Idol Speculation: “Survivor 44” Cast Assessment

Dear readers, I would like to welcome you back to “Idol Speculation”, my knee-jerk opinion that everyone is entitled to.  That said, I cannot do so in this case, due to the fact that the world is ending.  

Yes, hell hath frozen over, pigs are flying, the whole works.  We have hit the apocalypse, my friends.  How do I know this?  We had a cast release on a Tuesday.  You know, the day “Survivor” does not air on.  We have broken one of the immutable laws of the universe.  Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.  Force equals mass times acceleration.  “Survivor” casts drop on the same day of the week that episodes premier on.  And since I haven’t heard about the show switching to “Tuesdays”, this can only mean the world is coming to an end.  

Still, I suppose we might as well enjoy ourselves while we await our inevitable demise.  Let’s take a look at my thoughts on this new cast, starting with…

Claire Rafson (25, Tech Investor, Brooklyn, NY, Soka Tribe): Starting strong out of the gate, Claire is one of my two picks to win the whole thing.  Yes, seriously.  The woman is just too solid a competitor.  She compares herself to two solid winners in Michele Fitzgerald and Natalie Anderson (“Survivor Kaoh Rong” and “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, respectively), and makes a good note of what qualities she needs to utilize from both.  Specifically Michele’s social game and Natalie’s willingness to cut ties when necessary.  A blend a likability and cutthroatness can be lethal, game-wise, and all in a very unassuming package.  Admittedly Claire doesn’t seem like she’ll be the BEST in the outdoors or in challenges, but she doesn’t seem like she’ll be a sink in either area either, and given that her tribe seems like it’s the most well-rounded in challenges overall, I suspect she’s in it for the long haul.  If you REALLY want me to find weaknesses in her game, I would probably say her age and her pet peeves.  Claire is on the younger side for a winner, but as Maryanne taught us in “Survivor 42”, it’s by no means a deal-breaker, and I think this self-described “queer black Jewish woman” has those skills, helped by the fact that she’s clearly a longtime fan (something that, as I’ll discuss later, does not seem to be as universal amongst this cast as it has been in recent seasons).  Slightly more concerning is her pet peeve, which is people who are not self-aware, something that can describe many a previous contestant, and will doubtless apply to some this season.  Given her savvy, plus her tribe’s possible lack of early votes, I think Claire can ride this out for the long haul, and emerge as our eventually winner.  I know, I usually pick two winners, and still intend to do so this season.  But put a gun to my head, and force me to pick just one, I’m going with Claire.  Plus, the woman listens to young-adult novels on tape to go to sleep (specifically “The Hunger Games” in her case), and can I just say, I feel seen?

Matt Blankinship (27, Software Engineer, San Francisco, CA, Soka Tribe): This guy stole my first name, he stole my hairdo.  Man’s just a thief overall!  I kid, I kid.  Either way, though, I suspect this guy will be rewarded like a thief, and receive a harsh sentence.  That sentence, in this case, being an early exit.  Matt had better hope that his tribe truly IS the dominant one of the season, because I see him going at their first Tribal Council.  Given the makeup of the tribes, I doubt he’s the overall first boot, but when the opportunity arises, he’s toast.  There’s several of the “nerd” archetype this season, and while not the most egregious example of this, Matt is the most clearly visible.  Everyone nowadays knows this archetype is a threat, and coupled with a usual lack of skills in non-puzzle-based challenges (which, admittedly, are becoming as rare as hen’s teeth these days), they are an easy early target.  It takes a great deal of skill to overcome this obstacle, and while Matt is far from the worst person I’ve ever seen in terms of game sense, he’s no genius in that territory either.  The thing that clinches Matt’s poor chances for me is him talking about his failures in life.  It is refreshing to someone so open about their past mistakes, admittedly.  He chickened out for applying for the show the first time.  He failed to get a job.  He failed college.  It’s good, uplifting stuff that he kept on fighting in spite of this, but does not bode well for a winning game.  Matt is a pre-merge boot, but hey, maybe he can learn from this failure, and find success on a returnee season?  Stranger things have happened.  

Carolyn Wiger (35, Drug Counselor, Hugo, MN, Tika Tribe): Remember how I said people in psychology and psychology-related fields, unless they are Denise Stapely of “Survivor Philippines”, don’t do well on the show?  Yeah, don’t be looking for Carolyn to buck that trend.  Seems we’re getting all my extreme takes out of the way early, since Carolyn is my pick for first boot of the season.  While by no means “old”, she definitely fits the mold the show has for an “older woman”, one of the more vulnerable archetypes to be perceived as at the beginning of the season.  Carolyn also lists a lot of worldly things that she likes, makeup and potato chips and whatnot, that make me question how well she will do in the outdoors, only making her more vulnerable.  On top of that, when asked to compare herself to a previous player, Carolyn says she’s most like Noura of “Survivor Island of the Idols”.  About the best thing that this comparison says about Carolyn is that she has good self-knowledge.  Yeah, Noura ain’t exactly the comparison you want to make if you’re looking for success in this game.  Yes, Noura made it deep, but that was in part due to a large win streak from her tribe, giving other people time to rub the tribe the wrong way.  While I maintain that there will be no “disaster tribe” for this season, if there IS one on some off-chance, it will likely be Tika, putting Carolyn in an early vulnerable spot.  IF she somehow makes the merge, expect her to go deep as a goat, but unfortunately for her, I expect her to have a very short shelf-life this season.  Good on her for doing the real-life work she does, though.  Very necessary, but very difficult.  

Yamil “Yam Yam” Arocho (36, Salon Owner, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tika Tribe): One of two contestants currently living in a US territory at the time of casting this season, Yam Yam bookends the unintended theme this blog of “Get the extreme takes out early”.  Yes, Yam Yam is my second winner pick for this season.  You may remember Yam Yam from the preview we got at the end of “Survivor 43”.  He was the guy excited to poop in the ocean.  This may have you thinking “Well, the guy will be a fun character for sure, but winner equity?  Not seeing it.”  But as Maryanne proved on “Survivor 42”, being a good character and being a good strategist are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  In fact, Yam Yam’s personality could work to his advantage, as his strategizing won’t make him as visible a threat, thanks to his “wacky” exterior.  The man has admitted to surviving 90 days without electricity following a hurricane, so I’m going to say he’s got survival bona fides.  Yes, his challenge prowess might not be the best, but unless his tribe goes the route of Vesi last season, and cuts off their worst at challenges when they just can’t take it any more, Yam Yam is here for the long haul.  People will want to keep him around for his humor, and I’m confident he could use his charm to his advantage.  Man compares himself to Cirie Fields (“Survivor Exile Island”) for a reason, and he’s the only person I’ve yet seen to have NO pet peeves listed in his bio whatsoever (though that could just be a quirk of “Entertainment Weekly”, where I usually go to read them).  Honestly, the only concern I have with Yam Yam is that he DOES remind me so much of Maryanne.  She may have proved big characters can still be good at strategy, but her doing so means people will be on the watch for such a game.  Given that “Survivor 42” was the last season this cast saw, it will be VERY fresh in their minds, and that could put Yam Yam in trouble.  Otherwise, expect him to be around in the end.  Besides, he’s endorsed by Sandra Diaz-Twine (“Survivor Pearl Islands”), and who am I to disagree with The Queen?

Lauren Harpe (31, Elementary School Teacher, Mont Belvieu, TX, Ratu Tribe): After several novella’s worth of character bits to talk about, we finally have someone who we can go over without some big rant involved.  Lauren should do fairly well in this game, but aside from her hair, which is awesome, I don’t expect her to make any big waves in this game.  I think she should have some good skills interpersonally.  After all, managing a bunch of elementary school kids is one of the undersold toughest jobs in this day and age.  And mad respect to her for raising kids as a single mom, another undersold tough job.  Her pet peeve is a bit concerning, in people who don’t own up to their mistakes, but I’ve seen people with way worse peeves do well, so I won’t hold that much against her.  I don’t see Lauren being the major mover and shaker in an alliance, but she seems skilled enough to work her way into the core of a major alliance, and probably hang on until the early-to-mid merge or so, where she’ll be taken out as a safe boot.  Possibly she’s even one of the “split tribal” boots at the final 10, assuming they bring that back again.  Not knocking my socks off, but a solid player I predict will do decently well.  

Danny Massa (32, NYC Firefighter, Bronx, NY, Soka Tribe): While perhaps not quite to the same degree, Danny is very much the Jonathan Young (“Survivor 42”) of this cast.  Not so much in the sense that he will win challenges single-handedly, but in the sense that physically, he’s head and shoulders above the rest of the cast.  That said, I don’t see much strategic chops from him beyond surface-level stuff, and his pet peeves are the most concerning so far.  Bullies and whining are both decently common on this show, and I could see them getting under Danny’s skin.  On the flip side, however, this makes Danny a very good alliance member.  Skilled in team challenges, loyal, but not bright enough to strategize against you in any threatening way.  As with most challenge beasts, Danny will be a target as soon as the merge hits, and unless he gets an alliance as tight as Jonathan’s, will probably be out in the early-to-mid merge area.  

Heidi Lagares-Greenblatt (43, Engineering Manager, Pittsburgh, PA, Soka Tribe): For her own sake, Heidi had better hope her tribe IS a major force in the challenges, because if things shake out relatively even in terms of who goes to Tribal Council, she is an easy early target.  I love her enthusiasm, and we stan a board-game lover on this blog, but the fact simply is that Heidi is the oldest person on her tribe, and that person is almost always vulnerable early on.  Add onto that someone who self-describes as “loud”, a personality trait that gets very irritating very quickly when you can’t get away from it, and an enthusiasm for the game that, while admirable, frequently leads to playing too hard, too fast, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a pre-merge boot.  Her pet peeve, “rude people”, doesn’t help matters any further.  Again, unless her tribe just completely bodies the immunity challenges, I don’t see Heidi having much of a shot moving forward.  About the only other thing worth mentioning is that she is one of a few people this season to mention Angelina Keeley (“Survivor David vs. Goliath”) in their “who are you most like?” question, something that doesn’t really impact my thoughts on how they’ll do, but DOES point to an interesting trend that I’ll discuss more when we come to the final thoughts on the cast/season preview overall.  

Carson Garrett (20, NASA Engineering Student, Atlanta, GA, Tika Tribe): It’s revenge of the nerds!  Carson is the second (of three) overt “nerd” archetypes this season, and like with Matt before him, I think it helps spell his doom.  Man’s certainly got the studying down, though.  3-D printing puzzles to practice them beforehand.  Studying up on the statistics of the game.  Correctly identifying himself with Christian Hubicki (“Survivor David vs. Goliath”).  The man is doing his best to set himself up for success, and I do like the guy.  Man loves board games in general, and Settlers of Catan in particular.  Can’t fault him for that.  But the man has too many little things working against him.  I mentioned the “nerd” archetype being a threat, but the fact is that he’s just too young for me to consider him doing well.  I know I said Maryanne proved that age is less of a factor than we might have previously thought, but there is a limit to how low one can go, and I’m just not sure this guy has enough life experience to connect with people, and consequently do well in this game.  Finally, there’s his tribe.  I doubt Carson will be the FIRST target from his tribe, he needs to not go to Tribal Council too-often pre-merge, yet finds himself on probably the worst tribe for challenges.  Rough luck, my dude.  Another pre-merge boot in my opinion.  As an aside, the man DOES have probably the longest list of pet peeves, but most of them, apart from mosquitoes, are things he’s unlikely to encounter on the island, though I suppose production could put him on a tribe with negative vibes/moon-landing-deniers just to mess with him.  

Maddy Pomilla (28, Charity Projects Manager, Brooklyn, NY, Ratu Tribe): Not content to have Elie Scott (“Survivor 43”) on just once, production let her change her name, occupation, and location, then brought her back immediately.  Apart from physical resemblance, Maddy and Elie exude the same energy.  Decently game-savvy, but still overestimating themselves, and energetic to the point of annoyance.  Maddy will be a strategist, but an overly-visible one, and therefore an easy target.  Given the large merge sizes of recent seasons, expect Maddy to be our merge boot, or perhaps our “Mergeatory” boot, if that’s really what we’re calling it now.  Too visible not to take out at an opportunity when an easy consensus boot is needed.  She will burn brightly, but burn (relatively) fast.  

Bruce Perreault (46, Insurance Agent, Warwick, RI, Tika Tribe): Our oldest contestant (though admittedly only by a few years) on this season, I would not blame you for not expecting Bruce to be that old at first glance.  True, the man does not look like a spring chicken, but you could easily shave 10 years off his age, and I’d believe it.  This implies he’s relatively fit, ergo not a challenge sink, ergo less likely to be targeted for that reason.  That said, there ARE reasons to be concerned about his game, at least in my opinion.  While the man is in insurance, thereby effectively a salesman and presumably social, the man gives the shortest answers by far in his bio.  A welcome break in reading, to be sure, but does not imply, to me at least, good sociability.  Think of him like Rocksroy (“Survivor 42”): Not unlikeable, but very set in his ways and not going to sugarcoat stuff.  He’s one of two players who very much give off “dad vibes” this season.  Useful on a tribe that’s likely to be fairly chaotic early, but could also isolate him.  I think Bruce needs to hope for a very even split of Tribal Council attendance in the pre-merge, since there are people I’ve discussed on his tribe who would likely be targets before him.  If they ARE closer to the disaster tribe, his perceived lack of sociability will likely catch up to him, and Bruce will be out likely in the pre-merge, though probably the late pre-merge, if I had to guess.  

Sarah Wade (27, Management Consultant, Chicago, IL, Tika Tribe): If someone can ride out the chaos that is this tribe, my money’s on Sarah.  Apart from her career implying she knows how to handle disparate personalities, the woman is a long-time fan, and so knows the game quite well, while appearing unassuming, another deadly combination in this game.  Not enough stands out about her for me to really go so far as to say she’ll win, but she was definitely one I considered for the title, and will probably make it far regardless.  Mid-to-late merge I’d say.  Her pet peeves are relatively unassuming (loud chewing, rule followers, close minded/inflexible people), though she could run into some in the game, another slight mark against her.  Also, she references multiple times how the passing of a close friend inspires her in life.  A tragedy for her, and my heart goes out to her for her loss, but expect her to be the one we get MULTIPLE flashbacks to.  No way the show isn’t milking that for all it’s worth.  

Matthew Grinstead-Mayle (43, Barbershop Owner, Columbus, OH, Ratu Tribe):  Hoo boy.  Let’s tally the list, shall we?  This guy shares my first name.  He lives in the same metropolitan area as me.  We bear some superficial similarities, being large, hirsute, barrel-chested guys with bushy beards.  This guy is my favorite of the season in part because I’m basically OBLIGATED to root for him at this point.  So, do I think he’ll win?  Eh… I think he’ll make the merge, at least.  The dude gives off SERIOUS dad vibes, even more so than Bruce whom we just discussed.  Not a bad thing, but it makes me question how good he’ll be at the game once things really get cutthroat.  On top of that, dude has a LOT of pet peeves.  Admittedly, most of these are food-related, and unlikely to come up, but the two that AREN’T, specifically people who talk in circles and people who dominate the conversation (or presumably both), are something he’ll have to watch out for.  While I appreciate him comparing himself to Elaine Stott (“Survivor Island of the Idols”), an underappreciated player, his further comparisons to Shan Smith (“Survivor 41”) and especially Ben Driebergen (“Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”) are concerning.  Admittedly his take on the former is that she was the social center, but should he bring in her cockiness, he might be in trouble.  As for Ben?  Well, a nice enough guy, but good strategist he ain’t.  I don’t see Matthew going SUPER early, but expect him out no later than the mid-merge, when the game just gets too cutthroat for him to keep up.  Of course, this is assuming he’s not one of the medevacs we saw in the season preview, since it seems like it was likely him falling off the rock in the preview.  He has the closest build, and does have the right buff color, assuming no swap.  Then again, these previews also made us think Tori Meehan was getting an idol on “Survivor 42”, so I’m not going to go so far as to say he IS for certain a medevac.  

Helen Li (29, Product Manager, San Francisco, CA, Tika Tribe): Rounding out this tribe is the OTHER person I have confidence can ride this thing out, regardless of if the tribe ends up being a disaster.  Helen’s another bona fide fan, making good references from recent seasons (comparing herself to Erika Casupanan of “Survivor 41”), all the way back to season 2 with Tina Wesson.  Preparing for the future while learning from the past.  I like this woman.  Her unassuming pet peeves help as well, as a lack of toilet paper and cars on the island mean two out of her three are non-factors.  Disrespectful people might be an issue, and that plus a potential lack of challenge prowess keep Helen from the winner’s spot for me.  Still, all else being equal, she should have the good game sense to weather early storms, and make the mid-to-late merge period.  I’d even have her as a dark horse to win, if it comes to that.  

Josh Wilder (34, Surgical Podiatrist, Atlanta, GA, Soka Tribe): Josh seems nice.  Yeah.  That’s really all that needs to be said.  Dude is decently athletic, seems likable enough.  Should do well.  I don’t think he really has the killer instinct needed to be truly great, but unless he makes some major social gaffe none of us see coming, he should be safe.  No reason to vote him out early, and not enough of a strategic threat to be an immediate target come the merge.  Man is one of the better challenge competitors on paper this season, so expect his threat to rise in the mid-to-late merge, and see him go there.  Be aware, as well, that he’s another contestant who regrettably had tragic medical hardships at a (relatively, in some cases) young age.  Something called “Prune Belly Syndrome” at birth, necessitating a kidney transplant, and stomach cancer at age 25, necessitating the removal (and presumably transplant) of his stomach.  Dude’s been through a lot, and expect to hear it in multiple flashbacks.  In truth, I expect Josh’s biggest risk early game to be the fact that, due to the aforementioned transplants, he’s on immunosuppressants, and so I could see him getting some tropical disease that makes him one of the medevacs of the season, though I would hope that production, if they thought he was at that much greater a risk than others, would not have let him play the season in the first place.  

Jaime Lynn Ruiz (35, Yogi, Mesa, AZ, Ratu Tribe): Jaime wins the award for “Most Unusual Occupation” this season!  Good thing, too, as she’s not winning many other awards.  Similar to Carolyn, whom we discussed earlier, Jamie is not “old” by an objective measure, but fits the “older woman” archetype as far as this show is concerned, and that’s a problem.  She claims to be a day one fan, and perhaps she is, but comparisons only to recent seasons make me question that.  She’s another Angelina stan, and again, we’ll get into the significance of that later on.  She also has a lot of enthusiasm, as evidenced by a large number of all-caps words in her bio.  As a viewer, I appreciate it, but on the island, could be grating.  I will say she avoid any even mildly concerning pet peeves, but she’s likely the worst challenge performer on her tribe, so unless she has above and beyond social skills, I don’t see her lasting very long, unfortunately.  Chalk her up as another pre-merge boot.  

Kane Fritzler (25, Law Student, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Ratu Tribe): Rounding out our nerd trio is Kane, and he is an exception to my thoughts on these types this season.  That is to say, Kane will be voted out for reasons OTHER than his nerddom.  Don’t misunderstand, Kane has a few read flags.  Likely not the best in non-puzzle challenges.  Describes himself as “loud” which I’ve already expressed as a concern for others.  Admittedly not any concerning pet peeves, but this is little comfort.  No, sadly for Kane, he is doomed before he starts by his nationality.  What’s wrong with being Canadian, you might ask?  Erika and Maryanne, that’s what.  The last two times there has been an opportunity to do so, a Canadian has won this show.  This, in the minds of this case, who JUST saw “Survivor 42” end before coming out, makes Canadians a threat.  Possibly Kane can try and pass himself off as an American, but that’s a big lie to keep up, and if there’s somehow another spelling challenge, he’ll give himself away.  Unfortunately, by virtue of his place of birth, Kane is a goner.  Another pre-merge boot.  And to those who say “So two Canadians won back to back, no big deal!”, I would remind you that it took only ONE successful women’s alliance (after at least three failed attempts at one, if you’re being really picky about what constitutes an “attempt” at a “women’s alliance”) for contestants to have a fear of women’s alliances that arguably persists TO THIS DAY.  I give it at least 3-5 years before the paranoia dies down to the point where a Canadian can win again.  

Frannie Marin (23, Research Coordinator, Cambringe, MA, Soka Tribe): If I were to describe Frannie in one word, it would be “quirky”.  Not too surprising, considering she compares herself to this blog’s beloved Aubry Bracco (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”).  She also says that Sophie Clarke (“Survivor South Pacific”) and the Scarlet Witch are her heroes, which we can get behind.  Likability does not always translate into success, though, and these traits that we the audience love could end up being a detriment to Frannie’s game, if they are in excess.  Thankfully, Frannie also seems to be able to tone it down when needed, as evidenced by her not-too-wordy bio.  She’s also another with no listed pet peeves, though again, that could just be a hiccup of how I’m reading these bios.  Couple this with her likely being on the strongest overall tribe for challenges, and I see Frannie making it to the early-to-mid merge.  She’s not subtle enough to win, but should make it decently far, and will certainly be fun along the way.  

Brandon Cottom (30, Security Specialist, Newtown, PA, Ratu Tribe): We end our cast assessment with the most “celebrity” of these contestants.  His occupation may be “Security Specialist”, but Brandon is more well known as a linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.  Brandon pretty well fits the archetype we’ve come to expect for sports players on “Survivor”.  Decent, if not great, at challenges.  Generally charming, but not as much game sense.  A good team player who likely can’t win, but unless their fame is well-known, should make the mid-merge area or so.  Brandon is pretty bog-standard in this category, so I don’t see that much more needs to be said about him than that.  They wanted another by-the-book sports player on this show, and that’s what they got.  

And thus, we round out the cast assessment, and I am hyped.  While I struggled to find things to say about a LOT of the cast of “Survivor 43”, here I struggled to find people I DIDN’T have a lot of things to say about, for good and for ill.  That bodes well for at least an entertaining season.  But let’s talk about some miscellaneous topics, shall we?

No more delaying, time to address the Angelina in the room.  While it wasn’t as common as I thought on first read, it DID seem like people were mentioning Angelina more than they had in previous seasons.  What’s more, most of them were looking at her in a new light, saying she got a raw deal in the edit.  Is this some sort of Angelina Renaissance?  No, I think it’s an indication that, if these people are fans, they’re very RECENT fans.  Recall that “Survivor David vs. Goliath” was recently on Netflix, getting wider exposure than a lot of the other seasons of the show have had in some time.  It probably got a lot of new people interested in the show, thus explaining why Angelina seems to pop up, at least to me, more than she normally would.  This makes me doubt who deep their fandom is, but at the same time, this might be a good compromise.  I’m on the side of liking superfans on the show, but I can see the other side, who want people clueless about the game to prevent gameplay that feels overused.  As such, getting recent fans who know the game to a degree, but not encyclopedically, might be a good middle ground we can all enjoy.  

On a more negative note, I HATE these tribe names.  Apart from running afoul of my dislike of short tribe names, this season, perhaps more than any other, REALLY shows why staying in Fiji long-term is an issue.  Eventually, you run into similar sounding names, making it harder to distinguish tribes between seasons.  Here, I’ll do the rundown of similar names for the tribes right now: Ratu=Ravu, Soka=Soko, Tika=Tiva.  And that was just of the top of my head!  I’m sure I’d find more similarities if I actually did RESEARCH on this.  Not to mention, I’m surprised that the show was even ALLOWED to use “Ratu” for a tribe name.  I may not know much about Fijian culture, but one thing I DO know is the definition of “Ratu”, that being “chief”.  The OTHER thing I know is that Fijians are VERY picky about how the term gets used.  Jokes or irreverence for the term are a big no-no, and so I’m amazed, assuming they even had permission, that the show got to use it.  Even if so, though, it does not excuse the similar names.  Show, either come up with better names, or better yet, SHOOT IN LOCATIONS OTHER THAN FIJI!

Finally, while I did not consider medevacs in my placement predictions, and don’t think it’s fair to ask me to predict effectively an act of God with little outside evidence, here are who I think are the most likely medevac possibilities: Matthew due to the preview showing probably him falling off the rock, Lauren since we can assume Ratu loses someone besides Matthew from the preview and I think we would have remembered her hair, Carolyn due to her age/general lack of physical survival skills, and I’ll throw in Josh as a wild-card due to the immunosuppressants concern I voiced earlier.  

So there you have it, my thoughts on the cast!  Let me know what you all think, and assuming we’re still alive and the show is still airing in this apocalyptic hellscape, I look forward to blogging the premiere of “Survivor 44” for you all!  

-Matt 

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

A Short History of the “Survivor” Season Preview

Well, after a break of I would say reasonable length, it is time to return to our off-season discussion content.  And naturally, with the first thing I’m covering, the thing that is designed to bring back readers who may have tuned out during the off-season, I’m going with an incredibly niche topic that is likely non-controversial and interesting to few.  Because I make good decisions!

In all seriousness, my reasoning for covering this topic merits some explanation.  At the end of “Survivor 42”, I, like most fans, eagerly consumed the preview for the upcoming “Survivor 43”.  It was an enjoyable preview; pretty standard on the surface, but fun.  However, I did have a nagging thought that this preview seemed to have more cast members present in it than previous ones.  Still, this was not enough on its own to merit further investigation, particularly since it might be a “just me” thing.  Later on, though, reading around online and talking with fans myself, many people got a similar sentiment, and thus investigation seemed more warranted.  To do this, though, I needed to rewatch every single season preview “Survivor” has ever produced, taking down relevant data on each so as to be able to compare the latest preview to those that came before.  Entertaining enough, but even with such short subject matter (generally 1-2 minutes in length), that adds up over the course of 40+ seasons, so that’s over an hour of my life I can never get back.  All this research mushroomed into a lot of patterns and factoids I felt might be fun to share with the readership, hence this blog.  Or, to put it another way, I have spent over an hour of my life on this, and you will all now experience my findings with me, dang it!

Before we get to what makes the preview for “Survivor 43” different (and rest assured, there are some stark differences), we need to talk about how the season preview started out.  As one might expect, the focus of the preview when it first came to light was not on the cast, or even the twists that the new season would bring, but instead on the location.  The culture, the beauty of the land, and the difficulty of survival were the main things highlighted, if not the only things highlighted.  One need only look at how the preview was introduced to recognize this.  Rather than “Take a look at what’s coming next season” or similar language, the preview was usually brought up with “Take a look at where ‘Survivor’ is going next” or similar language.  And, for the early days of the show, this should not be a surprise.  Strange though it may seem now, in the early days, “Survivor” was pitched as a show about, well, actual survival.  Not the elaborate strategy game we know and love today, the idea was that actual physical survival in the wilderness would be important, if not the driving factor of the game.  

What MAY be a surprise is how long this method of hyping up the next season lasted.  “Survivor” may have been initially pitched and marketed as a show about actual survival, but the social survival and strategy quickly came to dominate that perception, even in the eye of the public.  The exact date the switch happened is unknown, and therefore up for debate (some might argue that it happened as early as halfway through “Survivor Borneo” with the Gretchen boot), but even being conservative, I feel like it would be hard to argue that the focus of “Survivor” was on literal survival post “Survivor The Amazon”.  The success of Rob Cesternino on that season is hard to justify if the game is truly about physical survival.  So, even with this estimate, you’d expect, around this time, that the previews would switch to talking about the casts, twists, and possibly a hint of strategy for the new season.  Yet, with only a couple of exceptions, this style of preview, focusing on the new location, continued up through the preview for “Survivor Nicaragua”, pretty much the halfway point of “Survivor” at the time of this writing.  

Conversely, a peak at the cast, now very much the norm, did not happen in any form for quite some time.  The first preview to even SHOW the cast was for “Survivor Fiji”, since the show highlighted the diversity in socioeconomic status in their casting.  They noted that they had “A former homeless street performer” and a “Harvard educated lawyer” on the same season, and showed clips of Dreamz and Alex, respectively, when mentioning this.  And it would take another year before we actually heard any of the cast SPEAK in the preview, with the first instance being in the “Survivor Micronesia” preview.  Yeah, well after the viewing audience had abandoned the idea of physical survival being a major factor on the show, the show doggedly tried to act like this was the case in the preview.  They paid lip service to it, more so as time went by.  Mostly through the use of the phrase “How will they survive the elements, and more importantly, survive each other?”.  But if you were someone new only seeing the preview for some reason, you’d be forgiven for thinking the show was about actual, physical survival.  

For every rule, however, there is an exception, and this era of preview has a few exceptions to this rule.  Most notably, in instances where the show had to reuse a location (such as with “Survivor Exile Island” or “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains”), they couldn’t exactly focus on the wonder, mystery, and danger of a location the viewers were already familiar with.  Logically, they went to the next step, and focussed instead on the twist or gimmick of the season.  The preview for “Survivor Exile Island” focussed on the titular “Exile Island” twist, while “Survivor Micronesia” and “Survivor Heroes vs Villains” focussed on their respective tribe divisions, and the 10th anniversary in the latter case.  The show also began using the technique of reminding viewers of the previous exotic locations the show had been to to hype up the legacy of the show continuing, and oddly, not always when going to a reused location.  “Survivor Palau”, which could easily have had a regular season preview in the “new location” style, was the first to utilize this technique.  

Perhaps the most confusing outlier, however, is the preview for “Survivor All-Stars”.  Or rather, I should say, the LACK of a preview for “Survivor All-Stars”.  Yes, out of all of the seasons in this era, with the exception of “Survivor Borneo” (which obviously couldn’t have one due to coming first), this is the only season to not get a proper preview video at the end of the previous season.  Probst just says a couple sentences about various old castaways coming back, and asks everyone to tune in next season.  Underwhelming by any measure, but particularly baffling given that this is a season that should be EASY to hype up.  After all, this is something fans had been speculating about for years at this point, and hyping themselves up online for such an event.  Surely a preview extravaganza would be in order?  Well, while I don’t have a definitive answer, I can offer a couple of hypotheses.  

For the more cynical side of things, one might assume that production just had little faith in the season as a whole.  Filming had wrapped only three days prior to the Pearl Islands finale, so they knew how the season would play out.  It’s well known that pretty much all of production were not happy with the result, and Probst in particular was vocal that it was not fun to work on.  With all that so fresh in production’s mind, perhaps they just didn’t feel the season merited the grand preview the season premise would indicate.  If one is perhaps more optimistic, it might simply be that the show felt it did not have a good way to market itself.  Really, the entire draw of a season like this IS the cast, but as mentioned, the show was quite reluctant to give any casting hints in their previews at this time.  Perhaps they just wanted to avoid spoilers, and figured the hype of the premise itself would be enough, preview or no preview.  How badly the cast was spoiled even prior to the end of Pearl Islands might also be a factor here, but as I wasn’t part of the online fandom at the time, I can’t say for certain.  If someone is reading this who was, how soon was the cast of “Survivor All-Stars” known?  It really would be interesting data to help with coming to a  conclusion.  

Moving along, naturally the era of hyping up the location itself came to an end.  It was less due to public perception changing, however, and more due to logistical concerns.  Once the seasons started shooting back to back in the same location, every other season, at a minimum, would be hard, if not impossible, to hype up as an exotic and dangerous location if it was one we’d already seen before.  Thus, from “Survivor Redemption Island” on, pretty much up until the present day, the twist of the season became the defining feature of the preview.  How would the tribes be divided?  What new twist would our players have to face in the upcoming season?  These were now the sort of questions the preview was posing to try and hype up the next season.  

Interestingly, the format for hyping up the twist was more fluid in this era than the format for hyping up the location in previous seasons.  Initially, it stayed focussed on the twist, with rarely any appearances by the cast, either in voice over or in on-camera shot.  “Survivor Caramoan” saw the second return of contestants appearing, making it seem as though such an appearance was limited only to seasons subtitled “Fans vs. Favorites”.  

Then came the brief stretch where “Survivor” tried to focus more on social media hype than on preview hype.  “Survivor Blood vs Water”, “Survivor Cagayan”, and “Survivor San Juan del Sur” all have exceptionally short previews, only a few seconds long.  Instead, the show let people speculate on these incredibly vague previews (Blood vs. Water was just a shot of a drop of “blood” falling into water, Cagayan showed the logo with “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast” changing to “Brains, Brawn, Beauty”, and San Juan del Sur had a lot of quotes about how great “Survivor Blood vs. Water” was), and showed these speculations via tweets at the end of the reunion to hype up the season.  A decent enough idea, but really fell flat, particularly as most of the ideas they chose to highlight were ridiculous, rather than anything that could actually get people talking and debating.  Most notably, they highlighted a tweet for the “Survivor Blood vs Water” preview which suggested that the location would have a lot of sharks.  Give me a break.  

No, it would not be until the preview for “Survivor Worlds Apart” where hearing from the contestants would become the norm (since technically “Survivor Cambodia” did not get a traditional “preview”, but instead a live vote reveal), and continue up through the present day.  From that season on, the only season to get a preview and NOT feature any of the new cast talking was “Survivor Island of the Idols”, which features Rob and Sandra instead.  True, it could be argued they count as “cast”, but I’d classify them more as “on-screen producers” myself.  Helping this trend was the large number of “vs” seasons during this time period.  Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty, Heroes vs. Healers, vs. Hustlers, David vs. Goliath.  The show really had a thing for dividing tribes along semi-arbitrary lines during this era, and having the cast talk about what it meant to be a part of their particular group was a good marketing strategy.  This is also where the average of hearing from six players per season became codified, since it fit neatly into this format.  After all, if you want to talk about some divide, you want an equal number of representatives from each side, and 6 divides evenly into both a 2 tribe and 3 tribe “versus” format.  Notably, seasons during this time that DIDN’T have such a divide were less likely to adhere to the 6 contestants rule, with “Survivor Game Changers” and “Survivor Ghost Island” only having two players make appearances, and “Survivor Winners at War” having 8 (though three of the latter were voice over, more easily identified due to the winners being more iconic than unknown players).  

So, if being unable to emphasize the location was the impetus behind emphasizing the twist, you’d think that being unable to emphasize some game-defining twist would be the impetus to emphasizing the cast to the degree we saw in the last preview.  Yet, while “Survivor 41” did not get a preview at all, “Survivor 42”, which purely reused twists, still emphasized that they were reusing said twists.  It had a decent number of the cast shown (8 overall, though 4 of these were purely in voiceover, rather than a full confessional), but also talks about the twists that the contestants will have to endure, as well as the accursed “Monster” metaphor the show keeps emphasizing.  So no, “Survivor 42” still fits right in with the preview family of this era.  

Which brings us to “Survivor 43”, and the results of the date I gathered.  First off if you, like me, thought we saw more of the cast in this preview than in previous ones, you’re not wrong.  The preview for “Survivor 43” holds the record for the most individuals we see a confessional from in the preview at 9.  Technically we heard from as many people in the preview for “Survivor Worlds Apart”, but that was purely in voice-over, and there might have been some doubling-up I missed.  For now, I’m fine saying “Survivor 43” holds the record for most people shown in its preview.  

Yet, even this explanation alone is not enough.  Yes, we have more people in this preview than any other, and yes, we have no twists emphasized instead, but it’s still only slightly more than some other previews.  Again, “Survivor Winners at War” had a respectable 8 identifiable players, barely less than “Survivor 43”, yet felt like we saw much less of them.  For that, I have a simple hypothesis as to why this is: It’s not what’s present in the preview, but what’s absent that makes the difference.  That something is Probst Narration.  

Yes, with the exception of those three exceptionally short previews at the end of the 20’s I mentioned, every season preview save for “Survivor 43” has had Probst narrating the action, giving us a hint of what’s to come.  Here, however, Probst is completely absent, just letting the cast speak for themselves.  The hype doesn’t come from Probst, but from the player, and THAT, dear reader, is the big departure.  With nothing else to distract from them, you’re focussed on the cast for 100% of the preview run time, something no other preview (that’s full-length) can boast.  That, I believe, is the major factor as to why it feels like we saw more of the cast than we did on previous season previews.  

Why would CBS make this switch?  Again, I can offer a couple of hypotheses, mostly based on trends of how the show has developed.  Over the course of its history, the show has tried, in each preview, to hype up everything BUT the cast.  They started with the location.  When the locations got reused, they emphasized the twists.  It was only when the twists began being about tribe divisions on the regular that they started putting in new cast members on the regular.  This may seem like it’s been going on for a while, but really, this has only been a thing for the past 6 years or so, at least regularly.  But this trend got us used to the idea, and with “vs” twists seeming to be a thing of the past, as well as back-to-back seasons being carbon-copies twist-wise, really the only thing LEFT is to emphasize the cast.  More cynically, one could argue that the show has stopped caring about spoilers.  After all, logic would dictate that the main reason not to show any of the new cast is to avoid the public getting spoilers about your new cast.  By showing half the cast in this preview, it could been seen as the show saying “Yeah, we know you’ll know the cast by now.  Go ahead and look, we don’t care anymore.”  Still, that’s perhaps a bit cynical, even for me.  More likely there’s a marriage of the two.  With the greater prevalence of internet culture than when the show started, coupled with the realities of staying in one location for filming permanently and needing to reveal the winner on the island due to COVID, hiding spoilers is that much harder.  CBS could fight, but if the public’s going to find out anyway, why not just get a great preview out of it?  Take the lemons of a spoiled cast, and make lemonade out of an engaging preview.

And that is why, whatever you think about the new style of preview, I suggest you get used to it, as it is likely here to stay.  Again, with no location or twist to newly emphasize, all the show has left is the cast.  They may tweak the style a little bit, but without the need to hide the cast for spoilers, expect this sort of preview to become the norm moving forward.  

And there you have it: A brief history of the “Survivor” season preview.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this little romp through history as much as I have!  As a bonus, here’s a couple of fun facts I noted during my research, but didn’t have a good place to include in the body of the work:

-While Probst narration is a mainstay of most previews, Probst himself very rarely appears on-camera in them.  I only remembered him being in the preview for “Survivor The Australian Outback”, and was prepared to write this off as an example of “Early Installment Weirdness”, and was thus surprised when he put in a brief appearance at the beginning of the preview for “Survivor The Amazon”.  The reasons why remain a mystery to me.  

-Much was made of the preview for “Survivor 42” intentionally deceiving us, putting the voiceover of Maryanne finding the idol over footage of Tori looking at a paper.  Yet, this is not the first time a preview has been misleading.  It’s happened a number of times over the course of the previews, but the first outright error I could find was in the preview for “Survivor Vanuatu”.  Probst specifically says there will be “16 castaways”, when there ended up being 18.  This could just be them changing the number of contestants after the preview was made, admittedly, but an error nonetheless.  

-While most season previews that feature the contestants try and show an equal number from both tribes, the major exception is “Survivor Micronesia” the first time the players are heard to talk in the preview.  They show an above-average number of players at a respectable 7, but all of those seven are from the “Fans” side.  None of the favorites are shown, a trend that continues through most All-Star type seasons.  Even “Survivor Heroes vs. Villains” did not name the players, instead showing highlights from fan-favorite past seasons, which did show some players on the season (such as Coach), but also some who did not appear (such as Jonny Fairplay).  

-When you watch these preview back-to-back, you come to realize that producers have some shots/moments they love to favor as their B-roll for the previews.  Some are mundane shots that would be hard to pick out unless you’re looking for them.  For instance, they LOVE showing shots of people jumping off the ship during the Pearl Islands Marooning.  Others, however, are more notable and predictable.  I never thought I’d say this, but I tire of hearing Erik say “I want to give individual immunity to Natalie”.  When you see it used multiple times in subsequent previews, it loses its luster.  

Hope you’ve enjoyed this off-season content!  Keep an eye out for the next one!

-Matt

Title Credit and Idea to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Finale: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

Normally the top of the blog is where I joke around a bit before getting into the nitty gritty of the recap/analysis, but I’d like to be sincere for a moment: Were he alive today, I truly believe Gene Roddenberry would love “Survivor”, and particularly this season.  Say what you will about some of the new changes to the show, but one thing that has been consistently good is taking people from different walks of life, and showing them not just getting along and working together, but learning from each other and moving forward with new respect.  Given the man’s vision of the future, I can’t help but feel that he would enjoy it.  

Then again, there’s not much sex on “Survivor”.  Might be a deal-breaker for him.  

We start off our episode proper with Probst talking to the audience, and for once, I’m not really mad about it.  Probably because this is just an in-person replacement for the Probst narration of the now-extinct season recap, and honestly this is less cringe-worthy, since Probst doesn’t have to justify why some of the finalists that we the audience know can’t win could win.  Really, my only gripe about this proceeding is that they keep playing snippets of “Ancient Voices”, the theme song, over various clips, something they’ve been doing sporadically all season.  Much as I love the song, it just makes me long for its return.  GIVE US BACK OUR AWESOME INTRO, DAMMIT!

Our players proper start out happy that they have ousted the biggest jury threat left in the game, but also a little bummed at their new digs.  It’s a bit hard to blame them, given that they now have to start over from scratch, but they do, I think, oversell how hard it is a bit.  Yeah, it’s not a fun or pleasant experience, but for how little time you have left, not the end of the world.  

But, of course, fallout from Tribal Council must occur with a non-unanimous vote.  Now, people over these past couple seasons have been good about handling being on the wrong side of a vote at least semi-competently.  This season in particular I would say has had people playing this off well.  Yet it seems, every so often, someone must completely lose it.  Lindsay does not really acquit herself well here.  While she’s happy to have survived, she asks why exactly they couldn’t let her in on the Omar vote.  She’s particularly upset at Jonathan, since they were supposed to be “allied”.  Jonathan brings up the perfectly valid point that Lindsay drew first blood, and was working against him.  Lindsay accuses him of talking down to her, in confessional, and while that’s been true in the past, Jonathan’s actually pretty reasonable here.  Stonewalling, yes, but being pretty chill about the whole thing in general.  Saying that Lindsay was “aggressive” is maybe a step too far (seriously, is every woman who raises their voice at all to Jonathan “aggressive” in his mind), but at least somewhat more justified than with Drea, given that Lindsay was clearly frustrated.  

With the morning comes our misdirection.  Lindsay seems to be dead in the water, with Jonathan and Mike taking time out of their day to talk about how she needs to be the next to go.  How do we give Lindsay a chance?  Immunity aside, we have two plays that could be questionable at best.  Starting with the more unambiguously bad one, Mike, in an attempt to curry favor, suggests he might give Lindsay his idol, if he wins immunity.  Decent coddling, and certainly more believable than saying he’d give it to her no strings attached, but the flaws here are twofold.  One, after voting out Lindsay’s closest ally, it’s a tough sell even with Mike’s acting skills.  Two, Mike also promised Maryanne his idol LAST episode, so congratulations, you’ve lied to someone!  At least one of those people is likely to be on the jury, poisoning it against you!  Hope you like having to fight that battle at the end, Mike!  

Our other bit of strategy comes courtesy of Maryanne, who says that she doesn’t want Lindsay to go, since Lindsay is part of her endgame plan.  At first, my gut reaction was to dismiss this as Maryanne being cocky over her Omar boot last night.  Thinking she’s unbeatable now.  Maryanne is the favorite after Lindsay, but Lindsay still most likely beats her in the end.  Why, after all, would you want that person around?  But the more I thought about it, the more there is an argument for Maryanne wanting to keep Lindsay close.  

Consider that Mike and Jonathan are incredibly tight at this point.  Probably the tightest pair left in the game.  Also, if Lindsay’s out, the most likely to win challenges, assuming they don’t involve a complex puzzle or endurance (as final immunity challenges sadly rarely do these days).  Thus, with Lindsay gone, unless Maryanne herself wins final immunity, or Romeo, she’s likely going into fire making, something she may not be good at.  Conversely, as she’s the only person left Lindsay’s tight with, if Lindsay is in at four and wins immunity, she probably takes Maryanne to the end.  On the whole, I’d still say better to want Lindsay out, since again, she’s the only person left ahead of Maryanne in the “winner potential” at this point, but there is an argument to be made for Maryanne’s thought here.  

Still, immunity is probably the best chance that Lindsay has of making it past this vote.  Lucky for her, the challenge advantage found after the word scramble is back once again, and Lindsay is evidently good at word scrambles.  She gets it decently quickly and then runs around trying to find the thing.  No one else even finishes the scramble, though this is partly due to Maryanne sandbagging Jonathan and Mike’s attempts.  The clue ultimately says the advantage is in the sleeping giant’s toes, which, putting two and two together, Lindsay concludes is in the roots of a fallen tree.  Pretty standard deductive reasoning for “Survivor”.  But, PLOT TWIST, the advantage is NOT in a tree this time!  What spore of madness is this?!

Admittedly, said challenge advantage is CLOSE to a tree, but is hidden in a foot-shaped rock formation with a tree leaning against it.  As it seemed to be on the rocks rather than a tree, I’m going to say it was not related to a significant looking tree at this point.  

Oh, and Romeo tells us he made a fake idol.  Not that he really needs it, since everyone wants him in the end anyway, but it’s a decent effort.  His second-grade teacher must be proud.  

The challenge that Lindsay specifically got the advantage for is your standard “Ropes course to collect puzzle pieces”, with the puzzle this time giving us one last look at the ouroboros motif of the season.  Standard enough challenge for this point of the game, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen this challenge in particular, so I won’t fault it for being a repeat.  I WILL, however, fault it for being a LAME version of this challenge.  Usually, with a challenge like this, one goes to and from the bags of puzzle pieces via the ropes course.  This can lead to collisions and tie-ups, which help make for a fun, tense physical challenge.  Here, you only use the ropes going back, and run around the perimeter of the course to get to the puzzle pieces. Much less exciting!  Boo!

Fortunately, our players make up for this lack of excitement by bringing their own.  Like last season, Lindsay’s advantage is substantial, only having to untie one knot per bag instead of six.  Jonathan has a lead in spite of this, but this challenge involves a puzzle.  We already know he’s not winning.  Lindsay, however, falls off the plank bridge halfway through, and this costs her time that could have had her win.  See, with a challenge like this, it usually comes down to the puzzle, and this is no exception.  Even Romeo and Maryanne, easily the two slowest players left, make it to the puzzle.  Granted, Romeo does terribly at that to but he is, technically, “in it”.  Our top two are Mike and Lindsay, who are always one or two pieces apart from each other.  Fortunately for our entertainment, Mike wins, thus making things more exciting post-challenge, and proving that, on occasion, the physical part of a challenge ending in a puzzle CAN make a difference.  

Mike also gets to take someone to a pasta a cake reward.  He unsurprisingly chooses Jonathan, which given how close the two are, I can’t blame him for.  Best to keep your ally close and strong at this point, so that they don’t turn on you at Final Four Firemaking.  No, Mike’s dumb move is an entirely DIFFERENT one!  See, Jonathan realizes that he’s the logical target for Lindsay to pitch, and so, with Mike now immune, asks Mike for the idol, which Mike agrees to do.  Now, don’t misunderstand.  If Mike is to use his immunity on someone else, Jonathan is the PERFECT person to do so.  Someone loyal to him, so keeps him safe down the road, and cuts out from under Jonathan the narrative that he got there on his own.  No, the flaw in this is that YOU ALREADY PROMISSED LINDSAY AND MARYANNE YOUR IDOL!  If you weren’t keeping count, that’s now everyone EXCEPT Romeo he’s made that promise to.  Odds are, at least one of them will be on the jury, and VERY pissed at you as a result.  

Lindsay recognizes that she’s likely doomed, but gives it her level best, guilt-tripping Mike about his promise from earlier.  Mike seems genuinely hurt by it, but waffles on actually giving it to her.  A worthy effort by Lindsay, though she laid it on a little thick.  On the whole, honestly, I don’t buy it.  If Bob didn’t give up immunity to Kenny on “Survivor Gabon”, then Mike, someone strategically leagues ahead of Bob, is not going to give up his idol here, immunity or no.  

Far better for misdirection is Maryanne, who is a much better actor than Lindsay, and has more pull with Mike, more subtly guilt-tripping him into playing his idol for her.  This, then, would free up her idol to be played on Lindsay.  This scenario seems more plausible, but I still don’t buy it, especially when Maryanne considers whether or not she should save Lindsay.  It’s basically the same debate I laid out a few paragraphs ago, so I won’t re-tread it here, but it’s a reasonable debate.  Still, not buying that anyone but Lindsay is going overall.  This is a more plausible move for Mike, but overall he’s usually made the best move for his game (moral pontificating aside), and right now, his best move is to make Jonathan immune.  

Sadly, all the misdirection goes out the window when we get to Tribal Council.  Lindsay is going, and even she seems to know it, seeming kind of downtrodden throughout the proceedings.  When Romeo dubs Tribal Council “The Fire”, and talking about someone who has fought hard every single time, yeah, we know she’s going.  I’m mixed on the outcome, to be honest.  I think she played the most consistently good game of all those left, and on that level I’m sorry she didn’t get the chance to prove it in front of the jury.  That said, if Lindsay WAS our winner, I’d be a bit upset about her edit, since we saw little of her compared to everyone else left.  Not invisible by any means, but on the heals of Erika’s win on “Survivor 41”, having two under-edited female winners in a row would be a big problem.  

Now the one with the biggest problem is Maryanne.  She’s set herself up well to win in pretty much any final three combination, but now it’s a matter of getting there.  She’d better hope that Mike or Jonathan are feeling particularly strategically poor today…

Or our final immunity challenge could be “Simmotion”, the challenge with no clearly defined skill set where pretty much anyone can win, that works too.  Look, I have no problem with “Simmotion” as a challenge in and of itself.  Wide open in terms of winner possibilities, and decently fun to watch.  But it doesn’t have the grandeur, the FINALITY that a final immunity challenge should bring, in my opinion.  Much as I complain about endurance challenges due to how ubiquitous they’ve become post-merge, this is the one place that should ALWAYS be a straight endurance challenge.  Give me “Hand on a Hard Idol” any day.  This, for me, falls into the same category as the “Build a House of Cards” challenge.  Fine enough as a challenge, but should not be the last one of the season.  

For all my complaints, this one actually has a few good moments.  Probst takes the time to let everyone left talk about what this challenge means to them, as well as to make it this far in the game.  Everyone gives good answers, and tugs at the old heartstrings.  Second, and this may be a cruel bit of schadenfreude, but I love Mike going out when there was only one ball.  Pretty sure that’s a “Survivor First” and surprised Probst didn’t take the time to call it out as such.  Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, Romeo wins!  Told you this challenge had no obvious skill set.  Still, good for him, and a very solid performance.  Also means we get an epic “shocked” face from Hai.  Guess Maryanne doesn’t have to worry about being sent to fire.  

Or perhaps she does!  Mike talks with Romeo first, and does not try to fight that he’s being sent to fire.  Instead, he pitches that Maryanne is the biggest jury threat, and so should send her to fire making, rather than giving Jonathan one last victory.  A decent pitch overall, and Maryanne does practice her fire making skills.  We the audience, of course, know that Romeo is a dead man walking, and is pretty much just a kingmaker in this scenario.  He’s a less crazy Noura from “Island of the Idols”.  That said, even from Romeo’s perspective, I would still pit Jonathan against Mike.  Apart from Mike having the angle of an easier fight in the end, at least by taking Maryanne, Romeo takes away some of her power, and shows that he was not just dragged along by the bros, but had some say in their fate.  

All practice fire, and we see that Jonathan is pretty good, while Mike and Maryanne struggle.  I’m sure this is not setting up any ironic twist at all!

Tribal Council is played pretty close to the chest, yet it’s still obvious what’s going to happen.  With no outstanding moments to discuss, we cut right to Romeo announcing, smartly, that he’s taking Maryanne to the end.  This has all but guaranteed Maryanne victory, but we’ll play out the rest of the episode anyway.  Jonathan and Mike have a very close duel, with both building respectable fires.  Maybe not as close as the one last season, but still a decent watch.  Still, call me a masochist, but I prefer the ones where players epically fail.  Give me the train wreck that was the Becky/Sundra duel from “Survivor Cook Islands” any day.  

In one of those moments that will doubtless make people think “Survivor” is scripted, the underdog wins.  Mike edges out Jonathan, who gets to say farewell to “Mr. Jeff”.  As you can guess, not sorry at this outcome.  Jonathan was not the WORST of the “dude bro” archetype I’ve ever seen on the show, but it’s just not one I’m fond of, and his words at the split Tribal Council this season just really soured me on him as a winner.  It’s ok that he came, but I’m glad he didn’t win.  Also, had he made Final Tribal and lost, we would have had an even less-justified “Xander Situation” from last season on our hands, and I just couldn’t take that right now.  

Also, fun fact, this marks the first time each starting tribe has been represented in a “Final Three” (with three starting tribes), since “Survivor Worlds Apart”. Not unique, but fun to see nonetheless.

We get our usual “Here’s why each finalist can win” narrative over our breakfast, but in a different and clever way.  We here a BIT from the finalists themselves, but in a clever move, particularly given the lack of “Ponderosa” videos this season, we hear the jurors themselves talk about each finalist, both their strengths and what we need to see.  It’s a fascinating insight into the jury, and I would welcome more dives like this in future seasons.  Even if some of the justifications are a bit weak.  Both Mike and Maryanne get a “here’s what we want to see from them” bit (owning up to playing duplicitously while pretending to be honorable and owning/fighting for their game, respectively), but Romeo gets a somewhat lackluster “He’s not completely out of it.” justification from a couple of people.  Don’t get me wrong, they do their best, but clearly the jury doesn’t have a lot to work with here.  

Also, not buying the “Anyone can win” montage at the end.  Yes, I know pretty much all the jury says they were open-minded at the reunion show, and this jury may have had more wiggle room than some other seasons, but no jury is THAT open minded.  I don’t buy at least half these people not having their votes locked in.  

For all that Romeo is drawing dead at this point, I will credit him, he does a pretty good job at Final Tribal Council.  He owns the moves he did make, talks about his growth, owns up to his mistakes but talks about how they relate to his game journey.  He even gets in a bit of pandering to Hai, reminding him of their in-game bond.  Really, the only misstep I can think of for Romeo is that when he gets called “Paranoid” by Tori he stumbles over his explanation of why he wasn’t, and even that’s a minor thing.  He did his level best, but his fate was already sealed at this point.  

Contrast with Mike.  You remember how the jury wanted him to own up to betraying people despite talking about wanting to play with “honor”?  Yeah, that wasn’t put in there for no reason.  Mike all but directly gets asked about that several times, with the jury making it abundantly clear they want him to own his betrayals.  Despite this, Mike does not take the hint multiple times, and insists the only time he broke his word was with Rocksroy.  You hear that, Mike?  That’s the sound of your million, fluttering out the window.  

Maryanne, while not overall the most performance-heavy Final Tribal, does her job well.  She fields her questions in an articulate manner, gives the jury what they want to hear.  It’s not going to rock the history books, but it does what it needs to.  She even points out that her moves gave her more options to be taken to the end rather than make fire (with Mike using his idol for her at final five, and all left wanting to take her to the end at four), thereby destroying my theory regarding why she would want Lindsay around. The stand out moment, that clinches her win, is of course her reveal of the merge idol she found, the “One secret that was kept all season”.  The jury clearly eats it up, and if you doubted Maryanne’s winner potential, doubt no more.  

Yes, we have two female Canadian winners of color in a row!  Huzzah!  Happy for them, but feeling uneasy about Canadians in particular being targeted in future seasons.  Still, good for Maryanne.  Very happy to see her win, and definitely a fun character to have as a winner.

Our reunion show is, as per the norm, nothing to write home about.  I’m still mixed on whether I prefer the old format or this new one.  I do enjoy the intimacy of the new format, and the lack of audience gimmicks/old players being called back for an interview.  That said, the lack of pre-jury, while understandable given the winner reveal, bothers me, and I do think it’s good to give people a chance to reflect on their games before interviewing them about said games.  This particular reunion did few favors in terms of turning me on to the new format.  Probst seemed to be schilling for the new twists half the time, which I suppose is his job, but still, not what I come to the reunion for.  There were a few funny highlights, though.  Rocksroy owning that he was clueless about the idol activation phrases.  Mike being delivered multiple pizzas in a row.  Probst actually talking back to Jonathan when he tries to give Omar a suggestion when asked to name an animal Mike is like.  All comedy gold.  

Before we wrap up my overall thoughts on the season, it’s time for the traditional look back at my pre-season cast assessment, and see how badly I failed in my predictions.  

Jonathan-His personality I had pretty much pegged (no surprise there, he’s not exactly subtle about it), but he did last longer than I would have thought.  

Marya-Slightly overestimated her time in the game, but overall pretty much right.  

Romeo-Wrong.  For all my snark, particularly this episode, he played a pretty good game, and made it deservedly deep as a result.  

Tori-Wrong.  Lasted longer than I thought, and less irritating on the show than I would have thought.  Still don’t care for her in real life, though.  

Jackson-Wrong, though in fairness, I had no way to predict he’d hide medical information from production.  

Chanelle-Her time was slightly shorter than I thought, but out in the merge area and not that memorable.  Overall, I’d say I was right with her.  

Omar-Slight overestimation, since I said he’d be out at five or four, but within the margin of error, so I think I can give myself the win on this one.  

Swati-I was right in regards to about how much time she would have in the game, but I gave her too much credit on game-savviness.  

Hai-Pretty much right, though the guy was more ruthless than I gave him credit for, and thus his reason for leaving was different.  

Lindsay-Wrong.  More game-savvy, and longer-lasting than I anticipated, and I am here for it!

Mike-Wrong.  He’s not setting the world on fire with his gameplay, but there’s more of it there than I gave him credit for, and he lasted much longer than I thought he would as a result.  

Lydia-Pretty much right.  Her humor shows more in her twitter than on the show, though.  

Rocksroy-Wrong.  Sometimes being hard to find just means you’re anti-social.  Not good in a winner pick.  

Jenny Kim-Mixed on this one.  She went out pretty much exactly where I thought she would, and she DID have shades of the bossiness I thought would do her in.  But she hid them well, and would have done much better if not for fluke twists.  Kind of right, kind of wrong, in pretty much all ways.  

Daniel-Wrong.  Worse player than I thought, and out earlier as a result.  

Zach-Wrong.  Much less smart than I though, and consequently out much earlier.  

Drea-Pretty much right, though again, I think I underestimated her smarts.  

Maryanne-TWO FOR TWO ON THE WINNER PICKS IN THE NEW ERA, BABY!  LET’S GO!

In case I haven’t already made it clear, I LOVE this season to death.  This is, unquestionably for me, a top-tier season, the first to get that honor since “Survivor David vs Goliath”, and probably the one I’ve been most excited to put there since “Survivor Cambodia” (I have a lot of respect for “David vs Goliath” as a season, but between enjoying “Ghost Island” more than most and thinking the theming is incredibly dumb, I’m not as jazzed about it as most are.  I acknowledge it’s overall technical perfection as a season, but it just does not have the “umph” to bring it to true love that I have for seasons above it).  Really, the cast is what make this work.  We really connect with this cast, who are by and large fun characters and decent strategists.  Yes, we may not have gotten truly innovative gameplay this season, but not every season needs that.  Standard gameplay, done well, can serve as well, and we get that in spades this season.  Every week told a fun, coherent story with characters we loved to watch, and really, what more could you ask for from a season?  

That said, this season is not without a couple of flaws.  The positives outweigh them, but they are there.  Predominantly, like “Survivor 41”, this season just had too many twists, too much stuff to keep track of.  Being a carbon copy of the format between seasons was KIND OF a cool experiment, but it meant the worst excesses of the previous season were not corrected.  Secondarily, and admittedly very nit-picky, I would say the tail end of the season (last 2-3 episodes) did not have good misdirection.  You could pretty much tell the order of the last few boots at the start of their episodes.  Granted, the show made up for this by giving us great “downfall” narratives each time, but as someone who goes out of his way to praise the misdirection, it is, technically, a flaw.  

While not affecting my ranking in and of itself, I also want to note that “Survivor 41” was kind of hard-done-by, in comparison to this season.  Most of the positives for this season could be said of “Survivor 41”, and that season definitely had more innovations in strategy than this season.  The problem is that, with “Survivor 41” having to introduce SO MANY new twists and advantages that time needed to be spend explaining them, it took away from time that could be spend bonding with the cast.  As such, while I think both are great, I connect more with this current cast, just because half of each episode didn’t need to be eaten up with rules explanations.  That said, that’s purely a factor of order.  Flip them around, with “Survivor 42” introducing all the new stuff first somehow, and I probably have the exact opposite feelings about these seasons.  Again, not a factor in my ranking overall, but wanted to acknowledge that “Survivor 41” got a raw deal due to factors outside its control.  

We did get a short preview for “Survivor 43”… Despite the fact that it’s still filming.  Eh, whatever.  It was so devoid of overall content that I can’t comment too much on it, but I do have a couple of random thoughts.  The cast seems decent.  I already like the attitude of the tattooed woman in blue.  The buffs are nice and colorful.  And the logo is an excellent design, save for the stupid giant number at the top.  I guess I have to accept that it’s going to be a “thing” moving forward, but I still think it looks dumb.  Make it smaller, and either integrate it better into the logo, or put it BENEATH the name where it belongs!

Anyway, I am tired, but don’t think this is the last of the blogs for now!  There will be a brief hiatus, but we will return to our off-season content.  Still deciding what I feel like working on, but at the very least, look out for the return of “‘Survivor’ What-Ifs?”

-Matt 

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 11: Canadian Civil War

You know, they’ve talked about this coming for a while now.  Sensationalist news headlines everywhere, portending the end of all things.  Even some semi-compelling evidence for it.  I must admit, though, that even if I DID subscribe to the idea, I did not expect it to be coming this far north.  

I also did not expect to be doing one of these right now, yet here we are.  Yes, a mere one episode before the finale, it’s time for another edition of…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

This one really hurts.  Some of these “Mess-Ups” are slightly more jokey, but I legitimately feel bad about this one.  Last episode, when talking up the brilliance of this group unintentionally repeating “Survivor 41”, and outwitting the “Knowledge is Power” by having someone else hold the idol that was to be stolen.  However, I made it out to be purely Omar’s move.  In some ways, understandable.  Omar was the narrator for the whole thing, and he WAS the one who happened to get the information out of Drea.  But his move alone?  No.  He discussed the move with Lindsay, and together they came up with the move.  I’ve seen some people say Lindsay suggested the move, and thus should get all the credit.  They may be right; I can’t remember the exact order of the conversation, but I don’t usually go back and rewatch episodes to get these sort of facts straight, and I’m not going to start now.  Even in the most generous interpretation for Omar, though, Lindsay deserves at least equal credit, and I did not give it.  As such, I correct that here.  Lindsay is also an architect of this move, and deserves at least equal praise to what I gave Omar last episode.  

In some ways, it’s kind of fortuitous that I made this mess-up, as this move directly leads into our post-Tribal Council discussion for the episode.  Lindsay and Omar are both high off the outcome, as it went exactly as they had planned.  I will dock Lindsay a point for calling it a “Perfect” Tribal Council, since to my mind, such a title would belong only to a Tribal Council WITHOUT a “Do or Die”, or at least one where I wasn’t the one vulnerable to said “Do or Die”, but hey, she’s here.  Can’t fault her for being happy about that.  

In the middle of this euphoria comes the issue of Mike’s idol.  Omar gives it back because really, what choice did he have?  Yeah, keeping it keeps you safe for a round, but also invokes the wrath of Mike, a wrath well worth being afraid of.  And Omar should know; he weaponized it against Hai two episodes ago.  Mike does make a good show of saying how the idol is for the both of them, but in private, Mike admits that he “knows” Omar is coming for him, and so plans to turn on Omar.  Fair enough, since Omar is the biggest threat out there to win, and therefore someone Mike needs to take out at some point for him to have a shot at winning, but I find the justification oddly amusing.  With the other people Mike had a vendetta against, there was at least SOME slight, real or imagined, that put him on the warpath against them.  Chanelle with the “Shot in the Dark” safety vote, Hai with the supposed “puppet” comment.  But no one really egged Mike to turn on Omar.  So what does Mike do?  Does he say “Omar’s a threat and needs to go?”  No, Mike just HAS to turn it into some drama, specifically that Omar will come for him, despite Omar NEVER saying that in this episode (though he did discuss it in episodes previous, if we’re being completely fair).  Again, perfectly fine decision by Mike.  No complaints strategically.  Just funny to me that it can’t just be a strategy thing.  Someone HAS to be against him, or have slighted him, for Mike to justify mobilizing against them.  

Mike pitches this move to Maryanne, who admittedly does see the value in it.  She frames it as “Omar is a threat and needs to go.”, which again, can’t argue with.  So loyal is she to Mike, that she… Talks about how uncomfortable he’s feeling the next morning.  Way to keep that alliance under wraps, Maryanne.  

Ok, ok, she doesn’t mention the “Targeting Omar” part, but even that felt like a bit more disclosure than necessary.  Maryanne will have to wait, however, as Jonathan speaks, and per the edict of Probst, when Jonathan speaks, everyone else shuts up.  Specifically, Jonathan has now taken on the persona of “Captain Obvious”, telling us things that we already knew were blindingly true.  Specifically that Lindsay and Omar are a pair working against him, and this is the breakup of the Taku 4.  Wow, wonder where the hell you got that idea, Jonathan?  

This, however, is the excuse Mike needs to bring in Jonathan on the “Get Omar” plan.  Omar DOES catch them talking, but not before the deal is sealed, and so everything seems to be in motion.  

Speaking of motion, our reward challenge features a lot of it.  Contestants spin themselves around really fast to unspool rope from themselves.  Having done so, they cross a rope bridge and then a balance beam, on which they must untie keys to unlock puzzle pieces.  This, of course, means a puzzle at the end, with the solver winning reward for themselves.  

Now, contrary to how generic a descriptor that is, I actually quite like this challenge.  There are specifically two things about it that hit the mark for me.  One is the puzzle.  If you’re familiar at all with “Survivor” History, you will realize this is no ordinary puzzle.  This is what I call “The Kass Puzzle”.  More specifically, the puzzle that Kass solved on “Survivor Cagayan” to win her immunity in what is, in my opinion, the best challenge comeback in the history of the show.  A good puzzle on its own, but allowing me to relive this challenge brings me joy.  

The other reason is Maryanne.  Say what you will about her, the woman is making the MOST of this experience, and loving every minute of it.  Everyone else just kind does their spin as quickly and clinically as possible, but Maryanne goes all over the place, laughing all the way.  She even gets in some “Opposite Direction Spins” to try and cure the dizziness.  Doesn’t work, naturally, but the pleasure’s in the trying.  I hope, dear reader, that you at some point experience even 1/4 the joy that Maryanne felt doing that challenge.  You will truly be happy at that time.  

As this challenge involves a puzzle, Jonathan does not have much chance to win it, despite his decent lead from the physical portion.  Most everyone here has something of a chance to win it, but it’s Omar that ultimately takes the thing…

SMACK!

Sorry, a pig just flew into my window.  It’s not enough for Omar to enjoy his win, however.  We need to talk about how much it means to him as a fan, and what it will mean to his niece, whom he just cares SO MUCH about!  Subtle, show.  Very subtle.  While you’re at it, why don’t you photoshop in a sign that says “Dead Man Walking” around his neck? 

Because it would cover the awesome Emu Shirt, that’s why.  

Anyway, like last season, Omar has a choice between a healthier meal of chicken and veggies, or sugary foods like cake and cookies.  With no Deshawn to try and bargain for letters from home, Omar is instead left with the wrinkle of taking the former reward and two people with him, or the latter and three.  Correctly recognizing that the boost from food is going to be fleeting, Omar chooses the latter, and takes everyone but Lindsay and Jonathan.  Assuming that he and Lindsay had discussed this earlier, this move makes perfect sense.  No sense in giving Jonathan even fleeting strength, and you nullify the risk of people strategizing against you, since the two aren’t talking strategy at this point anyway.  

Case in point, both make a show of wanting to target Mike back at camp, though neither are particularly good liars, and it’s clear to everyone watching that they don’t trust each other.  Kind of hilarious, actually.  We get better strategizing once everyone gets back to camp.  We find out that Maryanne, despite that one earlier scene, is more on board with the “Boot Omar” plan than we thought, and she starts telling the few left who don’t know about her extra vote.  And yeah, given that this is still a semi-slim majority, this time it actually makes SENSE to tell people about your advantage.  Gives them more confidence in the plan, and makes defectors less likely.  Mike reciprocates by saying he can use his idol to protect them both, which makes Maryanne very happy since she has an idol ANYWAY, but now has an extra backup, effectively.  The only thing that can possibly go wrong is Lindsay or Omar winning immunity.  

Our immunity challenge is sadly not as good as the reward challenge.  Just your generic obstacle course with ladder puzzles, and a table maze at the end.  The one thing I think was pretty cool was getting a key up a ladder by moving its rungs back and forth.  That was clever.  

Not inherent to the challenge, but another thing that helps is the tension.  This challenge is surprisingly even overall, but it quickly becomes clear that Jonathan and Lindsay are our two table maze whizzes.  They go back and forth, and the music gives us some good fakeouts.  In the end, the more interesting choice of Lindsay wins.  Now, as Mike rightly notes, there is the possibility of Omar being immune by Lindsay’s talisman, now an idol, and so a backup plan must be put in place.  

Said backup plan is… Romeo.  Ok, I guess it makes sense.  Mike doesn’t want himself, Jonathan, or Maryanne gone, and with Lindsay and Omar potentially immune, only Romeo is left.  But if you’re talking about using him as a swing vote, maybe just let Jonathan go, and get one of Lindsay or Omar on the next round.  The “They’re taking up a seat at the end” argument is only for the likes of Cirie Fields (“Survivor Exile Island”) who win no matter who they’re up against.  Mike has by no means the LOWEST chance of winning of this group, but he’s not a certainty like Cirie would be in any Final Tribal Council.  

The Omar plan is not completely dead, however.  Lindsay, fearing that her talisman will be put back in play should she use it, discusses NOT using it at all.  Now, THIS is the one true misstep of the episode, strategically and editing wise.  From a strategy perspective, while I get the fear of “It comes back into the game”, this is contradicted by the text of the advantage itself saying it expires at the Final Six.  You know, where you are RIGHT NOW!  Unless they blatantly change the rules on the spot (something that is, admittedly, not out of the question given how the show has been these past couple seasons), it will be powerless.  Moreover, by NOT playing it, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to show off in front of the jury, not to mention save an ally YOU NEED going forward.  Omar is, for all intents and purposes, drawing fire away from Lindsay.  If she wants to not be targeted, and thus need to win every immunity moving forward, she NEEDS Omar around.  She’s also probably the one person left who might have a realistic chance of beating Omar in the finals, so even if he does stick around to the end, there’s no rush.  

From an editors perspective, however, this REALLY should have been the misdirection for the episode.  Put this closer to the end, right before they march off, throw in a sound byte of Lindsay saying maybe she will play it after all, and BAM!  A decent mystery heading into Tribal Council.  But no, it’s taken as a near-certainty that she won’t, which leads Maryanne to spearhead the Omar plan.  Getting Romeo fully on board, she plans to split the votes.  She, Romeo, and her extra vote go on Omar, thus giving him the majority at 3-2-2 (Jonathan and Mike voting for Romeo for safety, and Lindsay and Omar voting for Jonathan, obviously).  Then, even if Omar is made safe, it’s still a tie, rather than an automatic Jonathan eviction.  Only a moron would be against this plan.  

Ok, ok, I exaggerate.  Jonathan and Mike do object to it being too complicated, Mike in particular saying Maryanne is trying to play a “too advanced” version of “Survivor”.  See, this is the Mike I was afraid we’d get pre-season, the one who only understands the most basic of strategy and becomes hard-headed in the face of anything more advanced.  What Maryanne is suggesting is the smart move, guys, and not rocket science.  Hell, ROMEO is the only person who might have an objection, as he’s an alternate target in that scenario, and yet he’s the one fully on board!  That might be because Maryanne did a masterful job convincing him they were just going for Omar, but still!  

That said, for all that I joke, these two men are NOT, in fact, morons, and I have no doubt they’ll fall in line with Maryanne’s superior plan before Tribal Council.  That said, such a plan requires things being played close-to-the-chest, and all do it masterfully here.  Brilliant strategy, but leads to a Tribal Council with not a lot to talk about.  Save, that is, for Omar’s final nail in the coffin, when he talks about being “Survivor Confident”, where you can never know for certain, but think you’re good.  

Yeah, guess who gets the rug pulled out from under them.  Go on.  Guess.  

While I fully acknowledge it was the correct strategic move for everyone save Lindsay, I can’t deny that I will miss Omar.  He and his Emu Shirt were great strategists on this season, and overall just fun and likable.  When he wasn’t shoving animal metaphors down our throats, he was a joy to have on screen, and I look forward to seeing him on a future returnee season.  Hell, he even leaves with a lot of class, correctly giving Maryanne credit for the boot.  Or the ABOOT, if you will.  Ah, Canadian jokes.  It’s a shame to see two countrymen go after each other like this.  

One or two slip-ups aside, this was still a solid episode.  Not much misdirection, but several fun moments, and well-crafted narrative, and a great downfall arc.  More believable misdirection might have been helpful, but you can’t have everything.  You can, however, have the tradition “Idol Speculation” rankings heading into the finale, however.  To quickly recap, this is where I talk about who I think has the best chance of winning in the finals.  HOW LIKELY that person is to make the finals does not factor in; this is merely who I think has a shot versus no shot.  

1. Lindsay-As always, the top spot is reserved for the person about how I can say “If they get to the end, they win.”   With Omar out of the picture, that honor belongs to Lindsay.  There’s no one else left who can say they’ve played as strategically over the entire season, so she’s got that facet on lockdown, but she has good arguments in other areas as well.  You like someone who’s good at challenges?  Lindsay so far is the only one who can go toe-to-toe with Jonathan in that department.  You like someone who’s good socially.  Tell me who Lindsay has pissed off.  Who?  No one, that’s who.  No, like most people in this position, Lindsay’s issue is getting to the end.  Her only true ally is gone, and she’s the only person truly on the “wrong” side of the vote this episode.  Granted, she has a decent shot to immunity her way to the end, but still, uphill battle.  

2. Maryanne-Before tonight’s episode, Maryanne would have been lower on this list.  While she did a good job hanging on despite being targeted, and had the second-most “Stuff” after Drea, she hadn’t really done a lot with it, and I could see that plus her loose lips docking her points with the jury.  Tonight, however, she proved her worth.  She publicly got out what the jury perceived as the biggest strategic threat, and that retroactively gets you a lot of points.  Sort of a “The king is dead, long live the king” type thing.  Think what happened with David on “Survivor Millennials vs. Gen-X”.  He was the big strategic threat, but when he was eliminated, the person seen as eliminating him got all the strategic credit.  Granted that honor was placed incorrectly on Adam when it was Hannah who did the orchestrating in that scenario, but you take my point.  No one will misplace the glory of eliminating Omar after that performance.  Maryanne’s one true obstacle is her personality.  Multiple people have referred to her as “annoying”, and again, loose lips could come back to haunt her.  Unless she REALLY turned off the jury just by being herself, though, I think she’s in a decent spot to win, provided her strategic rival in Lindsay is voted off.  

3. Mike-Mike is in many ways the opposite of Maryanne.  People love his personality.  That’s part of how he’s stuck around so long.  He’s a straight-shooter, but likable and funny.  People just want to be around him.  That said, his strategic game is lacking.  Not bad, just not going to set the world on fire.  If the jury is heavily into that aspect of the game, Mike’s in trouble.  Still, he’s acquitted himself well enough to garner some votes, and even win so long as he’s not up against a stronger strategic player.  

4. Jonathan-It is how unusual having a player of Jonathan’s archetype this late in the game is that gives Jonathan any hope of winning.  The dude’s strongest argument is that he was a super-obvious target, particularly with how Probst was building him up pre-merge, yet still made it this far.  Can Jonathan articulate that?  Not from what we’ve seen, but you never know.  Sadly, between him not looking too good at the split-Tribal Council, and juries these days respecting the physical game less, I would say Jonathan is the most likely “Xander” of the season: Someone who gets to the end and SEEMS like they should win, but just don’t have what the jury wants.  

5. Romeo-It speaks to the quality of this season that someone like Romeo is the bottom contender of this group.  Romeo has done very well playing the decoy boot, and worming his way further and further despite nominally being on the bottom.  That may seem like weak strategy, but it’s basically what won Sandra the game twice.  Romeo also has some strategic chops to his name, very well running the Ika Tribe pre-merge.  Sadly, as we saw with Sherri on “Survivor Caramoan”, pre-merge actions often count for very little on the jury.  Moreover, while Romeo’s strategy can be a winning one, you need to be up against really unlikeable people to pull it off.  Romeo has no such people here, and thus is the least-likely to win.  Hardly a bad player, though.  

And there we go.  Let us see how the finale plays out next week!

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 10: A New Villain Arises

While I admit I haven’t seen this complaint so far, I could see some in the fan community having a gripe with this season.  Specifically after Tori’s exit, there’s no real “Villain” left in the game.  Everyone is at least some degree of likable (some more than others, but let’s not split hairs), and even if they have some rough edges, no one is a real “villain”.  Evidently the show heard this complaint through time, and set out to give us a new villain, and his name is Mike!  

What’s that?  You say that Mike did nothing particularly villainous this episode?  Oh ho, I beg to differ, dear reader.  He committed perhaps the most heinous crime known to man.  HE MISUSED SHAKESPEARE!  

You all heard him!  He made the inevitable “Wherefore art thou” reference that must happen when someone named “Romeo” is around, which is fine, except that he made the admittedly common mistake of using “wherefore” as if it were the modern “where”.  It’s NOT people.  It’s analogous to WHY in Modern English.  This is not a hard concept to work through!  At least the episode is over, and I don’t have to hear it again…

CRASH!

MIKE: Wherefore art thou, Matt?  In your home, obviously.  

ME: Why do I even bother?  Look, Mike, what are you doing here?  

MIKE: Our hill, over dale, over bush and briar, I do wonder everywhere.  And your house is a part of “Everywhere”

ME: Yeah, but see, that doesn’t work since that’s ACTUALLY an appropriate Shakespeare quote for the situation, albeit an abridged one.  

MIKE: Well I heard you were a Shakespeare fan, and thought I could regale you with some more of The Bard, ya’ know?  Show ya’ I actually know what I’m talking about.  

ME: You know what?  Fine.  I have better things to do than chase you off my property with my nice new Taku Buff.  Just try and keep it to a minimum, ok?

MIKE: The silence often of pure innocence persuades where speaking fails.  Ya’ know, shut up if you don’t want people to know about your advantages.  

ME: Woah, slow down there, man!  We’re not even at that part of the episode.  First we’ve got to get over you congratulating yourself on blindsiding Hai.  

MIKE: What can I say?  Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em!

Mike has no idea how appropriate that quote is to his situation right now.  In any case, there’s really no drama from that vote out since it was pretty unified.  Even morning doesn’t bring much drama, as we instead focus on camp life.  Drea evidently wants to be the next Richard Hatch (“Survivor Borneo”) or Tom Westman (“Survivor Palau”), and catch a shark, the mechanism for which she debates with her tribe.  This is soon interrupted by Maryanne’s oddly casual observation that her pinkie toenail has fallen off.  This casual nature is soon revealed to be because it’s a regular occurrence for Maryanne, something the tribe is oddly fascinated with.  Though I suppose if I had nothing but time, such a banal subject might get my attention as well.  

Strategy talk does eventually re-emerge, though, as our “Strong 5” go down to the beach, leaving Maryanne and Romeo behind.  The pair acknowledge that they’re on the bottom, but also recognize that that five are not going to stick together, and they can weasel their way further forward.  

Meanwhile, on the beach, the five are making a pact to stick together through Romeo and Maryanne’s boots, only to “duke it out” later.  A decent enough idea for all of them, under the patented Cirie Fields “Every goat left is a threat to my finals seat” logic, and Drea, at least, is heavily on board, very ready to throw Romeo under the bus.  They just haven’t been able to get on the same page.  And credit where it’s due, but this group has FINALLY figured out to send the right salesman to make such a pitch.  Mike, the guy who would seem most likely to propose such an alliance, is the one doing the talking, and he sells it hard.  Good job for him.  It’s certainly more believable than, say, Omar trying to go with this idea.  

The salesman language is intentional, though.  Once the group splits up, he confides to us and Omar that the whole thing was to make Drea comfortable, so she doesn’t play any potential idols or advantages.  Smart play, but unsurprising.  Just due to sheer amount of “stuff”, Drea is the biggest threat left for the end, and that’s not even including her surviving being a target multiple times, plus her heart-wrenching speech at the Tori boot.  

Yet, I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t believe this is who they would target until Mike told us so.  I thought he was being 100% serious.  Good job, Mike.  

MIKE:  What can I say, I’m a good actor.  

This player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann’d,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit?  And all for nothing!

Thanks for the good performance, it helps take some of the salt out of that “Wherefore” misusage.  Also salty is Jonathan, who continues to want to be the provider, yet finds himself very much weakened, both physically and in his resolve.  Drea is still on that shark-catching train, and so she and Lindsay go down to untangle a net to attempt to use it.  Jonathan, after some perceived effort, goes down and verbally directs them in their untangling efforts.  After this surprisingly doesn’t work as well, Drea makes an offhand, if somewhat snarky, comment that more hands would help, which Jonathan takes as a slight unto himself.  This blows up into far more of an argument than it needs to, save for the fact that it proves Jonathan will remain a target.  While I can see his side of it, I do think he was overreacting, and again, it’s that side of Jonathan that I don’t like to see.  

And so, we now come to the moment we all saw happening from the moment the preview for this episode showed up.  Yes, dear readers, it is time once again for the episode with the “Do or Die” twist.  Mike, any appropriate words for this situation?  

MIKE: It sucks, man?

ME: Well yes, but I meant more bardic words.  

MIKE: Hmm.  How about “What a sign it is of evil life…”

Good enough, thank you!  Now, I promised at the top of this season that I would not give the show flak for reusing twists, as they had no time to gather true feedback from the audience on how they played out.  And I will hold to that, even if the rub salt in the wound by having Probst talk to the audience like we’re kindergarteners while re-introducing the twist to us all.  So no, I will not complain about the presence of this particular twist here.  Much.  

That said, however, I do want to re-address something I talked about last season.  While this and a large number of twists implemented last season have received some degree of hate, I’ve noticed a number of people come around on this one, and say that it’s actually a decent twist, or at least not the worst last season had to offer.  And fair enough.  One is entitled to one’s opinion, and it’s not the WORST opinion one could hold regarding “Survivor”.  However, I would respectfully disagree, and I would like to take a minute to explain why.  

When I do see people talking about the worst twists from last season, usually the hourglass is top of the list.  And again, fair enough.  That is also a terrible twist for a variety of reasons.  But I still maintain that “Do or Die” is by far the worst.  Still, it seemed odd to me that this was so common an opinion that I took time between seasons to consider why, and have come to the conclusion that it is because we’re rating the relative merits of a twist based on different criteria.  

The most common criticism I see lobbed at the hourglass is that it’s “Unfair”, which it categorically is.  And if you’re rating at twist on fairness, I 100% agree with you.  Much as I may dislike the “Do or Die”, I cannot deny that it is “Fair”.  Contestants are told up-front what will happen, and are given the chance to avoid it.  No, it would be wrong to say the “Do or Die” is unfair.  

But fairness is not the issue for me.  For me, how well it fits into the spirit of the game is.  

In my view, there are only three ways a player should leave the game: They get voted out, they quit, or they are removed by production, either for medical reasons or some other violation of contract that necessitates production removal.  Anything else does not feel like “Survivor”.  The mechanism for implementing the twist is fine.  But the consequence is far too severe for my liking.  

NO ONE should ever leave the game based on what the show describes as “a game of chance”.  Even those screwed by the hourglass twist have a chance to socially maneuver to save themselves.  But this twist leaves open the possibility that someone leaves, not based on their own social maneuvering, willpower, or actions, but a bit of bad luck.  Luck may play a factor in many exits, but it should not be the ONLY factor, or even the PRIMARY factor.  You want to keep the “consequences” theme going?  Fine.  But make the consequences less severe.  Hey, you’re fond of taking away votes, and we saw what good drama that caused at Vati’s first Tribal Council this season.  Keep things the same, tell people about the twist beforehand and give them a chance to opt out, but say it’s a chance to not be able to vote.  I would even accept the vote being lost for two Tribal Council’s in a row if that’s what it took not to have this particular twist in the game!  And hey, if you want to push the “chance at reward” angle like you did this season, you can do that as well!  Survive the “Do or Die”, you get an extra vote!  It keeps the fairness of the twist, and creates a dilemma without the possibility of gutting the true drama and point of the show: The social maneuvering and the vote.

Boy, my fingers are sore from all that typing.  Mike, can you fill in for a second?

MIKE: Farewell, Immunity!  Thou art too dear for my possessing!

Another misquote?  You’re on thin ice, buddy.  But yes, most here do choose to sit out, and wisely so, given the potential consequences.  Mike and Maryanne have immunity via idols, so they see no need to risk themselves.  Drea has the ability to steal one of their idols with her “Knowledge is Power”, so she is also out.  Omar has somehow not had his name mentioned once for elimination yet, so he sits out, like a boss.  And Romeo sits out… Well, it’s not made super clear, but I guess he gets the accurate read that he’s not going to be a target tonight.  All understandable.  

Naturally, the two people competing are Jonathan, correctly surmising that his name is brought up, and Lindsay who… Ok, Lindsay’s not a target, but I admit it would be out of character for her not to complete.  Specifically, they will be competing in an endurance challenge where our players have to stand in a semi-crucified pose that makes them go numb.  You may remember this either as the challenge where Natalie Anderson accidentally spat on herself during “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, or more recently, the one where Christian blabbered everyone else into submission on “Survivor David vs. Goliath”.  Not a bad challenge, but again, I’m sick of nothing but endurance immunity challenges post merge.  Jonathan wins, somewhat surprisingly, meaning this twist could now screw over someone I actually really enjoy watching.  Way to keep ruining things, show!

To really hammer home just how terrible this is for Lindsay, we get HER flashbacks, specifically to playing football in high school.  She talks about her toughness and how she perseveres in spite of the odds.  On the one hand, I want to complain about how pointless this flashback is, given how it just tells us stuff the show already did a good job of conveying about Lindsay.  On the other hand, we get to see pictures of High School Lindsay, which is pretty cool, and discover that she has the same Fountain of Youth that Probst does.  She does not age either.  You doing ok, Mike?

MIKE: I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.  You ain’t getting rid of me that easily.  

Ooooookay then.  Angsting over, it’s time to get back to targeting  As discussed earlier, Drea is the main target due to all her “Stuff”, but Drea is not so easily got rid of.  Being no moron, she recognizes that when people are distant with her, that means her name is coming up.  Fortunately, she has a plan.  No one knows about that “Knowledge is Power” advantage, so she can steal Mike’s idol to keep herself safe.  All she has to do it keep quiet about it… Wait, why is she telling Omar about this plan?  

MIKE: She prattles something too wildly.

Precisely.  Look, props to Omar for getting in so good with everyone that he’s at the center of most every plan that comes up, and for somehow being the only person left who has NEVER been brought up as a target for elimination, but what the heck was Drea thinking here?  How does it in ANY WAY behoove her to let ANYONE know about this?  All it can do is derail her plans.  There is LITERALLY no need for Omar to know this, but she tells him anyway.  

About the best that can be said is that it leads to some decent misdirection here.  Omar acknowledges that he has power, and can eliminate Mike tonight.  He could even possibly get him to let Omar hold his idol, then still vote Mike out to take full possession.  The latter, at least, is a somewhat compelling argument, as Omar is one of the few people left with no idol or advantage to his name.  Still, this falls into the same category as “Now that everyone’s against Hai, maybe we should keep him.”  There’s no way this is real.  Yes, Mike is getting a big head about stuff.  GOOD!  Let him think he’s in charge, and he’s less likely to move against you.  Mike does not take being betrayed very well, as you may have noticed from literally all of his game so far.  You really want someone like that on the jury?  I think not.  Plus, Drea is probably the only person left who you realistically lose to in the end, so she should be target numero uno.  

The ethics of Lindsay’s risk are the main topic of discussion at Tribal tonight.  Not much comes of said discussion, but it is nice that people don’t take the mickey out of her too much.  Of course, when Lindsay goes up to pick a box with 10 minutes still left, and no cut to commercial, we know she’s safe.  Probst gives us the Monty Hall problem, the jury looks shocked, Rocksroy proves he doesn’t understand the Monty Hall problem, you know the drill.  Oddly, like Deshawn last season, Lindsay ignores the odds and refuses to switch.  Again, like Deshawn last season, it saves her.  I’m happy at the outcome, but this twist still needs to die.  

MIKE: My dancing soul doth celebrate!  Even though dancing isn’t a real sport.  Now we can get out Drea.  

Not without a hurdle, you won’t.  With the vote now on, Drea naturally plays her Knowledge is Power advantage, asking for Mike’s idol.  Continuing with his surprisingly good acting chops, Mike looks all dejected, only for us to discover that, indeed, Omar did the smart thing.  We flash back to Mike handing Omar his idol for safe keeping, and so Drea is out of luck, though we see she wisely spends her extra vote on the move as well.  See, THIS is good stuff!  The strategizing, good and bad.  The plays and counter-plays.  The dramatic reveal.  All stuff we would have missed had the show just had “luck” boot out Lindsay.  

I would also like to take this time to point out that the “Knowledge is Power”, a twist that’s actually got the potential to be GOOD on other seasons, has given us great dramatic moments, highlights of the season, twice now.  Why do people hate this one again?

The smart moves continue as bigger threat Drea goes.  I admit, I’m mixed on this one.  On the one hand, between Mike and Drea, I want to see more of Mike on my screen, particularly after he’s shown how good an actor he can be this episode.  That said, Drea was far from my least-favorite player on this tribe.  It’s just Jonathan was immune.  Drea leaving takes out one of the last remaining threats to Omar’s victory, which I would enjoy, and also removes more “Stuff” from the game, again a plus.  But it also takes out a great strategist, which means that the remaining episodes become more predictable, never a good thing.  Sorry to see her go, but not as sorry as if she stayed.  

Now, Mike got three votes this time, one more than expected.  Given Mike’s track record of handling surprises against him, he… Asks Drea for clarification, congratulates her on a move well-done, and hugs her goodbye.  Huh.  You really are full of surprises, man.  

MIKE: Men at some times are masters of their fates.  Not Lindsay, though.  

Most players content themselves with throwing one or two people under the bus as they leave.  Drea is not most players.  She compliments EVERYBODY in some way, whether it be Jonathan being below the radar, Lindsay being her close friend, Mike being likely to win in the end (doubtful), or giving Omar credit for foiling her Knowledge is Power (she does also say stuff to Maryanne and Romeo, but I missed it.  I assume it was in the same vein, though), she gives everyone a reason to target everyone else, which should help keep things interesting these last couple of episodes.  

Despite the show’s best efforts, this was a good one.  Once we didn’t have the worst outcome of “Do or Die” leading to “Die”, we had great misdirection, good use of flashbacks, and valid strategizing that led to a satisfying exit.  You’ve dodge the bullet twice, show, but don’t expect to do it a third time.  Next season better not have this particular twist.  

Anyway, thanks for the help Mike.  Want to take us out before I run you out of here with my nice new Taku buff?

MIKE: If this blogger has offended

Think but this, and all is mended:

That you have but slumbered here

While this blog post did appear.  

No more hatred, no more spite.  

Let it vanish in the night.  

If you seek a new recap,

Head to Dalton, that good chap,

For he is an honest man

Who seeks to tell us what he can

Of challenges and strategy

And he do hath no symmetry

With these harsh words of this here Matt

And that’s all I can say ‘bout that.  

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And I’ll make sure everything’s right, ok?

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 9: Stromboli’s Puppet Show

It is a sad fact, but true, that oftentimes someone gets out of a rough situation, only to end up in another one right after.  Whether their fault or not, “Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire” is a cliche for a reason.  Such is, sadly, the case for Mike tonight, escaping being the “Puppet” of Hai, only to instead become the puppet of Omar.  At least it gives me the excuse to make another Disney reference.  

Mike’s path to removal of his strings, only to get new strings attached, begins immediately after Tribal Council.  While you’d think the humdrum Rocksroy boot would produce no drama, the fact is that there was SO much drama at the second Tribal Council that the players there are exhausted, and thus our remaining players have to pick up the drama slack.  As such, while Mike DID go along with the plan to boot Rocksroy to stay in the majority, it wasn’t his preference, and he wasn’t happy about doing it.  Hai tries to console him, and in the dark, it’s easy to believe that Mike was cool with the whole thing.  

Mike was, of course, not cool with the whole thing, and confides in Omar his feelings about what went down.  Omar, correctly reading the moment, effectively mimics Mike’s feelings back to him.  This is a ploy to get Mike to believe that Omar is on his side, despite the Rocksroy boot being largely Omar’s idea.  Omar plays it off well, and it seems Mike believes him.  This, while brilliantly executed by Omar, is getting very close to danger territory for Omar.  It speaks well of his game that he can so quickly bond with someone, and so accurately read the room and adjust accordingly, but stringing Mike along like this is a dangerous game.  Some people, as we’ll see later tonight, can take being burned in the game very well, and appreciate the artistry in your blindside.  But do you think Mike is one of those people?  It’s all well and good to be nice to Mike.  By no means should you antagonize him  But make him believe he’s at your inner circle, only to instead blindside him down the line?  I don’t see Mike handling that very well.  Thus, unless you intend to take Mike all the way to the end, you’re setting yourself up to have a VERY bitter juror working against you.  Now, Omar could just be planning to take Mike to the end, and he’s not the WORST option out there, but I could see people being impressed with him playing as well as he is at his (relatively) advanced age by “Survivor” standards, and I’m not sure that’s a risk I’d want to take.  

Mike isn’t the only one cozying up to Omar, however.  Lindsay, still rightly pissed at Jonathan’s bull-headedness last episode, updates Omar on what went down, and confides that she wants Jonathan gone.  For extra measure, she manages to let Hai know about this as well, WHILE EVERYONE IS STUCK IN THE SHELTER IN THE RAIN!  That thing that is said to be the killer of strategies, that prevents people from shaking up the game, and Lindsay just found a way around it.  You go, girl!  

Back to the conversation with Omar, though, I would just like to point out that this means Omar has had at least some degree of confidence with… Pretty much everybody left!  Ok, ok, he and Drea don’t seem super tight, but pretty much everyone else left has had a close confidence with Omar at some point, and it points to good gameplay.  Furthering this, after Omar and Lindsay’s strategizing, he rightly suggests the pair split up on the way back to camp.  The one downside is that this gives Lindsay time to look for a presumably re-hidden idol, noting that she needs a victory since she hasn’t had any at the challenges.  And that trend unfortunately continues, as Lindsay continues the tradition of “Being right beside the idol yet not finding it”, complete with light flash to indicate where it is on screen.  In Lindsay’s defense, the weather is kind of miserable for idol hunting, and while the idol itself is not particularly well-hidden, the paper does seem to be colored in such a way as to blend with the tree bark, and thus easy to miss on a cursory glance.  

Unfortunately for Lindsay, Maryanne has better luck.  She too sets out on a idol hunt, this time while gathering dry firewood (if such a thing can be found in a downpour of this caliber), and has more success.  This lands her a straight-up hidden immunity idol.  Yep.  No tricks, no gimmicks, no cost, just your regular hidden immunity idol.  Same as it’s been since “Survivor Fiji”.  Now, with my known… dislike… of the gimmicks they’ve added these past two seasons, you’d think I’d be happy to see a return to form.  The trouble is, now things are inconsistent.  So what, you find one idol, you lose your vote until some goofy phrases are said, but you find another one and everything’s fine?  That just seems… Imbalanced.  Having penalties for idols and advantages is not an inherently bad idea, even if I do find the specific mechanism weird.  Now, it certainly wouldn’t make sense to have the phrase/lost vote thing come back for an idol found post-merge, but if you’re going to have penalties for finding things on “Survivor”, then that needs to go for EVERYTHING!  Consistency is all I ask for.  Still, good for Maryanne.  

Lindsay will get to have her day as well, since she’ll be the winner to today’s reward challenge.  After going through a short obstacle course, our players must balance a sandbag on a platform on a pole, then toss that sandbag on another platform.  Standard post-merge fare, and honestly kind of dull, though the pole and platform becoming part of the finish table is a nice touch.  

What Lindsay specifically wins is a bunch of “Survivor” Pizza, and perhaps more importantly a night in a well-built hut.  Noteworthy since the rain is REALLY pouring down on these poor saps today, with most everyone visibly shivering.  In the tropics, mind you.  It’s by no means the worst weather the show has ever experienced, but this episode does a great job of really making you FEEL just how miserable this is for everyone.  

As is tradition, Lindsay gets to pick someone to go with her.  She picks Omar, which I can’t really fault.  She wants to talk strategy, and this is a good place to do so.  He was on her starting tribe, so no one will think it too weird, plus, as she says, he hasn’t had any rewards yet.  Under this same logic, when Probst predictably gives her a second pick, she picks Mike.  Not the WORST pick, but one that would raise a few eyebrows.  After all, Lindsay and Mike have not been particularly close up until this point, so unless you 100% believe her “taking people who haven’t had rewards” thing, the only reason to take Mike is strategy talk, and that should set everyone on edge.  In particular, you’d think Jonathan would be suspicious, given how close they’ve been up until now.  Then you remember Jonathan’s utter lack of social awareness last episode, and you realize Lindsay’s probably good.  

Cabana time has to wait, as the three won’t go until later in the evening.  For now, the main order of business is dealing with the unrelenting rain.  The shelter gets reinforced over a montage of everyone talking about just how much the weather sucks.  The one real dissenting opinion is Hai.  While he does concur with the suckage, he also notes it could be worse, noting his parent’s experiences in Vietnam and immigrating to a new country at age 3.  Yep, it’s another photo montage, not the last one we’ll see this episode, but it works pretty well.  We were already connected with Hai, but it’s good to get to see another side of him.  Plus, seeing baby Hai and teenage Hai was pretty cute.  

Our reward must eventually come, and so Lindsay, Omar, and Mike head to the cabana.  After Mike talks about Jersey boys enjoying pizza, we see that these three have gone mad.  We hear a voice-over talking about Lindsay, yet she reacts as though she can hear something inserted obviously later!  Break out the straight jackets, people!

No, she’s reacting because the sound is actually diabetic.  Yes, in addition to pizza and a good night’s sleep, it seems this is also our equivalent of the family reward for the season.  Due to COVID restrictions, a full family visit was of course not in the cards, but each contestant gets a photo montage and video message from home, lovingly projected on the shipwreckage on their island.  It’s kind of corny, but in that fun, “Survivor” way.  Plus, it must be fun for them to see their names in the “Survivor” font on the show proper.  

These warm fuzzies bond the three, thus completing Mike’s entrapment to Omar.  He says he’s fully on board with him, and ready to stop being Hai’s puppet, not realizing that he’s just traded one puppeteer for another.  Somewhat surprisingly, Lindsay is on board with the plan as well, despite having been hard core against Jonathan earlier.  Partly this is due to not wanting to rock the boat, partly due to recognizing Hai as a threat, and partly wanting to power up her amulet.  

Oh, did you forget about the amulet?  Don’t worry, Lindsay will remind you all by telling Omar and Mike all about it.  I have to ask… WHY?  Is it just the fate of everyone who gets an idol or advantage this season that they can’t stop blabbing about it?  But seriously, getting rid of Hai is great for Lindsay for the reasons she listed out.  But how does it benefit for Omar and Mike to know those reasons?  I think they’d be satisfied with “He’s a threat” as a reason to want him gone.  Then your amulet gets powered up with them none the wiser.  Win-win!

Our immunity challenge comes around, and it’s “Bow-Diddley”, first seen on “Survivor South Pacific”.  Yet another dull endurance challenge.  Much like last episode, it comes down to a duel between Jonathan and Lindsay.  Unfortunately for Jonathan, with a lack of strong winds, his size is no longer an asset, though credit where it’s due, he was REALLY good at recovering the ball when it seemed likely to fall.  After some good musical fake-outs, Lindsay wins, leaving our two main targets, Hai and Jonathan, available.  

Sadly, misdirection is not one of this episode’s strong points.  Hai has been playing, at a minimum, a solid game so far.  He may not be setting the world on fire with his innovative strategies, but his moves have been sensible, and he’s generally worked to position himself well.  But this last third of the episode was an off-day.  He starts by trying to get Mike on the “Vote Out Jonathan” train, but completely misreads the situation.  Mike, however, is not having it, and while he gives sweet words of agreement to Hai, his body language tells a different story.  Hai misses this completely, and we cut to a montage of everyone else being told to target Hai.  Jonathan and Maryanne are on board due to Taku loyalty, since Jonathan is clearly the alternate tonight.  Romeo is on board because he’s now tight with Omar.  And Drea is on board because her amulet would get powered up as well.  And of course, all rightly recognize Hai as a threat.  

So yeah, literally everyone except Hai wants Hai gone.  Not exactly a lot of room to maneuver there.  They do their level best by having Hai add some fuel to the fire.  Under the reasonable guise of wanting to avoid a Shot in the Dark play from Jonathan, Hai bluffs that he has an idol that he’ll play on Jonathan to get out Romeo.  A flimsy lie, and given that Omar has already told Jonathan everything, Jonathan doesn’t buy it.  No, instead, our attempted misdirection comes from Omar thinking about building Hai back up, since no one trusts him, thereby making him a reasonably loyal ally without any options.  

Yeah, sorry, not buying that.  Omar has spent too much time carefully crafting this plan to not follow through, and as we saw with Lydia, Hai is not guaranteed to be loyal if the votes aren’t there.  Add onto that the fact that Hai is one of the few people left who is intellectually capable of standing up to Omar.  If he goes, Drea is probably Omar’s only major remaining threat.  Not to say everyone left besides those two is a moron.  Pretty much everyone here is at least semi-competent, if not full on competent or above-average.  Omar’s just on another level right now, and that level says Hai is going tonight.  

With no mystery left, Tribal Council instead goes for humor.  Unfortunately, most of it is cringe humor relating to people making connections to their occupations.  Some work ok, but Mike literally talks about his being a Firefighter in relation to them needing to be WARM on the island.  Wow.  Never thought I’d see that forced a connection.  Now, if only John Kenny from “Survivor Vanuatu” was on this season.  I’d love to hear him try and connect being a Mechanical Bull Operator to the game somehow.  Maryanne at least varies it up, giving a decent metaphor comparing the game to Jenga, which is a new one, but she pretty well makes it work.  The real capstone here, though, is the brick joke, where Jonathan finally says he understands Maryanne’s ramblings after many episodes of not getting it.  Bravo, show.  

Unsurprisingly, Hai goes home, and while I’d say it was the smart move overall, given Hai’s threat level and amulet possession, I am sorry to see him go.  He was one of our last chances for a real shake-up in the pecking order this season, and just seemed like a nice guy to have around.  Not that Jonathan isn’t nice overall (I have more time for him than I do others of his archetype), but his behavior last episode really soured me, and while he’s not the worst, I’d rather Hai have stuck around than him.  Kudos to Hai for leaving in good spirits, though.  He congratulates everyone on a blindside well-executed, and is nice to them all, even by my standards.  I’m all for players not having too big a chip on their proverbial shoulder, but it’s ok to be at least a BIT salty at the loss.  

Despite the lack of mystery, this is still a great episode.  We got a deep dive into how the strategy came together, some more good bonding moments with the characters, and good moments of humor as well.  When the worst that I can say is that the challenges were lackluster, that’s a solid episode.  Sadly, it appears from the preview that next week may be the return of the “Do or Die” twist, so don’t expect that positivity to last.  

-Matt 

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 8: Return of the Lex

You know, of all the players I invoke on a semi-regular basis, Lex van den Berghe of “Survivor Africa” may be the most out-there one.  Now granted, he’s a classic character; hardly the worst person to call out.  But he’s neither someone whose game I despise, and thus bring up as a negative example, or one of my favorite whom I praise at every opportunity.  Granted, I like Lex overall as a character.  Dude is complex, and definitely funny.  Seriously, his commentary on “Survivor All-Stars” is worth a watch if you want to laugh your ass off, if you’ve never done so.  But he doesn’t exactly break my “Top 10 players of all time” list or anything.  He’s maybe in the Top 50, but not much beyond that.  Yet, he gives such specific material to work with, that I can’t help myself.  

Such is the case tonight.  Evidently Lex took some voodoo lessons from Butch, and has made one of Hai, channeling his spirit through the doll so that Hai reacts similarly to how he does at the top of the episode.  Romeo, you see, was on the outs of that last vote, and so took a leaf out of T-Bird’s book (also “Survivor Africa”) and threw a vote on the person he perceived to be in charge, in this case Hai.  Hai, understandably, does not take it well, going around interrogating everyone as to who it was, when Romeo gives a decent denial.  The only real differences are that Hai does not go to quite the extremes that Lex did on Africa, and he’s actually right in who voted for him.  

All that said, props to Romeo for overall playing this well.  Apart from one or two kind of awkward acting moments, does a good job saying the right things to prevent any more flak from falling in him, while at the same time recognizing his position and what needs to be done for his game.  The comparison to T-Bird is 100% a compliment.  And yes, I am still bitter at the fan base for not putting T-Bird on “Survivor Cambodia.”  I voted for her every day; I have the right to say “Ya done goofed.” You put on Monica Padilla (“Survivor Samoa”) when we could have had T-Bird.  

The next morning, we keep going old school, and no surprise, it’s Rocksroy who gets that ball rolling.  He gets frustrated over the larger lack of work ethic in the camp, citing himself, Mike, and Jonathan as the three biggest workers around the camp.  The three meet at the water well, and agree that with Hai and Omar on board, they can make an overall majority to run the game.  Fair enough plan for them, but two problems: One, this is framed as a “Guys Alliance”, which is about as painful as every time a “Women’s Alliance” is brought up, though this has the added negativity of it seeming like the “strong” pick on the “weak”, not to mention making for boring tv.  Two, and perhaps more immediately concerning, Omar and Hai have basically no reason to join such an alliance.  They recognize that they would be on the bottom, and unlikely to immunity their way to the end in order to save themselves.  Thus, they have little incentive to comply with the plan, and both openly mock it in confessional.  What little chance the plan had is further torpedoed by having ROCKSROY, the man who openly admitted that he has a terrible social game, pitch this plan to them.  I suppose this is technically a third “problem” with the plan, but one that was avoidable even with the strategy, unlike the first two.  All this really does is make Rocksroy a target.  Good going, man!

Speaking of targets, it’s time for our challenge, where two people will win immunity, and two will be voted out.  Look, this is normally where I get hyped for them having a double-elimination with all 10 people left voting in one big group, but we all know this won’t be the case.  “Survivor” is committed to their “Split into 2 groups of 5” at the Final 10, and on paper I can understand why.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pagongings are boring, or at least create a boring stretch of episodes.  Granted, more recent seasons, due to smaller tribes and sometimes multiple tribe shake-ups, tend to not be straight tribe Pagongings, but rather a supermajority Pagonging the minority, so the point still stands.  Thus, the show hopes that such a shake-up will put the minority in power on one tribe, and/or force the majority to eat each other early.  On paper, this makes sense.  But, after SEVERAL seasons of this, it needs to be acknowledge that it has NEVER worked!  Partly  this is just due to luck, but EVERY SINGLE TIME, the majority just gets, well, the majority on both teams, and it has ALMOST never led to any shake-ups.  Again, I get the temptation, and it was worth a shot.  At some point, however, you need to acknowledge it isn’t working, and try something different.  That is the case with this twist at Final 10.  A worthy attempt, but it has failed.  TRY SOMETHING ELSE!  

Our teams are Hai, Omar, Mike, Romeo, and Rocksroy against Jonathan, Lindsay, Maryanne, Tori, and Drea, playing in the “Pyramid Balance” challenge first seen on “Survivor Caramoan”.  It remains unchanged, save for the waters once again being rough.  Nearly snapping Rocksroy’s neck not being enough, now it needs to throw contestants in the air like it just does not care.  Which it probably doesn’t.  Thus, it becomes less about “Who wants it more?” and more about “Who has the best sea legs?”  Hai quickly wins on his side, but stays in since the overall winner between both teams gets kebabs for their team, as well as the right to go second to Tribal Council.  Jonathan and Lindsay are our combatants on the other side, with Jonathan ultimately winning out, both immunity and the food.  Gotta admit, despite the guy’s challenge prowess, this one surprised me.  Men are traditionally worse at challenges that involve balance, as their center of gravity is higher up (in the shoulders, compared to women’s, which is in the hips), and Jonathan being so top-heavy, I would have thought he would be out early  Good on him proving me wrong, though.  

Hai and his team get sent to Taku beach to strategize.  They talk like it’s a step down from the merge beach, which it may be, but the shelter looks decent enough, all things considered.  It’s not Rupert’s hole in the ground from “Survivor All-Stars”, or the Younger Men’s “Four Fronds on a Tepee” from “Survivor Exile Island”.  Strategy, unsurprisingly, quickly coalesces around Romeo being the one to go home, with even Romeo seeming to accept it, saying he just doesn’t fit in with the machismo around camp.  Fortunately for him, Omar in particular still has a chip on his shoulder about Rocksroy, though he also brings up the fair point that Romeo is a possible ally for him down the line, while Rocksroy is, to put it mildly, inflexible.  We haven’t seen this much reluctance to change the plan since Joe Del Campo (“Survivor Kaoh Rong”).  As such, he, Romeo, and Hai hatch a firm plan against Rocksroy, which is honestly probably the smarter of the two options.  Their analysis of their position in the “Guys Alliance” is correct, so they have no reason to stick to it.  Keeping Romeo around keeps their options open, and while the current overall majority might not be happy with the move, Rocksroy is not so integral or so well-liked that they’ll have hell to pay for making such a move.  

Really, the biggest drawback is that Mike would be left out in this scenario, and we’ve seen how he feels about being left out.  Hai corrects this problem by, well, talking with Mike about the plan.  Mike is unhappy about it, and talks about possibly not doing it, but we all know that’s BS.  Mike will stick with the numbers in the end, as well he should, and Rocksroy is obviously going to be the boot of this group.  

Our other group, however, is a bit more of an interesting story.  Like Romeo, Tori would seem the obvious choice, but also like Romeo, there is incentive for the others to not follow said plan.  Drea’s pile of stuff has grown so large that even Jonathan, whom Lindsay will later describe as “Not very strategic.”, takes notice.  As such, he decides to organize everyone else to blindside her.  Which, much as I want Tori to finally be gone, is a move that makes sense for them all.  Having stuff on your side is one thing, but Drea just has SO MUCH STUFF that it can’t be ignored.  Plus, you still have Maryanne to be your “Stuff Supplier.”

Like with the “Guys Alliance” earlier, however, the flaw in the plan is in the messenger.  Jonathan tells us that he’s trying not to be “That big guy” who just bosses everyone around and acts like he owns the game just because of his strength.  Which is true.  We’ve seen shades of it here and there, but for the most part he’s kept his cool.  Now, whether due to immunity or just dwindling patience, Jonathan snaps, and starts talking down to people in regards to his plans, which rubs Maryanne the wrong way, such that she chats more openly with Tori than perhaps might be advised.  

But wait, there’s more!  It’s not just those who personally annoy him that he’s unreasonable with!  Lindsay, whom we’ve only seen be close to Jonathan at this point, brings up the “Hey, what if Drea plays her idol?” scenario to Jonathan.  She points out, correctly, that Maryanne might go at that point, which would get rid of a lot of their edge at the moment.  As such, splitting between Drea and Tori might be wise at this juncture.  Jonathan takes this reasonable idea, and throws it away entirely, evidently on the basis that he “Doesn’t trust Tori.”  Fine.  Don’t trust Tori.  You can still split the votes!  It’s not like Tori and Drea are going to work together at this point!  Seriously, Jonathan is not as bad as many men in his archetype, but loss of respect points this episode.  

Even though we get two Tribal Councils tonight, it really just feels like one.  The first Tribal Council, with Hai’s group, can pretty much just be “Yadda Yadda’d” away.  Absolutely zero mystery, and not even any fun banter.  When the highlight of your Tribal is Hai commenting on his lack of body fat, you’ve got issues.  Rocksroy does go, and while I’d say it was the smarter move overall, I am sorry to see Rocksroy go.  Granted, keeping Romeo around probably keeps things more interesting strategically, and I hardly dislike the guy, but I just connected with Rocksroy a bit more.  Possibly because his archetype is so much rarer in this age of “Survivor”, but I find him more intriguing than Romeo, despite the simplicity of his strategy.  No disrespect to Romeo meant, though.  He’s awesome as well, and I look forward to seeing his strategy play out moving forward.  

What we lose in intrigue in the first Tribal, however, we make up for in the second.  You see, since Rocksroy was voted out first, he gets to sit in on the jury, along with Chanelle.  Thus, this group KNOWS he was the boot, and they can’t help but notice a pattern developing, even if it’s just a subconscious one.  Yep, two black people are the first two members of the jury, and if blindsides go as planned, it’ll be three in a row.  Fortunately, Drea is quick to inform us this will not be the case, as she will be playing her idol to prevent this.  Honestly can’t blame her.  With all the stuff she has, might as well use some of it, both to lower threat level and buy yourself more time.  Drea then talks about the problems of implicit bias and how it affects people, both in day to day life and on “Survivor”, which at first might seem like unintentional guilt-slinging at the attempt to blindside her, but it’s not.  She was aware of the plan.  It was intentional guilt-slinging.  

Maryanne, also being black, chimes in to talk about how she notices the same issues, and thus will also be playing her idol tonight.  With Drea’s proclamation, can’t really blame her, since she would be a viable alternate target.  Our group whispers to come to a Tori consensus, though why they need to whisper I can’t say, since I would assume, with Maryanne, Drea, and Jonathan immune, Tori would be the logical boot.  Only potential misstep here is that Maryanne says the quiet part out loud, outright saying she’s voting for Tori, but since there’s little that Tori can do about it, it’s a minor thing at best.  And hey, while we have had individual discussions about diversity this season, this is the first time this season we’ve seen a community come together to talk about their lived experience, one of the few things “Survivor 41” had going for it over this season.  Good to see this one can hold its own in that territory as well.  Maryanne and Drea manage to marry emotion and articulation, explaining their points well while also making us, the audience, FEEL their pain.  One of the best discussions I’ve seen about this issue in a long time, including “Survivor 41”

TOO BAD JONATHAN’S HERE!  Just when the conversations winding down, Jonathan HAS to butt in with “Hey, I’m not a racist!”  News flash, bud: If you have to say you’re not racist, YOU’RE MOST LIKELY AT LEAST SLIGHTLY RACIST!  Look, Jonathan may be telling the truth when he says that consciously, race has nothing to do with his targets, but that’s not the issue here.  It could be implicit bias (which is in most people, and something we as a society need to work on), or it could just be coincidence.  Overall, though, the point is that you are stepping on these women’s lived experience, telling them, in effect, that what they see and feel is not true.  I don’t care if you’re hurt or offended by that; that is not your place.  Sit down, let them have their platform, then show through your actions, not your words, that you are not, as an individual racist.  It doesn’t help that after the conversation dies down again that Probst goes BACK to Jonathan for his thoughts, though Jonathan does at least have the grace to apologize, and leave the door open for some discussion.  Maryanne and Drea clarify they don’t hate him, but need to talk about their experience.  Could have gone a lot worse, but MAN did Jonathan not come out of this looking good.  

With all the emotion in the air, Probst smells an opportunity for a drama moment, and offers to let everyone skip the formal vote, and just come to a consensus.  Naturally, that consensus is Tori, and we now see her one recourse: The Shot in the Dark.  Yes, this is the one way Maryanne’s proclamation could backfire.  Fortunately for Maryanne, and us as a viewing audience, Tori continues the trend of the shot being useless, and goes home.  I am THRILLED!  Of the choices available at this Tribal Council, definitely the smarter choice, and while she played better than I would have guessed, her arrogance, coupled with her outside-the-game actions, left her the one person remaining I just didn’t care for.  As such, very happy to see her go.  

A jam-packed episode, but one that overall did pretty well.  They made the most of having one straightforward vote by focussing on the less straightforward vote, and hit those mirror neurons very well with Tribal Council #2.  Granted, time is still an issue, with them packing too much into too short a time frame, but with less people and less “stuff” hopefully the upward trend can continue!

-Matt 

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 7: Mistakes Were Made

2-hour episode or not, this is just embarassing.  Yes, folks, we have not one, not two, but THREE things last episode that I forgot to mention.  Dear readers, we have a trifecta, meaning it’s time once again for another edition of…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

To give credit to myself, at least one of the things was relatively minor.  While on Exile, while I talked about Rocksroy’s arc overall, I neglected to mention his penchant for firewood collection, even going so far as to state “when you think you have enough, you don’t have enough.”  Minor enough moon its own, but clearly Rocksroy is being controlled by Butch Lockley of “Survivor The Amazon”.  Evidently Butch has taken up voodoo in order to control Rocksroy from a distance.  Not what I expected of him, but power to him.  

Speaking of Rocksroy, while I mentioned his smashing of the hourglass, I neglected to mention the fallout from it.  We oddly didn’t see a lot of people complaining about this.  I assume that it happened, like it did last season, but just wasn’t shown by and large.  What’s funny to me is that the one pissed-off person we see is Tori, narratively implying that she was the ONLY person who had an issue with Rocksroy’s choice.  What’s rich is that Tori had the LEAST reason to be mad at Rocksroy’s choice.  Does it screw up her game?  Absolutely, but she was the one throwing Rocksroy under the bus earlier that episode.  Not to mention the argument they had earlier as well.  Tori, you can hardly blame the man for looking out for himself rather than you.  

Finally, but to me most importantly, I neglected to mention a strategy employed by the teams at the “immunity” challenge last episode, and I’m talking the team one, not the individual one.  I did mention it was the same challenge as last season, but the players here started it off SLIGHTLY differently.  In this case, rather than dig up their entire ball, they dug a ramp in the direction the ball needed to go, and just rolled it up that way.  A smart bit of challenge strategy, and one that, you’ll recall, I advocated for last season.  Given that this was filmed WAY before that blog was written, you’d think this was just a coincidence.  What you don’t realize is that Dr. CasWHOpanan from last season has taken up a new companion in her TARDIS, and it’s MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Silliness aside, we dive into our episode proper with damage control needing to be done on those left out of the vote.  Chanelle is naturally pissed, and does a bad job of hiding it.  She goes OFF on Hai, who really has no defense.  If Chanelle didn’t know she was on the bottom before, she does now.  Little better off is Romeo, who while not as overtly pissed, is also well aware of where he stands.  Understandably, Drea is the main target of his ire, as he wonders why she couldn’t clue him in.  Drea tries to pass the buck to Mike, but Romeo rightly points out that as his main ally, it was really up to her to make sure he was informed.  While the bridge may not be as burned as thoroughly as Chanelle’s at this point, it’s very tense at a minimum.  Despite being included in the last vote, Maryanne is consoled as well, with Lindsay coming clean about her whole plans and why.  Maryanne, as per usual, gets emotional about it, and gives the schpiel about being excluded from the “cool kids”.  We’ve seen this a million times before on this show by now, but what gets me is that, while some like Jonathan and Mike this season are your typical “cool kids”, this “cool kids” includes the likes of OMAR.  And don’t get me wrong, I love Omar!  He is awesome, both as a human being and as a player, but “cool kid” is not a word I would use to describe him.  

We also learn, via chyron, that the merge tribe is to be named Kula Kula.  Decent enough name, but kind of confusing when we had a “Kalokalo” on “Survivor David vs Goliath”.  Kind of a problem when you stay in a place, and thus names are often drawn from the same linguistic group, over and over.  Why they waited until now to reveal the name, I can’t say.  Perhaps it’s because they didn’t get the flag and paints until tree mail for the reward challenge came?  Hell, when was the last time we had tree mail shown on this show?

To emphasize how great a guy Omar is, we see that Mike has taken up Omar offer to answer questions about Islam, as he quietly watches to the side while Omar conducts his prayers and gives a play-by-play.  It’s respectful and nice on both ends, a fun little humanizing scene that doesn’t advance the game, but does connect us to the players.  Enjoy this moment.  There will be few compliments to be had for this episode.  

Complaints, on the other hand, will about.  You remember last episode?  How I was complimenting the show for reducing Probst’s asides to the audience to the absolute bare minimum?  Yeah, they took that and spit it back in our faces.  Probst talks MULTIPLE times this episode, but the first is the worst, since not only is he still treating the audience like a pack of kindergarteners, but it’s to hype up ANOTHER twist, labeled a “beware advantage”.  This one is the one Xander missed last season, or at least another one hidden under the bench.  Probst tells us that if this one doesn’t get found, they’ll keep trying.  Perhaps neon signs will be put pointing to it at that point.  Joy.  

Our challenge is “Octopus’ Garden” first seen on “Survivor Cagayan”.  A decent challenge, but overplayed at this point.  Of course, with a sit-out bench, we need a sit-out.  Maryanne draws the bad rock, but then Drea, on the pretense of disliking the reward of PB&J offers to switch.  An odd parallel to when Xander also switched last season.  I’d say again that it’s just a weird coincidence, but again, Dr. CasWHOpanan strikes.  

Our teams consist of Omar, Hai, Maryanne, Lindsay and Romeo, against Jonathan, Rocksroy, Mike, Tori and Chanelle.  As there is no puzzle in this challenge, the latter team is favored to win, and they do, but more narrowly than one would expect.  Inexplicably, Jonathan is not, at first, put on the basketball portion of this challenge, and this combined with Omar having a surprising amount of skill in this area, puts the former team ahead, in spite of being slower to get their buoys to the platform.  Then they come to their senses, and Jonathan of course crushes it.  They win, and while it was a comeback, Probst is more than a bit hyperbolic when he calls it “One of the biggest comebacks in ‘Survivor’ history!”

Both teams actually kind of celebrate after the challenge.  The winners celebrate having food, obviously, with Jonathan once again going on about his caloric intake.  Eh, it was funnier when he was going full Gaston.  But the losers still express joy in how hard they fought, with Omar’s performance in particular being impressive.  It’s here that we get insight into Omar’s game, with him talking about creating “options”.  He uses not having had a vote at the last Tribal Council to his advantage, making it seem like he’s on the outs, so that he’s getting information from pretty much everyone, even if he’s not explicitly allied with some of them.  Good smart play.  We love to see it.  

Drea, of course, is also happy, in this case because of her advantage.  After reading it, it turns out it’s the return of the “Knowledge is Power” advantage.  You know, because Drea didn’t have enough stuff.  Now she needs an advantage that gets her even MORE stuff!  I know I praised this advantage last season, so let me clarify my position here: This is a brilliant idea for an advantage, placed on the worst possible season for it to be on.  This sort of twist works best when things like idols and advantages are kept secret, and not, you know, incredibly public like they have been.  Between needing to say phrases to activate idols and sending people to Shipwheel Island, this advantage takes little skill to play, and therefor loses any good it possibly has.  I’d like to see it come back on a different season, but for this one, it’s OP, please nerf.  

But what of the “Beware” part of this advantage?  Well, the advantage is hidden under a coconut near the water well, and so Drea has to make an excuse in order to obtain it.  To paraphrase Devon Pinto on “Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers”, “That is not a disadvantage”.  Look, I get that it’s harder than just being given the thing outright, but this isn’t even like when they hide it in the campsite proper, and you need to wait for good timing, or manipulate events to get the good timing, a la Yau Man on “Survivor Fiji”.  Literally all you have to do is say you’re going to get water for the group, and BOOM!  Done.  Suspicion averted, provided you don’t take too long.  

To be completely fair, though, there IS a bit more “Beware” to this advantage than explicitly stated in the note.  It mentioned needing to avoid being caught “red handed”, and it seems this was meant to be taken literally.  The advantage was sealed in a container at the bottom of a tube of red paint, which Drea had to stick her whole forearm in to reach.  I’ll give it points for cleverness, with the subtle foreshadowing in the note, and it does have kind of an “Indiana Jones” vibe with the “stick your hand in this unknown hole” thing.  As mentioned on previous seasons, I like a good “Indiana Jones” shout out.  And it DOES create a dilemma.  I mean, how’s Drea going to get this red paint off?  If only she had some water to wash it away!  Oh, wait, SHE DOES!  IT’S LITERALLY FIVE FEET AWAY!  What kind of consequence is this?  

Well again, to be fair, there ARE repercussions.  Tori notes some leftover red paint, at first thinking that Drea is bleeding.  Drea claims she was painting, but no paint on the still unmade tribe flag makes Tori think otherwise.  That, plus a lump in Drea’s pants when Tori KNOWS she’s not happy to see her clues her in to Drea having an advantage.  Much as I hate to say it, props to Tori for good deductive reasoning.  Still, with all that said, these consequences do feel quite tame for a “Beware Advantage”.  They’re not NOTHING, but compared to losing one’s vote for likely an extended period of time, it’s kind of a letdown.  

Probst once again has an aside as we come to the challenge, noting that he’s offering another deal for rice to the tribes, as he did last season.  Really, there’s little bad about this one apart from the “monster” metaphor when he talks about bargaining being harder on future seasons, but with so much emphasis on “stuff” coupled with my dislike of these Probst asides in general, I’m in no mood to give it points.  Kula Kula is a lot more stingy than Viakana last season, since it takes Maryanne begging to get four people to sit out, with her, Lindsay, Omar, and Drea ultimately making the sacrifice.  Jonathan says he owes them, once again grateful for food.  More on that later.  Maryanne uses this to tout how she uses her emotions to manipulate others, which is doubtless true, but not sure this was the best example.  Not a hard situation, and hardly the first time we’ve seen someone plead to give up immunity.  Really, Maryanne here is being a nicer version of Colton Cumbie in episode 4 of “Survivor One World”.  I feel disgusting even putting those two in the same sentence, but it was the first thought that came to mind when I saw this.  

Our challenge is the lame endurance one where you hold up a buoy with two sticks, and barely worth mentioning, save that I thought for sure they would bring back the “Do or Die” twist just to hit the awfulness trifecta.  In the end, it comes down to challenge beast Jonathan versus previous challenge winner Tori.  Sadly, Tori wins, and so we must endure her presence for another episode.  

Without immunity, Chanelle is now once again the target.  Pretty much no one has a good relationship with her, and she’s an easy consensus boot.  Such boots need obvious misdirection, and Romeo is there to provide.  He’s checking and double-checking with everyone about his plans, and like Jamie Newton on “Survivor Guatemala”, it’s getting on everyone’s nerves.  Even the relatively chill Omar is talking about booting him.  What’s interesting is, despite Romeo being an obvious decoy, he would actually be the smarter choice, apart from Drea.  While Drea has some relationships in the majority alliance, Romeo is someone she can use to help flip numbers if needed, when he has few relationships in the majority beyond her.  Vati gets to keep their numbers up, Taku weakens another potential upstart tribe, and perhaps most important, you keep a consensus boot around to help unite your supermajority.  Yes, Chanelle needs to go at some point, and she’s hardly a BAD choice at this juncture, but Romeo still keeps the alliance intact, while eliminating a potential numbers flip down the road.  Plus, Romeo is just better at the game than Chanelle, from what we’ve seen.  She may have said she was playing chess while the others played checkers at the top of the episode, but that metaphor seems more apt to be flipped around, from what we’ve seen on the show.  

Tribal tonight is a mostly standard affair, though with two stand-out moments worth commenting on.  The first is when Probst checks in with Jonathan as to whether he’ll vote for any of the challenge sit-outs, which he denies on the grounds of “owing them one.”  I want to point out that it’s easy for Jonathan to say when 3/4 of them were on his starting tribe, and he’s at least to some degree allied with all of them.  Good excuse to hide still holding to tribe loyalty, is what I’m saying.  The second is something that should be a bad thing, but turned out good.  Sensing that we don’t have enough forced metaphors this season, Probst injects one about how playing “Survivor” is like riding in a car.  Of all the metaphors I’ve heard on this show, this one is definitely on the “More Cringey” end of the scale, but damn if this cast doesn’t kind of make it work.  Maryanne makes a joke about getting a new car, adding much-needed hilarity, while Lindsay and Hai actually manage to tie the metaphor into the game in a good way, noting the need to not be in the driver’s seat 100% of the time, or at least have protection if you do.  

Unsurprisingly, Chanelle goes home, and I’m not too sorry to see her go.  Nothing against her; she seems nice enough.  Just not as exciting a character as some others here, and I felt like we’d seen all the strategy we could from her.  Not that she didn’t have more game in her, but she just had no options at this point.  Credit where it’s due, though, she was totally right in rejecting the “We love you” from the group, particularly Hai.  Since they just voted her out, she was justified.  Also happy she gets to serve on the jury.  She’s earned that right, if nothing else.  

After so many steps forward, this episode really felt like a step backward in a lot of ways.  Having largely shed the worst excesses of last season, this episode largely fell back into the bad habits of “Survivor 41”.  More Probst talking to the audience, and adding in new advantages that ate up a lot of screen time.  The editing was still good, and the cast overall still likable, with a few good moments even shining through.  Not the worst episode, but a worrying trend, should it continue.  

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 6: Now Owned by Disney

I must admit, when I thought about the possible fates in the future of “Survivor”, a channel hop was not one of them.  Then again, Disney is buying up everything even remotely marketable; I guess it was only a matter of time before they got to “Survivor”.  Suppose Probst talking about something happening “For the first time in forever.” and Sydney’s stint at the little mermaid last season should have tipped us off.  

But before we can get into the cornucopia of Disney references, it’s time once again for another round of…

MATT’S MESS-UP!

Because having a two-hour episode to recap wasn’t enough, I need to talk about something I neglected LAST episode.  In all my discussion about the activation of idols, and the rules of idols (as a side note, I hate the rule change that if you don’t all say the phrase, the idol activates at the merge anyway.  Wasn’t just Mike misreading things, and I despise it.  Make them risky, I say.), I neglected to mention that we got a good look at the hidden immunity idols themselves, and they’re… underwhelming.  Not terrible, but basically just some colored beads on a string, rather than anything distinct.  Now, I get why the show would do this. By making the idols stand out less, fake idols become more viable.  And that’s fair.  I don’t mind seeing fake idols being brought more into strategy.  But it seems to me that the thing to do is, rather than make the idols generic, have no theming of idols whatsoever per season.  Like, one tribe has this super-elaborate necklace that fits with the theme of the season, while another’s is a tin can with a hole in it.  When an idol can be anything, fake idols gain power, but the idols still look distinct in and of themselves.  Seems like the perfect compromise, but hey, what do I know?  

Rant over, we continue to talk about last episode, or at least Probst does.  Yes, after a LONG absence, the “Previously On… ‘Survivor’!” makes a return.  Much as I might say otherwise, I don’t miss it.  Look, I know in the past I’ve said it’s helpful, but I’ve changed my stance.  The need for it arises when the show only airs weekly with not easy way to rewatch things.  Then, we NEED to make sure new viewers are up to speed.  But, in the age of streaming and on-demand video, that’s just not necessary anymore.  Sort of the same logic for why I don’t rail against the show staying in Fiji full time (I would prefer they continue to move around, but my main argument for why staying in Fiji will kill the show no longer applies).  Really, the only reason you would NEED a recap, and the reason we seem to have this one, is if you need to remind everyone who has what advantage.  If that’s the case, then it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, you have TOO MANY ADVANTAGES!

Vati also wants to talk about last episode, it seems.  Mike, unsurprisingly, is not happy about having his name written down.  Fair enough, though I must disagree when he says the move made no sense.  Chanelle was trying to protect herself in the event that Daniel successfully used his shot in the dark.  Then the vote would be a tie between her and you, and she’d at least have a chance, instead of being out automatically.  You want to be mad?  Fine.  That’s your right, and Chanelle is probably the least-trustworthy person left in the group.  But a bad move?  Can’t agree.  Mike plays it off well for now, but admits that he doesn’t trust Chanelle moving forward.  Probably should have been feeling that way since the Jenny boot, but either way, makes sense.  Mike prays for a merge.  

Despite this perfect segway, we first need to check in with Ika.  Rocksroy is going full Moana (something he will do multiple times this episode) and extolling the virtues of island produce.  The strategy, however, is the main point of the segment.  Shock of all shocks, Tori is causing drama.  Rocksroy, true to his game so far, was completely honest with his tribe about what happened.  It was the prisoner’s dilemma, he didn’t risk anything, and got no information out of Lydia.  We move on.  But no, Tori insists Rocksroy must have gotten SOMETHING from the island, and doesn’t trust him when he says he didn’t.  To put Tori’s argument in the BEST light possible, it’s not outside the realm of possibility for something new to happen on the “journey”, and it’s the sort of thing she’d keep hidden had she gone.  Rocksroy does not help matters by saying “I’m not telling you.” when what he means is “I’ve told you everything.”  Poor word choice aside, though, this is clearly Tori making a mountain out of a molehill.  The man was as open as he could possibly be, and yet she insists on going after him.  Even Romeo and Drea, people who have also targeted Rocksroy in the past, are on his side here, and put Tori on the block, thereby ensuring that Tori will stay this episode.  

So we head off to the challenge and… Oh hey, Probst is talking to us again, Blue’s Clues Style.  There’s something from last season I didn’t miss.  

Speaking of awful things from last season, the hourglass twist is back.  Joy of joys.  Look, I said at the outset of this season that I was not going to hold it against the show if they repeated bad ideas from last season.  They had little time for feedback; little time to correct.  This, however, is the exception.  They KNEW it was a bad idea.  The players last season TOLD THEM it was a bad idea.  It is very much PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE that Danny in particular read Probst the riot act for how this went down.  And yet, they still kept this in?  Madness!

Ok, ok, let us be completely fair.  Probst does explain in narration that the twist was tweaked a bit from how it went down last season.  Specifically, all contestants will be informed beforehand that whoever is sent into Exile will have some major power in the game, though exactly what is unspecified.  In addition, anyone on the winning team can sacrifice their spot for that power instead.  These are both good additions.  Steps in the right direction.  Sadly, for me, they don’t go far enough, and don’t fix the two major problems with this twist, that being the unfairness and the lack of entertainment.  

So, what changes WOULD this twist need to be ok in my eyes?  Let’s start with the fairness aspect, since they did seem to TRY and fix this one, by noting that the exile got power.  This does add more strategy to how the winning team plays things, and it makes it easier for the players to figure out what said twist might be.  Hell, Drea actually DOES figure it out; good for her!  But the sticking point for me is that Probst still says “The winning team makes the merge and is immune.”  This goes against Danny’s point of fairness, where you say that someone is immune, only then to revoke it, not due to a technicality, but due to a twist.  This undermines the game, and the fix is so simple.  In addition to the changes Probst made, DON’T SAY THE WINNERS GET IMMUNITY!  Just tell them they win a feast, and leave it at that!  Nothing lost, and much more fair!  As to the entertainment part?  Well, we’ll see later that Rocksroy’s “dilemma” is exactly the same as Erika’s, and just as “tense”, as in, we all know what will happen.  If you really want some mystery to the season, the exile should be immune no matter what.  Then it comes down to “which side played it better socially”?  Still not the stuff of legends, but better than what we keep getting, which is a non-choice.  

Oh, and Probst also mentions that the winners specifically get Applebee’s this season.  Guess Karishma from “Island of the Idols” got a job as a producer.  

So little was this whole thing tweaked that they even reuse the exact same challenge from last season!  Probst shows our players the “Whole New World” that is the hemispheres they must unearth and work with, and divides them up.  Our Orange team consists of Hai and Lydia, Jonathan and Maryanne, and Tori, while our Blue team consists of Omar, Mike, Drea, Romeo, and Chanelle, with Rocksroy and Lindsay as our sit-outs.  Orange team is of course favored to win with the presence of Jonathan, and win they do, but Blue manages to keep things fairly close, in spite of Drea’s difficulties getting up the ball.  They get to the puzzle, and get a decent way through it.  I actually thought Maryanne’s impression of Mr. Incredible, saying she “has time” over and over, foretold a come-from-behind puzzle victory, but no, Orange still wins.  

As with last season, Orange gets to take along one person, and here we get probably the only real strategic blunder we see this episode.  Orange takes Lindsay with them, and none of them sacrifice themselves to exile, sending Rocksroy instead.  Um, WHY?  Even if none of you wanted to give up your spot, why not send Lindsay instead?  Literally NONE of you have a tie to Rocksroy, with the only two people who have spoken to him on this team (Tori and Lydia) either not getting much from him, or getting bad vibes.  Why would you want to give someone like that power?  Conversely, Lindsay is more trustworthy, and actually has SOME incentive to not screw your team over, since at least Jonathan is there.  She might be ok screwing over Maryanne, but I have a harder time seeing her screw over both her AND Jonathan.  

At least they get to enjoy their feast.  Jonathan explains that he DID consider stepping down to exile, but felt he needed the nutrition of the food, which for a guy his size I can understand.  He even regales us with his meal plan.  Every morning, he eats five-dozen eggs, so he’s roughly the size of a barge.  Not to be outdone in sucking up to the mouse overlord, Tori notes that she’s gone from “Zero to Hero”, and proceeds to throw Rocksroy under the bus.  She brags about her power over him, and, um, Tori, did you NOT hear Probst talking about the exile having power?  Do you not realize that you have sent someone with NO incentive to save you into a position of power?  My, you really can be blind to your game sometimes.  

Less blind are those back at the Vati camp, which will be the merge camp (oddly no word on the merge tribe name this time), where they discuss what the twist might be, and here’s where Drea pulls out her eye of the fates, and correctly predicts what the twist will be, in hoping that Rocksroy makes them all safe.  Good on her.  She even ups the ante, once she and Mike are alone, by comparing idol notes.  They agree to stick together, and talk about who they’re tight with, with Mike throwing out Hai and Lydia, while Drea names Romeo and Rocksroy.  They agree to stick together and discuss available targets, with Mike pushing hard for Chanelle because of the top of the episode.  Solid strategy all around, you two.  Kudos.  

Meanwhile, Rocksroy makes himself at home on exile, even getting a small shelter for himself.  Since Probst is taking his sweet time to come out and explain the hourglass to him, Rocksroy, feeling alone on this island, looks out towards the sea.  It calls to him.  And he enjoys this look, as he notes that his eyes are degrading, and his eyesight may go before too much longer.  This sort of thing could sound forced, but Rocksroy delivers it with such sincerity that you sympathize with the guy.  Again, this is good, personal content.  Say what you will about this new era of “Survivor”, but they are GOOD at getting you to sympathize with the contestants.  

As our challenge winners now arrive back at camp, the real socializing can begin.  With the tribes so even, and a lot of chances for tribe interaction this season, there’s naturally a lot of good conversations to be had.  Lydia and Omar seem to bond over their quirkiness.  Hai, Drea, and Lindsay agree not to go against each other due to their advantages, presumably based on some sort of mutually-assured destruction fear (i.e. if one of them betrays the other two, the other two have no reason not to tell the tribe about their amulet on the way out), though Hai admits he’s not sure how deep that goes.  Drea loops Maryanne in on the idol holders sticking together.  Maryanne and Tori discuss how much they can trust Drea.  Jonathan and Mike bond over being strong guys who are only ever seen as just strong guys.  Mike and Omar bond after talking about Omar’s love life.  Hai tells anyone who will listen how tight he and Lydia are…  Wait, what?

Ok, perhaps I spoke too soon when I said there was only one bad move of the episode.  Hai is a social butterfly, and will make some good bonds, as we see, but the man goes a bit too far in talking about how he’d die on his sword for Lydia.  Not that he doesn’t frame it well, offering someone that level of protection is a good incentive, but advertising that you’re a tight pair is a bit of a death knell in the game, man.  Might make you more of a target than you want, just saying.  

Like I said, though, Hai is very social, and does make a good impression on a number of people.  One such person is Romeo, who is pleased to see someone in the LGBTQ+ community so open about their sexuality, when he himself is not out to several members of his family in El Salvador, who will find out presumably due to the show.  It’s a real human moment as the two bond, and Hai gives Romeo the encouragement to “Show Yourself”.  Yep, it’s great to have friends like these.  

One would assume that the presence of Omar, who is also a member of said community, would continue the heartwarming conversation, but instead, talk turns to strategy.  Hai is still on the warpath for Chanelle, and quickly turns Omar to his side by informing him that he has lost his vote, his chyron now changing to reflect this.  Despite making pleasant overtures at the merge, this is something that Chanelle, for some reason, neglected to tell Omar, putting Omar now firmly in the “Don’t trust Chanelle” camp.  Again, way to play, Chanelle.  

Our majority does eventually coalesce into a group of 8.  Jonathan, Hai and Drea all agree to work together as the physical threats.  Hai naturally pulls in Lydia and Mike as loyal allies, Jonathan pulls in Lindsay and Omar, and Drea pulls in Rocksroy.  Guess Romeo got dropped between commercials for some reason.  To be fair, though, when they’re throwing out targets, Drea does NOT name Romeo, but instead Tori.  Hai continues the “dump on Chanelle” train, and Jonathan throws out Maryannes name, though in the latter case it’s less that he really wants her out and more that he doesn’t want to let on how tight Taku is, which is fair.  I’d normally criticize this super-majority as being too large and too even to be viable long-term, but between split-votes being the meta right now, and larger merges tending to lead to large consensus boots for safety (yet another reason to hate larger merges), I can understand it.  

This, of course, leaves only Chanelle vulnerable of the targets, thus making her the consensus boot.  They shun her like Belle’s town in “Beauty and the Beast”.  Unfortunately for the majority, Chanelle has the annoying habit of walking in on conversations about targeting her.  Incidnetally, once Omar reveals his lost vote, Drea reveals her extra vote, making it the first time she’s done so that it ACTUALLY makes sense to do so.  The first time Chanelle comes up, everyone splits up as soon as she arrives.  She gives Lydia the third degree, who tries to “play dumb”.  It’s not the worst performance I’ve ever seen, but Chanelle is not an idiot, and realizes something’s up.  The majority then REALIZES that Chanelle realizes that something’s up, and admit they can’t end their conversation right as she comes up.  They then… talk about fish for like 30 seconds and split up.  Way to execute the plan, everyone.  

Of course, plans don’t matter when you have TIME TRAVEL!  Probst has explained the twist to Rocksroy, and though he puts up a decent effort at acting like he won’t, citing “not everyone gets a trophy”, we all know he’s going to smash that hourglass.  ALL his allies are on the other side, and the show stupidly allows him to give himself immunity, thereby all but guaranteeing he’ll smash that hourglass.  Yep, there he goes saying that “Change history” thing.  I can only assume that production is priming them to say it, because that phrase is too stupid for BOTH Erika and Rocksroy to say it.  The losers of the challenge now get the pretty purple buffs, and we move on to more fun topics.  

The challenge is standard.  Spell “Immunity” in blocks you balance on a board you hold with a rope.  Pretty standard, but tough, and hardly a bad challenge to reuse.  But the REAL highlight of all this is the new individual immunity idol, which is nothing short of kick-ass.  They keep the Ouroboros as the central image, and build on it with a necklace of what looks like scales,, and some bone spikes for an ominous feel.  It stands out, looks badass, and is overall a great continuation of the aesthetic of the season.  If only the hidden idols could keep up.  

While it might seem that we have more viable targets available, given how Jonathan was really not keen on getting out Maryanne, Tori is still really the only target we’ve heard about.  Naturally Tori wins immunity.  Guess she was able to keep up the “Surface Pressure”.  Note how happy I am.  Also not the sarcasm.  

At least we now get some good mystery out of it.  With all our viable targets immune, the scrambling begins.  Romeo is the first to throw out a name, talking about his “Rally the weak” strategy with Lydia.  You know, since that worked so well with Zach.  Jonathan is naturally the target of such an alliance, and it seems to gain a fair bit of traction.  Unfortunately, Jonathan has several people in his corner who want to use him as a shield, particularly Lindsay.  She then deflects to Maryanne, citing her large number of advantages as a reason to get her.  I would berate Lindsay for targeting someone on her original tribe, but to be fair, if she wants the group of 8 to stay tight, that’s the best option.  

It seems initially like those two will be our only options, but, in an attempt to get Omar in on the plan, Lydia talks about the 8 possible not being as tight down the road.  This is presumably meant to let Omar thing he wouldn’t be on the bottom of such an alliance, but Omar instead sees an opportunity.  While he knows he has no vote himself (and s, from what we see, everyone else knows as well), he can influence the vote, and starts pitching Lydia based on this.  He warns Maryanne and Jonathan (the former even shedding some tears in confessional about this), and seems to also gain some traction, presumably in part because Hai talked about how tight they were beforehand, and people wanting to split that up.  Where Omar may slip up is in telling Hai about this plan.  Hai, understandably, is not on board with this plan, and pitches Maryanne more aggressively as they head off to Tribal.  

So, three reasonable targets, but which one is best?  Well, depends on what side you’re on.  With old Ika seeming to be the most fractured of the bunch, they’ve lost the chance to grab power as a whole, so in some ways, this comes down to whether you want old Vati or old Taku to have power down the road.  Old Taku of course, want to keep power for themselves, and so have the best interest to vote off Lydia.  Old Vati and old Ika, however, have more incentive to de-power old Taku, since they seem to be the most united group.  Of the two, though, who to target?  Personally, I’d go Jonathan.  Physical prowess aside (as we saw today, it does not guarantee individual immunity wins), the man is the glue that holds old Taku together.  Take him out, and they’re no longer a threat to either of you.  Yes, Maryanne has “stuff”, but it can be strategized around, and as we’ve seen, Maryanne has trouble keeping secrets.  Better to weaken the tribe socially than in terms of advantages.  

For how tense and mysterious this tribe is, Tribal Council is oddly fun.  Everyone seems to genuinely get along, and have good rapport with one another.  The highlight is definitely Drea and Maryanne trying to figure out if they’re on the same page or not, but there’s a lot of fun moments from each individual.  

After a decently chaotic vote, with a total of four targets somehow (Rocksroy seems to have thrown a stray vote onto Lindsay.  No harm done, but see little logic when the vote was so split already), Lydia ends up being the consensus.  On the one hand, I’m happy she left, since it gives Taku, and by extension Omar, more power, which is what I want to see.  On the other hand, I did enjoy her presence on the show, more so than, say, Lindsay or Jonathan.  Nothing against either of them, I like both of them just fine!  Lydia was just more entertaining to me.  She will be missed, at least on my end.  

Hourglass shenanigans aside, this episode was great!  “Fun”, above all, is what I think of, but there’s more to it than that.  Strategic intrigue.  Good misdirection.  There’s something in this episode for everyone!  Let us hope the merge can keep up this pattern!  And if not, oh well.  That’s just the Circle of Life.  

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.  

Idol Speculation: “Survivor 42” Episode 5: Fully-Armed Battalion

I try not to be too antagonistic on this blog, but sometimes, things just have to be said: CURSE YOU, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA!  You and your annoyingly catchy lyrics!  Now I cannot here the phrase “push comes to shove”, a fairly common phrase, without your songs getting stuck in my head.  And now I’m forced to make them the title of my blog.  Again, CURSE YOU!

Rant over, we join the Ika Tribe, fresh off of Tribal Council.  As Romeo tells us, there’s damage control that needs to be done with Rocksroy, since his “set in his ways” mentality means he was unwilling to not vote for Tori.  Surprisingly, despite numerous slip-ups, Rocksroy actually takes being effectively “left out” fairly well.  I won’t say “perfect” because Rocksroy is not good at hiding his emotions.  He clearly is irritated by the decision, and mistrustful of the others moving forward.  But looking at his reaction on paper, it’s kind of hard for him to have a better one.  He talks about how glad he is that Swati is gone, once Romeo explains the whole “everyone is her number one” thing, and even has some good introspection.  He notes, both publicly and privately, that his social game needs some work, and if he wants to win, he’ll have to up it, or at least “ride his team’s social coattails” as he says.  Good introspection I would not have thought possible for him.  Kudos.  

Continuing the praise, much as I hate to do it for her, I will admit I got a laugh out of Tori rolling her eyes behind Rockroy’s back after he asks if his social game needs work.  That was actually good comedic timing, and I can’t deny that she’s probably right in this scenario.  More concerning for Ika is that Tori is not on board the “strong four” train they have going.  Granted, she has little reason to.  She WAS the alternate target at the first Tribal Council, and was at least talked about for the second.  If she’s not on the VERY bottom, she’s clearly not on top either, and so has little reason to stay loyal, barring no better options.  Really, I bring this up just to reinforce my point that Tori would have been a better boot.  Swati might have been double-dealing you all, but at least she had INCENTIVE to stick around.  

Moving on to Taku, all is not well in Jonathan’s paradise.  Specifically, his tribe won’t stop talking, particularly Maryanne and Lindsay, who first discuss Mario Kart, then the finer points of the game “Hot/Cold”.  There’s only so much the man can stand, but fortunately he has fishing gear to go full Rupert Boneham (“Survivor Pearl Islands”) and get away from it all.  

Unfortunately for Jonathan, he goes even further down the Rupert hole than he should, and by that I mean causing a disturbance via camp life.  Jonathan is in the process of chopping a log, but in the process, it bounces and hits Maryanne in the foot.  Maryanne is naturally upset about this, but Jonathan feels like she’s making too big a deal out of it.  Drawing on my deep knowledge obtained via years in the Boy Scouts (probably the first time I’ve done so in a decade), I have to say, while Maryanne may be slightly dramatic, she’s in the right here.  While she did enter what’s called the “Blood Circle” (an imaginary circle around a person wielding a sharp object whose radius equals the point of that object held at arm’s length to the corresponding shoulder, into which one is not supposed to enter for safety), it’s also incumbent upon the person IN said blood circle to A) call it out and B) keep an eye and make sure no one enters unawares.  

Jonathan tells us he needs to keep his temper, as he’ll come off looking like the jerk in any argument.  Valid, and shows good self-knowledge.  Instead, he privately vents to Lindsay about how Maryanne would need to go next due to irritation, to which Lindsay agrees… Despite being part of the “annoying” group earlier.  Jonathan is not as subtle as he seems, however, since Omar notices him going off, and correctly deduces that Jonathan is complaining about Maryanne.  This, as he notes, is a problem, given that it splits the group, and Maryanne has all the advantages.  Only time will tell if this bears any fruit.  

Not wanting to be left out of the “tribe fracturing” action, we head over to Vati, where Hai is mistrustful of, well, pretty much everyone but Lydia.  And we see he has reason to do so, since shockingly, Daniel and Chanelle seem to be mending fences, agreeing to bury the hatchet should the merge come.  Granted, with Mike, he and Lydia still make three to Daniel and Chanelle’s two, but it’s a point of concern.  Hai decides to break up that possibility by throwing shade at Daniel while the latter is out fishing.  Hai notes that Daniel is saying he can’t do challenges, yet can go out fishing.  I personally would not be one to question a serious injury, but it’s a valid point, and the others seem to buy it, so I can’t really complain.  

Now, we’ve been getting some good strategy this episode, even some bits of social interaction, but viewer, that’s not what you want.  No, what you want is STUFF!  Idols!  Advantages!  Long explanations of rules!  That’s what brings the viewers in!

This, at least, seems to be the mindset of Romeo, who along with Drea sets out to look for the Ika idol.  This segues into him talking about being a pageant coach, and the sacrifices his mother made for his family, and how it inspires him.  Not the greatest backstory we’ve ever had, but it does it’s job decently well.  The picture of Romeo in Time’s Square is particularly inspiring.  That said, I do find it concerning that he frames it as him wanting to help DREA be the best she can be, tying it back to his pageant coach thing.  If it’s just to tie into his career, I’ve no issue.  But the way it comes across is that he’s here to support someone else’s victory, rather than his own.  Not a good look.  

With all this talk about the idol, naturally it must be found, so naturally, with the previews spoiling everything, it is found by… Drea.  

Ok, ok, time to address the elephant in the room.  The preview snookered us, most especially myself.  In hindsight, the voice over that played over Tori looking inquisitive is NOT Tori herself, but Maryanne.  Yes, Tori was never the one to find the idol at all, and could have gone home no problem.  Yes, it is clever on the editor’s part to trick us that way.  But no, it is still not a good thing to do.  Whether intended or not, it still sucked out a lot of the tension.  More to the point, I feel like one should really not include ANYTHING in the season preview that’s after episode 2, in order to avoid such speculation/spoiler.  Or, if you MUST, if there’s some draw to the season that cannot be ignored, talk about it in the VAGUEST terms to build intrigue.  I can’t believe I’m typing these words, but they should have taken their cue from “Survivor Fiji”, or at least its season preview.  The big event of that season was the deal between Yau-Man and Dreamz, and it’s something they couldn’t ignore in the preview, despite happening in the last two episodes.  But rather than give us details, they kept it vague, referring to it only as “The most controversial move in ‘Survivor’ History”, over footage of a shark.  Gives nothing away, but builds intrigue.  The hyperbole could get old, but better than spoiling your season outright, or ruining its intrigue.  

Drea gets her idol, and is very pleased with the amount of stuff she now has.  Much as I like this season, that amount is starting to get out of hand again.  Reading the note, she notes that Maryanne has found an idol, since both Maryanne and her particular phrase are hard to miss.  She wonders aloud if anyone on Vati found their idol.  This is our cue to cut to Mike, who is STILL insisting he won’t say his phrase.  Mike seems to be under the impression that if he just keeps quiet, his vote AND his idol come back at the merge.  Now, they may have changed that rule between seasons, but that’s NOT how it worked before.  Your vote came back, but the idol went away at the same time.  Like I said, possibly they just didn’t tell us about a rule change (in which case, shame on production), but I’m more inclined to think Mike just didn’t read the rules carefully.  

Mike will get the chance to put his money where his mouth is, as it’s once again challenge time.  The challenge is your standard obstacle course and puzzle, with a slingshot at the end, so not much need to dwell on it.  Instead, let’s talk about those idol phrases.  Maryanne once again uses her large reactions to sell her “bunny having dinner in the mailbox” line, and Drea has a natural lead-in with talking about food to get in her potato phrase.  Mike?  Well, he DOES say his phrase, and wisely so, but he doesn’t even TRY to sell it in the moment.  Oh, he goes back an tries to tie it into his football coaching, but he REALLY does a poor job of selling it.  Give Naseer credit from last season: He might have just blurted out his saying as well, but at least his SOUNDED like something of a rejoinder to the other two.  

Given that this challenge only has one small puzzle element, despite all tribes getting good strategic content, Taku is almost guaranteed to win this.  After all, they have Jonathan, who’s basically a fully-armed battalion in one person.  Yet, surprisingly, this episode does a good job of convincing us this might not be the case.  Ika cruises to an easy victory after Tori frankly BEASTS the puzzle, but Omar, on the puzzle, REALLY blows the lead, and Vati gets several shots on the slingshot before Taku gets a chance.  Unfortunately, Vati sucks just as bad on the slingshot as Omar did on the puzzle, and Jonathan is able to beast mode Taku to a victory.  

But wait!  Shipwheel Island returns once again!  As winners (getting a larger tarp as well as immunity, while Taku gets a smaller tarp and second immunity), Ika gets to send one person from Vati to Shipwheel Island.  They choose Lydia.  Unsurprising, given her not-great challenge performance, and a decent move.  Then they can choose one person from themselves or Taku to go as well.  They wisely choose themselves, which I can’t complain about.  Again, keep power and information consolidated into your tribe, rather than the other one.  But I must ask… You send ROCKSROY?  Granted, they can’t send Drea again, since those who’ve gone before are explicitly banned, and Tori is a bad option since she’s disloyal, but Rocksroy?  The guy who’s bad socially, in a situation requiring social smarts, and who may feel burned from the last Tribal Council?  THAT’S who you’re sending?  Again, better than some choices, but Romeo, who has proven to be very socially smart, and also in the majority, is RIGHT THERE!  Why not send him?  

While there is mystery as to which of two choices will go at tonight’s Tribal, it’s not a mystery who those choices will be.  With Hai and Lydia having done the smart thing, and picked up straggler Mike, it will be Daniel or Chanelle.  That said, we’re definitely left in the dark as tho which one the group will go for.  Hai seems to favor taking out Chanelle, while Mike is still against Daniel.  Both are good options, and there’s not really any downside to eliminating either of them, but on the whole, I say better to keep Daniel.  Apart from TECHNICALLY having voted with you once, the dude’s injury makes him less of a threat at the merge, which you now have to assume is nearby given the numbers.  And if it’s not?  Eh, you can get him at the next Tribal Council anyway.  Still, not going to fault them if they decide to keep Chanelle.  

Everyone left tries to push the decision onto Lydia, despite them not NEEDING her vote, assuming that Chanelle and Daniel vote against each other.  They talk about how they need Lydia’s vote anyway, thereby all but guaranteeing she risks her vote at Shipwheel Island.  Speaking of which, we get our requisite backstory on Lydia.  It’s decently touching, as she talks about her image issues, but really only stands out for her pink flower hat.  That thing is awesome.  Vati doesn’t need to worry, though.  She and Rocksroy are both suitably cagey, and so both naturally protect their vote, not trusting the other.  Reasonable decision, and nice to see another new outcome than either a mix, or the total miss when Chanelle and Omar went, but ultimately, just kind of a waste of time.  

What does NOT waste our time is Tribal Council, which brings entertainment in spades.  This is mostly due to Daniel, who tries to deflect things back onto Mike when asked a question, and weirdly succeeds.  He talks about how he can’t do analogies, only to then give an analogy to Muhammad Ali of all people.  He’s neurotic and all over the place and I kind of love it.  Unfortunately, this also dispels the tension of Tribal.  These are the actions of someone desperate, particularly when he tries to build up what a team they are, not someone confident they’ll stay.  Daniel will be going, which is hardly a bad decision.  Dude has shown himself to be unreliable.  

Daniel DOES go, but it’s a bit trickier.  Chanelle, anticipating a possible shot in the dark and unanimous vote on Daniel, throws a vote on Mike to try and save herself in a possible tie should Daniel be safe.  I was initially critical of the vote, since it seemed to come from Lydia or Hai and served to antagonize Mike, but from Chanelle, it makes sense.  This leads to a 2-2 tie between Daniel and Chanelle (Mike and Daniel voted for Chanelle, Hai and Lydia voted for Daniel), leading to Daniel going on a re-vote.  In terms of character, I am sorry to see Daniel go.  Chanelle is perfectly fine, but dude brought way more personality.  In terms of watching strategic play, however, very much pleased with the outcome.  After that first Tribal Council, Daniel was on a train-wreck to failure, and had next to no chance to recover.  Chanelle, at least has moves she can make and that will be intriguing going forward.  

I will say, this episode sits wrong with me.  It’s not the WORST, but I feel like, apart from some Daniel character moments, it’s the weakest of the season.  The issue, I think, is that the episode is more focussed on the twists and advantages coming into play, rather than the characters, which most of this season has focussed on.  The characters are strong enough to shine through anyway, but it’s a concern, particularly after last season.  

What intrigue there will be next episode!  An even 4-4-4 split!  Omar not having a vote, and possibly not knowing if Chanelle doesn’t tell him!  Jonathan now being targeted at every available opportunity!  Join us next week, for a rant about the hourglass twist if they don’t get rid of it and/or alter it!  

-Matt

Title Credit to Jean Storrs.