Sorry for the title, guys. I know it’s kind of long. I guess I just need the reminder of my all-time favorite player to cheer me up. MAN, this episode was rough!
Not that it starts out that way, of course. We actually get a charming wake-up at Sele, with Rob doing the old “tickle the nose of the sleeping Adam” routine. Little known fact, it only works on people named Adam. Our Adam doesn’t have a particularly big reaction to it, but everyone present giggles anyway. Adam takes it in stride, though. After all, he basically got his way at the last Tribal Council, so he should be happy, right? Well, while Adam is certainly pleased with the outcome, since it was a unity vote, he doesn’t see it as a victory, more Rob still controlling the narrative. He meets up with Denise, and discusses the need to get out one of the old school players, these being Rob, Ethan, and Parvati. It’s during this time we see that Danni willed her fire token to… MICHELE! No, it’s actually Denise, which I really should have mentioned last blog, and should have been a “Matt’s Mess-Up”, but this was an easy way to work it in, and saves time on the blog. We also learn that, rather than the split idol staying split, it works the way it did for the returnees on “Survivor Edge of Extinction”, and if returned, becomes a full idol that need not be split. Much less interesting, and I’m disappointed in you for it, show. Adam and Denise wisely agree that of the three old-schoolers, Parvati should be the one to go. She brings the least in challenges, and isn’t connected with anyone. Contrary to what we’ll see this episode, Boston Rob is not bad in challenges overall, and Adam has a bond with Ethan. That’s why Adam goes and tells Ethan the plan to vote out Parvati… Wait…
Yes, for all that Adam talks about wanting to get out the old schoolers, that doesn’t mean he wants to make enemies of those remaining. Thus, he pitches the idea of voting out Parvati to Ethan. To his credit, Ethan clearly has been coached on the proper response in these situations. While he gives no firm commitment, he does nod along and doesn’t outright deny the plan. Where Ethan falls apart in in HOW he does these things, as his body language clearly indicates that he doesn’t want to go along with this. Sure enough, he tells us that while he has a bond with Adam, Parvati is his ride-or-die, and so he’s sticking with her over Adam. Nothing seems to come of it, but it sets up the story thread for the episode.
Over at Dakal, we see Sandra do what all great players do when they return: Change up their game (take note, Russell Hantz). I do, however, have to slightly question Sandra’s emulation choice. She’s going the Rupert Boneham (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) route, and going to catch fish via a net. Understandable that she would emulate a close ally she had seen on multiple seasons, but is Rupert, really the guy you want to emulate? Not the best track record in terms of game performance, is all I’m saying. Nevertheless, Sandra does literally net the tribe a shark, and I have to say, I’m much happier that she gets the glory rather than Tony. Look, Tony running around with a live shark is funny, but Sandra is overall the better game player, so I’m happy she got the glory. Not so happy is Tyson, which is understandable given that he’s on the bottom of the tribe. As such, he decides to throw Sandra under the bus because, well, she’s won twice. Kind of makes her the biggest threat left, now that Boston Rob and Amber aren’t around to be a pair anymore. He pitches the idea to Yul, who admits that he doesn’t trust Tyson, but takes it under consideration. When Sandra catches wind, however, she’s back on the anti-Tyson train, and Yul is now fully on board with voting Tyson out.
Heading over to the Edge of Extinction, Danni comments on the need to find food, due to the lack of coconuts on the island. Plus, you know, her original season had food provided for them, but no need to bring that up! In any case, everyone gets a clue in a bamboo tube with some shells that’s a drawing of a distinctive tree. Everyone quickly finds said tree, only to find a chest with a combination lock, and a note saying that they have the numbers and not to just guess. Naturally, everyone starts guessing, but it’s Amber who has the bright idea of going back down to the beach and looking for numbers. She finds them on the flotsam clustered around the mast, and runs back up to try them out. This would have been a BRILLIANT way to hide the number clues that could have made for a fun hunt, so naturally that’s not where the answer comes from. Instead, after a flash on the tubes, Natalie figures out that the shells on the tube give away the numbers. Wisely smashing or hiding the other tubes, she takes her own back to the lock after Amber and Danni are too tired to continue, and manages to open it. To Natalie’s credit, I will say that Edge of Extinction is where she seems to flourish. She’s so far the only one who’s managed to find any advantages to sell back, and is three for three on picking good people to sell to. Based on this, and how her game really kicked into gear on her original season when Nadiya was voted out, I can only conclude that Natalie is secretly the Incredible Hulk: She gets REALLY powerful when you make her angry.
As to the specific advantage Natalie gets, it’s a “steal a vote” to sell to someone on one tribe, with the location being at the other tribe’s camp. Does this mean a swap is incoming? No, that would be a good bit of foreshadowing. Instead, as we see shortly, it’s another “sneak into the other tribe’s camp” advantage. Ok, show, it’s really time to retire that particular method of obtaining an advantage. It’s either comically easy (like Jeremy’s was on “Survivor Cambodia”) or it’s built up to be difficult, but then is still easy. You play it up, use your clever editing tricks, but in reality, we know these people are never going to wake up and catch someone. Spare us the time for bonding with these players, and just give it to them outright. Stop making them jump through hoops.
But who exactly did Natalie decide to sell to? MICHELE! No, no, she actually goes with Sarah. A fairly logical choice. The only person Natalie can suspect of having more than one fire token at this point is Rob, who she probably doesn’t want to have advantages, so there’s not game theory to be had there. Meanwhile, Sarah is someone whose game relied heavily on advantages, and so she’d be likely to bite. Sure enough, she does, despite the supposed “risk”. See my comments above for my thoughts on how risky this actually is. Really the better argument for not buying it would be in saving up a fire token, especially since an extra vote can backfire and piss people off. Or, if you’re Stephen Fishbach, end up inadvertently leading to your own exit. Sarah is not Stephen, however, and so goes for it. Deciding she needs “cop backup”, she of course gets Tony in on this business. Tony coats Sarah’s face in ash for “camouflage”, but really, this is just how Tony does Ash Wednesday. Nice bit of synergy there, “Survivor”. After our manufactured “tension”, Sarah gets the advantage, and we move on.
Our immunity challenge today is an obstacle-course hodge-podge, ending with the bonsai tree puzzle. Barely worth commenting on, so instead I’ll say that this is where the episode begins to fall apart, and now I’m not just talking about the lackluster reused challenge. No, the misdirection on this season has so far been pretty solid, and it would seem decent enough on the surface even in this episode. But really, it’s obvious that Sele is bound to lose again, missing out on both immunity and shish-kebabs. How do I know this? Well, while both tribes got strategy and fun, Sele had a dangling story thread (Ethan not being on board with eliminating Parvati), while Dakal did not. Plus, if you’re me, and follow the “Survivor” Facebook page, you’ll note that the preview for the episode talked about the vote coming down to an “Old School/New School” split. Gee, I wonder which tribe has been talking about old school/new school, and which one hasn’t.
Really, this episode’s best misdirection comes from the challenge itself, which is really down the wire. Dakal gets an early lead which the seem to keep for most of the challenge, but Sele makes a major comeback on the puzzle. They’re literally one piece shy of victory, but that’s not good enough, and so they must go to Tribal Council. At least they get a gorgeous aerial shot of the sun on the ocean before the strategizing begins.
After a standoff, Ben and Jeremy go off to confirm that the vote is Parvati. Everyone seems to be on board, so this should be a straightforward vote, right? Well, then there’s Adam, who I love, adore, and respect, but MAN can the guy make some questionable choices. And no, I’m not talking about his telling Ethan about Parvati earlier. That move was questionable, certainly. Ethan doesn’t seem like the type who would take that well. But at least Adam and Ethan had a BOND. There was a REASON to not want him blindsided. But no, Adam is not content with just keeping Ethan happy, he needs to keep Boston Rob happy. Why? Well, Adam says he wants him around as a shield, which I can understand. No one, with the exception of Sandra, is going to draw votes more readily than Boston Rob, and so keeping him around as a target who’s helpful around camp and in challenges makes sense. My question is WHY DOES HE NEED TO BE KEPT HAPPY? Even blindsided, Boston Rob is still a shield, and by telling other people, you risk being seen as untrustworthy, and your plan leaking out to the wrong people. Oh look! Boston Rob is spilling Adam’s move to Jeremy and Michele, and now they don’t trust him, considering voting him out along with the old school players! Even Denise says it’s a dumb move! How ever did this happen?
Michele and Jeremy, as our swing votes for the evening, discuss what to do. They briefly give me a heart attack by discussing voting out Ethan as a way to weaken Rob, but that gets quickly pushed aside, and I’m sure will have NO bearing on our episode whatsoever. Instead, they debate the need to get out Parvati, and weaken Rob, against Adam’s untrustworthiness. A reasonable debate, but for me, the clear winner the choice to get rid of Parvati. True, Adam’s behavior is concerning, and you don’t want to let it sit by the wayside, but at least he seems like a solid ally. The old schoolers may be willing to work with you for a vote or two, but they’re not going to be solid with you. Also, I would differentiate Adam’s spilling of the beans versus, say, Ben’s spilling of the beans in intent. Ben spilled the beans accidentally, while Adam had logical reasons for doing so. Flawed logic, to be sure, but he knows enough to keep the people who need to be kept in the dark in the dark, and is unlikely to accidentally let something slip. Really, the only reason to get rid of Adam is to break the streak of women getting voted out this season. We head off to Tribal Council with the debate still in the air, so that’s ONE bit of misdirection in the show’s favor.
This may be a controversial opinion, but I’m not a fan of this Tribal Council. It’s hardly the worst, but I think that standoff when Sele first got back to camp carried over, as everyone as a whole felt subdued. True, Denise’s bunker metaphor was fun, if a bit confusing, and the hypocrisy of Rob calling out Adam for stating the obvious (basically what he did last time) is good for a laugh, but really, what holds this Tribal Council together is the mystery. So, our tribe is choosing between one beneficial boot (Parvati), and one that’s not as beneficial, but still has some logic behind it (Adam). So, who will our swing votes go with?
THE WRONG FREAKING ONE, THAT’S WHAT! Yes, folks, as my flimsy foreshadowing has indicated, the boot tonight is my personal favorite of the season, Ethan. As mentioned, this means that, for all the good this episode did, it now has “Jeremy Collins Downside”, which is weird, given that this season actually HAS Jeremy Collins on it. Heck, I think I may rename this “Ethan Zohn Downside” in the future. Look I give Jeremy’s boot in “Survivor San Juan del Sur” crap for a lack of foreshadowing, but compared to this, Jeremy got an entire prequel novel’s worth of foreshadowing for his boot. There was at least an entire conversation about booting him before he left. Ethan got a LINE. Literally, one sentence, indicating that he could go. Nothing else. What. A. Load. Now, would I have been happy with either of the other boots? Not entirely, but a lot of that has to do with those I WOULD be happy to see go being over on Dakal at this point. But even amongst Sele, Adam and Parvati both would have been less painful than this. Parvati, while playing a respectable game overall, doesn’t bring as much in the character department, while Adam, while very enjoyable, has been playing patchily at best this season. Both better choices than Ethan.
So, why is Ethan’s departure so painful, apart from just being my favorite? It’s the fact that he wasn’t playing badly at all. True, he was no stellar strategic genius or anything, but he seemed to be making an effort to up his game from his last outing, and making bonds with multiple people. He was targeted, near as I can tell, basically because Rob makes a better shield, and the Parvati plan got screwed due to Adam being too talkative. In other words ETHAN DID NOTHING TO EARN BEING THE BOOT! Ok, ok, to be fair, Ethan did stick loyally to the minority alliance, which is a mark against his game, but even then, you feel like he shouldn’t be first out of that group. He held his own and was helpful in challenges. He was friendly with everyone. Unless you’re in an Edgardo (“Survivor Fiji”) situation, you don’t vote out the nice guy in the minority when there’s better boots around. And true, the alliance could have been voting out of fear of Parvati having and then playing an idol, since they didn’t have enough votes to do a split vote safely, but if so, we didn’t see it, so it comes off as them sending Adam a message by getting rid of a fan-favorite winner. Hardly the dumbest move ever, but still pretty dumb, and MAN is it painful.
Much as I hate Edge of Extinction, at least Ethan gets to hang around a bit longer. He also gets to give away his fire token, and of course wills it to… MICHELE! No, no, of course he gives it to Parvati. Was there ever any doubt, with how bonded he and Parvati were?
For all my complaints, this episode is a step up from the last episode. More time devoted to non-advantage-based strategy, and a couple of fun interludes at each camp. But my longtime readers will know that, on both a micro and macro level, for me, the ending of “Survivor” is more important than the beginning. I can handle a horrible beginning if it leads to a fantastic ending, but it’s much harder to handle a horrible ending with a fantastic beginning. Guess which category this episode falls into? And yes, I am aware that the beginning part of the episode included Edge of Extinction. That was a good puzzle for them, and it highlighted the awesomeness of Natalie, so my statement stands. Yeah, not as bad as before as there are SOME redeeming qualities, but not one of the greats. I would have hope that next episode can do better, but it’s clear from the preview that Ethan has medical look at him on the Edge of Extinction, and if he gets medevaced, well, that’s just a double-whammy I’m not sure I can take.
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 