After only a few episodes of Survivor 49 had aired, it had already become clear that the season was going to be remarkable. While Jeff Probst's show has missed out on what could have been an epic Survivor 50 moment, the current season featured a scene that definitely will go down in the show's history.
While Survivor arguably is the best reality show ever produced, its production team rarely gets the same level of credit that the people who craft scripted shows often do. Despite that, Probst believes that the way a recent scene from the show played out is similar to a moment from one of the most acclaimed medical dramas ever produced.
Why Jeff Probst compared a Survivor 49 scene to The Pitt
During Survivor 49 episode 3, "Lovable Losers, a scary moment played out when Jake Latimer was bitten a sea krait, which is a highly dangerous species of snake. Fortunately, the snake's attack was a "dry bite," which meant that it didn't deliver any venom into Jake. That is extremely lucky since a BBC's Discover Wildlife Magazine article states that sea krait venom can cause "neurological symptoms including fits, paralysis, cardiac failure and – sometimes – death."
During the Survivor 49 episode that featured the snake bite, the show featured footage of Jake's medical evacuation and him getting treated for the snake bite. It was the first time that viewers were shown a Fijian medical facility where a player was being treated.
After the Survivor 49 episode aired, an episode of the "On Fire with Jeff Probst: The Official Survivor Podcast" titled "Jake and the Snake" was released. While co-hosting that podcast episode, Jeff compared the footage of Jake being treated by doctors to a scene from The Pitt.
"It sounds funny to say this, but now that we know Jake's okay, it's like watching an episode of The Pitt, that new medical show, because it looked like chaos to me.
To Jeff's point, the footage of the doctors treating Jake after the snake bite was scary for viewers in part because most fans couldn't know exactly what was happening.
Instead, the majority of viewers solely knew that Jake's bite was being taken very seriously by the medical team, who were acting quickly to ensure his safety. While he continued to discuss the footage of the doctors helping Jake, Jeff explained that he later learned that, despite the chaotic appearance of those events, there was nothing disorderly about the medical team's actions.
"But as I talked to the team later, they said, ‘No, there was nothing chaotic about it. We knew what we were doing.’ It was a scary situation, but you have doctors, nurses, paramedics, everybody's super calm, talking in lingo and jargon that I have no idea what the're talking about."
There are many reasons why The Pitt deserves to be one of the most acclaimed shows on television today. One of the biggest is the fact that The Pitt allows viewers to have a better understanding of the fact that doctors need to maintain their cool in the middle of the bedlam that medical emergencies create.
With that in mind, it is fascinating that, as Jeff pointed out, a Survivor scene featured footage of a real-life example of doctors doing exactly that.