Jeff Probst says you should not watch all “Survivor” seasons in order

The host tells newcomers what they should do instead.

Survivor seasons in the new era have been filled with super-fan players, but what’s interesting is that the majority of those super-fan players only started watching the show during the pandemic, when they blew through all 40 seasons while trapped indoors in the early days of the Covid outbreak.

Contestants are not the only ones who discovered the reality competition series late and have been catching up at a furious pace. New Survivor fans are constantly popping up and wanting to check out older seasons of the show. But what is the best way to watch those blasts from the past?

That was one of the fan questions posed to Jeff Probst on the latest edition of the On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast, as a listener asked the host, “Would you recommend watching the seasons chronologically starting at one, or would you have any other recommendations for the order?”

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As someone that has been watching and writing about the show since day one, I have fielded this same query many times over, so I was curious how the Hostmaster General himself would answer. “I love this question, because I get it a lot when I meet families where they maybe have a 7 or 8-year-old who's just discovering Survivor,” the host says on the podcast.

So what is his answer? “I would absolutely not watch in order.”

WHAT?!? The host of Survivor advising people to not watch all of Survivor? “I can't imagine anything so ponderous,” Probst says.

Ouch! So, if he is not advising people to go back and start with arguably the most important and game-changing season of television in the past 50 years, what is he advising? “I'd go online and I would just look for fan suggestions and follow them,” he says.

While I would be remiss in my Entertainment Weekly duties if I did not point out that you can see those highly controversial suggestions right here, Probst throws a few recommendations himself into the mix. “It's going to be seasons like Heroes vs. Villains, David vs. Goliath, any seasons with Russell, or Tony, or Coach, or Parvati, or Sarah Lacina, Boston Rob.”

Related: Jeff Probst was shocked by first Survivor 47 elimination

Essentially, the host proposes starting with specific contestants rather than seasons: “Look for players that are dynamic and watch their seasons. And then if your curiosity about a player is piqued, go back and watch Ozzy play for the first time, or watch Boston Rob get voted out early in Marquesas. Then you'll have some context and you'll be able to look at season 1 and realize, 'Oh, so that's how this show started.'"

Okay, so… first off all, SPOILER ALERT on Marquesas, Jeff! But that aside, my season-watching advice is not dramatically different from Probst’s. I generally steer people towards Survivor: Micronesia — Fans vs Favorites as a starting point, and then Cagayan or David vs. Goliath after that. The first truly old-school season I recommend to check out is Pearl Islands (season 7, a.k.a. season several).

Related: Ranking every season of Survivor

Of course, the danger in starting with a season like Micronesia, which features returning players, is that you are getting somewhat spoiled on how those contestants did in their previous seasons, which is why you do not want to make the same mistake as Survivor 46 runner-up and current On Fire cohost Charlie Davis. “My main piece of advice,” says Charlie on the podcast, “is to not do what I did, which is watch Winners at War as your very first Survivor season and spoil half the endings of every single season for yourself.”

So what season does Charlie recommend you start with? “If I had to throw one season in the ring to watch first, one of my early seasons that I watched was Survivor: Tocantins.”

Should you take him up on that advice, prepare for dragons to be slayed.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.