Survivor Recap: On With the Show

The best part of this episode is when everyone files into the competition and Jeff delivers his typical, “You’re getting your look at the new Yanu tribe … Bhanu was voted off last tribal council.” First of all, Jeffrey, that is a lie. There were no votes cast. Bhanu was, I don’t know, “excused” at last tribal council. Secondly, usually the other tribes gasp at who went home, but not this time. Everyone just nods their heads like, “Of course he was.” I wanted Soda to blurt out, “Yup. Even I thought that guy was annoying.” But with Bhanu gone we finally got a good old-fashioned episode of Survivor, even if a blindside at the end left me with that not-so-fresh feeling.

Even before the episode started, however, I knew that Yanu (a.k.a. Purple) was going to get the night off from tribal council. Reminding us that both Maria and Tevin have extra votes and that Jem is the one with the Beware Advantage from Siga (a.k.a. Green, a.k.a. Jem and the Holograms) foreshadowed that something was going to go down with their tribe. I got the same sneaking suspicion during the first few minutes of the episode. We start with Yanu, the losing tribe, as always, but then we get a long intermission at Siga where Ben talks about reading the Mötley Crüe biography and we see the growing bond between him and Charlie, who sold his chocolate factory for a front row seat to the Eras tour.

Sure, there’s some cute footage of the tribe salsa dancing on the beach (Charlie moves his hips just as well as his musical idol), but mostly what we’re hearing is that Charlie and Maria are a tight two, and they have to choose to either go with Jem and Moriah and keep true to the “Charlie’s Angels” alliance they formed day one, or go with Tim and Ben. Because Jem got the Beware Advantage and then rehid it, the women think that Tim is the one with the idol. When talking about her decision to put out the fake idol, Jem says she did it to “get the scent off of that someone already found something.” Um, what? I think you did just the opposite. Now that they found the paper but not the idol where it was supposed to be, everyone knows it was found. If she didn’t use this silly ruse then people would still be wondering. With knowledge comes blame, and that blame can boomerang right back at you with a quickness.

This is exactly what happens when Tim confronts her and says she moved the advantage and accuses her of having an idol. She tells him she wishes she had it because she’s clearly at the bottom of the tribe. Really? Because it seems like she’s tight with the girls. If they are the “vibe tribe” that they purport to be, wouldn’t no one think they were at the bottom? Her paranoia seems to be telegraphing something to the other players in the game.

This is when everyone heads to the immunity challenge and Jeff lets us know that Yanu has gone the longest in the “new era” without a flint, and, if they lose this challenge, they will have lost the most of any tribe in the “new era.” The only thing Jeff loves more than saying “balls” while narrating a challenge is asterisks and footnotes. But we know that Yanu is winning because we already figured out Siga is going to tribal council.

The challenge is an obstacle course followed by a hook that undoes a rope followed by shooting sandbags at targets. As usual, Nima (a.k.a. Orange) wins with Hunter leading the charge. He also has the Beware Advantage in his pocket and will be unstoppable for a bit. It’s a showdown between Siga and Yanu as Q and Tim are both shooting at the last target. Q releases his sandbag and the music slows, the footage slows, the whole thing is like the moment the edible hits and the whole world does a somersault, and we know what that means. Yanu wins. It’s cute to see them celebrate and bond with the little immunity idol that they’ll never see again because next week is the merge.

Like Jeff, I also love asterisks and footnotes, so here is a long note on the “new era”: I hate having three tribes. Jeff says it means there is “no place to hide,” but I think that the small groups form intractable bonds that are very hard to break, which leads to a boring second half of the game. How many times are we going to have to hear “Nima strong” over the next several episodes as someone pretends like they’re going to flip but doesn’t? (Except Venus. She’s flipping more than Simone Biles.) Also, there is always one tribe with smaller numbers that inevitably becomes the swing votes as the two bigger tribes face off against each other. Look at how the Tika three got themselves all the way to the finale! Yanu is actually in the best position coming into the merge because the other two tribes of five are going to need them to vote off someone from the other side. Losing is the new winning, I guess.

After the challenge, Jeff says that there is going to be a journey and Nima “is in charge” of who gets to go. Hunter says he’s going and then asks for volunteers. Tim raises his hand for Siga and Tiff says, “We’re sending Q” for Yanu. They’re sending him? Isn’t Nima in charge? How does this even work anymore? Are there rules? When Q, Tim, and Hunter arrive, Q proposes an alliance among the three guys because they’re the physical threats that will be targeted. He says they should each bring in someone else they trust and roll as a six. It’s not a horrible plan (and reminiscent of the one that the Cookout used to win Big Brother), but it’s never going to work because in the “new era,” tribe loyalty is what usually wins out.

Anyway, they have to choose one person to participate in a challenge and he could win an advantage, but if he fails he will lose his vote at tribal. They select Hunter and he goes onto the game, which will challenge his knowledge of Survivor. He has to put the logos of 20 seasons of the show in chronological order, which Hunter says will be hard for him because he watched them in order of what his roommate thought were the best seasons, not in the order they aired. He gets 12 out of the 20 wrong. How pissed is that roommate that they’re not the one in Fiji right now?

I think this whole challenge is kind of bullshit. (Gosh, Grandpa Moylan over here is full of plights and gripes this week.) Imagine if you are a figure skater and you train for years and years to get to the Olympics, and then when you get there, you’re competing for a gold not based on whether you can out-skate people, but whether you know the order of the cities that the Olympics have been in for the past 20 years. That knowledge has nothing to do with the skills it should take to win. Just look at Bhanu, a purported “superfan” who thought that honesty had a place on Survivor. Winning or losing Survivor shouldn’t have anything to do with what might win you a free drink at a pub quiz night, it should be based on … hmmmm, what should the criteria be … how about outwitting, outlasting, and outplaying the competition? Notice “outstreaming Survivor on Paramount Plus” is not one of those three.

Back at Siga, Jem straight up tells everyone she wants to idol hunt and goes off to find the key to her locked immunity idol so that she can vote at Tribal council. Her instructions are to use the machete to measure the size of the tribe flag, the boat on their beach, and the circumference of Tree Mail. That will tell her how many paces away from where she found the idol she has to dig. The music swells, she races around camp, we see jittery camera angles of where all the tribemates are as she’s doing this. The producers love to show us someone finding an idol even more than Jeff loves asterisks.

Naturally, Jem finds it. But that’s when something truly, truly, truly outrageous happens. Most of the talk has been about Charlie and Maria going with either the boys or the girls, but it seems like they have a plan to split the votes between Ben and Tim, with Ben being the main target because they think that Tim has the immunity idol. But then Jem starts playing really hard. She’s pressuring Ben and Tim for information, but she doesn’t tell us why. There’s lots of talk about how funny Ben is and how dangerous he is, which makes us think they’re going to go for him. Everything is leading us in that direction.

After a staid tribal, Jeff counts the votes and Jem is sent home with her immunity idol in her pocket. Watching the votes at the end of the episode, Maria used her extra vote to get Jem out, possibly because she knew that Ben had lost his vote in a previous journey. So, yes, I was surprised that Jem got sent home, but I don’t think that surprise is worth not knowing the thought process. What made Maria change her mind and decide to go with the boys? Or what made Charlie sway her when Maria had been harping on what a threat Ben was the whole episode? I fear we’ll never really know, but at least the game is finally afoot, just in time for the merge.