Thursday, September 14, 2006

Survivor: Race Wars, initial impressions

I'll do more detailed "Survivor" analysis with spoilers in the morning, but so far we're off to a banner start. What have we learned already? Let's seee.
  • Asians are good at puzzles
  • Black people struggle in the water
  • White people steal things that rightfully belong to minorities (or, if you prefer, Jews steal other people's resources)
  • A gay man would rather have a headache than a facial blemish
Good stuff. Very, very good stuff. And that's not even accounting for all the self-stereotyping jokes everyone was making in the first 20 minutes, which must have been Burnett's wet dream. I've cautiously defended the concept until now, but this was not an especially strong start.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I almost fell off the couch chuckling from the start of the water challenge. I love MB, but he's not going out of his way to foster positive race relations with his editing.

Adam said...

Asians know mystical healing remedies! Black people are spiritual, and love quoting Dr. King!

Daniel said...

Bah. I thought it was entirely inoffensive. Sure, I could go out of my way to be offended, but honestly, I was just more bored by the predictability of the entire thing. Getting worked up about it just feels like a gigantic waste of time.

And I say that as somebody who *loves* getting worked up about stuff...

Dan

Louis said...

Booooooring! Plus, I didn't like anyone except, possibly, the chicken-stealing guy (who, by the way, didn't really steal the chicken if it was running around loose).

Adam said...

Oh, I wasn't actually offended, but I was definitely a little uncomfortable and not that entertained.

Alan Sepinwall said...

And I didn't find it offensive, either -- just lazy. For all of Burnett and Probst's talk of how this season would shatter stereotypes, all the premiere seemed to do was trot them out. It felt like an extended version of "The Jew, The Italian and The Red-Head Gay" from The State.

Louis said...

What I find most offensive is the fact that the men are all body-waxed.

Anonymous said...

I didn't find it offensive at all; in fact, I thought it was pretty entertaining. My fave part is seeing how many dumbass white people Burnett picked. "Yay, whitey!" or whatever my friend Flicka shouted, indeed.

It looks like a stereotype gets shattered next week, though, judging from the previews. Doesn't Billy know that it's the Mexicans who are the lazy Latinos, not the Dominicans? :-D

(So sez the world's laziest half-Mexican, half-Italian American on earth--which, cool, I get to make fun of two tribes with impugnity, yeeeha!)

Anonymous said...

Actually, didn't the gay guy not mind the facial blemish? He seemed happy that his headache was gone.

Anonymous said...

First episode showed that blacks were inferior at teamwork, puzzle solving, and that their women are dumb.

You see how the brotha reacted when the only other man on the team got voted out?

Even he knows that was a terrrrible example of black on black crime.

Heres hoping the Asians take it, but whats up with none of them being chinese or japanese?

Anonymous said...

So about not having Chinese or Japanese about, why are the South Indians being ignored? Instead of having 2 Koreans to up the hot factor, what about not being superficial about the label Asian?