Why Did I Watch a Full Season of Survivor When All It Did Was Make Me Mad?

Survivor: Nicaragua concluded last night with an anticlimax: A competent, immunity-prone contestant won the competition and beat out two more scheming players. I'd praise the winner's athleticism, but the mere fact that his cunning competitors lost is a bit depressing. Why do we watch this show when it just becomes a squatting contest among "less threatening" contenders? (Spoilers ahead.)

Congrats to Jud "Fabio" Birza, the 21-year-old Californian who outwitted, outlasted, and outplayed runner-up Chase Rice and third-placer Matthew "Sash" Lenahan in last night's finale. But how exactly did his victory come about? In the final five, Fabio was on the outs with the dominating alliance of Holly, Sash, and Chase, but because he won immunity in a puzzle contest, he remained in the running. In the final four, he won a coin-stacking game that secured him a spot in the final three. Altogether, he'd won four immunity challenges, more than anyone else. And in a close final-three race, the jury of eliminated contestants voted him the winner ahead of Chase, who'd been deemed something of a flip-flopper, and Sash, who'd been deemed an utter turncoat.

It's ridiculous that the only way Fabio, the historically best and most honest competitor, could qualify for victory is if he won multiple immunity challenges at the eleventh hour. You can claim he should've wheedled his way in with the majority alliance, but his pariah status has little to do with his strategy and more to do with sheer inevitability: Somebody has to be the minority. In a just game, the less able contestants would be subject to exclusion. In Survivor, the most survival-qualified players are predestined for elimination, since they're likely to curry the jury's favor at season's end. Jimmy Johnson, the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was eliminated in the third week because he was a noted public figure. Kelly Bruno, an athletic contestant, was targeted for "having a fake leg," a liability that might've swayed the jury at season's end. Ultimately, Survivor is not about scheming, capability or even outdoorsmanship. It's about being unnoticed for reasons beyond your control. (Though perhaps Jeff Probst will invent reasons for you to be eliminated and share those with the tribes anyway, just to be incendiary.)

Following Survivor's premiere in 2000, a storm of mostly unsuccessful copycats emerged. One such beleaguered series was The Mole, ABC's reality mystery where one contestant acted as a planted spy and the others were charged with discovering that foe's identity among their ranks. One of the main complaints leveled at the series (which was treated like a lesser Survivor) was the method in which contestants were eliminated: Each week the contestants took a ten-question quiz about the Mole's identity (including age, hair color, quotes, favorite movies, and the specifics of their sabotages, for example), and the lowest-scoring contestant was eliminated that week. Critics argued that trivia questions about the Mole served as a lame rubric to pick a winner, but I'd argue that method is twice as reasonable as Survivor's longstanding one: letting majorities weed out minorities.

The numbers game aspect of Survivor has potential to be interesting. If well-performing contestants required more votes for elimination than weakly performing tribesmen, that would at least force certain alliances to expand or recalibrate in order to dominate. But in Survivor, Mr. Probst only dispenses immunities to the single best performer each week (or, sometimes, to contestants who happen upon maps to immunity idols buried in the woods). As such, numbers are numbers, and hapless minorities wither quickly. On American Idol, if a competent singer is voted out early, the bias of home voters is at least a salient catalyst: If other contestants are more popular, it's safe to say they're worthier of a record deal. But on Survivor, watching virtual nonentities like Purple Kelly and Dan (the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Nicaragua) persist in the competition thanks to "nonthreatening" qualities is not edifying.

After 20 seasons -- and even some more entertaining ones like the recent Heroes Vs. Villains cycle, the godfather of reality shows is just a popularity contest mined in luck. For a grudge match that pretends like an epic battle with the elements, Survivor is about the wimpiest character trait of all: Nonchalance.