Here, we see the elusive “Live Tribal” in its natural habitat. Claimed sightings of this beast are common, but rarely are they correct identifications. While this one does seem confirmed by scientists, we also see the dangers this beast can pose to the ecosystem: Making everything pointless.
Having dispensed with a recap of previous episodes, the show now goes on a cutting spree, and cuts the very thing it replaced the recap with. Hence, we start things off at our reward challenge. As advertised, it’s the loved ones challenge, which is as nice and heartwarming as one would expect. There’s no cringe-worthy moments as the family members are introduced (but just you wait, the cringe is right around the corner), so we’ll just touch on a couple that either merit commentary or are particularly heartwarming. Janet’s husband comes out in a pink shirt, indicating that the family is having a girl. Nice bit of news, and a creative way for a gender reveal without being overblown. Dan has his 13-year-old son come on, which is a nice touch, since we don’t see it that often. However, I take issue with Probst calling him “The youngest person ever on ‘Survivor’.” Even leaving aside the various young kids you’ve given supplies to, have you perhaps forgotten Boston, the son of Shane Powers from “Survivor Exile Island”? He was on the show just as much, if not more than Dan’s son, and was also 13 years old at the time. I’m sure that Dan’s son probably wins out by a matter of months, but it’s the principle of the thing! I will not have “Survivor Exile Island” erased from continuity, dammit! It’s not “Survivor Edge of Extinction”! The winner for “Most Heartwarming Reunion”, though, goes to Eliane and her partner. It’s not as tearful as some others, but the pair clearly share a bond, and Elaine gets a good talk about how she wasn’t sure her partner’s children would accept their union. What goes unsaid, but also worth mentioning, is the bravery of them being a lesbian couple in Kentucky. We don’t get a confessional about it, but Kentucky is not the most LGBT friendly place on Earth, and now your relationship is being laid bare on national TV. That takes some guts, and sends a good message, but doesn’t drive it into the ground unnecessarily. It just lets a nice moment be, without needing to draw attention to “HEY! LOOK AT THE PROGRESSIVE THING WE’RE DOING!” Enjoy the compliment, show. It’s one of the few you’ll be getting tonight.
Our challenge is a generic obstacle course run in pairs. The challenge itself is not worth talking about, but I’ll note that our pairs are Dan and Noura, Dean and Elaine, Tommy and Janet, and Lauren and Karishma. Remember when I said that the show was doing a good job of not patting itself on the back unnecessarily? Yeah, throw that out the window. You see, Noura’s sister has some vision problems, and so can’t really see the challenge from the family gallery. As such, the show does the proper thing, and has her stand next to Probst so she can cheer appropriately with the rest of the family members. The trouble is that Probst needs to keep drawing attention to this fact, like it’s some big feat for the show to be fair to someone with vision trouble. It’s not like this is a common courtesy thing that you should have been doing regardless, right? At most, maybe mentioning it once as an explanation to the audience would have been appropriate. With how much Probst emphasizes it, it just feels forced and fake, like the show did this more to pat themselves on the back than to be fair to everyone. On a season that doesn’t need a more sickening taste in one’s mouth, this is just unfortunate.
I’d favor either Tommy and Janet or Dean and Eliane to win this challenge, but everyone manages to get to the last leg together, since it involves throwing a single sandbag onto a small platform (gee, haven’t seen that on “Survivor” before!). Tommy and Janet pull it out, though, only to be given the schmuck bait that is the family reward challenge. They get picnics with their loved ones, but now get to pick two more people to come with. Janet goes first, picking Dan. Now, despite me giving these two some flak, Dan is not the worst choice. With how high emotions run with this particular challenge, more than with any other reward challenge, you NEED to pick the swing votes to come along, lest they get mad and turn on you. While I wouldn’t describe Dan as a “swing vote” he has been shown to hold a grudge, so I could see the logic in picking him. What I CAN”T see is Tommy’s logic in picking Lauren. This is the LAST person Tommy should be picking. Everyone knows they’re together, and emphasizing that fact doesn’t help matters. Plus, if Lauren’s already loyal to you, you don’t need to earn that loyalty further. And perhaps you’ve forgotten how much Elaine’s been saving your butt in the past couple of episodes? Didn’t think maybe you could pay her back, while still keeping her loyal yet not taking her to the end? Noura, as we’ll soon see, would also have been a wise choice, but regardless, Tommy did a dumb.
Karishma’s on the warpath after the challenge, but before we get into that, we have to see our players and loved ones enjoying themselves. Nothing much comes of this, but they do scoff at the people they left back at camp. Lauren especially is dismissive of their prospects, stating that they have Noura wrapped around their fingers, and the group will in no way come together to make a plan to get one of that foursome out. At first, it seems like she might actually be right, since Noura is so busy ranting about how upset she is to be the only original Vokai left out of the reward that they simply won’t have time to strategize. However, our remaining players are rewarded for listening to Noura’s rant by having her declare loyalty to all of them. Everyone agrees that this foursome is in control, and needs to be broken up. Even Dean finally seems to be coming out of his “bro-down” reverie, and acknowledging that he needs a different strategy if he wants to get farther in the game. And while they celebrate, I have to take a moment to talk about what this says about Tribe dynamics.
Up until this point, the season’s done a good job of keeping the exact members of the dominant alliance under wraps. The Tommy/Lauren bond was tough to keep quiet, but exactly who else was in the majority was hard to pin down. This episode tells us that the core includes Janet and Dan, which would be fine if that made any sense. The Dan part is understandable, but where did Janet come from? Only a few episodes ago, she seemed to be the primary target of Tommy and Lauren. Now she’s with them? Either this is some next-level strategy we mere mortals cannot comprehend, or the show just purposefully lied to us. Kudos to them if they did, since they did it masterfully, but the fact still remains that this feels kind of cheap, especially since, for all the talk about how dynamic the alliances on this season are, it seems to be boiling down to “Original Lairo versus Original Vokai”. Because we’ve never seen that before. Frankly, the whole thing feels like a con. A well-made con, but a con nonetheless, and it retroactively sours me on the season somewhat. Because we didn’t have enough of that already.
Back to our strategizing four, they quickly realize that four is not enough, and so either need to pull in one more person or find an idol. Sadly, the go with the less-intriguing option “B”, leading Elaine to find an idol for the group’s use. They collectively agree to go for Lauren, since she’s the biggest threat in terms of the jury. Personally, despite his dumb move earlier, I’d say this is a feather in Tommy’s cap. Both he and Lauren have been living and dying by their social games, but the fact that Tommy’s well-liked, yet also not talked about as a threat, means, to my mind, he’s playing better than Lauren. Granted, this also means Tommy needs to get rid of Lauren before the end, lest she sweep up votes he could otherwise claim at Final Tribal Council, but still, good on him.
Our immunity challenge is, you guessed it, another endurance challenge, in this case the one involving holding a ball against a pole with a rolling pin. It’s really not worth mentioning, save for Lauren’s emotional fight. The woman was literally CRYING trying to win, so it was nice to see her effort rewarded, especially since Elaine is no pushover in this department either. That said, since Lauren was the ONLY target presented to us prior to the immunity challenge, it pretty much makes the first half of the episode POINTLESS!
Don’t worry, though, our next half isn’t much better. With Lauren no longer available, the new foursome switch to plan “B”. In this case, plan “B” is Tommy, since he’s “Lauren’s right-hand man”. I’d personally say it’s because he’s a major social threat, but they’re right for the wrong reasons. Can’t blame them too much. Things look even better for them when it turns out the other four are SO convinced of their superiority that they’re even going to split the vote between Elaine and Karishma. Karishma I get. If you’re not going to use her for her vote, all she’s good for is as a number for the other side, so why not get rid of her. But Eliane? You don’t know she has an idol, and she’s worked with you in the past. I’d have said get rid of Dean before her. Not targeting Dean works in their favor in the end, though, as Dean is our weak link this time. Now, some might say that Noura’s the weak link, but her craziness is well-established at this point. Dean’s the one who doubts, which seems somewhat justified as we see Noura tying herself up in knots trying to figure out the best move based on the possibilities. This is what she should be doing, of course, but she’s doing it in such a convoluted way that she’s just making herself more paranoid than necessary. Add onto that at least a bit of skepticism from the other four, and despite the relative pointlessness of the episode so far, we’ve still got some enjoyable misdirection.
Ah, but then we see exactly WHY nothing of consequence could happen before Tribal Council: Everything of consequence happens AT Tribal Council! Yes, while I think both fans and the show are too quick to call “Live Tribal” these days, I do think this is one case where things legitimately got shaken up at Tribal Council. We’re barely two “Generic Probst Questions” into the proceedings when Dean whispers to Tommy that his name’s come up, but that he (Dean) won’t go for it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if this was a double-bluff by Dean to look better towards Tommy on the jury, or if Dean was legitimately trying to blow up a plan that would benefit him. Having now seen the entirety of Tribal Council, I favor the latter explanation. From what little we’ve seen of Dean’s strategy, he’s been big on the physical threats teaming up, and I think he sees Tommy as a shield he doesn’t want to get rid of just yet, even though they’re all close to the end. That said, as Dean himself mentioned earlier, however bad he wants it, I don’t think it’s going to happen. As Dean demonstrated with Kellee, one saved vote does not buy loyalty. If the foursome left out of the reward are offering you a better deal, take it. Fortunately for Dean, he’s spared any backlash since people immediately turn to Noura to find out if she flipped. Since this is Noura, she goes off, and starts spilling the beans on everything. Now, a little bit of honesty coupled with a lie (“Yeah, they approached me, and I debated it, but I wasn’t going to do it.”) played off with skill might have helped Noura. I’m not sure she had the skill to do it well, but it would have been an attempt. But no, she spills everything, including the presence of Elaine’s idol, thereby killing any hope the foursome left out of the reward had of coming together. Noura caps off the performance by saying that Dean, not her, started this. Technically true, but Noura, when you make such a spectacle of yourself, and make the whole procedure worse for everyone, you might as well have.
I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow (both out of me being tired, and it needing to be experienced for oneself), but this is some great chaos. Unlike the chaos of, say “Survivor Game Changers”, we can follow this, but still have the pandemonium of lies being flung about, and people questioning people. Even Boston Rob and Sandra get some good commentary in, ripping Noura a new one for lying so poorly. This may be the first time I’m actually glad they’re at Tribal Council.
You may have noticed that I skipped over the smart mover for everyone. I’ve hinted at it, but not talked about it explicitly. That’s because, like this episode, none of it matters as of Tribal Council. Little strategizing happens, and what there was gets thrown off the crazy train. Noura seems to be the consensus boot, and at this point, I can’t really argue with it. Sure, she’s easy to beat in the end, but she’s now crossed to the point where she’s going full Keith Nale (“Survivor San Juan del Sur”) and giving away secrets she shouldn’t be giving away. This makes her a liability to everyone, a good consensus boot, and for the group that has been in power, keeps them in power.
And yet they go for Karishma. Not the worst target, but as I just laid out, I think not the best one either. On top of that, I’m sorry to see Karishma go. She was never my favorite player, but there was something intriguing about the way she just kept hanging on, despite constantly being the target. Much more fascinating than Noura’s general kookiness, in my opinion.
The last ten minutes of this episode were great! I just wish the first fifty justified them. Don’t get me wrong, this was a fantastic finale to the episode, probably the best of the season so far. Hell, it left Probst speechless. That in itself is a feat. But most of the rest of it just didn’t matter, because it all happened at Tribal Council. We could have had a ten-minute episode, and gotten just as much out of it. That makes for a real mixed bag. Next week promises some better intrigue. Hopefully it delivers.
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 