#91: Does Billie Eilish know she was on Survivor last week?
Let's talk about Survivor 50!
Death by Consumption
2/24/26 - 3/2/26
I know there’s a lot going on — did you know there’s a lot going on? — but I’m still annoyed about last week’s pre-war media cycle, which was wall-to-wall about the NYPD whining and crying and literally arresting people for throwing a couple snowballs at them (during a massive snowball fight they walked into???). There have been so, so, so many worse things that have happened over the past year (the past year? try the past 36 hours), but for some reason this whole snowball fight circus was my final straw. How the media was able to take these claims that these cops’ lives were endangered by snowballs seriously, to breathlessly report on every deranged statement from everyone involved, has to have been the final nail in the already-buried media coffin. Anyway, I’m glad it’s finally going to go above 60 degrees this weekend, so hopefully all the terrifying, dangerous snow melts (it must be so scary to be a cop and to walk by a pile of snow these days… you might as well be walking past a loaded gun). Anyway, let’s get to the consumption, I just got myself mad about this all over again.
This week: I went long on the Survivor 50 premiere because I am unfortunately addicted to that show, I watched the two remaining Best-Picture-nominated films I had yet to see, and I watched another new movie that traumatized my gay ass.
Survivor 50, episode 1 — on Paramount+
The premiere of Survivor’s 50th season came with a lot of trepidation. I’ve been watching, studying, and obsessing over this show since I was 13 years old. I have never missed a single episode — even when I studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt, in 2007, I would regularly take my janky old laptop to a nearby cafe and drink tea for hours while using the extremely slow Egyptian cafe wifi to illegally download that week’s episode of Survivor: China (don’t sue me, CBS). So, having been on the Survivor journey for 26 years — literally 2/3 of my entire life, yikes — I was equal parts excited and anxious as the show’s 50th season began last week.
Thankfully, and somewhat to my surprise, it delivered! The fact is, Survivor has discovered some of the most iconic and charismatic reality TV stars of all time, so having true megastars like Cirie, Coach, Colby, and Mike White back on the show goes a long way to making the 50th season feel as big as it needs to. The whole cast isn’t up to that caliber, of course, but that news was released months ago, so I’ve had time to whine and cry and gnash my teeth, and I’m practicing a Buddhist (or Coach-esque) acceptance now with the show. I’ll take whatever slop they’ll give me, basically, but at least right now the slop has true Survivor icons like Coach and Colby on it!
It’s hard to overstate just how truly famous Colby Donaldson was 25 years ago, but he’s aged very well, if you’re wondering, and has returned to remind us what true reality TV star power looks like. Within minutes, he dismissed Rizo — a 6-year-old boy stuck in a 12-year-old boy’s body but who is somehow 25 years old — as “annoying as hell.” If you, like me, had suffered through Rizo (who calls himself “RizGod”) for all of Survivor 49, Colby calling him annoying on television felt like that first bite of cheeseburger must feel after you get off the island. Finally, some real food!
In the old days of Survivor, calling someone annoying would barely rate as an insult (we’ve literally seen a woman mock another woman for crying over her father’s death… this show used to be dark dark), but in the post-covid reboot of the show (what Jeff refers to as Survivor’s “New Era”), the casts have been overwhelmingly positive and friendly. It’s rare we get a spirited disagreement on the show these days, let alone a full-fledged insult, so hearing someone call someone else annoying was as shocking as, like, the Oscars slap (which happened 50 years ago next week, can you believe it?).
And while I will forever complain about fully half the cast of season 50 consisting of players from seasons 41-49 (a move that feels a bit like Jeff Probst stubbornly doubling down on criticism from fans that the show has lost its way in the last 5 years — which is a response I unfortunately very much relate to as a stubborn brat myself), even some of the more random “new era” choices are given a lift toward stardom merely by interacting with true legends. In fact, Colby quickly reverses course on finding Rizo annoying and decides to take him under his wing (they briefly bond over Rizo telling Colby, who is 50, that his dad is 47[?], before bursting into tears[???] — I burst into tears as well, because what do you mean you’re an adult on Survivor and your dad is only 47???), which serves to let Colby show he’s a more flexible player than he was in his younger days, and lets Rizo show that he’s a more socially savvy player than I possibly give him credit for. (Still doesn’t mean I have to root for Rizo, though. Go away! Get off my lawn!).
As you can tell, I’ve suddenly found myself deep in the Survivor strategy weeds, now, while merely trying to write about the show, and that’s still the biggest flaw with the way it’s evolved: it’s simply too complicated! I have no idea how new viewers can follow along with the slew of advantages, twists, “beware advantages,” and, in season 50, prior relationships you have to track. And with the premiere running a full three hours, if you opened a bottle of wine at the start of the episode, you were probably cross-eyed by the end of it. You can’t expect me to keep up with whatever a Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol is when I’m drunk!
Because, yes, they did introduce something called a “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol” into the game, which was revealed by a hidden note “written by Billie Eilish,” which began: “Hey, it’s Billie Eilish,” before “she” went on to describe how this complicated advantage works. I guess this is the show’s way of trying to bring in new viewers, but… are people watching a 3-hour episode of TV just to see a note that some PA wrote and passed off as something actually written by Billie Eilish? Furthermore, where the hell was Billie during all this? I saw no promo from her, no acknowledgement she had anything to do with it — if this woman is supposedly designing complicated Survivor game mechanics, can she not whip out her phone and quickly record a front-facing video to promote the damn thing? I’m genuinely asking: does Billie know this happened?
This whole thing was so baffling, and yet, because my gay brain is broken (or maybe because of the aforementioned bottle of wine), I found it kind of…. campy? I do not think the Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol did anything to help the show’s ratings, but I’ve already gone through the five stages of grief with my feelings about this show and settled on acceptance. So, fuck it, it’s Survivor season 50 and for some reason that means we’re going to have to watch Mike White being forced to learn who Mr. Beast is. Jeff already knows I’ll keep watching the show no matter what he does, apparently, so why should he care what I think? He knows he had me hooked long ago!
The Secret Agent (2025) — on Hulu
This was wayyyyy weirder than I anticipated (the leg scene?????), and better for it. I was expecting a sober, action-packed look at the horrors of 1970s Brazil, and instead I got a goofy, beautiful, slightly messy film, one where I literally never knew what was going to happen next. Like pretty much every film, it’s too long for no reason, but I don’t care; despite the horrors of the Brazilian military dictatorship, I could have stayed in this world forever, with its gorgeous colors and Wagner Moura’s adorable, sad eyes. It’s so crazy the Oscars nominated this and Sinners for Best Picture, but also nominated… F1???
F1 (2025) — on Apple TV
This is the longest movie ever made. If you told me I watched this for 6 hours straight, I’d believe you. There are exciting moments, sure — the racing scenes are actually fun, and thank god for that because otherwise what are we even doing here — but this is such a cookie-cutter old-school Hollywood plot that I found myself gobsmacked at how normal it all is. Unfortunately for me, I will follow my girl Kerry Condon anywhere she goes, and sometimes that means sitting through 3 hours of her simply batting her eyelashes at Brad Pitt (who, it must be said, turns in possibly his clunkiest and stiffest performance of all time in this movie). If there’s an F2, I will NOT be watching.
The Plague (2025) — streamed somewhere, I forget
This is billed as a horror movie, which is kind of annoying because it’s not, though I guess it captures the horrors of being a young boy surrounded by other young boys. Call it: emotional horror. Gay trauma horror. Sissy horror. Set at a water polo camp (do those exist??? hundreds of kids getting shipped away to become water polo players? is this some WASP shit I don’t know about?), it follows a boy who tries his best to fit in with the popular crowd by joining in on their bullying of an outcast boy who’s been deemed to have “the plague” — some sort of vague disease that requires you to be ostracized by the group.
It’s a simple movie shot absolutely gorgeously (all those underwater shots!), with several sequences I’ll be thinking about for a while, and builds perfectly. I really liked this one! It will possibly be re-traumatizing for anyone who was once a little boy (well, maybe not if you were the popular kid, but if you were, you’re probably not reading a gay substack), but it’s all fine now! You’re an adult! No one can bully you! And water polo isn’t real! There’s really nothing to be afraid of.