Survivor Recap: Things That Don’t Rock

A few seasons back, RuPaul decided that there shouldn’t be any more double saves (or “double-shantays” in the show’s parlance), and even when there was one of the all-time best lip syncs for their lives, the host still sent a queen home. This is a lesson for Survivor; an episode where someone isn’t voted off is no fun. Yes, we got to see Randen sent home due to a medical issue (and as someone who had radial nerve damage in one arm, I can tell you it hurts like the Dickens), but we didn’t get a tribal council, we didn’t get a torch snuff, we didn’t get the ritual that we are accustomed to. What that means is this episode was a complete waste of time because we ended where we started.

Not only is no elimination no fun, but I also don’t think I can handle another episode of Bhanu, who might be the singularly most annoying player in Survivor history. He says that he didn’t come to win $1 million; he came to win a million hearts. Okay, sure.

The episode kicks off, as they always do, with the losing tribe. They barely survived a tough night by sleeping under a rocky crag, which is sort of like living under a rock, which means if you asked Kenzie who Beyoncé was and she said no, and you asked her, “Have you been living under a rock?” she could say yes. Bhanu is already crying about how he is going home if they lose. He goes to Kenzie and begs and whines and pleads for her to work with him. She asks him what the plan is. He says he doesn’t know, but if she has one, he is willing to go along with it.

Dude, this is not how you play Survivor. He’s literally saying that he is just a goat, he is just a number. He has no strategy, no thoughts, no anything. All he has is desperation; as the idiom says, it reeks. He pulls the same thing with Q, who is slightly more sympathetic. Q says that he needs a Philip to his Boston Rob, and he thinks that Bhanu might be able to be his Philip. What Q means is that he wants Bhanu to be so annoying, so oblivious, and so loyal that he will shield Q the entire game, and then Q will then go on to defeat at the end. Just like Charlie wants to be a Malcolm, Bhanu playing Philip’s game is not a winning strategy.

Based on how they’re all talking about the game, I just know that we’re going to be seeing another Yanu loss, another Yanu tribal council, another day on the Yanu with Bhanu being annoying.

As for the other tribes, we hear very little. Hunter makes a bed at Nami, and Venus thinks that he has to go. Please don’t because he is very handsome and likes to go without a shirt. I would like to keep him around at least until the final six for eye candy. Thank you very much. At Siga, they all go on an idol hunt, and Jem manages to find the Beware advantage. That means she’s outrageous. Truly, truly outrageous.

The challenge is one we’ve seen before. It entails a swimming journey followed by digging up some sandbags and then balancing the sandbags on a number of hanging targets. Nami is trailing for a change, and then Hunter comes from behind and manages another win for the yellow tribe. In a showdown between Siga and Yanu, Q comes up short, and the four-person tribe is headed back to tribal council. Bhanu is toast.

But the episode is only half over. You mean they’re going to go back to camp, discuss voting out Bhanu, go to tribal council, and vote out Bhanu, and that will take an entire half of an episode? No way.

There is no way because there is a journey first, and Liz from Nami gets to pick who is going with her, so she chooses Ben and Bhanu. When they arrive, Bhanu immediately tells them he is going home and starts wailing and crying on the beach. This is my problem with Bhanu. It’s one thing to have no strategy; it’s another thing to have no strategy, offer no strategy, and complain that you’re going home all the time. It’s a combination of desperation and pessimism that seems like it would be anathema to Mr. Probst.

The three players have to choose rocks, and then the one with the white rock doesn’t get to play in a challenge and goes back to camp. The other two then have to try to complete a block puzzle in an allotted time. If they do it, they get an advantage; if not, they lose their votes. I think the rules need to be a bit clearer here. Bhanu says he wants the white rock so that he can have his vote, or more accurately, his shot in the dark, at the next tribal. Can’t they just switch rocks? Or can’t they just decide who gets to play and who doesn’t? Why do they have to draw if one person doesn’t want to play? Bhanu and Ben go on to try the puzzle, and they both fail. Womp. Womp.

Liz goes back to her tribe and, aside from giving them every bit of gossip from Bhanu, she also tells them she got the white rock, and nothing happened. It’s always best to tell the truth when you can. Ben does something close to that. He tells the tribe that he had to do a puzzle, and he doesn’t find out until the next tribal if he got an advantage or lost his vote. Smart because you don’t want to paint a target on yourself. I’m starting to like Ben, who said that the puzzle definitely didn’t rock, but he said even an “idol” like Nicolas Cage couldn’t do it. What is up with this dude and his obsession with the star of the 2010 family adventure movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?

They seem like good players, which is the opposite of Bhanu. Maybe it’s good that they’re getting players who will be horrible, though. Players have to overcome all sorts of obstacles on their way to the win; why shouldn’t one be a player who will blab everything going on in his tribe as soon as he meets two strangers with different color buffs? That’s just what he does with Liz and Ben, telling them that Tiff and Q are in a tight alliance but that Kenzie is running everything.

This is why it’s impossible to work with Bhanu. It would take far too much work to turn him into something of an asset. When he returns, he has a conversation with Q that is actually quite clever. Q says that in the game, there are liabilities and threats. One needs to eliminate the threats and turn the liabilities into assets. When he talks to Tiff, he tells her that Bhanu will work with them until the very end if they keep him and they can control him the whole way, as opposed to Kenzie, who is very charismatic and trying to win. It’s an excellent strategy, but the amount of emotional labor it would take to keep Bhanu on their side for another 20-something days would be exhausting. Not even an ultramarathoner could do that.

It seems like we’re going to get an interesting tribal council where Tiff will decide to go with Q or with Kenzie and decide the fate of her game when it is all snatched away from us. Jeff shows up at Nami with Dr. Will, who is not to be confused with Dr. Will Kirby, winner of Big Brother. They say that Randen needs an MRI for a nerve issue he’s experiencing, and he is being pulled from the game. Because of that, no one from Yanu is going home, and Bhanu is saved. What annoys me is that he didn’t save himself through any skill, trickery, or gameplay. He got saved thanks to pure luck, which isn’t fun to watch on television, and — speaking of things that aren’t fun to watch on television — lives to annoy us another day.