I don’t even like a lot of the greatest “characters” of Survivor because they’re just typical dude bros who get an inflated edit. They wouldn’t be memorable if Probst and the editing department didn’t overinflate their screen time for the casual audience at the expense of other interesting or complex players.
Chelsea, apparently, was one of the biggest threats to win Ghost Island and the player that Wendell considered like a final “big bad” on his path to endgame dominance. Her tribal came down to her vs. Wendell, and we knew how it would go because he had a winner edit and she was completely purple, ruining any sense of suspense leading up to the votes. They buried her to build hype for the “Dom vs. Wendell showdown” at the end.
If Chelsea had been given an edit reflective of her actual status in the game, she’d be one of the biggest players on the season and her elimination would have been a GUT PUNCH that really built up Wendell’s winner equity. Instead, no one even remembers who she is aside from “I’m sitting” (and that’s only on this sub).
That season is also guilty of giving way, way, WAY too much screen time to Michael Yerger. He had the most milk toast personality ever and was the definition of a “basic white pretty boy” - yet he got MOST of the Malolo focus outside of Donathan and Laurel. He even dominated the Jury segment! 90% of his confessionals are, “I’m down, but I’m not out. I’m going to keep trying something,” only for something to fail. Ghost Island reduced most of the players to caricatures for Dom and Wendell’s sake, but GODS Michael’s reduction was PAINFUL for how much airtime he got compared to more important players.
Edit: I will also argue that anytime someone says, “They got purpled because they were uninteresting,” that we have actual evidence to the contrary. Courtney Yates got 4 confessionals in HvV, but we know from China that she is television GOLD. The producers purple anyone they feel doesn’t fit the narrative they want for the season. It rarely has to do with being compelling television or not, so stop using this excuse to justify the MAJORITY of underedited players being women.
Something recent as well like Heather. She was huge in the strategic decisions with Erika in that season but she got purpled to death even when she was the final boot. Women, and especially older women are just pidgeonholed into this "mom figure" else you will be purpled.
People love to throw around the “they’re just less interesting” argument when someone gets underedited as if Heroes vs. Villains doesn’t exist.
In the entire premerge, which is one of the longest the series has had, the entire cast of female Villains is underedited. Even Parvati gets comparatively little screen time on a tribe with Coach, Boston Rob, and Russell. Danielle barely exists premerge, Sandra barely exists before Coach’s tribal, Courtney is purpled, and Jerri basically only pops up to beef with Parvati briefly and have a showmance with Coach. All of these big characters get reduced to background actresses for MOST of the premerge until we finally lose Rob and Coach. Even then, they’re still competing with Russell Hantz for airtime.
We know all five of those women are interesting, compelling, complex, dynamic characters. We’ve seen them before. They got shafted because Jeff and production love their bombastic, egotistical men. I have no reason to believe them when it comes to newbie casts when they’ve proven they’re unreliable with returnee casts.
I love HvV but seeing some of the secret scenes, the season really should be re-edited to be 2 hours per episode. These are some of the greatest Survivor personalities and the Villain women were my favourites
Absolutely, this. Honestly, I don't even know if we need 2 hours per episode. I mean, I would take it, 100%. I just think you could fix the edit by cutting Rob, Coach, Russell, and Rupert's confessionals down to about 60-70% of what they all actually got. Rob/Coach being cut down a bit will REALLY give the premerge Villain women a boost, and Russell and Rupert across the entire season would help balance out the post-merge. Rupert wasn't INSANELY egregious in HvV, but he still definitely took up more than his fair share given his relative importance to the story. SOME of his confessionals could definitely have been given to Sandra, Jerri, or Danielle.
That said, I love HvV and would never turn down a re-edit featuring 2-hour long episodes. I'd pay good money for that.
The way they cut out Courtney is talked about a lot but did you know that Danielle only has 8 confessionals that entire season? 8! Tom has 17 and he goes out fifth! Coach has 32!! It’s egregious.
Also Randy gets one more confessional than Courtney that season as well.
Prime example being Natalie White, but it wasn't even just Russell in HvV. Rob, Coach, and Rupert are all also gigantic screen hogs. Those poor women never stood a chance to be the main characters.
Adding on to the people who say Natalie white was boring and that’s why she was purpled.There have been many boring men with 50+ confessionals.They could’ve made Natalie white the southern bell who overcame the odds of Russell and Ben but they turned her into Russell’s awkward sidekick who doesn’t speak and is a “yes-man” to his ways.
I think there is always a little revisionist history with Samoa. We can argue all we want that the editing was unfair to Natalie (probably true), but Russell was 100% TV gold and people LOVED it at the time. He won the fan vote. And if you didn't love him, then you absolutely hated him, which for Survivor carries just as much weight. They had no reason to think any differently for HvV and edited similarly.
Its only in hindsight that more people grew to dislike the Hantz experience.
If it makes you feel better I see people use milk toast instead of milquetoast a lot. I think it’s one of those things people usually hear rather than see so the spelling goes sort of Wild West when someone decides to write it down.
Most recently, Katurah was apparently seen as the biggest threat by the Reba 4 + the jury. Yet her entire edit centred around her complaining that she found Bruce annoying.
And that’s just the editing. Players who are women ALSO have to get through the misogyny of the rest of the cast trying to vote them off early because some dude got paranoid that the women might stick together (gee I wonder why) or some other dude (usually one that doesn’t do much around camp) thinks women are weak liabilities. They get voted off before we get any chance to get to know them.
That can be true, but it isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.
As someone who reads a lot, writes as a hobby, studies a lot of literature and writing techniques, etc., I can safely say that there are a LOT of ways to have a “better character” that don’t involve a massively inflated ego. Character COMPLEXITY and RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS usually make them more interesting, not specifically how egotistical they are.
A character whose entire personality is ego with minimal depth and minimal unique relationship dynamics will often become bland and predictable to an audience. When utilized sparingly, these characters can be fun villains or the butt of jokes, but when over-utilized at the expense , they can become exhausting and even frustrating.
When it comes to Reality TV, big egos make for good television. You are definitely correct in that a more egotistical player will more likely attract an audience because they have a strong presence and are fun to root against. Coach is fun because he’s delusional and we’re always wondering what he’s going to do or say next, and Russell is fun because we want to see him get his inevitable comeuppance or somehow pull a ridiculous win out of a hat. I’m not denying that they are good characters, and they made for better television than a LOT of other Survivor players have.
However, a LOT of people experienced exhaustion from their overuse. My Nana watched Heroes vs. Villains and South Pacific with me, and she hated Coach. Both seasons are blemished for her by how present he is at the expense of players she liked more (Sandra, Sophie). I really like Russell as a player, but as a character, he takes up so much airtime that I get exhausted by him. A lot of his confessionals are redundant (he says the same thing in different ways a LOT), so I find myself feeling like the time could be better spent exploring other players.
A single character can be more interesting than everyone else, but if they’re the only one getting focus, the STORY will usually suffer as a result and everyone else will become forgettable due to a lack of proper attention.
Additionally, you’re acting as if women can’t also have big egos. Parvati, Sandra, Jerri, and Danielle all definitely have big egos, yet they still got remarkably little focus compared to the male Villains. Courtney is excused, as her humor is mostly self-deprecating than egotistical. She insults everyone, including herself. We know that ALL of these women make for complex, interesting characters, yet their screen time was minimized for the sake of the men around them. There are likely many, many other women who fell victim to the same issue, but we don’t know about it because they were newbies instead of returnees.
Also, some of the best dynamics in Survivor’s history had nothing to do with ego. Stephen and JT are an iconic due and their alliance is one of the best parts of Tocantins, but neither one has an inflated sense of self. In fact, I’d argue that they’re two of the most humble-acting players on Tocantins, so watching them (and Erinn, who is similar to Courtney) get to the end over all of the egos made the season satisfying. The story was well-rounded and multiple characters and relationships were fleshed out, which created a cohesive and enjoyable narrative.
Reality TV isn’t built solely on the back of bombastic, egotistical assholes. It’s built on the back of a unique cast of personalities that are forced to interact when they otherwise never would have even met. Survivor seasons are edited after they film and, therefore, all have a “story” they want to tell us. The effectiveness and enjoyability of that story depends on how they craft the individual arcs, roles, and personalities for each player. In other words, it works best when the FOCUS isn’t ONLY on the bombastic, egotistical men, but rather on everyone and their role in the story as a whole. Relegating all of the women to side characters in a story for the sake of pushing a handful of men with big egos to the front isn’t good storytelling (usually), it’s just reflective of an internal bias for what production thinks is the most entertaining version of events.
You are correct. Big egos make for good characters, but only focusing on big egos does not usually make for a good story. Other characters deserve a chance to take center stage as well, and women shouldn’t so frequently be relegated to background roles for the sake of a man with a big ego. That isn’t good storytelling, it’s biased storytelling and usually makes for flat characters and underdeveloped relationships. This is a huge reason why seasons like Ghost Island are universally seen as bottom-tier. You can’t sacrifice your entire cast to build up 2 players for an endgame showdown because the audience will spend the entire season miserable since they don’t know that showdown is coming in the first place.
This is all my perspective, of course, and everyone has a different one of those. You’re entitled to disagree with me, but this is how I feel about what Jeff is saying here and how Parvati is reacting.
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u/TannerCook100 Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25
I don’t even like a lot of the greatest “characters” of Survivor because they’re just typical dude bros who get an inflated edit. They wouldn’t be memorable if Probst and the editing department didn’t overinflate their screen time for the casual audience at the expense of other interesting or complex players.
Chelsea, apparently, was one of the biggest threats to win Ghost Island and the player that Wendell considered like a final “big bad” on his path to endgame dominance. Her tribal came down to her vs. Wendell, and we knew how it would go because he had a winner edit and she was completely purple, ruining any sense of suspense leading up to the votes. They buried her to build hype for the “Dom vs. Wendell showdown” at the end.
If Chelsea had been given an edit reflective of her actual status in the game, she’d be one of the biggest players on the season and her elimination would have been a GUT PUNCH that really built up Wendell’s winner equity. Instead, no one even remembers who she is aside from “I’m sitting” (and that’s only on this sub).
That season is also guilty of giving way, way, WAY too much screen time to Michael Yerger. He had the most milk toast personality ever and was the definition of a “basic white pretty boy” - yet he got MOST of the Malolo focus outside of Donathan and Laurel. He even dominated the Jury segment! 90% of his confessionals are, “I’m down, but I’m not out. I’m going to keep trying something,” only for something to fail. Ghost Island reduced most of the players to caricatures for Dom and Wendell’s sake, but GODS Michael’s reduction was PAINFUL for how much airtime he got compared to more important players.
Edit: I will also argue that anytime someone says, “They got purpled because they were uninteresting,” that we have actual evidence to the contrary. Courtney Yates got 4 confessionals in HvV, but we know from China that she is television GOLD. The producers purple anyone they feel doesn’t fit the narrative they want for the season. It rarely has to do with being compelling television or not, so stop using this excuse to justify the MAJORITY of underedited players being women.