Survivor Recap: Bigger Than the Game

The first 45 minutes of the latest Survivor episode chugged along in the usual fashion. There was the post-tribal-council fallout with Hai and Romeo bickering about hinky votes. The reliably old-school Rocksroy went back into his Survivor circa 2002 handbook and tried to form an all men’s alliance. The fast and furious immunity challenge wiped out the field in minutes, leading to Jonathan and Hai claiming the two necklaces up for grabs. And in a repeat of last season, the tribe was split into two teams for two separate tribal vote-offs. So far, standard Survivor fare.

Then something happened that went beyond the game, completely changing the tone of the episode. Just as Tori felt uncomfortable switching back into game mode following what happened, I would feel equally weird approaching this recap with the usual lighthearted and strategy-focused mindset. So let’s talk about what happened.

The first tribal council of the night ends with Rocksroy having his torch snuffed. His idea of bringing the guys together seems to gain some traction with Mike and Jonathan, but Hai and Omar are not about joining the “misogyny club,” in Hai’s words. So when the tribe is divided and Rocksroy winds up with Hai, Omar, Mike, and Romeo, he doesn’t have the right components to put his plan into action. Omar sees Romeo as a more malleable ally than the immovable Rocksroy, so he convinces Hai to put his Romeo beef aside and join him in booting Rocks. Mike, who gave Rocksroy his word, shows some reluctance, but he ultimately falls in line.

On the surface, the first tribal is pretty uneventful, but its result plays a significant part in what happens next. The second team is shocked when they arrive at tribal and see Rocksroy sitting on the jury bench beside Chanelle. Rocks was part of the majority alliance, so his elimination rightly causes some confusion. But for Drea and Maryanne, it’s more than just surprise and befuddlement. To see two Black contestants eliminated back-to-back brings a stark reality to light — the racial biases that plague society and are deeply embedded into Survivor’s history.

“I was so proud because we have four Black contestants in Survivor,” Drea tells Jeff when asked about her reaction to Rocksroy’s elimination. “And then it always happens where at one point the Black contestants get booted out — Boom! Boom! Boom! — and then that’s exactly what this is right now. So yeah, I’m pissed.”

Perhaps Survivor of the past would have glossed over this. However, since CBS committed to new diversity targets in 2020, the show has done better, not only casting more players from diverse backgrounds but allowing those players to share their stories onscreen. So Jeff continues the conversation, asking Drea if she believes the vote-offs to be race-related. “Subconsciously, a little bit of that, unfortunately,” Drea responds. “I’m not going to let that happen to another one of us — point-blank. It’s a reset for me. This was a game changer.”

This blows the doors wide open. Suddenly, we’re in this sort of bizarre cross section of reality TV, where the deep issues of REALITY meet the trivial constructs of a TV game show. The real-world experiences of Drea and Maryanne are now impacting their approach to the game. Drea openly declares that she is playing her idol to ensure she’s not the next Black player sent packing. Maryanne, meanwhile, tells Tori she can no longer in good conscience write Drea’s name down. “I walked into tribal, I saw two Black people; I cannot write her name down,” Maryanne says. “I am so sorry. I literally can’t. Morally, I cannot write her name down.”

It’s a complex issue and one that I’m certainly not qualified to unpack, especially not here in a 1400-word recap. But it’s also an issue littered throughout Survivor history, which makes Drea and Maryanne’s plight understandable. I’m sure a subsection of viewers are screaming about “woke Survivor!” and “reverse racism,” as they did last season when Danny, Deshawn, Liana, and Shan formed an alliance. But I would encourage those people to take even a cursory glance back at Survivor’s past. Minority players have often been eliminated early in the game. Does that mean every Survivor cast is racist? No. But for years the casting was so lopsided that those one or two minority players became easy targets for not fitting in or sharing commonalities with the majority white contestants. In a game where players are looking for any way to shift the target on someone else, especially in the first few days, it became alarmingly easy for the minority player(s) to be seen as “the other.”

Putting aside Drea and Maryanne’s real-life experiences for a moment, just the “baggage” of Survivor and reality television itself weighs heavy on their shoulders. They come into the game knowing that history, hoping not to see it repeated. So to suddenly be faced with the possibility of three Black contestants sitting on the jury having been voted out back-to-back-to-back? How can they not be thinking about the bigger picture? This is a show that in 41 seasons has only had one Black woman winner (Vecepia Towery) — that was 20 years ago, and she wasn’t even invited to play the recent champions season. It took fellow CBS reality show Big Brother a staggering 22 seasons to have its first Black (non-celebrity) winner. This is an issue so ingrained in reality TV that you’d have to be willfully obtuse not to notice it.

“Yes, we all technically have a 1-in-18 shot for the million,” Maryanne says. “But because we all come with our burdens and all come with our privileges, that 1-in-18 might be bigger or smaller for some people.” She’s right. And it’s what makes her stand with Drea. Despite knowing she’s not a target, Maryanne states she, too, will play her idol to counter any arguments that “they only stayed because they made it a race thing.” Drea and Maryanne stand up together and hand Jeff their idols, making for a unique but powerful act of solidarity.

The whole tribal is unique. Understandably, the topic of race dominates the conversation. Jonathan gets defensive, feeling like his character is being attacked. “I don’t feel this is right because you’re coming at this like we’re racists,” he says. But as Drea and Maryanne reiterate, that isn’t their point, nor is it what they believe. They are talking about the larger implicit biases in society and in Survivor. Drea says it’s not about Jonathan, and she shuts down his claim that she is “being aggressive.” As far as we see, Drea does not come across as aggressive at all but rather tired and pained.

After Lindsay and Tori express their uncomfortableness about going up to vote after such a heavy debate, Jeff suggests continuing the open forum and deciding the vote in public. With Drea and Maryanne now safe, and Jonathan having the immunity necklace, it leaves only Linsday and Tori on the chopping block. The tribe is pretty set on keeping Lindsay, so Tori gets up to play her Shot in the Dark in another peculiar game-meets-reality moment. Unfortunately for Tori, this last-ditch effort does not pay off, and she’s sent to the jury.

Would Tori have been voted out before the blowup? It’s hard to say for certain, but the odds were highly likely. Drea already noticed red flags before tribal. And after seeing Rocksroy voted out, the chances of her playing her idol seemed a near guarantee, even if she didn’t speak up. So in that scenario, Tori would have been eliminated as the backup split vote anyway. Maryanne might have even played her idol if she got spooked by Drea playing hers. So the same end result, just under an entirely different set of circumstances.

This won’t be an episode we forget in a hurry. Yes, it was uncomfortable to watch at times. But life can be uncomfortable, and after all, Survivor has always been a microcosm of life. Sure, you might just want the fun challenges and the blindsides, but Survivor, at its core, is a human experiment. It’s a game with real people with real experiences that shape their decision-making on their quest for a million dollars. That’s what makes Survivor so endlessly fascinating.