Thank god Survivor actually has good, interesting puzzles

Survivor challenges its players at (mostly) all times, giving them a journey in which they earn their money. Big Brother doesn’t even pretend sometimes.

Survivor fans, for the most part, know when something fishy happens on their show from production. The reaction to a forced Final Four fire-making challenge in Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers was swift and visceral, and people are still reacting negatively to where the game’s decisions are heading.

One thing we do love, however, is the evolution of the game’s challenges. With the exception of season 35’s Loved One’s “pull a marble from a bag” challenge, Survivor has produced a great number of intriguing puzzles and obstacles for the players to overcome. They often push people to their physical, mental and emotional limits, and we’ve seen people throw up from exertion or almost die.

It’s something fans should take solace in, as it could always be worse. You could be watching Big Brother, where weak challenges and obvious production influence come together on an almost-weekly basis. The recent episode saw a player named Kaitlyn evicted 9-1, but was saved by a season-long twist where a “power app” gave her the chance to win her way back into the house.

The challenge? Disassemble a seven-piece puzzle, shove each piece through a glass door, and reassemble it on the other side within 150 seconds. Kaitlyn saw what the puzzle looked like during commercial break, had time to study and, most importantly, it was a seven-piece puzzle. It was clearly meant to be a simple challenge a child could do, meant to manufacture chaos when the evicted player returns to the game.

Big Brother asks its players to “expect the unexpected,” but not even production could have predicted what happened next.

Kaitlyn, clearly panicked after the house almost unanimously voted to evict her, could not assemble a puzzle she personally saw and disassembled herself. It may be one of the most embarrassing puzzle displays all around, as both production clearly intended for the player to return to the game and the player might have had the worst performance in a while.

It’s a far cry from Survivor, where sometimes players are stuck for hours trying to solve a word puzzle and groups of people can’t come together and solve it. The discrepancy in the two shows’ puzzles is refreshing, and we cannot wait for David vs. Goliath to showcase the next challenge evolution.