Wow, I haven’t thought about, made or heard that joke in ages. Do people still know what that is? Is it still relevant? Eh, given the general age of people who are watching this show, probably.
Our first check-in following the ouster of Dwight is perhaps the most anticipated one: Sami. You see, out of all the people who voted for Dwight, Sami was the only one we saw little to no justification for. Sami now informs us that his vote came from Cody and Jesse informing him of their flip. Good to know. According to Sami, this news came right before Tribal Council, hence why he had no time to notify Jeanine. Granted, when we hear this it’s him saying it to Jeanine, so it might just be him doing damage control, but as we see no evidence to the contrary, we should probably take Sami at his word in this case.
Regarding Sami’s treatment of Jeanine, it’s overall pretty good. He acknowledges her feelings, and asks merely to be heard out. He does a good job justifying his actions, and offers Jeanine encouragement. Is he a bit too demanding at times? Perhaps, but Jeanine does not seem pissed at him, so I’d say he’s done all right. The biggest knock against him is probably insisting that Jeanine is safe for a while, merely because it comes across a bit patronizing.
Luckily for Sami, Jeanine has bigger things on her mind. Specifically her idol, lost when Dwight got voted out with it in his crotch. Yeah, she’s upset at being on the wrong side of the numbers for sure, but the idol is a double-whammy. Unfortunately for Jeanine, her hurt means she is not subtle about this fact, and it becomes an open secret amongst the tribe that Jeanine’s idol went home with Dwight. Good for everyone else, bad for her. Especially good for Jesse, though.
Why especially good for Jesse you may ask? Well you see, not only was Dwight blindsided, but WE, the audience, also got blindsided! In Soviet Russia, game blindside YOU!
Ah, the lengths I will go to to make a title work. Yes, the show decided NOT to show us the full steps of idol shuffling, as it seems Dwight, for reasons still unknown, felt Jesse should hold the idol rather than him. It seems Dwight didn’t bother to TELL anyone, though, as no one calls Jesse on it. And no, this is not a Bob Crowley on “Survivor Gabon” deal, making up a story about how an idol previously thought lost is still in the game, he shows it to us. It’s the real deal. Jesse, not being an idiot and realizing that there’s a “Knowledge is Power” in play, sits on this information, as well he should.
I really cannot emphasize enough how BRILLIANT this editing trick is. I’m normally the first to complain when relevant information isn’t given to us until an episode later, but this actually works really well. That information ISN’T relevant to last episode, unless you don’t want to be tricked at all by the show. Given how important misdirection is, I would say the trickery is warranted. And give the show credit: They went the extra mile to hide this information from us. Not only was there NO hint prior to this, but they actively released a separate blog on “Entertainment Weekly” clarifying that idols could not be handed back once votes start being read. An extra step that implied, without actually saying so, that Dwight went out with Jeanine’s idol. This is brilliant storytelling, and again, I love the fact that the show pulled one over on us the audience. It’s like the fake merge in “Survivor Thailand”. The clues were there, had we just listened to them. Bravo, show.
For a final side note, this, for me, reminds me a lot of Maryanne’s idol find on “Survivor 42”: An idol no one but the audience knows about, at a time when it was not thought of. Will it bring Jesse a victory, as it did Maryanne? Quite possibly, and I would be all in for it, even with my adoration of Karla!
Moving on to the next day, we find out that our seven who voted for Dwight (those being Ryan, James, Karla, Cassidy, Jesse, Cody, and Sami) are indeed a tight seven, looking to go to the end together. This, naturally, leads to discussion of who should go next. James, not shy about throwing names out there, names Owen as the person who should be their primary target. He publicly cites his overall challenge prowess and smarts, while privately admitting that it’s due to Owen voting for him at both previous Tribal Councils. Can’t fault James’ logic here.
Owen’s going to remain our focus for a bit here. We have a discussion of languages spoken, and after we kind of GLOSS OVER the heart-rending revelation that Jesse did not meet his father/his father’s family until he was 14, and then couldn’t communicate well with them due to the language barrier, we discuss Owen instead. Owen speaks a bit of multiple languages, including Korean (the specific ethnicity he is), but informs us of his adoption. This is, as he points out, fairly reasonable to assume, given that “Owen Knight” is not a particularly Korean name, but not the only one, so a bit of a shock. We get a flashback with ADORABLE pictures of baby Owen, and he talks about how great his adoptive family is. It gives me the warm fuzzies, y’all. Only complaint is that he segues this into a forced career analogy about how poor his game would look on a college application. Owen, stop, you’re better than that.
The next morning, the topic of the day is food. It seems Karla had a dream involving a chicken eating contest, in which Probst cooked some ramen. Which is ridiculous. We all know Probst is a bacon man.
Joking aside, it is nice to see a bit of bonding and camp life in these couple of scenes rather than just strategy all the time. We need the strategy content in there, but this helps us connect with the cast all the more, and I will always get behind that. The food talk also serves to transition us into Ryan talking about being the provider, catching fish for the tribe. He brings up the cerebral palsy thing again, but it’s mainly about his fishing skills, which Gabler even praises. Somewhere, far away, Rupert Boneham (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) feels the need to swim to Fiji and be possessive of the fishing spear.
Strategy must come back in the end, and as Ryan comes back with a haul of fish, so too does the majority come together to reaffirm their commitment to the top. Sami, however, is not so content. He correctly recognizes that someone is on the bottom of the seven, by definition. Given that he was the last clued in to the vote, and the only person in the seven without a close ally (well ok, maybe him and Ryan), it’s most likely him. As such, Sami wastes no time in making in-roads with his former tribe members plus Noelle, looking for someone else to flip. I’d say Ryan is probably his best bet, but apart from that one confessional at the “Earn the Merge” episode, Ryan has not shown any signs of disloyalty, so maybe that ship has sailed. Sami admits he can’t spend as much time with the minority as he’d like, lest it be too obvious, but good that he’s making these in-roads. My only complaint is that he feels the need AGAIN to remind us of his age. We get it. You’re a teenager who’s playing well. We don’t need to be reminded of that every 5 seconds! Michael Yerger (“Survivor Ghost Island”) contented himself with reminding us of that ONCE. Why can’t you?
It’s off to our challenge, which is by now another standard endurance challenge. This is the “Hold the ball atop an ever-extending pole” one, with the only real difference being that the balls are much larger than usual. Whoopee. I can barely contain my excitement.
More interesting should five members of the tribe having to sit out for rice. I say “should” because this CAN be a good dilemma, but has two issues with it. One is that, as Probst notes, this now happens around the same time each season, making it predictable and thereby less interesting (I’ll also say that I take umbrage with Probst calling 16 days “early” in the game, when it’s more than halfway through in the new era). The other is that Probst allows no room for negotiation. Rather than it being a battle of wits, Probst just insists that he get five sit outs, or the price will be higher. Way to cut out most of the tension, show. The only true intrigue comes when James, an early volunteer to sit out along with Sami, tries to promise Owen safety in exchange for his sit-out. Good on James for trying to get the person at risk to sit out, but he does a poor job on the execution. He barely sells it, and as Owen says, it comes across as patronizing. Thus, Owen does not fall for it, and after Jesse and Karla agree together to sit out, with Cassidy becoming the fifth.
The challenge itself is nothing special. The enlarged balls do nothing but be good fodder for childish jokes, though they did seem to stay on better than the small ones. Several poles were bent to the point where the balls seemed like they should roll off. Gabler’s in particular seems like it should drop long before it actually does. If the heavy-handed foreshadowing didn’t clue you in, Owen wins immunity, thereby upending the alliance’s plan. Predictable, but not the episode-ruiner it was last time. Why? Because we get more than just one bit of strategy talk and then immunity. Yes, Owen was the only real target, making his win obvious, but there was more talk to the alliance than just who to target, and we spent time on things other than strategy. Thus, the first part of the episode does not feel like a waste.
With James’ primary target immune, Ryan decides to throw some names out there, and specifically targets Jeanine, on the grounds that the way she’s playing indicates she probably doesn’t have an advantage that can muck up their plans. With Owen immune, I can’t fault the logic. Jeanine doesn’t seem to be that much of a threat, but a safe vote is reasonable. Ryan then decides to go fishing, since that strategy worked so well for Rupert. Like with Rupert, however, this time is used to strategize against the fisher. Sami, working his ways with the minority, puts the target on Ryan. He then talks about it to the seven, who are surprisingly ok with it. And, to be fair, it’s not a bad option. Ryan will be a challenge threat down the line, is probably the least loyal to the seven outside of Sami, and the rest of the seven move up a spot while still nominally keeping their numbers. True, Sami being so in with the minority makes this risky, and thus Jeanine is probably the better move from the outside looking in, but since it seems Sami’s done a good job covering his tracks, I can see why they think it a decent move.
Cody and James are the two holdouts. Cody (along with Gabler) wants things kept simple, and James starts having second thoughts as a result. Karla and Cassidy, however, seem more adamant, FINALLY bringing up the unfavorable men/women ratio this season has come down to. Cassidy in particular wants Ryan out, since he voted for her. Given that this was James’ reason for targeting Owen, yeah, can’t fault the logic.
As to which one should go, it’s really a toss-up. Again if the players know what we the audience know, then it should be Jeanine, to make it harder for Sami to flip on any of you, but given what they know? Kind of a wash. You get rid of someone you can’t trust long-term while nominally keeping your numbers. Really, I’m more surprised no one threw Gabler’s name out there. Logical consensus boot as someone not well-liked, proven he can win challenges, and set in his ways to the point where he has limited use as a number.
For every good bit of misdirection, it seems there must be a bad Tribal Council. The theme is that everyone is super-polite and respectful to each other (a “social construct” as Gabler puts it, and props to him for understanding what that is and using the term appropriately at his age), but this means that no one really gives much away. Apart from more effusive praise from Gabler for Ryan’s fishing skills, nothing much happens.
Thus we vote, and I fear they give the game away. Seeing Ryan’s vote for Jeanine makes sense, but rather than do the logical thing and show Jeanine’s vote for Ryan, we see Cassidy’s, indicating a Ryan boot. A bit obvious, but whatever.
But once again, I should have trusted that the edit had us in good hands! This was a clever decoy, as Jeanine goes home instead. I am sorry to see her go, partly because her game was pretty much downhill from the first Tribal Council on, but also because it further skews the gender ratio in the game in favor of the men, which is not the most fun watch overall. Neither she nor Ryan were the biggest character, but nice overall. Glad she gets to be on the jury, at least.
Lackluster as that wrap-up may seem, this episode was honestly one of the best of the season so far! One or two missteps stop it form being “great”, but honestly the majority of my complaints are nitpicks. This had generally good misdirection, excellent bonding with the cast, and a good look into strategy even if little came of it overall. A split Tribal Council next episode may ruin that, but hey, we’ll see.
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 
The other poor part of the episode was the challenge – not really very physical. I prefer endurance based immunities to be grueling affairs were they have to do things like hold a post for ages, or dig something up.
I wonder what this vote means for Cassidy. Watching her face as the votes were revealed gave the impression that she’d had some real hope it would be Ryan going home, meaning she didn’t know what others (like Karla) were voting. She might be in trouble next week. Not a bad thing – I don’t really like it when players use gender as a reason to vote someone out.