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Survivor: South Pacific was ruined by Religion

Survivor says a prayer to God and snuffs out another season. Amen to that.

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Tonight Survivor fans will get the see the Finale (and Reunion) of Survivor: South Pacific.

Remaining in the game are Coach, Sophie, Rick and Albert with Ozzy and Brandon set to battle it out on Redemption Island. Other than fly under the radar, I don’t think I can name one thing Sophie or Rick have done all season.

As a loyal follower of the long-running show I’ve been pretty disappointed this season.

If it wasn’t for fan-turned-competitor Cochran wreaking havoc amongst the tribes it would have been dull as dishwater.

But the biggest problem for me as been the suffocating focus on religion in the gameplay.

Coach, the self-appointed “Dragon-slayer” who’s never slayed a Dragon in his life, has led his flock with prayers to God while manipulating them at every turn. On the one hand he is practising Eastern meditation and then preaching like a Bible-Belt minister -all the while with his eye on his real religion: money (or possibly narcissism).

Last week he voted out his lapdog Brandon and had the nerve to tell him “It’s God’s will.” Seriously.

I’m all for wacky heroes and villains giving a Reality show colour and twists. It’s just that we’ve had to endure so much religion getting in the way of gameplay -but only one religion. Why?

Maybe next season they will have to cast Buddhists, Muslims, Russian Orthodox, Jews, Scientologists and Athiests just to give the show some balance.

In any case it all ends tonight from 9:30pm, with the all-important Reunion (where the winner is announced) at a very-late 11:30pm on Nine.

41 Responses

  1. Wasn’t Coach all about his Eastern philosophies and whatever BS he was spouting about dragons, though?

    The focus on religion doesn’t surprise me though – Mark Burnett’s doing a new show about the Bible in the US, and he’s now married to Roma Downey from Touched By An Angel.

  2. After watching every episode of survivor from season 13 onward’s (and many seasons before that) I have say that it was in my top four survivor seasons ever.

    I felt as though the religion aspect sparked much conversation in my family about the way religious people act. Not coming from a very religious family, I was intrigued to see people using gods name as an excuse for their actions – I would have thought that was above them.

    I was always going for Coach to win, he’s been one of my favorites since Tocantins and seeing him lose did mar a series which I have found truly enjoyable.

    Finally, maybe my opinion of this season is different to you guys as I had been busy so had recorded all episodes and watched them over the last 5 weeks. Maybe watching up to 3 episodes a night made it more exciting!

  3. Love survivor. My comment is it does not look good for Nine fast tracking the next series as they cut Jeff off from saying when we can expect it. The fast tracking did not add to this seasons ratings. It was on at a difficult time with many strong series like NCIS LA and parenthood at the same time.

    Let’s hope it is fast tracked

  4. The religion was a little heavy handed but I mostly ignore it. Once again, the wrong person won. Sophie was no strategist. She didn’t do anything to deserve to win. All she did was ride Coach’s coat-tails, thats all.

  5. Sorry that Coach did not win he play a great game.but for people to say Ozzy was great he was out of the picture for lot of it, so he play safe the only thing he did was to win at redemption insland. and Rick grow up its game and you did not do much.
    Any way my vote would of been for Coach

  8. Agree with many comments here –

    Next Season will be fab!!

    Edna’s speech at the final tribal council is great!

    Brandon’s speech at final council is one to watch too.

    And Russell Hantz’s comments towards Brandon during the reunion are interesting to say the least…..

  9. I too have recoiled at all the ‘holy rolling’ in this series, but as with all the shows in the Survivor series I’ll stick with it till the end tonight. I also can’t get over how deluded the religious types are such as Brandon and Coach. They interpret religion through their own warped self interest prism and totally miss the point of religion. Religion is not about massive ego. Oh I know that they will go on and on about how humble they are, without irony-sheesh.
    I also hope that this is the last series that they bring people back from previous series. Those who come back tell the other contestants that they are the leaders and the other contestants accept it and fall in behind to support them. Anyway, bring on the next series as I’m a fan.

  10. I’ve been interviewing contestants for my radio show recently and they have all been agreeing with this…as do I. A dissapointing season to say the least…next season looks interesting though…

  12. I don’t think it was the point of Survivor to purposely emphasis one faith, rather the emphasis was that Brandon was a major character this season and his religion was used as a tool by the producers to explain much of the game. Examples:
    – Coach identified Brandon as a loose cannon in the early game and created this religious framework to keep him in check with the core 5 + Edna plan.
    – The group praying at the pre-merge immunity challenge was a way to show Savaii how unified Upolu was at that game and they were willing to go to purple rocks come merge time.
    – Brandon’s decision to give up the immunity idol was because of his religion and this changed the rest of the game.
    – When Edna found out she was not part of the Core 5 she stopped praying in the group. Why? It’s was not because of religion. It was because praying was a way to bring the tribe together and she felt she was not part of the tribe anymore.

    Also Edna is Buddhist, Sophie is Athiest, Dawn and Rick is Mormon. There were probably other religions as well but i believe that was not explicitly shown because there was no reason to.

  13. I also agree and have found the religious content just too much. Brandon for one, clearly has issues and hides them poorly behind religion as many do. I find Christianity creeping into more and more shows from the USA, where it simply doesn’t belong and it is turning me off.

    Maybe next season they should get Richard Dawkins on the show just to try and get a little bit of balance… It would never happen of course, but I like the suggestion of having contestants from various faiths and atheists, it could be a very interesting show.

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