Note: The following contains spoilers for this week’s already aired episode of “Survivor”
Max Dawson, the former Northwestern University professor so obsessed with the CBS reality series “Survivor” that he taught a class on it, was voted off on Wednesday’s episode.
Apparently his extensive research and knowledge about the show did not help him stay beyond the fourth week.
This season has the contestants divided into a blue collar tribe, the white collar tribe (of which Dawson was a member) and the no collar tribe, with some cross-tribal mingling, much of it to Dawson’s disadvantage.
“The debate tonight is between Max and Shirin,” said Will (from the blue collar tribe). “It’s really about who is the most annoying.”
Dawson’s constant over-strategizing did him no favors, and the “annoying” charge was tough to dispute, based on his behavior during the tribal council. When host Jeff Probst instructed the contestants that now would be the time to use a hidden immunity idol if you have one, Dawson couldn’t help himself:
“Hey, Jeff, hold up, bro,” he said, while reaching behind his back and coming up … empty-handed. And then, a tad sheepishly: “I just always wanted to say that.” Cue the eyerolls from his fellow cast members.
Dawson, who now lives and works in Los Angeles, taught a class at Northwestern called “The Tribe Has Spoken: Surviving TV’s New Reality” in 2012 and 2013.
Despite spending two years readying himself to compete on the show, his interpersonal skills (and nerdy enthusiasm for the show, which involved spouting trivia from past seasons) clearly irked his competitors.
When I spoke with Dawson ahead of the season premiere, I asked him to talk about the differences of being on the show versus all the years he spent studying it as an academic.
“I had no idea how difficult it would be to actually play,” he told me. “And that applies to the basic survival elements — the food, the water, the shelter, the sun — but it really applies, more than anything for me, to the personal dynamics.”
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