Survivor Turns 15

A Look at the Finale of the Show's Groundbreaking First Season on Its Anniversary

By: Jeff McDonough

This Sunday marks the 15-year anniversary of the finale of the influential first season of Survivor. On August 23, 2000, corporate consultant Richard Hatch defeated whitewater rafting guide Kelly Wiglesworth on a 4-3 vote from his peers to win Survivor: Borneo and the million-dollar prize. Sixteen Americans had been chosen to live on a remote island for 39 days without any modern comforts and vote each other off one by one until there was one “Sole Survivor” remaining — while millions watched on national and worldwide television. This was truly a revolutionary concept by series creator Mark Burnett and could’ve ended in disaster. This wasn’t a documentary. This wasn’t a game show. This was “reality television.” We had seen isolated incidents of this type of thing permeating into the TV landscape before. COPS had already been on for a decade, but the premise was familiar and it was stashed away on Saturday nights. The Real World thrived in the ‘90s with MTV on basic cable. Survivor was a different animal. It aired in primetime on network TV, serving as the 8 p.m. anchor for a CBS weeknight block, and took the monetary investment of shooting on location with a large production crew on a near-desert island in northeast Malaysia. The success of the show ultimately resulted in the dawning of a new era in television — for better or worse.

The finale that night in 2000, was the conclusion of 13 weeks of unique storytelling and an astonishing 51.7 million viewers in the U.S. tuned in to watch. That is the second most watched episode of television this century so far — that “episode” designation obviously omits special events like the Super Bowl. The only other television show that has had an episode reach 50 million viewers in the post-Y2K era was the series finale of Friends in 2004 at 52.5 million. Even further than that, an estimate was reported by Neilsen that 125 million people tuned in for at least some portion of the Survivor: Borneo finale. That is simply staggering. So what captivated the country so much about Survivor that they tuned in in droves to see how it would end?

For those not familiar with the format, those 16 people, from various walks of life, are flown in and dropped off with a limited amount of supplies. The “survivors” are divided into two “tribes” and set up camp on opposite sides of the island. They need to build their shelter and build a fire from scratch — not just for warmth, but to cook food and boil their water for purification purposes. They are given limited quantities of rice and sometimes beans that must be conserved and rationed, but the rest of the food comes from the island: coconuts, plants, bugs and any other critters they can catch. There is the opportunity to earn rewards throughout the game for not only food and comfort, but equipment such as flint and fishing gear to help with the survival portion of this adventure.

Each episode sees an “immunity challenge” were the two teams face off and the losing team goes to “tribal council” and votes a tribemate off. Contestants vote in private, writing a name on parchment, that host Jeff Probst then reads aloud once everyone has voted.  Once about half of the players have been voted off, the tribes merge into one team and one living camp, and immunity challenges are now every person for themselves with one winner. That winner has “immunity” and can’t receive votes at tribal council, while everyone else is fair game. The number of people dwindles down to two and that’s when the power shifts to the castoffs. In Season One, the seven most recent players voted off formed the “jury” with each member voting for their choice of Sole Survivor. The show’s slogan of “Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.” were the only guideline this first generation had in determining the qualifications for a deserving winner.

 

Fifteen years and 30 seasons later, Survivor has become almost like its own sport. The strategy and physical elements involved provide boundless possibilities for how each season will go. There have been many twists and alterations to each season, but this core format I outlined has remained the same. America tunes in to see shots of gorgeous tropical landscapes and wild animals. They tune in to see the people struggle to survive the elements while battling each other physically each episode. But most of all, they tune in to see the strategy — the scheming, the maneuvering, the conniving, the alliances, the backstabs and the blindsides. The setting and the stipulations are really just a backdrop. What’s driving the show is the element of the human relationships and motivations as a million-dollar prize hangs in the balance. That’s the cake; the desert island setting is just the icing.

 

Playing the game of Survivor in Season One, was much different than it is today, or has been for years. These 16 players were all novices in a new frontier. The strategy of the game had yet to be figured out. The tribes would work together in camp to survive, compete hard in challenges and then if they lost, would each vote for the person they felt was least deserving of remaining on the team. The first vote after the merge saw seven of the ten contestants receive votes at tribal council. These people had no idea what they were doing. One man, Richard Hatch, did. There’s a reason why he won, and it’s because he’s essentially the Babe Ruth of Survivor — someone very influential from an early era, who was so much better than his contemporaries that he remains in the discussion for greatest ever to this day.

 

Richard was the one who first came up with the idea of alliances. He approached the people he liked on his tribe and said essentially, “Hey, why don’t we just stick together and vote for the same people? That way it won’t matter who is most deserving. We will always be protected because we have a majority voting bloc.” This shaped how Survivor was played from there on.

 

So after the tribes split the six team challenges, they entered the merge with equal footing at five on each side. Not everyone looked at it as an adversarial set up. They had merged after all. They should assimilate and make new friends. Well, Richard had a different idea in mind, and he and his former tribemates easily cut through their disorganized foes and picked them off one by one until they were the final five.

 

It wasn’t that simple, however. Richard had loyal allies/followers in Rudy Boesch and Sue Hawk — a 72 year-old retired Navy SEAL and a truck driver from Wisconsin respectively. The other two members from the Tagi tribe were not so steadfast in their loyalty. Sean Kenniff was somehow both a neurologist and a doofus and didn’t enjoy the mean-spirited nature that voting people out entails. At the merge he decided he would vote out people in ascending alphabetical order each vote based on their first name, instead of hurting anyone’s feelings. He wasn’t a member of the original alliance of four though anyway. He was only later included after the merge. Kelly was the true fourth member, but after a few votes past the merge, she began to have regrets about playing the game in this manner. She eventually abandoned the alliance, but only by no longer voting with them, not by directly voting for any of the other three to go home.

 

When only six players remained, the alliance was fed up and Richard — who also viewed Kelly as the biggest threat to beat him in the end — laid the plans to blindside her at the next vote. Kelly promptly went on an epic winning streak of four straight immunity challenge wins to close the season, ensuring her spot in the final. The finale episode itself saw the final four — which ended up being the original alliance that dominated the season, Rich, Kelly, Rudy and Sue — duke it out in a two-hour spectacular with three tribal councils. This is a tradition that has remained for every season, and concludes with a live one-hour reunion show afterward. To start finale, the girls and the guys were clearly aligned with each other, as they had been each other’s closest friends all season. Thusly, the tribal vote was a tie at 2-2 with neither side seemingly budging. However, in the tiebreaker voter, Kelly had a change of heart and decided to vote out her friend Sue and proceed to the final three with the boys. This perceived betrayal would not be taken lightly, but I’ll get to that.

 

The final challenge, pictured above, was a war of attrition, as the competitors simply needed to keep their hand on the past as they walked around it in a circle. Kelly was able to win after Rudy’s hand absent-mindedly slipped off momentarily after 4 hours and 11 minutes. Kelly decided to take Richard to the end instead of Rudy because she viewed him as the less likable option of the two. At the final tribal the jury was split. The former members of Richard and Kelly’s tribe all voted for him. Kelly’s former pal Sue authored maybe the most memorable moment in Survivor history, when she compared Richard to a snake and Kelly a rat, and said that the right thing to do would be to award Richard the win and let the snake eat the rat like “Mother Nature intended.” But that wasn’t all. She also offered this wonderfully heartless bombshell: “If I would ever pass you along in life and you are laying there dying of thirst, I would not give you a drink of water. I would let the vultures take you and do whatever they want with you with no ill regrets.”

Despite Sue’s harsh words, Kelly seemed to have the votes of all the members of the other tribe, as Richard was viewed as a villain for his cutthroat, alliance-based voting. One member of that Pagong tribe ended being the deciding vote for Richard, however. Greg Buis — an eccentric 24 year-old Ivy Leaguer who had spent his days on the island talking on his “shell phone” — asked Kelly and Richard to pick a number between 1 and 10, and based his vote on that. I’m skeptical that this was just his dry humor showing through and not his actual method of voting. Earlier, Greg and Richard had developed a mutual respect as the two intellectuals in the game. But either way, that was that, and Richard was a millionaire.

Survivor had become a national phenomenon by that time. It averaged 28.3 million viewers during its 13-week run. USA Today was covering each episode like it was a sport, recapping what the previous night’s episode like it was Monday Night Football and projecting what the team would do next week. In the name of synergy, CBS would have whomever was voted off Wednesday night appear on The Early Show on its network the next morning. The next season would premier after the Super Bowl and take place in the much different locale of the Australian Outback and would become the highest rate show on television that year, the first ever reality show to do so. Reality TV programs have seemed to litter almost every channel in the days since, many to massive rating as well — including several offerings from Survivor creator Mark Burnett, including The Apprentice, The Voice and Shark Tank.

Richard Hatch was a very interesting figure, and a fitting godfather-type to the show — and not just because of his strategic prowess. He was a portly, gay businessman from Rhode Island who would walk around the island nude. Surprisingly, his biggest allies ended up being a crotchety old man and retired veteran, and a Midwestern lady truck driver who was a self-proclaimed redneck. He was cunning yet likeable, charming yet smarmy. He was the best star the vehicle could’ve hoped for in its inaugural season, whether you tuned in because you hated him or loved him — I was in the latter camp for the record. Hatch would famously serve more than four years in prison for tax evasion related to the very winnings he earned on Survivor. Before jail he would return for Survivor: All-Stars in Season Eight, and would appear on The Celebrity Apprentice after jail in 2011. He was slated to return for Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains and Survivor: Redemption Island, but was unable to because of difficulties obtaining a visa that were related to his arrest.

 

This show has special meaning to me outside of it being a thrilling television product. In 2010, almost exactly ten years to the day from the show’s premiere, my friends and I played our own game of Survivor, which I, like Richard, managed to win. As many of you know —hell, some of you played yourselves — we ended up playing five games over the course of the four summers of my college years. Our games actually had more players than any season of the TV show, each consisting of between 21 and 31 contestants. We played our games over the course of one day, not one month, but the games all lasted between 10 and 15 hours. These games were clearly more about the strategy element of the show, as opposed to the actual surviving — although they did involve running around outside for an entire summer day with very little food. They also had the setup of an All-Star season in the sense that we already knew each other, and in the later games, already played against one another.

This was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life, getting to live out the very competition I had watched on TV for over a decade. Beyond that, it was an excuse to play backyard sports and field day games for hours while hanging out with a bunch of friends. It wasn’t all peaches and cream, as you can imagine. The act of voting each other out one by one can get testy even with strangers. When it’s a bunch of people with preexisting relationships, who also have to interact in the future, feelings can get hurt. Competition can get the best of you, but you get over it and it’s all in good fun. After high school, you often lose touch with people even if you enjoy their company. Thanks to our games of Survivor, we had an excuse to all get together and screw around, playing red rover and chugging ginger ale ‘til someone puked — just as a couple of examples.

The television show now enters its 31st season, which fittingly premieres a month from the Season One finale anniversary on Sunday — Wednesday, September 23 at 8 p.m. on CBS, to be exact. With 30 seasons in the books, this new season will give a second chance to 20 former contestants, who have all played once before and failed to win. In addition to two players from the aforementioned, highly-rated Season Two, our first season runner-up Kelly Wiglesworth will return for the first time, 30 seasons later, still seeking redemption. The previous season’s winner, Mike Holloway, was actually able to outdo Kelly’s final run of four straight immunity wins with her back against the wall. Starting at the moment when Mike’s allies had turned on him, he used five immunity challenge wins and one hidden immunity idol to escape the final six vote-outs unscathed. He, unlike Kelly, was easily voted the winner, however. So the ripple effects from Survivor: Borneo are still being felt on the show itself all these years later

Survivor has been an institution on television for fifteen years and 30 seasons. It has been an institution in my life as well — not just as weekly appointment viewing on TV, but as some of the most memorable times I’ve had with my friends trying our hands at the game ourselves. While not pulling in the monster ratings of yore, it still ranks in 11+ million viewers on average per season. So don’t expect it to go away any time soon. Longtime host Jeff Probst — who the first four Emmys given out for “Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program” — is really the lifeblood of the show, and has remained committed throughout. As this TV sensation has become a TV staple, it’s important to look back at to where it all started — with 50 million people watching Richard Hatch win $1 million.