User blog comment:AGuyHere/Is there a season where the post merge is better than the pre merge?/@comment-1341721-20150728233427

I think overall premerge episodes tend to win out because when the contestants are split into teams, each character is spending a lot of time with a fairly small amount of people. Hence, throughout the first half of the season, we get to see a lot of interesting relationships developing between members within each of the teams and these relationships have time to develop. If one person gets kicked off of the team, it's okay, because every character has developed intricate interactions with the others on the team. That's probably why TDWT is one of the most well-liked seasons. Not only did the characters already know each other very well, but the teams were small and the season was long so it made for some interesting character work.

The post-merge, on the other hand, usually has the same amount or more people than we started with on each team (TDI: 13 in the merge, 11 per team, TDWT: 8 in the merge, 5/6 per team, TDPI: 7 in the merge, 6/7 per team... etc ). However, half of these people have barely spoken with the other half, and people are getting kicked out of the game very quickly. Team immunity is no longer available as an incentive for people to communicate with each other to try to win (or conversely, to cause tension within members of a team - Who Can You Trust? is a perfect example).

As a result people usually stick with friends they've made from their own team, but very few, since obviously only one person can win (ex. Gwen and Leshawna in TDI, DJ/Duncan/Geoff in TDI, Beth and Lindsay in TDA, Duncan and Alejandro [initially] in TDWT, Cameron and Zoey in TDRI, etc).

It dries out and we get bored. Not only that, but the challenges no longer feel as intense because rather than two entities fighting for one team immunity, you have several individuals fighting for one solo immunity. We could focus on every single person in the challenge equally and make it a giant dramatic battle royale, but that scattered focus is better for action rather than drama. This is what lures writers into focusing on the people we deem screenhogs who have formed interesting relationships during their time in pre-merge, which could be why Duncan went so far in each season.

tl;dr: pre-merges are fundamentally better than post-merges