter egg hunts on the edge you know struggling starving that's one thing that jeff seems to really think

30:53 People enjoy seeing people starve out on the island like for me that's like the least appealing thing about survivor to me to watch you know i understand you can't give them food all the time and you can't have them live in luxury but also seeing them get nothing it doesn't do anything for me and understand that edge of extinction for winners at war was maybe the one time that it would work because of the fact that people had their favorites some of their favorites went out early so they could see them throughout the season we had some great growth moments with ethan and poverty and you know boston rob and amber getting to see their kids on edge of extinction and things like that it was really cool to see as fans we wanted to see that but one and done or two twice and done now i don't need to see that again but i agree with you some other themes you know or other twists sometimes that gets brought in sometimes just get thrown away too quickly like for instance i was okay with fire tokens i know you know we're not talking about twists here but you know fire tokens to me i feel like there's a lot more potential of what they could have done with that but it was misused with edge of extinction being the bad thing in that equation yep i fully agree with you another one we haven't talked about yet is survivor millennials versus gen x will we see that again with whatever the next generation is jeff wants to bring kids into survivor that's a whole different thing i don't think survivors should bring kids into it no but how do you feel about the theme so to very quickly touch

32:13 On a theme where it's like survivor youth or something like that it's kind of like endurance used to be a tv show way back in the day angel cake entertainment on youtube covers endurance and he's actually rewatching a lot of it so if anybody's ever interested in watching it or you know he watches it along with people i think he's allowed to watch it and stream it so people can go and watch that as well but yeah and it's kind of like endurance but what i would say is if you're gonna do a survivor youth i'm okay with it as long as it's not gonna replace one of my main seasons don't take up one of the two spots for survivor each year that i want to watch survivor 43 or 44 go on paramount plus make an extra season for a specific survivor youth yeah summer season a shorter version whatever they want to do you know what is the short version now 12 days compared to the 26. but go and do that as an add-on like don't like summer camp version or whatever but don't mess with actual survival i want to watch grown-ups play this game even though some people might not act like they're grown up sometimes when they're out there i still want to see a full-fledged survivor season so i'm not a big fan of that all this is young it's an interesting theme i think it's going to make it superior if the show continues long enough it is going to make its appearance again at some point where millennials will be the older ones gen z's will be the younger ones or something like that i think there will be an opportunity for that in the future but i don't see it happening before season 50.

33:31 That's kind of my verdict on it i'm okay with it i don't mind it like millennials versus gen x is one of my favorite seasons so i don't have a problem yeah i didn't like nicaragua though and it was kind of the same thing and that played out really badly but i think it was casting choices more than anything else not the theme yeah i think millennials versus gen x like we said the theme is there to market a season i don't think that season would have been bad if they just did survivor season 33 and didn't call it millennials versus gen x you know what i mean it kind of works that way one last theme i want to talk about survivor island of the idols yes i hot take i want to see it again i want to i want i want them to try it again maybe fix the editing a little bit it was a little off balance there was at one point early on in the season where sandra says oh yeah a woman's going to win this season keep in mind a woman hadn't won survivor in so long people are like oh foreshadowing here it's definitely going to happen not to happen like don't include that clip teasing the fans if you're not going to have that but i kind of had the idea the other day making notes for this podcast i was like maybe use an island of the idols as a way to kind of like beta test future hosts of survivor for when jeff probst can finally leave like beta test rob out there not playing the game

34:51 Or tyson out there adam kleiner someone out there island of the idol's role as like an assistant coach or an assistant host i thought that would have been hey if you're talking about the assistant coach it has to be tyson right oh yeah let's be honest there's only one assistant coach over and co-coach and survivor but it's funny you bring it up i was not a fan of island of the idols when it came up i was like you know when i first was saying okay we're going to have rob come back for the millionth of time and we're going to have sandra there's just like not interested if i was playing the game i would not want to take a lead from them because i would feel like they're going to potentially they've got nothing to lose so for me if they were to bring it back this is how i would change it because i do think there's a world like you said we should try every theme twice and i think that the theme didn't play out well the winner didn't even go to them you know didn't get advice from them so it's like ended up blowing people's games up based on the info that they got from the coaches survivors of africa did one where it was called survivors of africa champions and they actually brought back two champions which have never played the game so it was kind of a bit confusing but they were like international sports stars right so in south africa sport is like a massive thing so you've played for like the national rugby team they had a national rugby team coach and a national soccer team coach to come back and be the captains for the two tribes they couldn't get voted out but they also would win money if their

36:11 Player won the season so there's actually stakes in it so how i would look at this way so we redo the whole thing we get two people come back and now the tony has won twice i mean this is a great opportunity to get tony on our screens for the remainder of a season you know and the gold that he will bring with that get poverty there maybe like i'm just using the two mount rushmore people that haven't been used before they both get a team they both can win money if their player gets the game so now there is an incentive for them to actually make sure that the player that they're coaching actually gets fun i would like them to live on the beach with them you know maybe when it gets to the merge similar to the south african season they then go and live on their own beach so you get to coach them up until the merge but in the merge you're on your own and then the coach has competitions many competitions that play against each other to get an advantage for one of their players at the merge something like that make it interesting make it something where we wanna like i think there is value in island of the idols and plus we need mount rushmore to be fixed we need the extra two heads there as well you know so i'm all for it yeah i mean there you go that's my international survivor knowledge i really like that idea and it lets you kind of get rid of those stupid games that were played on island of the idols near the end of the season and that fixes it really well the idea of the cash incentive or whatever i'm sure rob and sandra got money for being up there anyway yeah but actually incentive

37:31 Living on the beaches with them and it also kind of fixes the editing of okay now we have to cut to rob building some massive shelter have him be there on the camp have sandra be there on the camp or whoever the future island of the ales people are and i think second chance that'll work i need to see tony teaching someone how to build that ladder to get the breakthrough or how to like build a spy submarine or something like that like you said you wanted to do like it's just going to be hilarious like if that would play out but poverty is not in the best i feel like i've heard some she's been talking out about the show a little bit so i don't actually know if she'll be asked back based on some of the podcasts she's been doing recently so if you don't know about it we won't go into it on this podcast but go and have a look google party's opinions about survivor 41.42 she's not a big fan of the direction that jeff is taking the show are you aware of that i was not aware of that this is there you go a little bit of team yeah a little bit of tea so i feel like she might not be i feel like jeff takes note of everybody that is of significance that comments about the show and that might that might sadly count against that all right we've talked a lot about actual themes that have taken place on this show let's talk a little bit about some new themes that you'd like to see and let's see if we can go and bring a couple up that both of us have and i think if both of us think it's a good theme then hopefully

38:52 You know the producers we clip this we send it to them they listen to it and we make it happen because i feel like there's a lot of themes on the table that we've not seen on survivor yeah for sure jeff is watching this right now taking notes intensely on what themes we want honestly this was gonna be the favorite part of the podcast for me i'm excited to brainstorm some themes first one survivor reality showdown get some amazing race players some big brother players and survivor players but i mean we're seeing too many three tribe formats but put them on three tribes an amazing race big brother and survivor and we'll find out who the true what the true best reality show is what do you think yeah i love that idea you know funny enough i should have put that down on my list i did not put it down on my list but i thought about that a few times in the past yeah i thought about a few times in the past because we've had amazing race like you said bring in different people to come and participate in the amazing race we've got the challenge bringing in five big brother players at a time and two survivor players like we've got two survivor players being rumored to be on the new challenge the challenge 38 not talking about the cvs version so both michelle fitzgerald and jay will be a duo so they're right or dies that's the theme of that season maybe that's one that we could bring in you know again for a future season for our themes like dios or alliances imagine seeing like a jt and fish back out there again for

40:12 Instance like as a famous deo dom and wendell you know so forth so i think that could be fun but yeah i agree with you like for an ultimate showdown i think having the challenge people coming in these great challenges that people on the cbs have never seen play any kind of game before that i think will translate just as well as some of the big names that we've had in survivor i think they would do extremely well in a season such as that they might even be better than survivor in some in some instances because they're so used to physical challenges but then survivors challenges aren't that physical these days it's become more of a balancing act like i feel like we really ran out of creativity this last season with the challenges being almost the same thing over and over playing out in front of us but yeah that would be awesome i endorse it i didn't have it on my list but i'm gonna go into the next one and then you can tell me what you think of this and then you can roll into your next one as well so one that we have to have i mean for me this is again i don't know maybe it's controversial again because we don't do villains but let's say a survivor rivals like you know get some of the rivalries out there we've got new fresh rivalries that are forming right in front of our face you've got romeo and hi you know get them back there's a little bit of spice there you've got sugar and randy chris noble and dom tyson and sierra colby and jerry r.c and abby maria like who wouldn't want to see some of these rivalries of people like cass and spencer you know i want to see it play out

41:32 I want to see a season of rivalries where i don't know do you put them in different tribes or do you put them in the same trap i kind of feel like you want to have them in the same tribe so did you see the spice yeah i was just going to ask you what are we doing here are we doing the same tribes or different tribes because obviously like it kind of makes more sense to put them on the different tribes one on here one on here but then again no i want to see them interact again on survivor so let's have it be you live separately we do one vote and second episode you're swapping together i know everyone hates episode two swaps but for a season like this you're gonna have to do it i think it's an interesting idea and i'm sure we could even workshop like a full podcast of people to cast on a season like i think we should do it i'm excited i think we should do it we definitely lock it in somewhere in the future in the off season we got it we got to do a full cast for rivals but sandy's saying sean and rickard i would have thought that even though yes they had a little bit of a falling out i feel like those two would be tight outside of the game i don't follow them too much on socials but it's kind of like even dom and chris noble i know i put it out because they were legendary in the game but i know outside of the game they've become really close friends so some of these rivalries might not be true rivalries outside of the game but it will still be interesting to see people back that had this beef with each other in the game and i think automatically

42:52 It's got just got it's got that bigger storyline that you can follow throughout the game who's gonna who's gonna i mean i guess colby and jerry's kind of played out now because they've played in three seasons together so do we really need to see them in the fourth season but i would still love it you know me i'm a colby fan i know you're you could you could take it or leave it on him but as an old school player that you know a fan of the show i just love seeing colby and both jerry on my screen so i think that you have to have the original rivalry on the show if you're gonna have a season like that and apparently just before we move on flynn masters is saying that the 40 season 40 was the theme was kind of rumored to be rivals and i heard the same thing i'm pretty sure russell hanse actually said that he was contacted to be on the show with yeah russell muscle go and support russell muscle so he can have more subs than russell hans but apparently he was going to be on the show and his rival was going to be sandra from what i've heard huh interesting that's cool i'll be i'll be interested in interested in seeing russell back anyways the next theme i have here just a quick one before we move on i know themes is the main thing do you think he there's any way he gets to emerge it's been so long since he's played like and a little while ago he made a video i watched a couple minutes of it where he talked about he understands his mistakes

44:12 In his old season he sold all his old survivor buffs and membrelia yeah is he just saying that to get back on the show or has he actually changed i want to think he's he has he's actually changed he's learned but like he's i think we can agree a top-tier player he's not but one thing he is one of the most iconic players this game's ever seen and that's one you have to have to get out survivor all-stars the biggest players the winners were targeted early i don't care if it goes first second or third i don't care like i still want to see him go out first second or third or surprise us all flynn master's here also and this is one that we definitely missed out on says that lex said yes and was going to be rob's rival can you imagine that like that would be that would have been a beef and i mean that's a legitimate beef like lex and rob have not spoken to each other for years like i listened to a podcast where lex came on and spoke about the issues that he had with rob and gave her side of the story with t-bird and rob and it was such a good podcast if you haven't listened to it yet go and listen to it really made me understand next because i was not i was a big fan of lex in africa i did not understand his saltiness in that season but we could do a whole podcast on this we need to move on because there's a few themes we still need to get through and i don't want to keep you too long i think we said we're

45:33 Going to do an hour but if we go slightly over hopefully you just let me know how much time you have okay here we go i'm reaching on this one i remember like eight years ago maybe i saw a youtube intro i don't know if anyone ever sees these youtube theme songs they put like fan casts of these players in for the themes i saw one i absolutely loved it's never gonna happen but give me survivor battle of the seasons give me this half a castle and half a cast of david versus goliath or something like that and have it have a battle did you have rivals as well because i didn't have your first one which was the rival so okay cool so we're two from three which is not bad i've got this one as well we'd love to see a survivor battle of the seasons bring back some of our favorite seasons bring back kageyan bring back who's your which one's your favorite season david versus goliath i don't think there's a lot of returning players but for do it's strictly newbie seasons yeah and i think people will people will be very interested in that as well like people will be very interested to see how they play out all right i'm going to move on to the next one so obviously i think both of us are going to have this one on we kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier legends at some point you've got to do a legend season it's just it's going to be the biggest showdown a lot of people say that winners of war was that legend season but

46:53 There's great players and we know that the best player don't always win and i know that's a controversial opinion but it is just the truth you know like if you were to get some of these players to play 100 times i think there's a lot of winners that would have a lower strike rate compared to some other players that have not won in the past so you know the best person always win but the best player doesn't always win if that makes sense but yeah i think i get what you're saying i literally have my notes right here survivor legends need to do it people are getting old like a lot of these people you guys do it sooner than later they're getting up there in the age i get what you're saying if you do it for season 50 or whatever it kind of feels like the end of the show yeah it's between the two yeah maybe do it for jeff kim another whole conversation we could do a podcast on can the show survive past jeff probst i think it can the international season but maybe do jeff probst last season survivor legends and then we truly enter a new era after obviously i had that on my list as well next season i have here is i think you're gonna like this one i love the your fans of on this channel are gonna like this give me survivor worldwide all the international seasons battling it out yeah so i've got it as survivor waltz collide you know because i think that's what it would be it would be survivables collide

48:13 I think that there is so many great players of the show that the american audience have not seen i'm absolutely heartbroken that paramount plus decided to remove survivors of africa and australian survivor on that platform i personally believe and i will continue to believe this unless i've told otherwise that jeff felt the heat of people in america watching it loving it because there was so much positive tweets australian survivors so much better than what survivor in the u.s is currently and people like really getting behind it that he said cut that out we don't need people to have different ideas as to what survivor is because we've locked in at fiji for so long we're gonna have 26 day seasons you know like i don't want this heat i firmly believe that's what happened and in my opinion australian survivor if you ask me it's got its own flaws but the americans love it they absolutely love the australian survivor the survivors of african season is like a mixture between old school and new school to a certain degree i quite like the old school editing style as well but we've got legends of the game as well like people that i know the american audience would love and you know who wouldn't want to see the us go up against australia and south africa or like a combined team of australian south africans or something like that i think it would be a heavy hitter cast and richard who's also going to be my co-host for survivors of africa this season says awesome war of the walls bentley this is

49:33 Gonna this is blacco so to give you an idea those three players that are being mentioned there are seen as the best three players of any version of the show ever so bentley is from south africa ganat is from australia and black holes obviously you know that is so i would love to see a season with all three of those because to be honest i couldn't tell you off the bat like i mean black was you'd think blockers probably won't win because we thought he wouldn't win the previous season but big tilly and ganat they've got the same ability as vloggers i think i really rate them very high so yeah i'm excited i'm amp for it but let's move on to the next one here because we're both in agreement i'm hoping you've got this one i've still got an appetite for this and i think that with the new era and i'll put that in the quotations off survivor right now we've had two seasons we might get 10 seasons later five or six seasons later get new school old school with the new school game versus the old school game so it could be the battle of the formats can the old school players adapt to a 26 day game there's a lot of them talking a lot of [ __ ] online saying that these guys are playing survivor mini which i actually agree with but let's get some old schoolers out there to prove it right i actually did not have this on my list but i fully agree with this should be a season and i kind of think survivor winners at war would have improved a little more if they split the cast old school versus new school and just had it still be winners at war but had

50:53 All the old school players on one side the new school players on the other instead of having all those old school players getting voted off one after another after another but i agree and then it's another way to sneak in some of those old school favorites that we probably won't get to see ever again mixed in with not just new era players some 41 and 42 but also you know those players from 36 onward 35 onward that we had because we haven't seen any all-star seasons since game changers yeah there's so many great players that are from that era that's why we want to see a second chances to get i mean dom is going to go on the challenge before he goes back to survivor it's absolutely blowing my mind that we lost a true legend of the game to that but anyways you're up next if you've got other themes now i've got a few still in the bag that i can bring up all right let's go i've got two more as well look at us we're just yeah you nee unique yeah together here okay what i got here is this might be the only benefit the only upside of a 26 day survivor season that i could think of and that might give us the chance to do a version of celebrity survivor now i only want to see this if we actually get a tier like top tier celebrities i don't want to see like d t or c t celebrities that no one really cares about if you can get those top tier celebrities to take 26 days out of their busy schedules

52:13 To go out there and play survivor and celebrities that actually care and actually watch survivor because we know a lot of them do watch the game i think that'd be really interesting and especially because i found out one of my favorite rappers jack harlow he's a big survivor fan and he wants to play the game one day i think that's a great chance for him to play yeah i mean there's a bunch of fans like the guy i've got his name now that played in how i met your mother neil patrick harris neil patrick harris is a big fan i'm a big fan of his i'd love to see him play the game stephen amell who's the canadian we played an arrow and i'm a big fan of stephen amell and i think he would do extremely well that guy trains like a beast so yeah so i'm very keen on that idea i like that idea but they like you said they have to make sure that they get the right group they don't make it easier it's not like a mini type of game real survivor they play real survivor fully with you i didn't have that on my list so we didn't get that on both but i'm happy with that so we'll go over to the next one for me actually no i might have one left because we already mentioned survival worlds collide but i'll go into my last one then which is going to be a season of actually i've got to i did mix one of them up i just saw that runner-ups runner-up said war i want to see runner-ups at war like you have to do it you've seen the you've seen the winners let's see the people because i feel like if you're talking about second chances people that actually you know

53:33 Want to win the game because they got so close can we see russell get votes and win a game can we see dom finally get that extra vote to win can we see people that like romeo can he come back and play a dominant game and change the narrative about him playing a passive game for instance i want to see a season like that i think it could be exciting and i think they will play in my opinion a lot harder than the winners had war yeah i agree and we touched on this at the very beginning the big problem with winners at war is they've already done it they're out a lot of them were out here for the adventure i think we got a workshop to title a little bit survivor runners up at war i don't know about that but the idea behind this season i'm fully down for jeff probst i know you're watching this write it down this will be a great season my last one this is going to be like a season survivor season like i don't know 60 survivor season 65 let's see survivor the new generation get all our favorite players all their kids out there on the islands of fiji i'm just having fun at this point will this happen 99 percent know but i just think like it would be such a fun idea and because all their parents will teach them how to play survivor they'll get out there and they'll give us a show yeah and i agree with you zodoman welcome and yes we did talk about battle of the seasons a little bit

54:53 Earlier on so if you go and check the replay or go back a little bit you'll see we spoke about battle of the seasons i think that's a good idea and also richard's saying that jack harlow is a fan and jeff loves him so it might be another person to get on there i think that would be interesting he also says we need to see bear grylls so clearly there's a few people that we could see on the show it'd be interesting to see big girls out there okay so my last one as well we're just getting this season right now in south africa but pre-merge versus poached merch so it's called the battle or the return of the outcasts so i don't know what you would call it over it's not very clear that it's pre-merged versus post-merge but we've got all-stars coming back they've made it to the merge versus those that we're just falling short and i feel like there's so many good potential players that played a big game that just got cut short now a lot of a lot of people want a season off first booted players coming back i don't think it will ever work i don't think it will ever like i'd love to see it i mean who wouldn't want to see wonder back out there but i don't think it's gonna happen so i think this is the most the closest you'll get to it would be that or you could even have as well like you have the pre and post merch you could have winners versus runner apps for instance and there will be like a little bit of i think a rivalry there like no we want to win this time we can't have a winner win this time and that would be one of the few ways that i would want to see winners come back because i don't like when you bring one or two back they're just cannon fodder in my opinion yeah i agree i

56:14 I didn't have that one on my list obviously my list is done but i like that idea and i guess this next season of survivor south africa will be a great judge for how it works out i don't know the all-stars they cast it on that season and if it will be a good season but from the sounds of things it's a really cool concept yeah so my hot take and i can't say too much because richard who's in the chat here is my co-host we're going to be doing a draft live tomorrow it's probably going to be in the middle of the night for most people in america but in the future we'll have a time that sort of overlaps with hopefully all countries a little bit better you can obviously check the recording afterwards i don't want to give too much away but i actually think that a lot of the pre-merged people that are coming back were people that could have won the game if things went differently where a lot of the post merch are characters and big personalities so i feel like there's a good chance we see i think a pre-merger is going to win that's my it's my early take on it i think that they're going to come back and redeem themselves could be completely wrong but that's kind of how i see it playing out so if anybody that's listening to this is going to watch survivors of africa and you just stumbled across my channel check it out here so make sure to subscribe to the channel we're on our way to 1 000 subscribers we're nearly 800 now so slowly but surely getting there growing doing the grind here on youtube but yeah subscribe to both of our channels russell muscle and also the nullified take if you're stumbling across this but be sure to check out the content that we're going to be doing for survivors of africa the whole season i just got approval again by the local broadcasting

57:34 Channel to do exit interviews for survivor return of the outcast so very fortunate to be able to do that and looking forward to it okay so if you had to look at all your themes to close it off here which one do you think is the most likely to get picked up which one do you think we see in the future play out i think because they're doing it with the challenge because we've seen it with amazing race i think survivor reality showdown is the most likely and then what was the other question no i think that was it for me the most likely one to come from this i think i would love for it to be survival worlds collide i don't think we see it i don't think we see it in the us i think if we do see it's going to be on the australian network because they have south africa and u.s survivor as well so the audience the fan base will already know who all the players are so it's just the easiest way to do it so if it does happen it will happen on the australian network and in the australian format but i think the most likely for me is probably new school versus old school i think there is an appetite for it i think that having the players themselves rep new school old school gear maybe the opportunity has moved on slightly now with the new era but i actually think the new era has moved the line in the sand for where new school and old school will be especially if they're going to continue on with the 26 day theme and it's going to continue to be a different show compared to what we saw in the first 40 seasons

58:54 I think that's a great opportunity to bring that in but if you want to listen to me talk about survivors world collide because that's going to be the next offseason podcast that i'm going to do i'm going to have shannon gus from rob is a podcast on she's a heavy hitter someone that has got a lot of experience working on all the different franchises she's consultant to survive survivors of africa with mike bloom currently and she's also a presenter for channel 10 when they do their official podcast after it actually is on talking tribal so she's got a lot of experience when it comes to international survivor so we'll be talking to now probably next weekend i'll release it's gonna be a pre-recorded one that one because we needed to make sure our times worked out well but that should be a really fun one as well russell it's been so much fun talking to you about survival themes i feel like this hour we didn't have enough time it just went so quick but i'm sure i'm gonna have you back on in the near future to talk about some more offseason content yeah this was so much fun again any time we can talk survivor i love to do it and let's make this routine every couple of months every two months let me hop on this channel and we can chat a random survivor topic i love it yeah thank you so much and for everybody that was in the live here today taking part in the conversation asking questions i appreciate it so much for those that are watching it later on or listening to it on audio thank you so much go check out

1:00:14 Russell muscle tv on youtube he's got great content the man is on a mission to beat russell hans on youtube let's make it happen and as always thank you so much catch you guys next time bye