Episode 1: Season 20 vs. season 50

Published: July 10, 2026

With one big milestone season just aired, it's a good time to look back at the one from 16 years ago, and try to figure out why it worked so much better. That's simple: S20 mixed huge characters and players together, and watched what happened. Season 50 did everything it could to keep them apart.

Jeff Pitman is the founder of the True Dork Times, and probably should find better things to write about than Survivor. So far he hasn't, though. He's also responsible for the Survivometer, calendar, boxscores, and contestant pages, so if you want to complain about those, do so in the comments, or on Bluesky: @truedorktimes