Boy, for a show that claims to like redemption arcs, this season sure is snuffing them out faster than Probst literally snuffing torches. Voce turning out to be likable? Poof! Gone! Brad actually learning to play more new-school style? Poof! Gone! And now we have the case of JD, who actually played semi-decently this episode (at least compared to his previous ones), seeming to finally be learning from his mistakes? Poof! Gone!
Well, now that I’ve spoiled the episode for you, let us get to discussing it properly. We actually start immediately following Tribal Council, meaning that there’s probably some drama to be had. Sure enough, Genie does not take the blindside well, threatening to stop working around camp due to the other players betraying her. She’s well within her rights to do so, but it’s not a good look. That said, the other players aren’t much better. Despite Genie saying she doesn’t want to talk, she basically gets forced into it, always a bad move from the majority. Shan is really the only one who tries to comfort her or justify things, revealing Brad’s vote steal advantage in the process, pointing out to Genie that this meant Genie was not Brad’s number one. A reasonable move, but not one that makes what YOU did much better. Moreover, JD points out, in confessional, the hypocrisy of Shan getting mad at him for keeping a secret advantage when Brad did the same thing. Shan tries to say that it was “Brad’s thing”, but JD rightly counters that the same was true of his extra vote, which he wants back. Shan complies, because she probably has very little choice, and JD vows not to make the same mistake again.
We cut to… A reward challenge? No, no show. You’re supposed to give us a new convoluted advantage that we spend all our time explaining instead of getting to what actually interests us in the show!
I kid, I kid. Yes, it could be argued the reward challenge takes up just as much time as getting a new advantage but A: The reward challenge is simpler and easier to understand, meaning it doesn’t confuse the game like a new advantage, and B: Doesn’t add more advantages to the game, apart from the reward itself. Speaking of the reward, it’s the return of an oldie but a goodie: The local who comes by and teaches you how to live at camp. A fun reward from past seasons. Whether it was Da the Ni-Vanuatu, Paul and Joe of Palau, or everyone’s favorite, Tata the Bushman of “Survivor Caramoan”, it’s always fun to see the locals school the American rubes, and a very important reward on a season like this, with limited supplies. Second place? A fish. Fair enough.
And the challenge itself? A returning one, but unusual and fun. Hailing I believe from “Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X”, one at a time each member of a team of four hurls a ball onto a rail, then runs through trip wires to try and catch it. Once all four do, they dig under a beam to an end course, where players must get all balls to land on a narrow platform. Tricky, and with some fun elements. Glad to see this return.
Teams of four mean Luvu must sit two people, meaning for the first time, they must deal with the “Cannot sit out the same people in back to back challenges” debacle. Fortunately, their picks are sound. Erika and Naseer are our sit outs. Sitting out your puzzle person on a challenge without a puzzle, and one of your stronger members, but not your strongest. All logical. Unfortunately, this means that your challenge sink plays, and that challenge sink is Heather. She has trouble even getting the ball into the rail, and Ua and Ease all finish up digging before she even gets through. It’s back and forth between those two, but between JD not showboating his basketball throws and Genie coming in with a clutch first shot score, Ua wins the island native, while Yase gets the fish. Heather is the star, though, with Probst once again milking an opportunity for a hero story, with Heather continuing to try in spite of her repeated failure. And it IS an inspiring moment, but the Probst narration was not necessary. Again, show, don’t tell. Also, while the inspirational music was called for, it was cued too early. While Heather’s perseverance was inspiring, the REAL star moment was after the challenge. Heather, understandably, breaks down a little about leading her tribe to their first loss. And yeah, this is a challenge performance that merits some fear. It’s a reasonable reaction. How does her tribe respond? Every single one of them, even the sit outs, comes up, hugs her, and tells her how well she did. Not a single one gets upset at the loss. Heather’s name is NEVER brought up in anything other than a positive manner. THAT is inspiring. THAT is heartwarming. And THAT is the true highlight of this challenge. Though Tiffany admitting she’s uncertain of the fish’s gender is a close second purely for its humor.
We stick with Yase as they prepare to cook their fish, and make a fun joke where Evvie makes a “Previously on… ‘Survivor’” for their tribe, and the editors edit it in. This is interrupted, however, when Tiffany calls the tribe over to look at something. On the other side of their island, we find that baby sea turtles have hatched, and are making their adorable way to the ocean. So much effort, so little forward motion. Evvie does take a moment to compare it to the stick-to-it-iveness of Yase, but really, it’s just a nice moment at camp, and a real bonding moment for both cast and audience. See what nice things we can have when new advantages aren’t shoved down our throats every five minutes.
We don’t look in too much on Ua, though we do meet their local, Nathan. He’s quite skilled, climbing up a coconut tree, and somehow descending face-first, but we sadly don’t spend much time with him. One thing I appreciate, though, is his dress. Usually on these rewards, the local is dressed in “local attire”, but Nathan here is wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Not that the other locals from other rewards SHOULDN’T have been wearing their native garb, by any means, but it did serve to set them apart from the cast. The cast were the identifiable “Americans”, and the native the “other”. Here? Nathan blends with the cast, and seems just like a regular guy, which in my opinion is a good thing. It’s so easy to demonize the “other”, that seeing someone from a different part of the world from the average American, with a different skill set from the Average American, look like the rest of the cast, serves to help bring a small bit of unity. There are differences, but ultimately, we’re all people, with similar wants and desires.
The rest of the tribe finds this heartwarming as well. So, leave it to Ricard to bring it back around to the game, as he tells us that now Genie’s threat is irrelevant, as they don’t need her. Way to be a buzzkill, Ricard. I still like his strategic game, but man, he can harsh the mellow of the season, sometimes, and be needlessly vindictive.
We head over to Luvu. Let me guess, now the tribe thinks they need Naseer again? No, actually, Naseer is probably the LEAST involved member of the tribe this episode, if you count Heather’s moment at the challenge earlier. Erika, you see, is being bit by the bug of “Big Move-Itis”, or inflammation of the Big Move. After Sydney throws a little hissy fit at not being able to make fire with a flint, Erika sees this emotional volatility as a liability, and goes to Deshawn to suggest voting her out. Deshawn plays along quite well, but if you remember anything about Luvu, apart from Naseer, then it’s the fact that Deshawn and Sydney seem to be aligned, as all strategy talk goes through them. Sure enough, Deshawn clues Sydney into what Erika is saying. Or at least, he tries to, but given that Erika is literally the LAST person on the tribe Sydney guesses threw her name out, I’m not sure she gets it. As if doubling down, Sydney doesn’t really react like someone who heard their name get thrown out. She doesn’t throw a fit. She doesn’t swear revenge. She doesn’t break down. She doesn’t scheme behind Erika’s back. No, she states that Erika’s right to do so, because Sydney is just THAT GOOD at the game. Way to be humble, Sydney. That’s sure to endear you to the audience!
Coming back from commercial, we see that Luvu is STILL on this train, with Deshawn informing Danny of the plan, and talking about how it might not be the worst thing for the tribe to lose a challenge here. He’s not saying they SHOULD, but just saying it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Reading between the obvious lines, Deshawn wants to throw a challenge to get out Erika. Now, throwing a challenge is risky, and should really be done only under ideal circumstances. Think Boran throwing the first post-swap immunity on “Survivor Africa”. As the old Boran could get a majority that way, and protect their unsafe allies on Samburu, it made sense. Here? Not so much.
Now, Deshawn does make a sound argument. Historically, on three-tribe seasons, a tribe that never goes to Tribal Council pre-merge becomes a target, and usually caves to infighting. This would be a valid reason to perhaps throw a challenge. The flaw in this plan is that you’re planning to BLINDSIDE someone. Blindsides, for all their positives, do not increase tribe unity. Ua noticed this right after the last Tribal Council. You throw the challenge, vote out a consensus boot like Heather or Naseer? Fine. Risky, but a logical play based on history. But blindsiding Erika at this juncture is only going to divide your tribe, and wreck your chances come the merge.
Thankfully for Deshawn’s game, the universe refuses to let him make this dumb move. This challenge is one that is nigh-unthrowable. Teams of four swim out to retrieve bags of blocks, which they then untie to open and use the blocks to push other blocks out the end. Inside one of the blocks is a key to unlock three rings, which must be landed on posts to win immunity. Two immunities up for grabs once again, in a decent challenge. Pretty standard obstacle course stuff, but the block-using was a fun set piece, and I like the way the key was hidden in this one. Still, not the sort of challenge you can throw. Really, the only choke point is the ring toss, unless your whole tribe is on board. Unfortunately, Erika and Naseer, two people who aren’t on board, have to be in this challenge.
Not for want of trying on the parts of Danny and Deshawn, though. Deshawn narrates the whole thing, about how he walks slowly to shore, ties MORE knots in their bags, and prays to get the key to the rings to hide it (Erika finds it first). Deshawn does his best to sandbag the ring toss, but Naseer eventually subs in. Presumably Deshawn could refuse, but that would only paint a bigger target on his back. This way, if they lose, he can claim he just had an off-day. Naseer is quite the ring tosser, but even he loses to the skills of Yase, who come from being even behind the intentionally slow Luvu. Yes, if you can’t tell, this is another case of Luzon losing to a tribe throwing the challenge in “Survivor Cagayan”. Ua is the victim in this case, and like with a tribe getting decimated in the game, it doesn’t land well. This sort of thing is fun to see once, but loses a lot of the fun on rewatch when you know it’s coming, and even more when you’ve seen something like it before. It doesn’t help that, while the throw in “Cagayan” served to emphasize how much Luzon sucked at challenges, this one just serves to emphasize how this challenge really couldn’t be thrown. It’s circumstances rather than ability that lead to this moment, and it’s lesser for it.
Shan knows just who to blame, though. JD, of course. He was Ua’s only ring tosser, and managed to blow a lead. Reasonable enough evidence and conclusion, but I’m not sure anyone on Ua would have been a BETTER ring-tosser, in which case there’s no point in blaming much of anybody.
Someone has to go, though, and it looks like Genie. Realizing this, Genie tells JD she intends to use her shot in the dark, and asks JD to throw a vote on Ricard just in case. Despite this being a decent thing to do to save his own skin, JD refuses. I did say he does better in this episode, right?
Instead, our drama comes from Shan, as you might expect. She’s REALLY not ok with JD having an extra vote, and so conspires to get it from him. She spins a story about how she’s paranoid, and needs to “hold” his vote for “security”. JD, in a departure from his past gameplay, responds calmly and rationally to this, but when Shan insists, he caves. Despite what he said earlier. Look, I’m not gonna lie, JD is still an incredibly inconsistent player, but he’s at least learned to keep his calm. I could read him the riot act for giving up his advantage in the same episode he said he would never do so again, but when your supposed number one is pushing that hard, I think you have to. An ally is more valuable in the game overall than one extra vote. For once, he’s not flying all over the place like he has in past episodes.
Of course, now that Shan has the parchment, her evil humming recommences, and she considers voting out JD for his vote (presumably it’s transferrable). One on many good reasons to vote JD out, but ultimately, I’d say Genie is still the smarter move here tonight. Whatever JD’s flaws, you haven’t burned him yet, so he’s likely to be loyal. Genie literally threatened to stop working because of one vote she was left out of. As you dwindle in numbers, loyalty becomes ever more important, thus making JD the slightly more valuable ally.
Tribal is a somber, subdued affair. Whatever flaws may be said about this season, the camaraderie amongst the cast is a highlight. They really do seem like family, and you feel the emotion at each eviction. That said, there’s no real highlights, so let’s get to the vote whose outcome you already know if you read the top of this blog. JD goes home, and I am sorry. Apart from him being in my draft team (I’m down to just Deshawn and, God help me, Sydney. Only shot I have now is if Deshawn wins this whole thing), the dude brought a lot of chaos, and for all his bad play, was always happy to be there, and that counts for a lot. That said, I would have been sorry to see Genie go too, so this episode was really just a lose-lose for me no matter what.
Outcome and (relative) lack of mystery aside, this episode returns to the form set by the original episode. Amazingly, when you let your good cast just be a good cast, and not bog everything down with 87 new advantages which all have to be explained, you can really connect with people. All the emotional moments hit home, and while I may personally dislike the outcome, it was still a fun ride. Hopefully next episode can keep up the momentum!
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
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