Survivor set to kick off its 21 edition, still a gold standard

Ten years and 20 adventures after "Survivor" first touched down in Borneo, the Mark Burnett/Jeff Probst production team is still playing this game like a Stradivarius violin.

Edition 21, which kicks off tonight in the rainforest of Nicaragua, confirms that "Survivor" remains a gold standard for unscripted television.

It's cleaner in every sense than almost all the reality television that has followed, and in today's TV world, that's worth a round of applause.

This 'Survivor' pits youths like (above, from l.) Kelly Bruno, Chase Rice, Judson Birza and Kelly Shinn against their elders, like Jimmy Johnson (l.).




The 20 contestants who troop into the rainforest this year include former Dallas and Miami football coach Jimmy Johnson, who apparently has wanted to be on the show forever.

Johnson gets a lot of the attention tonight, and while at 66 when the show was shot, he's not an early favorite to win, he helps kick off several dramas that seem likely to become significant story lines.

The tribes this year are divided by age, with 30 and under lined up against 40 and over.

This would seem to give the kids a big advantage, given the physical nature of the show's challenges. Let's assume the producers know this too, and will slip in some subtle equalizers, since maintaining suspense is what the show is all about.

Speaking of challenges, it should be noted that many aren't the kind of thing that real-life castaways would face.

While tonight's tribes must create fire, a basic and critical task for wilderness survival, they also have a challenge that involves the use of metal gutters.

That situation would presumably only arise if one crashed on a remote island aboard a plane carrying a shipment of gutters.

Still, the challenges themselves matter less than the result, which is that one tribe loses and has to start voting people off.

Herein lies the heart of "Survivor": who makes the smart alliances, who parlays a lucky break into the best position, who proves most useful to the team without becoming too powerful.

The first few episodes of every season, tonight's included, mostly give the viewers a sense of who's not going to make it. When they're gone, the focus turns to who's got a real shot at winning.

Much of the focus tonight falls on the older tribe, thanks largely to Johnson, meaning we learn less about the younger tribe.

But both have legitimate contenders to win the game and to create hero or villain characters along the way.

So "Survivor" has found a way to stay fun, and since it's moving to a new night this year, maybe it will even pick up some fresh fans who will be pleasantly surprised to learn that reality TV can be more than four-letter words in the hot tub.