With psychological tethers attached

It’s instructive to trace the continuing evolution of the popular TV reality program format known as the “survival” show.

When “Survivor” started telecasting years ago, the arduous physical and psychological challenge involved two teams of players, with complex “alliances” being formed and weaker or less clever contestants sequentially being voted and booted out, until only one victor remained standing to claim his or her well-deserved million-dollar prize.

Later, the hit format evolved by limiting its contending players, until other survival shows featured just two combatants. Even later, the “combat” factor was further reduced until some spin-off shows were more about cooperating  to jointly survive.

A particularly eyebrow-raising variation features naked players! The nudity is a come-on, but it isn’t underscored.

In fact, to be allowed to telecast, the show coyly blurs the coed players’ private parts.

More recently, a survival show has been telecast with its participants back to fully-clothed mode. But the latest variation we’ve caught on the tube has its two male players tied by an “umbilical cord” to each other—thus its title, “Tethered.”

Why the additional visual motif and restriction? It could hark back to an old movie we saw decades ago (“The Defiant Ones”), about two convicts on the lam who were chained to one another, and thus had (very much against their initially combative instincts) to learn how to think and work together to escape their pursuers!

This time around, the tethered “twins” aren’t convicts, just two adventurous guys who have agreed to spend a week in the wilds with no provisions at all—and do their darndest to stay alive until they’re found and flown back to civilization.

Just like the old movie that may have inspired it, the new TV show uses its central symbolic and actual tether to teach its players how to get over their animosities and personality differences to finally achieve a successful outcome for their joint endeavor.

To enhance the show’s lesson-learning prospects, the two guys tied to one another are virtual opposites in terms of character and temperament:

Jay is an adventurer and risk-taker, while Matt is a cautious planner and nerd! Expectedly, they clash more often than they cooperate—until their disagreements result in danger and frustration.

Aside from the constant challenge of finding enough food to sustain their bodily functions over so many days, a surprising problem is the fact that they have a very hard time sleeping!

In fact, one of them was unable to doze off for days and days—until he simply conked out from sheer, desperate exhaustion.

Also unexpected was his inability to tolerate the sound of his cosurvivor’s loud snoring, which initially explained his inability to doze off.

The most frustrating experience of all was the twin survivors’ bad decision to take a short cut—that instead forced them to climb a craggy cliffside and crawl through a cave with a very tight aperture at the other end!

But, some lessons have to be very painfully learned before we literally see the light, so there’s method to the “madness” of being “Tethered,” after all!