Australian Survivor 2019: Sam involved in seemingly impossible record

If you had thought that Survivor producers gave Purple Kelly a bad edit, Australian Survivor 2019’s treatment of Sam Schoers is worse.

Spoilers for Australian Survivor 2019 episode 7, which aired on Monday night.

There are stark differences between USA Survivor and Australian Survivor, however, they both share the same core gameplay loop. Tribes meet on Day 1 and compete for either resources in a marooning or in a challenge for some starting bonus. Then, they set up shelter, compete in reward and immunity challenges, go to Tribal Council, rinse and repeat until a swap(s) and a merge.

However, when it comes to episode formats, there is a lot of content to fill out in episodes, especially since several episodes cover two days of action. Australian Survivor 2019 has seen mostly 90-minute episodes, except for one 105-minute and 90-minute episode in the middle. That’s a lot of time to give everyone at least a little bit of screentime content to explore.

At least, that idea should be a practice, but as Sam Schoers found out during her seven-episode run in Australian Survivor 2019, the editing team made no effort even to pretend to provide her perspective. To my knowledge, she is the first contestant in international Survivor to never receive a confessional after appearing in multiple episodes.

For those who are unaware, confessionals are those candid talking moments where a player airs their thoughts to a camera as they talk to a producer about their state of mind and opinions on the game. To give you a perspective about how bad having zero confessionals is, Hope from Caramoan had one, as well as both Wanda and Jonathan, the first two boots unselected to join a tribe in Palau.

What made things worse is that based on episode 8 dynamics (recap coming tomorrow), Sam was involved with some of the power players on the Contenders tribe. Sure, her tribe didn’t go to Tribal Council more than twice, but we still have an idea which almost everyone else is on the Contenders tribe, especially devious players like Andy.

Imagine giving up 50 days of your life and make it 15 days into Australian Survivor only to have your elimination not explained and you give no insight into your game whatsoever. It will be impossible for this record to be topped; I hope it will never be replicated.