Scary Injuries on CBS' Survivor Samoa

Did that quote grab your attention like it did mine? While watching CBS' "Amazing Race" Sunday night, October 18, 2009, a teaser commercial jumped into the commercial rotation. A slow motion scene showing a blind folded Russell Swan plays out with some sort of tilting table in a jungle background. There's some sort of crazy, tilting table with what looks like a maze on top. It would appear that there's some sort of immunity or reward challenge taking place. The edge of the table angles up and appears to strike Russell in the chest or face. Now he's down. Someone is asking, "Russell, can you hear me?"

As it turns out, I'd just finished watching last Thursday's most recent Survivor Samoa (got to love those DVRs). That episode had ended with a short preview of Survivor's upcoming episode. In that mini preview it was mentioned that "another contestant goes down". From the way it was presented, the "contestant going down" didn't seem to be all that serious. But taken with Jeff Probst's Sunday night quote, I've got to wonder whether the injuries are starting to really ramp up.

I can remember in Season 16, James Clement of Survivor Micronesia was removed for an infection of his finger. Again in the Micronesia episodes, Chet Welch was medically evacuated after he suffered an infection in his heel. And then there was Jonathan Penner who suffered a leg injury and was removed to a hospital.

Though my wife and I do enjoy watching Survivor together, I'm beginning to wonder if the show is taking too many risks at the expense of entertainment. Do we really need to have riskier and riskier games that sometimes result in serious injuries just to keep the show interesting? Is that the slippery slope we've started down?

As I was typing up my thoughts on all this, the new show "Three Rivers" was running in the background. It breaks for commercial. Imagine my surprise to see another slow motion Survivor Samoa short teaser spot come on.

In slow, dramatic style, various blindfolded Survivor contestants are shown pushing some very large colored balls through a jungle background. The balls reminded me of gigantic hamster cages.

"Russell is exhausted," someone says.

And then a very serious voice over from Jeff Probst:

"Nineteen seasons... the scariest moment I've ever had on this show."

More shots are shown of Russell Swan face up on the ground, medical personnel are bent over. Camera people are shown moving in for close-ups.

The buildup is taking place. Will Survivor Samoa's "nicer" Russell end up leaving the show earlier than he'd probably like to?

Waiting on Thursday's episode to find out how this all turns out.