Just Play The Game

I shouldn't complain. I have a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I know that there are a certain number of articles in every issue that will be more interesting to me than others, but I tend to use the magazine as a test of the week: If I can make it through, from cover to cover, I will mark it as a successful week. I have some measure of completion. All of that to say that I wish that I hadn't read the piece written by "Survivor" host Jeff Probst.
Not that there was anything patently offensive or outwardly disturbing about it. There was some discussion of the relative discomforts of both cast and crew of the show, including encounters with leeches and other insects. There was a recapitulation of the time a cast member fell into a fire and had his hand horribly burned. Those weren't the things that stuck with me. Instead I was struck, once again, about the relative reality depicted on the CBS TV show.
Jeff would like us all to be impressed by the humanity on display during each and ever episode, in front and behind the camera. He wants us to be impressed by the triumph of the human spirit, and the way that people's true natures are on display on a weekly basis. He lauds the heroes around the tribal campfires. The ones who are all trying to earn a million dollar prize.
He enthuses about how all of this is done "LIVE" and "WITHOUT WRITERS." Really? It seems to me that any edited version of reality is less than real. It also occurs to me that somebody must be coming up with those immunity challenges somewhere, possibly even writing them down in advance. Are the words coming out of their mouths "real?" Perhaps, but only as a reaction to a heavily fabricated pseudo-castaway experience that occurs under the watchful eye of the camera.
Okay, I have never seen an episode. I don't plan on it. I prefer to have my drama and comedy the old-fashioned way: Made Up. So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and finish the rest of the video game reviews in this issue.