[S30.E14: It's A Fickle, Fickle Game / S30.E15: Worlds Apart Reunion]

So this season has the accomplishment of making me doubt Survivor's editing more than any other. I'm convinced now that Survivor is a classist and racist show and that Dan and Will are its victims. Both of those individuals were portrayed negatively in light of Shirin (who I mistakenly sympathized with due to the racist and classist editing of the show). Turns out, Shirin is a white person who earned millions in her twenties. She is a Yahoo executive. Nobody seemed to like her while there. Since she's a corporate executive, that's to be expected. She probably is intolerable.

 

White corporate (millionaire) executive Shirin accused Will, an African-American man, of lying about his bringing back all the food he won as a secret reward (which he had honestly admittedly to receiving and honestly brought back). Will understandably overreacted upon hearing about the rich white executive's accusations that he was stealing from the all-white (except him) tribe. Survivor portrayed Will, the black man, as the evil one. Survivor's editing portraying Shirin as the victim of the black man's aggression. That decision was racist. This is not to say that Will was not a goat or should have won. It is to say that Survivor should be boycotted by anybody that cares about racism.

 

Then Dan. I felt Dan came across in the reunion as credible. He frankly admitted that his comments about "slapping" Shirin were inappropriate. As he should. Shirin never admitted that a white millionaire falsely accusing a black man of stealing from the all-white tribe was inappropriate. That is to her and Survivor's shame. I can understand how a blue collar man like Dan wouldn't get along with an elitist like Shirin and might be provoked to say extreme things about her. We were not shown how a corporate executive like Shirin managed to annoy every single person on the island to hell. Why is that?

 

It should be added that it is not exactly controversial that being adopted creates certain trauma and psychological issues. The idea promoted by Survivor that Shirin's alleged witness to domestic violence somehow automatically trumps Dan's status as adoptee is disgusting (and, I can only assume, borne of classism, i.e., favoritism to a Yahoo executive).

[The Returned (US) - General Discussion]

Well the thing about Simon is he's DEAD and dead by his own choice so yeah I can understand Rowan decision in not wanting Simon to be part of her daughter's life.  As far as her sleeping with him, I don't know maybe just confusion, caught up in the moment of him being back, she did sleep with him before she found out how he actually died *shrug*.  If he died in a car accident or something that he wasn't in control of then yeah let him be a part of his daughter's life (as much as a dead man can be) but the fact that once he found out she was pregnant THEN he decided to kill himself--well that just doesn't speak highly of him wanting to be a dad now. 

 

IDK maybe I'm judging him too harshly; I don't hate the guy.

Right, but in response to this she conspired in his murder. Which is infintely worse than anything he ever did to her. It's not like she knew he would revive. The writers have turned this show into a bad soap opera.

[The Returned (US) - General Discussion]

Besides the substantive changes, which I agree do not appear for the better, I am getting the uneasy feeling that certain decisions are being made for the purpose of dragging out the plot, a quintessential feature of American television which is less about creating art and more about creating revenue (and staying on air as long as possible). In other words, the creators are looking ahead to seasons 2, 3, and 4. Thus I am less sure that dam/animal issues are gone from the plot than that they are being delayed.

 

I found the last episode--where we began to see what these writers will be doing--to be not that great. I thought the hospital scene where the doctors were trying to save a flat-lining Lucy was obnoxiously dramatic (and very American). Whereas the atmosphere was front and center in the French version and the plot moved along independently of the characters, I fear the American version will turn into a typical character driven drama where established characters are just given random things to do by writers until the ratings fall low enough for it to get axed.