Tribal Council is the place to make a “Hail Mary” play on “Survivor”, for a variety of reasons. Yet it’s rarely the SMART place to make that type of play. It can work on occasion, and nearly always produces spectacular fireworks, but by the time we get to Tribal, most people want to follow the advice of the late, great Keith Sale (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”, RIP), and “Stick to the Plan.” Much as the show wants to paint Tribals as “Live”, they very rarely are, and half the time it’s editing. Still, with these softball Tribals, we have to take what little drama we can get.
Before I get into our “mergatory” (still hate that name), however, it’s time for another edition of…
MATT’S MESS-UP!
Brief one here, but so caught up was I in making fun of Hunter for failing the logo-ordering journey last episode, that I forgot to talk about something I liked about it, namely the callbacks to “Survivor” history. So much of the “New Era” has come at the expense of the old, to the point where the show minimized these types of references before. Granted, that policy has been relaxed as we’ve gone on, but still, it’s nice to see the show be willing to admit it had seasons pre-COVID.
Even so, our focus should be on the season in front of us, so let’s get back to that. Having been on the wrong side of the vote, Moriah admits to being a bit uncomfortable. Still, she tries to keep an optimistic view, saying she’d rather be “A living idiot than a dead Know-It-All”. Decent attitude to have, while also throwing shade at Rob Cesternino (“Survivor The Amazon”) and Stephen Fishbach (“Survivor Tocantins”), despite neither of them being dead. She admits discomfort to the tribe, but seems to re-integrate decently well, largely thanks to Ben smoothing things over. Nevertheless, Tim admits in confessional that while they want to be “Siga Strong”, if push comes to shove, Moriah is on the bottom.
Moving up from the bottom is Yanu, who get mail the next morning telling them to drop their buffs, and that they have 10 minutes to gather their things. We get one last look at the Matthew Grinstead-Mayle Injury Rock (TM) as they celebrate being on the upswing. Nothing much going on here, though I will say I find it weird that they refer to this as “Tree Mail”, when it clearly came from a boat. Should have gone the “Survivor Pearl Islands” route and called it “Sea Mail”, at least.
There are a couple of funny bits here, though. Q tries to give his camp a nice send-off, only for Tiffany to say that the came sucked and gave them basically nothing, but in a humorous way. Because Tiffany keeps it real. Tiffany also reveals that she has named her idol “Idolecia”. This has no bearing on anything, but is pretty cute. Good pun.
Yanu may not have had much to say, but they get more of a reaction than Siga, which just boils down to Moriah being happy to have options. No, despite being the camp everyone will move to, it’s Nami that has the big reaction. Everyone passes the note around, with Hunter giving it to Venus, and I’m surprised Soda didn’t snatch that note away instantaneously.
Now, we have more game-important reactions to discuss. More specifically Hunter, since now his Beware Advantage clue comes in. Gotta say, this result feels lame. I don’t want Hunter to lose his vote in perpetuity, obviously, but I figured not going to Tribal would mean some extra-difficult task to get the key to get his idol. Instead he’s asked to solve a “riddle” that basically says “Dig by your tribe’s steps”, which he does, getting the key with seemingly little effort, despite what the show tries desperately to imply.
From there, things proceed much as you’d expect. Everyone celebrates coming together, but we quickly get to strategy talk. When questioned about the Jem boot, Siga all toe the line on it being unanimous. Good for Moriah, since it makes it clear the others do still want to work with her, but I’d say bad for the tribe as a whole. Yanu is no threat, and in comparison, Nami is much freer with their targets. As such, if Yanu ends up being the swing between the two tribes (which seems at least semi-likely), they’re much more inclined to want to break up the one with no visible cracks.
We get out usual honeymoon phase for the new tribe, but it’s a particularly short one. Unsurprisingly, Venus is the one to kick things off, showing just how salty she is with her tribe by talking about wanting to flip to Yanu. You know, the tribe with limited power based on numbers alone? Granted, this would put them on par with Nami, and they could at least temporarily band together against Siga, but still, on paper, you’d think she’d go to Siga with this info.
Q just files all this away, eager to rekindle the alliance of six that was made on the journey last episode. His check-in with Hunter and Tevin goes well, but less so his one with Maria. She does mention Tim talking to her, but in more vague terms about the whole thing than specifics. Confessionals indicate that Maria DOES know about this alliance, but isn’t sure she wants to go with it. In a hilarious bit, just because it shows a bad misread, she admit’s she’s flattered by Tim considering her his number one, but has him in her top three at best. Something about that disconnect is funny. Anyway, Q goes to Tim, who says he’ll talk to Maria more firmly. Privately, he says he does want the alliance to work out, but isn’t as eager to firm things up as Q. Shoes the difference in priorities when one’s tribe has attended most Tribal Councils, and one hasn’t. Good dynamic exploration here.
The next day sees Venus continuing to put out feelers to multiple people, trying to swing people against Tevin in particular. She moved on from Hunter, I guess. Unfortunately, she’s so blunt about it, Charlie calling her “Wicked Smart”. Charlie, quit trying to be Jake (“Survivor 45”). You’re not pulling it off. More intriguingly, we see Tim actually talk to Maria about the six alliance. Unsurprisingly, Maria is unenthused, though she seems to do a good job hiding this from Tim. She does say in confessional that she likes it as an option, but is so far wanting to stay Siga strong. Understandable from her perspective, but bad for basically everyone else in that alliance, lending yet more credence to the vibes that it’s not sustainable.
This is not the only strategy conversation we have. Wanting to get more information on Saga’s dynamics, Q speaks one-on-one with Moriah. She toes the line, but notes that Q is a bit more forceful with her than others have been, making her a bit suspicious that he’s sussed things out. In reality this just seems to be Q’s style, very blunt and up front, but it’s easy to see why she feels that way, so I don’t blame her in the slightest. Hell, she even toes the Siga line, so she’s not intentionally blowing up her game. Despite this, Q doesn’t trust her. Why? Well, she names Aubry Bracco (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”) as her favorite player.
On a completely unrelated note, Moriah just became my favorite player this season.
Anyway, why does this turn off Q? Well, as he notes, Aubry is a great strategist, executing excellent move after excellent move. The snarky part of me wants to point out that “Survivor Game Changers” and ESPECIALLY “Survivor Edge of Extinction” beg to disagree on this description of Aubry, but as the self-appointed head of the “Aubry Lobby”, I’m going to let it slide. Any and all pro-Aubry propaganda is welcome on my “Survivor”.
This brings us to our challenge, which works basically the same as all the others. Go through mud obstacles, stack sandbags to make stairs, climb a giant ball, puzzle is the first one from “Survivor Cagayan”. It’s so standard at this point, and I’m so over the same thing happening at this point in the season. Please, show, variety is all I ask! Granted, this group seems oddly confused by how this part of the game works, but that’s more a mark against them than a mark in the format’s favor.
There’s not even any drama of who will win! It’s going to be the purple team, consisting of Kenzie, Q, Ben, Tim, Hunter, and Tevin. Not only did they get ALL the challenge beasts of the season (particularly Hunter), but even if they didn’t we KNOW they win thanks to the “Next Time On…” segment from last episode. That mentioned Liz and Soda being against one another, a scene we haven’t seen yet, meaning they along with Venus, Charlie, Maria, and Moriah must lose. Otherwise there would be no point in those players targeting one another, since they’d be immune. Even Tiffany sees the writing on the wall, and after a humorous half-second seeming to consider her options, hitches herself the purple team. Even factoring out challenge ability, smart choice. All her allies are there.
I’ll give the orange team this: They put up a good fight. Hell, they’re actually ahead for the first leg of the challenge, only falling behind when it comes to loading and pushing sandbags, due to that being all brute strength. They even make up a good bit of time on the puzzle. The one good thing I’ll say about this challenge is that EVERYONE, in sections, has to do the puzzle. You can’t rely on one puzzle whiz to do the whole thing. You’re only as fast as your slowest solver. Unfortunately for orange, purple saved Hunter for the end, and since this challenge has nothing to do with past season logos, he naturally wins it for them. Tevin notes this, and I’m SURE it won’t matter for later for Hunter. Our winning several get their very nice deep red buffs, while the losers go to wash off the dirt.
There’s tension in the air, though in a nice moment, Venus looks on the bright side. They might not have won, but they did come close. No small feat, given how uneven these teams were. Granted she undercuts the niceness by wishing the winners to choke on the food, but hey, it’s something.
Speaking of said winners, they quickly get to discussing who to vote out. Initially, Venus is very much the target, thrown out emphatically by Tevin. Most everyone seems ok with this, but in the interest of parity, Yanu wants Siga to throw out a name as well. Ben continues to toe the party line of them being unified, which Tiffany FINALLY calls out in confessional. As I mentioned before, she rightly notes that this is not a good reason to want to work with Siga. As a result, when Tim finally cracks and reluctantly throws out Moriah as an option, she quickly becomes the consensus boot.
So, with it being down to Moriah or Venus, I would say the choice is clear: Moriah must go. I get the reasons for wanting to get rid of Venus, but she’s SUCH an outsider that she can be gotten rid of anytime, while Moriah could slip under the radar if you let her by. True, Venus could slip under the radar as well, but at this point she’s SO disliked I have difficulty seeing her winning over a jury. So if she gets to the end, hey, easy victory against her. For Yanu and Nami, it makes a crack in the seemingly unified Siga, and for Siga, it lowers their threat level without actually sacrificing that much. As such, in an ideal world, voting out one of the other Siga might truly be Yanu/Nami’s smartest move, but I don’t see it happening, and a Moriah exit is still a victory for them, on at least some level.
Despite this, we need to add SOME evidence for a Venus boot, which Venus gladly provides. Rather than just being happy to hear she’s been spared, she’s concerned that a woman is going, when they have the numbers. She tries to swing the vote to Charlie, which as I say COULD be a good move for Nami/Yanu, but they’re not biting. Understandable, given that she explicitly framed it as a move against the men, so Hunter, Tevin, and Q at least would have a reason to be opposed. Q in particular is mad about this, calling Venus “ungrateful” after “he saved her.” Not sure how much agency Q had in that, and this is really not a good look on Q. I could kind of understand it with Jelinsky, but dude gets really absolutist and morally righteous when he thinks things should go a certain way. That’s his right, of course, but not good in the game of “Survivor”, and in cases like this, can come off as having sexist overtones. I don’t think Q IS sexist, to be clear. At worst, he’s a southern gentleman taking things to their logical conclusion from that (for example, Tiffany apparently wanted to do the Sweat task with Q, but he refused to “let a lady do that”), which is not going to fly with everyone. Even with all this, I still lean towards a Moriah exit, particularly given her increased screen time this episode.
Thank goodness for Moriah finding out about her boot, since otherwise they Tribal Council would have nothing beyond standard double-talk. Even as it is, what we get isn’t great. Things break when Moriah admits there IS a crack in Siga, and it’s her. A decent enough move as a desperation play, but probably too late. Further, as Q points out, it makes her look bad, since she lied to cover it up. I ragged on Q for some of how he came off this episode, but credit where it’s due, the man shines here. He calmly and plainly explains why, while he’s happy to know that, it doesn’t change must from a trust scenario. Moriah for her part handles things with a similar grace, emphasizing her pitch without seeming desperate.
Even with these “fireworks”, the needle doesn’t seem to move, and Moriah understandably plays her Shot in the Dark. Not everyone is Kaleb (“Survivor 45”) sadly, and Moriah is not safe. She therefore goes, Venus receiving exactly one vote from Charlie, presumably to protect in case Moriah’s Shot in the Dark was successful. Tevin also wisely saved his extra vote, though I will note I did love his little dance when he received it.
Jokes about Aubry love aside, I’m overall not sad to see Moriah go. Venus brought much more drama, and it’s always nice to see people make the smart move. And hey, Moriah handles her exit with a ton of class, which is always nice to see.
Actually, that sums up this episode pretty well: It was nice to see. It’s not going down in the annals of “Survivor” greatness, but it executed everything competently, had some good humorous moments, and was overall just an solid, but unremarkable episode of the show. If Q really does go down the dark path and show his worst qualities next episode, however, this may be the high point of the season…
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 
I think your critique of Q is not warranted here. He does sometimes have a kneejerk reaction to finding someone played in a way contrary to his own game, and he expresses that strongly (often reconsidering later). But there’s nothing at all that had ‘sexist overtones’ (a term far to freely thrown around) or came across as a ‘dark path’.