This format has been mixed up a lot. Currently, most games feature eighteen or twenty castaways, a final three, a jury of nine, returning players from past seasons, returning players from being voted out, hidden immunity idols, host bias, huge editing bias, and invisible players. Early seasons were very good at divvying up time between those that remained. Nowadays, we rarely see half the cast pre-merge and one or two select people go for an extended period of time without confessionals (and at least fourteen people without any solid character development). It's sloppy, boring, heavily manufactured, and easily predicted. A lot of it is ****.
But there's always some seeds or kernels of good stuff in giant wads of elephant dung. The community is funny and lively. There's a great audience here on Board 8 (and by 'great' I mean 'large' =P). There are characters who are extremely memorable and awesome, some despite crappy seasons with some of the worst characters ever (see: Fiji).
I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. There are many highs and many lows, but the fact of the matter is that it's unpredictable what to expect episode-to-episode. Sure, it's become rather easy to predict the winner in the first few episodes of the season or which tribe is going to dominate by all the airtime and character development they get, but you never know who the next boot is going to be or how things mix up. I dunno. I'm sore with it right now. Maybe if I watch some Heroes vs. Villains, I'd get in the mood. Too bad I got rid of the two-hour premiere =( (still have Banana Etiquette!)
Again: http://www.funny115.com/
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"Because they don't want to reason about what they consider a masterpiece and be hurt when they realize it was all useless." - Umineko on Lost