Has "Survivor" Gone Too Far?

This doesn't give away any "plot" (for want of a better term), and doesn't say who was voted off the island last night (in fact, I can't even remember), so read at your own discretion, depending on how much you want to know about the show that you haven't cleared off your DVR yet.

It's hard to believe this is the 23rd season of Survivor. Obviously after 22 seasons, it's getting more difficult to keep this show fresh and interesting. I have not followed all 23 seasons. Ned kept telling me I should be watching. I think I may have watched the last half of the first season (won by Richard Hatch, who proved less adept in real life than on Survivor, since he "forgot" to pay taxes on his winnings and ended up in prison).

I may have skipped a couple of seasons when I got tired of the same old challenges with different faces.

Maybe people like me are the reason why they've been trying new things. They had an "old folks vs. young folks" season. They had a "good guys vs. bad guys" season (bringing back fan favorites that were considered either "good" or "bad" based on their behavior.

They started "Redemption Island" which gives people a chance to get back in the game if they can win contests with other cast-offs. I also notice that, unlike the earlier seasons, the contestants are better fed and get more help than they did during the first few years. I guess it became a health danger watching already skinny women become positively anorexic when they couldn't get any food for days on end. They also seem to have stopped feeding them local foods that are disgusting to us.

But with all the things I've watched on Survivor over the years, last night hit a new low in disgust. The tribes arrived to find two roasted pigs on spits at one end of a short course and baskets to gather meat at the start of the course. Host Jeff Probst explained that the teams would race to the pigs and chew off as much meat as they could. The tribe that spits the most meat into their basket in 10 minutes would win immunity and a reward. Oh yeah--they would have to do it with their hands tied behind their backs.

So the members of the tribe race back and forth to the spits to get mouthfuls of meat.

They then race back to the start and spit meat into the basket.

Soon they all start looking like something out of Lord of the Flies, with barbeque sauce covering their faces, looking for all the world like blood.

And yes, they are spitting food into the baskets, sometimes you see the globs of salavia ploping down on top of the meat.

Sometimes someone gets meat stuck in his or her teeth, but with no hands to release it, a fellow contestant has to take the meat out of his/her teammate's mouth by biting it and pulling.

As the contest comes to and end, one guy drops his piece of meat into the sand and decides to leave it. Another member of his team leans over and picks it up in her mouth, sand and all.

The winning team won by 2 ounces and for their award, they got to keep all the meat in their basket! Saliva, sand and all! I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a reward for me. A reward would have been to get the meat that was left on the spit!

So the winning team happily takes its saliva-covered meat back to camp to eat and we watch them washing it off. I'm sorry--there wasn't enough water to wash it off for me!

At Tribal Council later, Jeff quizzed them on what they thought of the contest. At least three, and possibly four people had damages from the contest. Two had broken teeth, one claimed a dislocated jaw, and the guy who has "not been good about wearing my retainer lately" had some problems too.

I dunno. I know they are trying to find new ways to keep an audience, but my god this was disgusting! If you watched it, what did you think?