Retro Survivor rewatch: Borneo episode 2, “The Generation Gap”

Survivor took a stab at focusing on a theme in its very second episode overall, “The Generation Gap,” but was it successful?

Welcome back to the retro Survivor rewatch. Last time, we looked at the very first episode of Survivor ever. Now, it’s time to look at episode 2 of Survivor: Borneo, “The Generation Gap”.

Since this is only episode 2 of the series, Jeff Probst takes a moment to reiterate the entire point of the show before actually getting to the recap. He doesn’t even open with “Previously on Survivor!,” which I definitely heard in my head as I typed this. Nor does he end with “who will be voted out tonight?” But we’ll make some allowances.

However, the recap also helps set up the theme of this week’s episode, which, in case you missed the title above, is about intergenerational conflict. This is a well Survivor goes back to often, because it’s something fairly universal. It’s even themed seasons around it! (Looking at you, Millennials vs. Gen X, but that’s just the most obvious iteration.) Of course, it’s a little more blatant than later incarnations, but I’m starting to notice that season 1 Survivor was really obvious about a lot of things. It worked, though, which is part of the reason we’re watching this show regularly almost 20 years later.

Now, each tribe had one older guy. For Tagi, it was Rudy. Meanwhile, Pagong had B.B. With an episode named after generational conflict, it’s not hard to guess who got the focus here.

The camp life scenes between Tagi and Pagong drew very sharp parallels between Rudy and B.B.. Watching the episode reminded me the old Goofus and Gallant comics. The show carefully paralleled them in a set of scenes.

• Rudy cooked and earned support from everyone. B.B. called others “backseat cooks” and then said when they were his age, he’d listen to their advice.
• Rudy had an interesting perspective about Richard being gay, but said they were friends nevertheless. B.B. focused entirely on work ethic.

Survivor also took a moment to set up other character arcs on Pagong though, specifically for Greg, who hosted a game show night, and Colleen, who happened to be building a friendship with Greg.

But for the most part, the Pagong focus was on B.B., who even dropped swear words that earned some censorship (without the sound effects that we now expect).

Jeff Probst appeared to explain how tree mail operates again, and both tribes got to read the challenge on camera. The challenge in question is now another Survivor tradition: eating things.

Two fun notes from the pre-challenge scenes: B.B. called it the “indemnity challenge” and asked Gretchen about possibly throwing the challenge.

Another Probst voiceover re-introduced us to the immunity idol and how that all works again before everyone sat down at the table. Probst did get to use the “up for grabs” line, at least!

However, even the eating challenge took a pretty tame format. There was only one thing to eat: beetle larvae. Everyone had water right there to drink as needed. Probst had to ask people about whether or not they’d eaten, but it seems like the players came up with showing him their tongues and empty mouths.

It came down to a tiebreaker, where Survivor established picking the weakest player from the other tribe. But Stacey knocked it out for Tagi, while Gervase struggled.

Speaking of not saying the right things (or at least the things we now hear Probst say), he said that Tagi was voting someone out from their “team”. Whether or not that was just for the sake of explaining to Tagi or not is unclear.

Pre-Tribal Council, Probst again identified who was in danger for Pagong, which boiled down to B.B. and Ramona. Probst also called Tribal “sacred,” which is something that’s fallen off. Tribal’s certainly still an important part of every episode, but it’s also not so much sacred as a chance for final moves to be made.

B.B. became the next person out, in a 6-2 vote, with Ramona. Probst didn’t announce who had been voted out; he just read enough votes for it to count, and then snuffed B.B.’s torch.

Next: Borneo episode 1 rewatch

So, how effective was Survivor at introducing a theme to its episode? On the whole, it did just fine. Viewers got both sides of the story from B.B. and Ramona, and even had the chance to make implicit contrasts with the Rudy scenes from Tagi. Other players got moments to shine. And hey, they even got to eat bugs.