Is Jeff Probst The Last Of The Painfully Self-Serious Reality-Show Hosts?

If you listened to the piece on Morning Edition today about the building of the Survivor sets, one thing you learned is that host Jeff Probst takes Survivor very seriously.

He tries to act like he doesn't — he sees himself as a jokester of sorts, and he's wildly attached to his notion of himself as a cool guy. Still, when he talks about the show, he can't not say things like, "Instantly, you have adversaries, and you have something to fight for!"

Listen to the way he actually trash-talks other reality shows for having cheap-looking challenges that he claims are "literally with tin cans and some string." I have never seen tin cans and string on any show I have ever watched, but even if I had, when you are bragging about how beautifully your obstacle courses are painted, you are taking yourself awfully seriously for a guy who snuffs torches for a living.

The Emmys, Elisabeth Hasselbeck's hair, and more, after the jump...

 

Probst is very different from the other people who are nominated for Outstanding Reality Or Reality-Competition Host this weekend at the Emmys. He's up against Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race, who famously showed up in his underpants last season; Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio of Top Chef, who like their somber "pack your knives" pronouncements but would never claim they are causing people to reinvent themselves, as Probst sometimes has; Ryan Seacrest of American Idol, who goofs on himself constantly (and did so in a cameo in Knocked Up); Heidi Klum of Project Runway, who talks in a breezy manner about how things make your butt look; and the divine Tom Bergeron of Dancing With The Stars, who has perhaps the most well-honed loving but self-deprecating sense of humor about his show on all of television.

Jeff Probst will never show up on Survivor in his underwear. He'd like to be a fun guy, but he's a little too attached to the idea that what he does, at some level, speaks to the human condition. Which it doesn't. He's also attached to the idea that Survivor is the Cadillac of reality shows (thus the cracking on other people's cheap-looking sets). Which it isn't.

I sense that the Probst style of hosting is going out of style. There used to be more: Donald Trump in his early days, while a goofball in every way, really believed he was finding a person capable of greatness, and he'd tell you so. Chris Harrison of The Bachelorette still acts like his show is about love, and you can certainly be ultra-serious if you're on an allegedly uplifting show like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

But competitive shows really don't tolerate this kind of puffery anymore. When Survivor premiered, they still thought they were going to be able to sell it partly on the actual survival aspects — gritty Robinson Crusoe stuff (remember the rat-eating stories?), in which case you might get away with taking it this seriously. It didn't turn out that way, of course. Nobody wants to watch people eat rats or starve until their hair starts to fall out (as happened to The View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck back when she was a contestant).

This isn't a survival exercise; it's a game show with less deodorant. That's largely how the other hosts treat their shows. Jeff Probst is the last one left who truly believes — as he once said — that people experience a "spiritual death" followed by a rebirth when they participate.

In Survivor.

Maybe it's those smashingly painted sets.