Survivor 41's changes look promising yet concerning, while Jeff Probst is still proving he's an "a**"

https://www.avclub.com/survivors-41st-season-promises-a-new-era-but-bears-t-1847728438

"With a full two hours allotted to the first days of the game due to the shortened 26-day competition, 'A New Era' uses some of its twists to deliver great early game strategizing, and plenty of time to really delve into the cast and make them seem like a group of people that I’ll be excited to see play this game," says Myles McNutt. "But as the twists pile up, there’s always this nagging feeling that around the corner will be the producers tripping over themselves, or Probst stumbling his way through an impossibly messy attempt to navigate the consequences of his actions in Season 39. And while it’s nothing new for long-time Survivor fans to live in this space of ambivalence, this season’s insistence that it’s a whole new game—and the fact so long since the show was on the air—makes the whole exercise more fraught this time around even if I came out the other side encouraged about the season’s cast." But, says McNutt, Probst tripped over himself by asking the castaways if he should still use "guys" in his phrase "Come on in, guys!" "It was an embarrassing display," says McNutt, addressing Probst directly. "I can’t even imagine what was going through the players’ heads when the host and producer of the show—who ultimately controls their entire edit, and thus how they will be perceived publicly and potentially subjected to all forms of discrimination—asks them to police his language on broadcast television. And I am sure those people felt very safe with you when, after one queer woman says that 'guys' is fine, you decided that the fact no one else spoke up means that the issue is now formally decided, as though you just held a global tribunal on sexism. For you to act as though this was some type of democratic decision, as opposed to a group of nervous castaways whose fate is in your hands struggling with how to address something they had no reason to think they would need to have an opinion on, is precisely the kind of attitude that Season 39 revealed as a problem. And yet somehow you chose to see this perpetuation of those problems as a solution, which is unfortunately par for the course with you."