The editing has completely fallen apart after the merge.

My first post for this was not approved for some reason, so hopefully this one will go through.

The editing since the merge has been sloppy, and I think it's done a major disservice to the cast. It feels like a lot of things are presented without context, or in a way that could be interpreted rather harshly by the audience. Or it's just straight up confusing af.

Examples:

• Joe's kryptonite comment about Star. I still don't understand what he was trying to say.

• Joe and Kyle's heart-to-heart. Seems like it confused a lot of people, and I saw theories that CBS edited out references to Kyle being racially profiled by police (no clue if that's true, but the conversation seemed really odd to me watching live).

• Mitch, Mary, Kamilla, Star, and maybe others just disappearing from episodes. No confessionals and very little footage of them.

• No explanation for why everyone dislikes Star, beyond "omg chaos".

And to a lesser extent...

• What happened to Mary? Seems like she became a completely different person after linking up with David.

• Why did Mitch feel so entitled to go on that reward? There was no explanation. They even did a confessional with Joe where he was like, "Yeah I'm kind of pissed. but actually, maybe it was a smart move by Kyle? Okay then."

• Kyle's weird comment about David and Mary looking like they were in a relationship. The sentiment was not that weird to air, but I remember it being edited in oddly.

A lot of this stuff can be interpreted pretty harshly, as seen by the constant dumping on Eva for being a racist woman hater or whatever. But it could also just be as simple as Star being really annoying to everyone. There's no way to know, and so the armchair psychology has gone nuts.

It really feels like post production is intentionally leaving information out for us.

It's also extra weird after such a great pre-merge: Sai vs Mary, the Vula 1.0 tribal councils, Vula 2.0 opening up about their backgrounds and upbringings, Kyle and Kevin's journey, etc.

EDIT

I'm not looking for specific answers regarding any of these examples. But for the kryptonite comment especially: the fact that there are multiple interpretations, some of which rely on outside interviews, kind of supports my point that post production really dropped on the ball on the editing.