Until the final day, this small community will had to coexist and make its existence easier. Taken away from civilization, on an island where conveniences and technology were left back home, each person had to use brain and hands to build together a small society.
Note that on SURVIVOR 2, to make things a little bit more difficult, the candidates were divided into two tribes, in order to increase competition from the start. Each tribe had a chief who assigned tasks and according to everyone's capacities, they were accomplished. In general, the players were supposed to build their shelters, hunt, fish, wash their clothes, make tools or kitchen utensils .
Moreover, the 16 candidates had to participate in contests for rewards; some of those challenges were rewarded with simple comforts like pillows, cold beer, and clean clothing. Then, the prime time of this journey was the Island Council. Every three days, the castaways formed a tribal council during which each player had to place a secret ballot vote to send one candidate home so as to eliminate him or her from the race.
At the end when the tribe was reduced at two survivors (final episode), the seven last eliminated players returned to form the tribal council and decide who was to be the winner of $1,000 000.
When SURVIVOR aired for the fist time, viewers were fascinated by this new concept of reality TV. They were witnessing the construction and the functioning of a society composed of 16 different individuals. It was a strange entertainment, where viewers sitting in warm living rooms, watched people surviving on a tropical island for a million-dollar reward.
Back there, I was living in Canada and I soon became one of the thousands of North American viewers of that show. I must say that it was quite intriguing seeing people impervious to criticism and insensitive to living conditions, fighting for winning a million dollars. Otherwise if they had not a strategy to win or to survive, they were heading towards a nervous breakdown or isolation, meaning elimination.
