Survivor Recap: Technical Knockout

Hello and welcome to Idol Hunting With Jeffrey Lee Probst. I’ll be your host, not Jeff Probst. But seriously, that is all that happened in this episode. The first half was idol hunting, then challenge, scramble, tribal, “Next week on Survivor,” and then TK talking about how the tribe should have valued winning more like he does, even though his valuing winning so much just made him lose — maybe he should rethink some things.

Seriously, the first thing in the episode is Rome returning to the hidden immunity idol lock box the morning after he found it because, much like Rome, an immunity idol isn’t built in a day. Wait, I take it back. The first thing we see is, “Previously on Survivor …” and a majority of that is who found what idols, where, and how. That’s all this episode cares about, where these idols are and how the people are getting them.

Rome decides that he’s going to use his idol to build trust, so he tells Teensy about it and shows her the box, but he does it at night so neither of them can read the instructions for what he is supposed to do next. Teeny then tells Kishan about it and then goes right to the box and inspects it. Who walks up but Rome? If I was Rome, I would have gone full Solange in an elevator on them. Teensy, who at that moment looked like a Weensy, tells him that the only reason she told Kishan is because she sees them as a tight group that will work together. The problem with Rome is that he’s so annoying that they would all rather vote him out than listen to him brag some more about being the next Yeezus.

Once Rome reads the instructions in the box, he decides that he’s going to take the one-tribal idol and just play it at the first tribal council. Sam does the same thing when he finds the Beware Advantage over at Gata (yellow tribe). He’s actually the second person to find it. After Andy’s freak-out last episode, everyone is being super nice to him and cheering condescendingly whenever he comes within seven yards of a coconut. As soon as Sam leaves him alone, he bolts to go look for the idol and finds it. However, he is the first person in Survivor history to find a Beware Advantage and leave it.

His strategy doesn’t really make sense. He says that if he needs an idol, he’ll go pick it up later. But we all know that the advantage means he loses his vote, and we also know that it will come with instructions. He’s not going to need the idol until he goes to tribal anyway, and who knows when that is going to be. If he’s going to take it at all, he should take it then because he then has all the time until the next tribal to do the instructions. If he picks it up after they lose a challenge and are headed to tribal, he’ll be rushed trying to finish it and may actually lose his vote.

There’s also the thing that, well, someone else may find it. Ah doy, Andy. Not ten minutes later, Sam and Anika go looking and Sam finds it and decides to take it right away because, well, that is what a sane person does. Andy, as we know, is about as sane as Courtney Love at an ayahuasca retreat. But Sam finds it with Anika, and then he tells his No. 1 Sierra about finding it cause he needs her help with the box. Sam knows that Anika, who is a class-A gossip (as a class-A gossip, I know my people and I would also venture to guess that Anika has watched every episode of Vanderpump Rules), is going to tell Rachel, so he also has to tell Rachel so that Rachel continues to trust him. Sam is also Andy’s closest person on the tribe, so Andy tells him he found it but now it’s gone. Now literally everyone knows that the advantage was taken and all but one person knows who has it.

This episode, from stem to stern, really elucidates the problem with idols in the new era. What makes idols great is when they can totally and unexpectedly upend the game. Think about Parvati playing two at one tribal and going from the bottom to the top. That’s what we want to see. We are no longer getting that. We shouldn’t even call them Beware Advantages anymore because everyone knows what the penalty is, and so far, there has been only one idiot idioty enough not to take it, and that’s Andy Pandy Pudding and Pie, who left the idol and made him cry. Maybe, I don’t know, change what the cost of advantage is? They can’t play in the next immunity competition, for instance. I don’t know; something that would really surprise and shock players. Right now, everyone knows they’re going to lose their vote, so they can pre-plan for that eventuality.

The other problem is that no one losing their vote has really mattered since 41 and 42 when they all had to say that dumb thing at the challenge to activate their idols. (While stupid, that was the best way to disadvantage players yet.) It’s not so much a Beware Advantage these days. It’s more of an Inconvenience Advantage.

I don’t know if it’s because of the small tribes, but all of these idols become extremely public. In Rome and Gabe’s cases, everyone saw their search because they were so bad at being covert. In Sam’s case, he was with someone when he found it. My guiding star in this game, Sandra Diaz-Twine, says that an idol is worth nothing if people know about it and she is absolutely correct. When people know you have an idol, it becomes a target. That’s why I don’t really fault Rome and Sam for only taking the one-tribal idol. Everyone knows they both have it, everyone knows they’re playing it the one chance they can. It guarantees them safety, yes, but it’s about as exciting for viewers as watching the White Sox lose their 120th game in a season.

I’m not sure if it’s because of all of this or despite it, but an idol hasn’t been deployed usefully or excitingly in seasons. Last season everyone went home with them in their pockets, more or less. So, we’re spending all of this time on our favorite show watching people find things that are going to have absolutely no impact. It’s like getting to the end of Lord of the Rings and finding out Frodo brought the wrong jewelry. How about instead showing us the tribal dynamics so we can actually see something that may affect the way players vote?

We do get at least a little bit of that in this episode. We get a tour of how annoying Rome is, we get a tour of how annoying Andy is, and we get a tour of how annoying TK is, complete with him cheating Sue and Caroline out of a nap on the beach while he prattles on about the hot spots in Vegas and Big Bear where he likes to hang out.

At the challenge, tribes have to grab a giant bag of rice, haul it through a water-based obstacle course, rip open the rice bag to find a ball, and then get the ball through one of the snake puzzles the challenge team loves to build. Throughout the challenge the teams are pretty much neck and neck with Gata (yellow) having a slight advantage. Jeff shouts, “Gata is in the lead, something they’re not used to.” Okay, Jeffrey, slow your roll. This is only the third challenge. Yes, they’ve been in last for two of them, but they won the first challenge, so they prove that being in last isn’t as bad as you would make it sound. If you’re going to start disparaging people, at least let it have some weight behind it.

The best part of the whole challenge is that Rachel on Gata took the rice out of the bag and filled her pockets. Duh! What do you think she would do when they left her to starve on this island with literally no food? If they didn’t want her helping herself like it’s closing time at Sizzler, then they should have filled that bag with sand or coconut husk or some shit. So yes, Gata wins, and Lavo (red like lava) comes in second, which means Tuku (blue) is headed to tribal.

At the end of the challenge, Jeff notes that some of the Tuku members are smiling. He then asks TK how it will be different going back to camp, but he can’t even answer that. “Honestly, I’m genuinely pissed off right now,” he says. “I’m just not that used to losing. I don’t hang with people who are cool with losing. I don’t associate myself with that. If I lose, I’m not going to be happy about that. I just want to make sure that I have a tribe with the same mindset, and if we don’t, then that’s a problem.” As he’s saying this, Tiyana’s eyes are rolling as if they’re on their fourth day at Burning Man.

Gabe, who shockingly seems to be a good player and the edit would have us think he’s going to be around for a long time, picks up on this. He is nominally in a group of four with TK, Kyle, and Tiyana, though TK is only tolerating him and thinks he’s too erratic. As a four, TK wants to get rid of Sue because he thinks she brings nothing to the tribe. (Speaking of Sue, the lighting guys are doing her dirty. She has a little dimple on the right side of her mouth, and they set her up in her confessional, so it casts a shadow and looks like a big furry spider is sitting on her face the whole time.)

What the TK group doesn’t know is that Gabe really wants to play with Sue and Caroline. He calls them wounded birds, and he says if he can take them all the way to the end, then they should just cut him a check. Okay, Patriarchy, you need to be toppled a little bit right here. Just because they’re smaller women doesn’t mean that they can’t play Survivor. He doesn’t even know whether or not they can play because they haven’t even been to a tribal yet.

Gabe has a halfway-decent plan, though. He tells Sue and Caroline to talk to Tiyana and have her vote out TK. He wants to play into her emotions about him being a huge jerk to get out a big threat, and TK is making it easy for him, too. Even when Kyle makes him apologize to Tiyana, he’s still too self-centered to make a difference. He tells them, “We’re straight. We’re straight. We’re solid.” Are you sure? Maybe ask Tiyana if you’re solid or not. Then he says, “We’re going to stick to the same plan.” Really, man? A dictator has not won this game since Boston Rob lined up all his little soldiers and marched all the way to (his only) victory. You, TK, are no Boston Rob. Even at tribal, he tells Sue, “These are the conversations you need to have on Survivor.” Oh, thanks for mansplaining how to play a game you’re about to lose.

Anyway, Gabe’s plan is to get the girls to convince Tiyana to vote with them so that they can go to rocks but what she doesn’t know is that Gabe is going to vote with them to get rid of TK. I guess he’s doing this so as not to burn Kyle or so that TK doesn’t get wind of it and turn on him. But it seems weird that he’s leaving himself out of this vote. It’s so much easier to convince Tiyana she can get someone she clearly hates out of this game than it is for her to go to rocks. No one wants to go to rocks. Only a fool would willingly go to rocks.

After the tribal discussion and the voting, Gabe plays his three-tribal idol but doesn’t play it on Sue to save her and make sure TK goes home, which would have been the simplest solution. Instead, he plays it on himself. The only logic I can think of is that Gabe was worried that it would go to rocks, he would have to draw, and he might get kicked out. However, if he plays his idol, he’ll be exempt from the draw. But instead of all of this elaborate planning and subterfuge, if he was just straight with Tiyana, they could have gotten TK out, and he could have saved his idol and deployed it more strategically. Instead, we get another wasted idol, and there is a sad probability that next week, we’ll have to see another episode of Idol Hunting With Jeffrey Lee Probst.