Many have left behind the obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion that infected entertainment (and society) back in 2020. But CBS‘s Survivor has not, and its DEI casting is killing what used to be one of the best shows on TV.
In 2020, CBS imposed racial quotas on the casting process for its reality shows, including the hit series Survivor. From that point on, half of every season’s casting slots were reserved by “BIPOC” (i.e., anyone but white people). Gone were the days of focusing on casting the top 20 or so people who came from interesting backgrounds and would make for interesting dynamics stranded on an island together. The new focus was filling DEI slots first and casting interesting people second.
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When you make a cast with DEI quotas in mind, you get a cast focused on DEI quotas. Such was the case in Survivor 42, the second season of the “New Era.” In this episode, two black contestants decided to stop playing Survivor and start acting as a DEI faculty lounge, calling it an injustice that three black contestants were voted out in a row. They ranted about racism and white privilege at tribal council and agreed to play hidden immunity idols to protect both of them and ensure a white person was voted out, for no other reason than skin color.
It became the fourth-lowest rated episode of Survivor ever on IMDb. The only episodes worse are the introduction of the “New Era” in 2021, the finale of that same season, and an episode from 2019 in which contestants made light of sexual harassment. Other than that latter episode, the lowest-rated 36 episodes of the show on IMDb are reunion episodes, recap episodes, and regular episodes from the “New Era” seasons.
The racial obsession struck again this past season, Season 49. Black contestants did not even want to send two black contestants out of the game in a row, which becomes a problem when the show purposefully casts a disproportionate number of black people. At some point, two of them might be voted out one after the other. But the contestants obsessed over race to the point that it affected the game’s elimination order, to the point that one of those black contestants says he is still in therapy over the horror of black people being eliminated from the game like the hundreds of contestants before them.
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Survivor never needed this. The winner of the very first season, back in 2000, was gay. A black woman won the fourth-ever entry in the series, as one of just two black people on that season’s cast (the other finished fifth). Survivor has cut through boring, hyper-politicized commentaries on race and every other left-wing collectivist stereotype and explored interesting dynamics between individuals when placed in challenging situations. It is what has made the show the cultural staple it became.
What the show has done now is become a university struggle session simulator, where a bunch of contestants who were all bullied as children import faculty lounge social politics to the game. Survivor‘s casting process, which focuses on racial quotas and trying to capture a social moment that is on its way out the door, is killing the show that became the greatest social experiment on TV.
