Survivor is one of the most popular reality shows, although we only started watching it during Pearl Islands.  We have since seen most of the seasons in repeats on the Outdoor Living Network and have really enjoyed almost all of the seasons.  There were a few bad ones, but as a whole it is a really good show.

Survivor is a reality show that takes a group of people and puts them on an island for a little over a month.  They are split into two tribes (or three as in the All-Stars season) and compete against each other for rewards and immunity.  Whichever team wins the immunity challenge does not have to vote off a player in the following tribal council.  In the middle of the season, the two tribes usually merge all their remaining members together and then it is every player for themselves.  When it is down to the final two, the jury (made up of all the players that were voted off after the merge) votes for who they want to win the million dollar prize.

We think that the best part of the show is the team aspect.  We like how they work together as tribes to win the challenges, and it is more interesting than when they merge and compete alone.  It is fun to watch the people working together rather than all the nastiness that results when they are competing alone to further their own stay in the game.  For the most part, when they are a team, there seems to be less backstabbing than when they merge.

Our least favorite part of the show is when the people take it upon themselves to decide for everyone in the group who will get voted out.  They all promise to bring others to the final 2, with no way of knowing if they will even be there.  It's annoying to watch everyone pick and choose who they want to stay, and see our favorites get voted out one by one.  It would be best if there was less strategizing as a team, and more of 'you vote out who you want to and not who everyone else wants you to' as it was for much of the first season.

Although Pearl Islands was the first season we watched, the outcast tribe was where the series went wrong.  When you are voted out of the show, that should be it.  It might have been lucky for the people who got to come back, but it was unfair to those who were still in the game.  The other place the show went really wrong is when they decided to give a second million dollar prize and had the audience vote "American Idol" style to pick the winner.  Although we were happy at the time with Rupert's win, it seemed to go against everything the game stood for.  But the show really went wrong for us when we watched Vanuatu.  It was a terrible season, and we didn't even like one person on it enough to really care who won.  The show redeemed itself slightly with Palau, but not enough to forget how bad Vanuatu was.