Survivor Redemption Island - First Thoughts on the Twist!

By now I'm sure you have heard about the new twist to Survivor that will be premiering during the upcoming season of Survivor.  Here are my thoughts on it:


The premise of the twist, bringing players back into the game, goes against the essence of Survivor and therefore I really don't like the twist.  I didn't like the Outcast twist done in Pearl Islands and I don't think I will like this twist either.  But, let's look at some of the positives and negatives of the twist:


Positives:

• The episodes may be more exciting, having 3 challenges in it (assuming the contestants not on Redemption Island still have to compete in an Immunity and Reward challenges.
• You may get to see a player that you didn't want to go come back later and have a chance to win.
• It may prevent someone from quitting knowing that they don't immediately go to the Ponderosa.

Negatives:

• As stated above, it goes against the basic principle of Fire represents life.  
• Once you are out of the game, you should be done.
• Could make it more difficult to get to know the players, since there could be less face time, due to having to show the RI challenge.
• Depending how it is implemented, it could favor one type of contestant more than others.

With that said, I'm all for having those voted out coming back in to compete in challenges, but the only reward maybe they would get is a chance to be on the jury.  Maybe only the final 5 people voted out are guaranteed the jury spot and the rest compete for the remaining spots, that could be interesting.  It also throws another level of difficulty in determining jury votes.  

The only way I can see RI working is if the challenges are predetermined and it is just the luck of the draw for those that have to compete.  I also don't think that the person coming back should be allowed to re-enter the game after the first jury member is selected, that way they still have a decent amount of time that they have to survive.  The returning member should NOT be given immunity at their first TC, but I could be in favor of them getting a clue to a hidden immunity idol.

Another thing that I think would be interesting is, instead of having the Survivors that get booted compete against each other, maybe bring the last two voted out back for the next immunity challenge and one competes on each tribe.  The RI player that is on the winning tribe stays at RI and the other goes home.  

So we will have to wait and see exactly how it comes to pass, but I don't like the premise.  With that said, I will still be watching the show and blogging every week.  

So until next time... the Tribe has spoken.