Thread:Fedora Kid/@comment-2091662-20151127221038/@comment-1734566-20151219171540

But again, a vast majority of people didn't like Season 29; and regardless of the reception, even PROBST admitted that there was still a fundamental flaw in them casting the season BASED on the theme, especially with an all-new cast. Yeah, maybe you're onto something that if Season 29 had literally just been BvW 2 in that it was, once again, 10 returnees and their loved ones, then yeah, it could've been just fine. But that twist with an all-new cast resulted in SO many errors and failures to live up to what made the original BvW so great.

I think the Collars was a great idea. Theme-wise, I think it turned out even better than the BvBvB theme two seasons prior or two seasons later. As I said before, the "attributes" of BvBvB were relatively interchangeable - smart people on the beauty tribe, beautiful people on the brawn tribe, strong people on the brain tribe, etc. - but with the Collars, their methods of playing the game were clearly contrasted and concentrated based on their collar label; it allowed for great diversity in gameplay methods and made the tribes clearly different rather than interchangeable. The only reason I can imagine why they wouldn't do that theme again is because the original season got such "negative publicity" over so-called "sexism." Gag me.

And yeah, having literally only TWO returnees is stupid as heck. They almost ALWAYS dominate the season. It worked out fine in Philippines - one of the many reasons why that's my all-time #1 favorite - but I'm definitely tired of the returnees.

I agree 1000% that there should only be a major, milestone season of half- or all-returnees every 10 seasons or so, if for no other reason than to mark the definitive bookend of an era of Survivor. Up to HvV, it was always really easy to categorize Survivor into certain eras based on the major returnee seasons. All-Stars ended Era 1, Micronesia ended Era 2, and Heroes vs. Villains wrapped up Era 3, with people included from the first two eras as well. But post-HvV? It's been a giant mess of returnees from all over the board - RI, SP, Philippines, and BvW. Caramoan was a bit more like Micronesia in that MOST of its returnees were from that same era - 8 of the 10 "Favorites" were post-HvV contestants, the two exceptions being Corinne and Erik - but the rest of the returnee casts were scattered all across the board in an era that not only left this era feeling like it was desperate for attention, but also resulted in SO many possible returnees from post-HvV seasons - again, the Nicaragua and Philippines casts being the main victims - being 100% ignored in favor of more three-timers. While Cambodia featured a cast of players from the first season to the most recent season, we still can't deny that this season was overwhelmingly dominated by the new-school era in every way: 11 of the 20 players were from the last four consecutive seasons ALONE, and 12 were from the post-HvV era. Couple that with the fact that an overwhelming majority of the finalists, up to the Final 10 and merged group, were from post-HvV seasons, and the fact that this season was repeatedly marketed as "Old School vs. New School" with New School decisively winning, it's clear that Cambodia's very theme and style bleeds of this post-HvV era's method of playing Survivor, and thus would be a PERFECT bookmark ending to this era.

That's why I agree especially with you, Solar, that Cambodia needs to essentially be the final and definitive bookmark of this post-HvV era, and the next 7 seasons at the LEAST need to be all-new. It's not like they've ever had a shortage of applicants, duh. Admittedly, it WOULD be a pretty big task by historical standards of Survivor - we haven't seen 7 straight seasons of ALL newbies since the VERY FIRST 7 seasons - but it would be great to finally close the chapter on this clusterf*** of a returnee-dominated era. My one major regret about this fact is that it MAY prevent some classic/popular older contestants who REALLY deserve to come back from being able to do so, due to age settling in: My main fear in that department is my dear Marty Piombo from Nicaragua, and maybe a few others like Trish from Cagayan and maybe Terry Deitz for a third-run. But if that's the price to pay to finally move on and definitively start a new era of Survivor from scratch...then so be it.