Episode 7: Coachspreading

Published: April 11, 2026

There was a lot of Coach in Episode 7 of Survivor 50: In the Heads of the Fans. His haiku flooded the episode, as did his irritation at anyone daring to play Survivor in a manner that deviates from the way he imagines himself playing. It was a lot to get through, although Emily and Rizo's Greek chorusing helped leaven the self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Episode 6: Grind that joy into the mud

Published: April 4, 2026

Episode 6 of Survivor50: In the Hands of the Fans implored us to "find the joy." It's a great mindset, but the show went out of its way to make that as challenging as possible, a remarkable flub for an episode that took an event implicitly bursting with happiness (remember all those people jumping around in ecstasy at news of the merge?), and replaced it with grim, maudlin tripartite gloom at being defenseless against a randomly selected majority.

Episode 4: Double whammy of terrible

Published: March 21, 2026

The title quote here is a bit misleading: Half of Episode 4 of S50: In the Hands of the Fans was amazing, and the other half felt like it had been impaled by an industrial-strength, rocket-propelled spear.

Episode 3: A plethora of plotting

Published: March 14, 2026

An Episode 3 tribal swap brought Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans three new tribes of seven players, and a renewed opportunity for all kinds of scheming and plotting. Better yet, the show gave the contestants ample time to do that.

Episode 2: Predictable, but surprisingly fun

Published: March 10, 2026

Episode 2 of Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans felt a lot more relaxed, well-paced (and more reasonable in length) than the premiere, even though it led to an outcome you probably would have expected pre-season (the mysterious winner from the season nobody has yet seen is an early boot).

Episode 1: A large quantity of Survivor

Published: March 3, 2026

There was a lot to like in the Survivor 50 premiere - the cast, the opening history-referencing montage - but there was also a lot that didn't quite work. That's in part because there was just a lot of everything, at a whopping three hour runtime. Sure, epic parties do tend to run long, and some end in trips to the hospital. It was probably all the fans' fault.

Pre-season: All hail the new Survivor record holders?

Published: July 8, 2025

Survivor 50 marks the first all-star season since S40: Winners at War, and the nine-season gap between the two is the longest without returning players in the show's history. That means it's finally time to dust off the old career Survivor record books (er, web pages), because there is finally a reasonable chance some may be broken. Which titles are most likely to change hands? Read on.

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