Family Ties

I do still watch Survivor. It's total junk food television, and nothing I'd recommend to anybody even when it's good. I think I probably wouldn't keep watching it myself, but I do have some friends that come over weekly and share in the junk food with me. It kind of goes down well with a bunch of friends snarking and shouting at the screen.

The season finale is tonight, but that's actually not what I want to talk about. A few days ago, in the last episode, they had the traditional "fly the loved ones in" episode, where contestants get all blubbery over seeing family from home, then compete in some challenge in the hopes of getting to spend a few hours with them. They do this every time.

And I never quite understand why the people are always falling apart in tears.

Stay with me here, because I don't think I'm an especially cold bastard or anything. I think I'm fairly close with my immediate family. I'm sure I could be closer, and see them and talk to them more often, but I know a lot of people who see their family very infrequently, or don't even want to have anything to do with their family.

When I lived out in in Virginia for five-plus years, I usually made it back to Denver to see my family once or twice a year, for holidays. It was not at all uncommon for me to go ten or eleven months without seeing them. Now granted, I would talk to them on the phone; we weren't completely cut off from each other. But sometimes I'd miss a weekend or something, and we'd go two weeks with no real contact.

Now I know that Survivor is a situation that'll wind you up and break you down. Starvation, exhaustion, heat, roughing it... sure, that'll get you a little raw. But I still don't see why when the brother, or the mother, or the spouse, or whoever, comes walking out, almost every single contestant just falls to pieces. Is it that hard to go one month without seeing your family? Do they only cast people with crazy-strong family connections?

I mean, sometimes there's a poignant story to go with it -- like on this most recent occasion, when an uncle came in because the husband was at war, and the mother was dead. The uncle had been there at the death of the mother, and so it was a tear-jerking moment for the poor contestant.

Maybe most people just really aren't used to being that far from family? Maybe I'm just a callous S.O.B. Whatever. I'm confused.

But I probably should call my mom.