Zac Brown faces criticism after controversial Survivor 50 cameo

I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for Zac Brown. I mean… not too sorry. The guy seemingly has fame and fortune, as evidenced by how many times he allegedly sold out Fenway Park, and the fact that he has a futuristic spear-fishing gun that appears to cost more than my entire annual salary. But I wonder if he is kinda bumming right now.

The reaction to his extended remix guest-starring spot on Survivor 50 was brutal. Fans were rightfully aghast that so much screen time was devoted to a celebrity fishing and giving his own confessionals — eating up screen time at an alarming rate during the most anticipated season ever. I say rightfully because we were recently assured all these celebrity angles that were teased extensively in the season trailer would not take the focus away from the players and the game we all came to see, yet that is exactly what it did. The dude got more screen time than an entire tribe, for crying out loud!

So Survivor nation pushed back… hard. Hopefully nobody was reading the replies on any CBS social media posts regarding the appearance, because it was an onslaught. It evidentially became IMDB’s lowest-rated Survivor episode ever (even with an epic blindside!). And fans have a right to be upset, especially after being told in the past how other things had been cut from the show (like the opening credits, jurors walking into Tribal Council, etc…) because every single second of air time was so precious. If that’s the case and every second of screen time is precious, then why are we watching so much freakin’ Zac Brown?!?

And yet even though I was critical of the decision, now I feel bad for Zac Brown. Here’s this guy who I guess was a big Survivor fan and gets the opportunity to be on one of his favorite shows, and now everyone is associating him with one of the worst creative decisions in franchise history. But none of this is really Zac Brown’s fault! Unless he insisted they air that completely needless segment of him fishing, or demanded they show multiple songs of his on the reward concert, this is really on the editors/producers.

As they do with the actual players in the game (who have 90 percent of their experience end up on the editing room floor), the producers should not have been hypnotized by the celebrity status and trimmed the obvious fat. Had they just cut out the Zac Brown spearfishing infomercial completely and taken the reward down to a single song, there would have be no outcry. No muss, no fuss. That would have been serving the viewer and not the celebrity. And now poor Zac Brown has to have his name attached to this mess forever. Or at least until MrBeast shows up.

Okay, let’s now focus on the good stuff and get to the rest of this week’s Mystery Box.

Behind the scenes at EW’s cover shoot

Here’s a fun little outtake from the lineup video of our Survivor 50 cover story that Entertainment Weekly photo director Alison Wild shot on my iPhone. Notice we have them lined up from left to right here, as opposed to reversed for the actual one that made the story.

Probst explains it all

What, nobody’s here for the Clarissa reference? Anyway, there’s a lot going on in this image I snapped before the marooning challenge, as you have Jeff Probst explaining the course to the Kalo tribe, while challenge producer Chris “Milhouse” Marchand listens in and director of photography Scott Duncan grabs a shot himself. I really love these moments where the cameras aren’t rolling as host and players engage in a more low-key back and forth. It’s also always interesting to see who is paying attention to Probst as he speaks and who is clearly distracted, thinking ahead as to the best way to attack a certain stage. (Christian had a whole talk with his tribe on the original Cila beach on day 2 about this, and how once Probst says the word “puzzle” he tunes everything else out and just starts thinking about that.)

Kamilla tortures Mike

There was a whole thing that went down on original Kalo beach where Mike White accidentally stepped on a hermit crab and killed it. Kamilla found this to be endlessly amusing and constantly was ribbing him about it and calling him a murderer and making him feel really bad about it. That ribbing continued down by the water in this fun moment I captured.

Survivor best friends weigh in

It’s always cool when Survivor players from different seasons become best buds, and that’s definitely what happened with Ghost Island champion Wendell Holland and Cagayan Beauty tribe member Brice Izyah (a.k.a. Brice Johnston). But Wendell and Brice are more than just former Survivor players and current BFFs. They’ve also created an entire community through their wildly successful Brice and Wen Present watch parties that take place all over the country (and Canada!).

So we figured we’d go for a package deal this week and get both of them to weigh in on last week’s episode and name their winner and loser of the week. Have at it, boys!