Is it just me, or do the Survivor players seem to be getting younger and younger? I could go through and calculate the average age of each cast to prove my point, but I’m going to take a note from the Siga tribe and go off survibes. Maybe the castaways are just engaging in better pre-island skincare routines, maybe they’re all way more social media savvy — whatever! The new casts feel young enough to merit a Millennials vs. Gen Z season. Just in general, Survivor: as an — ugh — “elder millennial,” I really don’t need the reminder that I am a few months shy of 40.
This is why the Survivor 46 premiere gave me a little bit of hope. Why? Because two survivors — Tevin (24) and Hunter (28) — bonded over their love of The Andy Griffith Show. Survivor even indulged the formation of an Andy Griffith alliance by dropping Tevin and Hunter into a black and white pastiche of the show’s opening credits, complete with that whistled theme song.
Tevin and Hunter’s love of one of the most classic of all classic sitcoms warmed my heart because it gave me hope for the youths. Why? Because the quickest way to make me feel old is to call Friends or Seinfeld a “classic sitcom.” But that’s how The Youths see those shows. To them, the 20th century was a whole other century. To me, 1999 will always feel like it was 10 years ago. But kids these days, they have 24 years of 21st century pop culture to wade through, and there’s so much of it. Why should Hunter (b. 1996-ish) and Tevin (b. 2000-ish) be spending any time at the watering hole with Andy and Opie? [Puts on Old Man pants] Don’t they have TikToks to be a-watchin’? [Keeps Old Man pants on because that’s how I dress]
However many Reels Hunter and Tevin watch, they also relax with a legit old favorite, The Andy Griffith Show. And these two couldn’t be more different! An extrovert and an introvert, an actor and a teacher, city mouse and country mouse (but both are Southern mice)! I cannot tell you how much this meant to me, someone who was born 16 years after The Andy Griffith Show left the air.
I know it’s confusing, me complaining about being old and then finding comfort in two people younger than me bonding over a show that’s older than me. Let me explain, and give a tip to any Gen Zers out there who hope to form alliances with older players on future seasons of strategy-based reality competition shows: old pop culture references are the key to our heart. If it’s from before 2000, even as old as 1950, the right reference can fire off nostalgia neurons in our brains that will make us fond of you — maybe even trust you.
That’s because I don’t call myself an “elder millennial.” I actually think of myself, and those born between 1981 and 1988, the Nick at Nite Generation. When people talk about millennials — after they get through grousing about avocado toast and us not buying property that we very much cannot afford, Boomers! — they talk about how we remember life before the internet, how we came of age during Y2K, etc. All that’s true, sure, but I think what separates our generation is the fact that we grew up during the first time in pop culture history that pop culture history was really a thing.
The rise of cable and proliferation of syndication allowed kids born in the ’80s to grow up watching cartoons from the ’50s referencing actors from the ’30s. Why do I know Peter Lorre? Because of Looney Tunes, which came on Nickelodeon. Nick at Nite, which packaged sitcoms from the ’50s to the ’70s with hip, ironic-yet-reverent, and totally obsessive marketing made I Love Lucy and The Munsters and Mary Tyler Moore cool for modern audiences. Why else were two (absolutely perfect) Brady Bunch movies made in the mid-’90s? Because before we had meme culture, we had classic TV culture. That’s what defines millennials, baby! So any time I see Drag Race queens not know who Charles Nelson Reilly is, I feel like the Crypt-Keeper — which is honestly a reference that Gen Z’ers probably don’t get!
