If you watch Survivor, surely you’ve noticed that Jeff Probst uses the EXACT same wording for most things that he has used in every single season. He ad libs as necessary, of course, but for certain things he recites the same faux casual talk every time.
I’m talking about things where he doesn’t have to say anything in any particular way, but still he does:
“Team A getting the first look at the new Team B. Player X voted out at the last tribal council.”
At reward challenges: “Want to know what you’re playing for?”
(description of reward)
“Worth playing for?”
Makes it sound like Probst is phoning it in, instead of just talking normally. Normal would be more random, like"Let’s see what the reward is this time!" and “Boy, those hamburgers look good. Ready to see who gets them?”
I could go on, but you get the idea. I’m okay with every season of Survivor being pretty much the same, but this word-for-word thing makes me feel like I’m watching reruns. Just annoying.
You forgot the omnipresent preceding statement: “Come on in, guys.”
I dunno – his refusal or inability to mix his phrasing up used to bother me, too, but I’m finding it’s fun to talk along with Jeff. I enjoy it, anyway.
Perhaps you could apply the old “Hi, Bob!” game to Jeff’s constant drivel. By the end of each episode it wouldn’t make any difference who was booted off.
It could be that there are some legal reasons behind at least some of the scripting as well. I don’t follow Survivor but on The Amazing Race there was ugliness and threatened legal action in season 2 over a vehicle breakdown and since then, every time someone’s car breaks down, Phil recites the same exact words about how teams get a replacement vehicle but no time credit for the unfortunate occurence.
No, this is something that Mark Burnett is responsible for. I don’t have a cite, but I remember reading stuff, and hearing his interviews during the first season, saying that he believes that Americans yearn for stability. According to some research he had, he believed that hearing the same thing every week, makes us comfortable and want to return.
It started with just “The Tribe Has Spoken” line, but in later years, they made everything repeated. And if you’ll notice, every reality show that has come after, has used this theory, so at least some people buy into it.
Yeah, Flightless Bird is on to it. I recall reading that Burnett was a big reason that so much of the show is almost ritualistic. He believed that the atmosphere would make it interesting. And even though I think we all thought it was silly at first, I can’t imagine Survivor without the little rituals now.
I think it’s probably a little bit more than him being a dolt. I think it’s supposed to lend a sense of ritual and structure and solemnity (to otherwise banal phrases)-- “we speak these words as our forefathers did” so that in the short communal memory of TV-watchers it will feel like this show’s a great long tradition, like Thanksgiving. We wait for him to say it, as it is always done, and he says it, and we feel satisfied and the cycle of the universe continues and the crops succeed this season.
