If any of my readers are wondering why I, and many others on the internet, are calling this one of the best seasons of all time, you need look no further than this episode. Oh, it is by no means a great episode. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a bad episode. Lackluster challenges, little to no strategizing, and a predictable boot. By all rights, this should be a terrible episode, the worst a season can produce. And yes, I’d say this was the weakest episode of this season as a whole thus far. And yet… I can’t hate it. For whatever reason, this season has succeeded at injecting such tension, such drama, that even the most predictable of episodes becomes exciting. How you may ask? An Oedipus Complex. Oh, sorry, that’s me pulling from a “Cards Against Humanity” Deck. The answer probably lies somewhere in the episode. Let’s look at it, shall we?
Our episode kicks off the morning after the regrettable Stephen Fishbach ouster, which Spencer takes credit for, though the way I saw it, that was more Joe’s move. True, Spencer was the swing vote that allowed it to happen, but I prefer to give credit for a move to the person who came up with the ove rather than the person who executed it. In any case, Spencer seems to have recovered from his temporary head trauma that led him to believe that Stephen was a bigger threat than Joe, as he now makes good with Jeremy, and wants Joe out of this game again. Jeremy is naturally a little suspicious, but since he has few options at this point, he accepts Spencer back into the fold.
It may be a case of too little, too late, however, as Kimmi has her own plans. Now, before I get into what bugs me about this, I’m going to give Kimmi the praise she deserves. She’s a lot more adaptable than I thought she was. Not long after I got done criticizing her for learning how to play the game better than on “Survivor The Australian Outback”, but still stuck in that early era of gameplay, she finally ramps it up here, and joins the rest of us. It’s a great evolution to see, and makes me feel bad for that criticism of her. But with that said, there is something that is equally true and must now be said: Kimmi’s strategy is irksome. Oh, not because it’s a bad strategy; far from it! Kimmi’s trying to form a women’s alliance so that, once obvious target Joe is gone, the women can just pick off the men all the way to the final four. For Kimmi, this is a great strategy. It’s a move she can claim as her own, pretty much guarantees her final three (since both Kelley and Tasha are bigger threats than she is at that point), and even gives her a decent shot at winning. At least she’d get a better one than up against, say, Jeremy and Spencer. No, my problem with Kimmi’s move is the hypocrisy of it all. Remember back to the days of Bayon? WHO was the one ranting about not letting a “women’s alliance” form? WHO was the one leading the anti-Monica charge? And don’t misunderstand, I have no love for Monica. I stand behind my assertion that she was a waste of a spot this season. But for KIMMI to be the one who suggests a women’s alliance? The hypocrisy of it all is just killing me.
With that nice little nugget of strategy tucked away (Kimmi having talked to Kelley, and Kelley having talked to the others), we head off to our reward challenge, which, as teased last episode, is the loved one’s challenge. Probst tries to fake out the contestants that they’re not getting a personal loved ones visit this time, but no one really buys it. I’ll be talking about the challenge itself in a bit, but let’s focus on the positives first. This is a really nice set of loved ones here. A few here and there are just kind of standard, but most of them have some factor that makes them stand out, and I mean that in a good way. We start out with Jeremy, whose wife Val is able to come out and see him, marking the first instance ever in which the loved one who shows up for a challenge was previously a contestant on the show. Recall that Jeremy had been a bit broken up about leaving his wife while she was pregnant. For him, this is probably the best day out there. He even gets to learn the sex of the baby. They’re having a boy, and if they happen to be reading this blog, I wish them a hearty congratulations, and ask that they leave a comment so that I can have some vindication in my sad, pathetic life. Jeremy for some reason doesn’t want his fellow tribe members to know that he knows the sex of the baby for some reason. Guess it’s that whole “Not wanting to seem too emotional” thing from earlier in the season. Tasha’s cousin shows up, though Tasha says they’re more like sisters than cousins. Frankly, this is one of the less memorable reunions of the episode, but it’s decent nice to see. Spencer’s girlfriend comes out, and he’s able to get over HIS inability to express emotion by saying “I Love You”. While I still think this conflict for Spencer is a bit contrived, it’s a nice scene to have. You really feel for Spencer’s reunion here, and you also feel jealous, if you’re me, since Spencer seems to have done very well in the girlfriend department. Abi-Maria and her mother reunite next, and like on “Survivor Philippines”, demonstrates to us that even the most despicable human beings have someone out there who loves them. I also like the little detail about how they speak Brazilian Portuguese to each other. It’s a little thing, but it adds a unique touch, and it’s kind of a fun little surprise to see what they’re actually saying. Keith gets to reunite with his wife, and this is another one that falls a little flat for me. Again, it’s a nice enough reunion, but there’s nothing special about it, and Keith’s quip afterwards really doesn’t do it for me. Fortunately, we have Kelley reuniting with her dad Dale after this, which is much more interesting. Dale becomes the second contestant to ever reappear as a loved one, and we get to hear his thoughts on the hardness of staying behind while your loved one goes play “Survivor”, and his happiness that Kelley managed to do better this time. Maybe not the most emotional reunion, but still fun to see. I’ve got a lot for time for Dale Wentworth, more so than most. He was a bit clueless socially, but he had some good ideas, and was good for an entertaining quip or two. Here, we get to see his arc come full circle, as he got his daughter voted out of the game, but now she’s surpassed him. It’s nice to see. While Joe may be boring in most respects, the one time he showed more than just bland niceness was when he was bitter about not even being allowed to make the loved ones challenge, since he wanted his dad to share the experience. This time, Joe gets his wish, and his dad comes out of the jungle just like he’d imagined. Once again, it’s nice to see the story come full circle. Finally, Kimmi’s dad comes out to greet her, and sadly, we end on a low note. The only real significant thing about that visit was when Probst played up how Kimmi had waited “the longest” for her loved one, referencing the fact that, with Kelly out of the game, Kimmi is the contestant from the oldest season left. It’s true, but it feels very contrived. Probably should have saved Jeremy or Joe for last, in my opinion.
As to the challenge itself, as I hinted, it’s pretty blah. Each contestant digs up a sting with three bags of puzzle pieces attached, then spin around a pole to get at a fourth bag. Now dizzy, they have to cross a balance beam and untie a fifth bag, before getting out the puzzle pieces to solve a word puzzle. This one’s a combination challenge, taking elements from “Survivor One World” and “Survivor Cagayan”. Like many post-merge challenges, it lacks in scale. Parts of it are entertaining. The dizzy balance beam portion is decently difficult, and the puzzle is, in many ways, insidious. Unlike most puzzles, which have words that commonly relate to “Survivor”, this one spells out “Nutritious”, and for this particular puzzle, you need to remember to spell it backward to be right, which is no small feet on little food, water, or sleep. Sadly, though, the challenge just isn’t that exciting over all. At least it’s not a team reward challenge.
Most everyone makes it to the puzzle and gets confused (no surprise there), but it’s ultimately Kelley who wins. She gets a barbecue feast with her dad back at camp, along with three other people, meaning for once it’s not an individual reward challenge where you offend more than half the tribe. Kelley, being the smart, strategic woman she is, picks… Keith. Ok, didn’t see that coming. I guess there might be a bit of a “Survivor San Juan del Sur” bond there, but other than that, I see no logic in this choice. A women’s alliance is a good strategy for Kelley, but it’s tenuous at the moment. This alliance is the perfect time to solidify that bond. Admittedly, you probably don’t want to take ALL the women on reward, since that might look suspicious to the men, but KEITH? What’s the excuse for taking him. You probably don’t want to take Joe, since he’s your prime target, and you don’t want him getting food, but with both Spencer and particularly Jeremy, you can make the “They needed it most” argument for taking them, thereby deflecting flak from yourself. Kelley’s next two picks are logical, though, as she takes Abi-Maria and Kimmi with her. One could argue that, since Kelley is closely bonded with Abi-Maria, that it’s better to take Tasha than her, but given how vindictive Abi-Maria can be, I can’t argue with that call too much. What I CAN argue against is her choice when Probst lets her take one more person along. Now there’s really no excuse for not taking Tasha. Leaving her out will make her less likely to join the women’s alliance, and since you’ll have taken at least one guy by this point, there’ll be less suspicion. But no, Kelley makes probably the WORST choice in this scenario, and takes Joe. Rather than take the person you want to bond with the most, you take the person you want to target, and you feed them. I fail to see the logic here.
Everyone goes off to enjoy their reward in front of the other three, and it’s very nice. Joe and his dad have a bonding moment in front of the Orkun flag, and while it’s definitely a very genuine moment, and I should be invested, I can’t help but instead focus on Joe’s Dad’s hair. At last, the origin of the man-bun is revealed! Ok, technically his dad has a ponytail, but considering how similar their hair is overall, I’m considering it a proto-man bun. Joe’s is just a slightly more evolved version.
Despite Jeremy, Tasha, and Spencer having the fact that they didn’t get a loved one’s visit rubbed in their faces, they’re not overly bitter. Spencer makes one comment, and even that’s a qualified comment. The three do agree, though, that they’d make a nice final three. Tasha rightly states that she’s in a good position now, as, so long as Joe goes, she can choose whether to side with Jeremy, Spencer, and Keith, or with Kelley, Kimmi, and Abi-Maria. I’ll also give Tasha credit for not being bitter over the whole “Not allowed to bond on reward” thing. I expected her to consider that having “crossed her”, which she, as you will recall, does not take well. She plays very well here, and throughout the whole episode overall, save for one small moment that I’ll touch on in a bit.
Only the halfway point of the episode, and already we get to the immunity challenge. This is the final immunity challenge from “Survivor Samoa” where everyone holds a small wooden statue over their heads on an increasingly long pole. Last person with their statue aloft wins. Not to say that this challenge isn’t difficult, but it’s yet ANOTHER endurance immunity challenge, and I’m getting sick of them. It’s also not exactly one of the most memorable or dramatic looking endurance challenges ever. I know that, by design, endurance challenges are not going to be the coolest looking, but consider, say, “Hand on a Hard Idol”, the classic final immunity challenge. Overall, not much is happening, just people standing there, but MAN do they make it look awesome to stand there. The pose is epic, the landscape dramatic! THAT’S what you can do with an endurance challenge.
But let’s add some ketchup to that awful sandwich, shall we? How about we make this a gender-segregated immunity challenge? Yep, this is one of those where the last man and woman standing each get immunity. Normally, this isn’t too bad a twist, especially in larger merges, since it gives a somewhat fairer shot at immunity. Plus here, it might break up the monotony of St. Joe winning everything. But the problem is that this twist works best right after the merge, just to add shake-up upon shake-up. This late, it feels tacked-on and not right. Having double immunity right after the merge adds a sense of grandeur to it. Doing it randomly, having not done it at any challenge before, just doesn’t make sense to me.
Well, better find something to like about the challenge. Um… the little wooden statue looks pretty cool?
Everyone lasts a decently long while, but the women start dropping like flies, leaving Kelley with immunity. Jeremy and Spencer drop out shortly after, leaving it be, once again, a showdown between Keith and Joe. Oh boy, we all know where this is going. We’ve been teased with a medical emergency, and Probst has been going on and on this challenge about not letting the statue fall on your head. Keith’s the one who’ll be feeling this challenge the most, due to his older years, so doubtless he’s the one to make this mistake, and probably get evacuated from the game.
All this is a very logical assessment, and I’m willing to bet most people who watched this episode expected that to happen. For them, I just have one question: why is Joe lying on the ground, unconscious?
Yep, the show got me. I’d been all prepared to snark cynically about how Keith’s evacuation was telegraphed, but instead, he wins. Joe ends up collapsed on the ground from exhaustion, something no one would have expected from him. This surprise really amps up the drama of what otherwise would be a fairly run-of-the-mill medical emergency, at least by “Survivor” standards. It doesn’t help that Joe doesn’t immediately respond to the medical team, bringing to mind the near death of Russell Swan on “Survivor Samoa”. It really hits you hard, and it feels, in a sense, like the show blindsided you.
Thankfully, it turns out Joe just needed a moment, and is going to be ok, which I’m grateful for. While I’m not the biggest Joe fan in the world, I hate to see people get evacuated for medical reasons, especially when they’re really playing hard. Further, St. Joe really needs to be voted out for a satisfying conclusion, showing that, despite his improved gameplay, he really couldn’t win. Probst gives a big speech on playing hard that really goes nowhere, and we get sent back to camp.
As one might expect, St. Joe’s name gets tossed around a LOT following the challenge. Abi-Maria, of course, ruins any tender moments that we might have. At first, it seems like the misdirection is really going to fall flat, as St. Joe talks to Jeremy about voting out Abi-Maria. Now you may ask, “Who in their right mind would vote out Abi-Maria? She’s cannon fodder at the end!” And this is exactly St. Joe’s argument. No one will ever vote Abi-Maria out, so she takes up an end slot. It might be yours. Why let that happen? Well, St. Joe, I’ll tell you why. At this point in the game, with so few people left overall, the focus shifts from “How do I get to the end?” to “Who can I beat?” Your argument might have worked earlier, when there was more cannon fodder left in the game, but now? No sane person would vote Abi-Maria out, at least on that evidence. This is REALLY bad misdirection, and had this been all we got, I might have found it in me to dislike this episode.
Thankfully, Tasha’s one stupid move of the night gets us much better misdirection. Hoping to build trust with the guys, she spills the beans about the women’s alliance. This, correctly, gets the guys paranoid about said women’s alliance, and suddenly voting out Abi-Maria seems much more attractive. After all, one less woman in the game weakens the women’s alliance. Now, I get where Tasha came from in the decision to tell the guys. She wants to build trust with a final three alliance, and she doesn’t want to look like a double-crosser, should one of the disgruntled women try and shake things up. But in doing so, Tasha pretty much throws all her eggs into the guys basket, since this makes it harder for the women’s alliance to get together, thus eliminating her best asset at this point in the game. Not only is this bad in general, but I’d say she’s throwing her eggs in the wrong basket. She has a MUCH better shot at winning the game against the women than against Spencer and Jeremy. It does give us better misdirection, though, which I appreciate. For all this episode’s faults, I can say I genuinely don’t know who’s going at Tribal Council.
Given this episode’s Tribal Council, that’s a good thing. It’s not the worst, but it’s just sort of generic posturing, nothing really special. The votes are cast, and predictably, St. Joe gets crucified, I mean voted out. Can’t say I’m sorry to see him go. Joe is a nice guy and all, but if there was one flaw in the past couple episodes, it’s that most strategy centered around him to the point of exclusion of all others, either by targeting him, or using him to target someone else. With him gone, we can now move forward with new and exciting storylines. If he wasn’t going to win, leaving sooner is better. Plus, while seeing someone immunity their way to the end would have been neat, it does not a legendary winner make, in my opinion.
Was the the right decision? Of course. The women’s alliance is a threat, to be sure, but Joe winning overall is a much bigger threat. It works well for both the women and the men. Plus, Jeremy’s immunity idol and the possibility of having Tasha on board means that this move is less risky overall. Good on you all for not making the same mistake twice!
This episode still confuses me. It has a lot of elements to dislike, that I listed earlier, but the exciting bits were just SO exciting, and I had such a fun time, that I can’t in good conscience dislike this episode. The preview for next week looked boring, maybe I can rag on that.
You know something I love, though? The “Lore” reward challenge from last week. I’m still riding a high from that. Thus, it’s time for a new segment I call…
MATT’S MARK-UP!
Yeah, the title’s a work in progress. Point is, I wanted to do a “Top 5 and Bottom 5” of lore challenges last week, but the blog was too long as is. This one isn’t though, so I’ll do it now. trouble is, by the strictest definition, there are only seven such challenges in the entirety of “Survivor” History. Rather than do a “Top 3 and Bottom 3” like I’ve done in the past, I thought it better to just rank all seven from the least good to the most good, since none of them are “bad” per se. I’ll be using a strict definition here, so the challenge must be one where Probst tells a story (or lists off facts about the locale), and then people must go and answer questions about that story, either by free recall, or picking the correct response. The lore challenge from “Survivor Cook Islands” doesn’t count because the lore barely factored into the challenge, and was just “Put the answers in the right spot”, rather than having to figure out the answer. Limits set, let’s get too it!
7. “Survivor Guatemala”: It pains me to put this one as the lowest, since “Survivor Guatemala” is one of my favorite seasons, and this challenge from this season is part of the reason I became a “Survivor” fan in the first place. That said, this one is the least remarkable of them all. It’s very by-the-numbers, and the flags grabbed to signify a correct answer just don’t stand out very much. Making the stuff to grab color coded to person (rather than question) was a nice touch, but this one is just too unremarkable to put anywhere else.
6. “Survivor Africa”: Sunset is a very picturesque time to run a challenge, but as we’ll discuss later, it’s not sunset. This was still a pretty cool challenge, with the breaking of ostrich eggs to get the ribbons being a cool part. Setting the whole thing in an abandoned boma was also a nice touch. However, while the ribbons falling off the staffs made for a nice bit of tension in the challenge, it ultimately came to nothing, and just seemed like a design flaw in the challenge. Plus, I can live without hearing about the circumcision practices of the Masai, thank you very much.
5. “Survivor Vanuatu”: The tale of Roy Mata is probably my favorite of all the lore stories ever given on the show. It was engaging, relatively easy to follow, and actually played a part in the end of the season, which was a cool touch. Collecting pig tusks was different in a good way in determining who won, though I take issue with the fact that you couldn’t really tell which tusk was from which question. Makes it harder to play along. It was also nice to see Eliza, someone who hadn’t won immunity to that point, win. But this one took place in broad daylight (unlike the rest of the ones further up the list), and the course felt really small and contained, which detracted somewhat from the tension.
4. “Survivor Marquesas”: I want to put this one higher, I really do. Kathy’s warrior whoop after winning is one of my favorite moments of the season, and holding it at night with everyone having a torch was a very atmospheric touch. Sadly, though, the story isn’t memorable, and the totems everyone needed, while easy to see, were a bit generic and couldn’t really be distinguished from one another. As such, here must this season lie.
3. “Survivor The Australian Outback”: Shackling the contestants was a nice touch, and added an element of strategy as to which lock you went for first. Locks as the thing needed to be turned in was a bit generic, but it made the challenge feel like more of a cohesive whole. It also helps that they could get easily lost, adding some drama and a somewhat come-from-behind victory. Really, it’s hard to say what this challenge DOESN’T have going for it. Really, what’s keeping it down is that the two above it have similar to what this one has, but more.
2. “Survivor Borneo”” This particular lore challenge is well-remembered by most, and for good reason. While it does take place at sunset, rather than night, it’s incredibly appropriate. Creepy masks all over the place, a story that for once directly relates to the contestants, it does a good job of scaring you. Giving each contestant a camera to record answers on was a pretty nice touch as well. The crowning moment, though, is Rudy’s repeated “I don’t know.” to pretty much every question. I’d ask what could possibly beat this out, but by process of elimination, you know what it is.
1. “Survivor Cambodia”: How could I not give it to this season? This iteration of the challenge throws everything at you. Three possible answers instead of two. People making stupid mistakes. People being tricked into giving the wrong answer. An atmospheric night shoot. A FREAKING IDOL CLUE HIDDEN AT THE CHALLENGE! All that effort deserves to be rewarded, which is why this most recent lore challenge is the best ever.
Feel free to disagree in the comments, but I’m riding high on this season. Not feeling too optimistic about next episode, but let’s hope this season proves me wrong again!
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 
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