Survival

I have quite faithfully watched Survivor ever since it started, and have also watched myself become cynical and jaded by how each season ends up. Each person eventually reveals the flaws in their personality and says something unforgivably stupid/cruel/selfish, or else they doggedly maintain the illusion that they are playing the game with "integrity" (boy, if I don't hear that word in context of the show again it'll be too soon...) and think they've persuaded us of their worthiness, which is a joke. The Mediocre almost always triumph on this show, because anyone with any qualities of strength, understanding, or intelligence are recognized as a threat almost immediately and are eliminated.

Everyone always claims to have loved the experience, to appreciate what it taught them about themselves and what they were capable of, blah blah blah, and how they're changed forever, yadda yadda yadda, and it's given them a renewed sense of purpose, la la la. But big maturing experiences, as grandiose as they may seem at the time, always diminish down to a small kernel in the corner of your character and personality... not without value, but only a tiny part of a bigger whole.

I'd give a great deal for someone on the show to say this: "Being on the island has shown me how unbelivably arrogant yet vulnerable I am, and I don't even begin to know what to do about it," or "Nah, I really hated it and it only made me realize how annoying other people can be." THAT would be worth seeing.