I have to believe in the audience, that attempts to artificially boost the genre will undermine what viewers finds special in it and accelerate the slide. He is, in general, a master craftsman, cutting his hours of footage into taut tales underscoring profound and universal emotions and weaving in a humor that is often overlooked. But he is absolutely obsessed by the dubious idea that wilderness experience always has transformative power. Over and over Thursday, he chose not to edit out contestant comments about how being on the show had changed them for the better. All the New Age glop at least had an unintentionally comic ending when the contestants, under the guise of demonstrating their respect for the land, were instructed to litter, throwing their totem poles into an Australian river.
Fire represents life, and flotsam and jetsam represent environmentalism.
And Probst had to get in one last, loving mention of sponsoring vehicle Pontiac Aztek.