The grandaddy of reality shows, Survivor kicks off a special 40th season Wednesday night with Survivor Winners At War. I may check it out because I recognized some of the early stars from the series – Boston Rob, Amber, Ethan, Parvati – but the rest of them are unknown to me. Like most people, when the first season of Survivor hit I felt pressured to check it out because that was all the talk was about around the water cooler and in the lunch room at the radio station. I resisted what sounded like a stupid premise for a tv show until about the 4th or 5th episode, but watched and became hooked on both the series, the show and the whole reality genre. I proceeded to watch it for the next four seasons and then found that it was becoming too repetitive for my tastes.
But I always wanted to see those first four episodes of Season 1 of Survivor that I missed. And I finally got to do that this past week when we got CBS All Access which streams all 39 seasons of the reality pioneer. I got to know Richard, Sue, Rudy and Kelly all over again.
For those first few years I became a reality tv junkie. I’d even watch all the international versions of Big Brother as well as the British version of a celebrity survivor -I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
But all good things must come to an end and eventually I moved on to other tv fare. I know reality tv gets a lot of criticism but it has it’s purpose. And it’s never going to go away since it’s so inexpensive to make.
Do you have a reality tv show that you really enjoy or was there one from the past that really captured your interest?
