Survivor Recap: Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

As Rupert Boneham said, paranoia will destroy ya. It’s impossible for those of us watching the antics from our couches to realize just how arresting the paranoia can be on Survivor, but last night, at Coco’s first visit to Tribal Council, Lindsay saw her torch snuffed as a result of an impressively deadly self-inflicted wound. Before we get to Lindsay’s game-ending blunder, though, let’s backtrack a little.

A week into the game, Vesi is returning from their second consecutive Tribal Council. As it stands, Vesi is down to four players, Baka has five, and Coco remains intact with their initial six-person tribe. Jumping straight into the reward challenge, it’s obvious Vesi is completely over losing. The reward today is a lovely prize of ten fresh fish, an absurd amount of food in relation to what they’ve been eating so far. In addition to the food prize, the winning tribe will get the chance to raid another camp and steal a single item. It could be something the other tribe won at a reward challenge like the fishing gear, or maybe it can be something essential and crucial for survival like a machete. Pretty much the only rule is that winners cannot steal another tribes’ flint.

In a surprising turn of events, Vesi dominated this winner-take-all challenge. One person from each tribe had to take on the brunt of responsibility, completing the first two steps of the challenge alone. Cody fires off some powerful shots, quickly obliterating the block formation. As a surfer, I assume Cody has great balance and that shows in the second stage of the challenge. Sami is right on his tail for Baka, but Coco is dead last the entire challenge. The tribes appear pretty evenly matched this season, and yet again the challenge comes down to the wire. Vesi wins the fish, but they haven’t had fire in days. What is there to do with a basket of fish if you can’t roast them up? “You don’t like sushi?” Cody says incredulously when Noelle asks Jeff if they can swap the reward for last week’s prize of fruit and a toolkit. It’s a very effective swap for Vesi that Jeff accepts willingly. After all, he’s in the business of making this game as difficult as possible, and a basket of fruit won’t come close to the nutritional advantage that fish would’ve given them.

Camp raids are something of a relic these days. Although they don’t occur often, raids were far more common in early seasons, and we haven’t seen one as a reward since Cagayan. In the pirate-themed Pearl Islands, the ability to loot a single item was included in almost every pre-merge reward challenge. It’s fun, dramatic, and personal to steal something needed and used by another tribe. But it’s also a double-edged sword — an added opportunity for dissent amongst a tribe that should be celebrating a victory.

Naturally, there are disagreements on every aspect of this reward: Who will Vesi send, which tribe will they raid, what do they want to take, and what do the other tribes want to keep? It’s a lot to balance. The obvious choice from where we’re sitting is to send Cody. The debate between Baka and Coco is a little trickier. Baka may have won the largest reward items, but Coco still has all six of its tribe members. In the end, Cody heads to Coco and it’s like watching a timeshare salesman in all his glory. He’s smooth-talkin’ and slimy and completely plays Coco. Acting as if he came for the machete — the unnecessary, mean-spirited choice, seeing as it would nearly cripple Coco and it’s one of the few tools Vesi already has — Cody talks them into happily giving up their fishing gear and adding in some cassava root they’ve found to sweeten the deal. Only after he leaves do Karla and Lindsay realize they fell right into his trap. This kind of interaction is exactly why I see Cody leaving soon after the merge. He’s a great player and a huge benefit to Vesi, but he’s a little too cunning and a little too good at talking. He’s certainly not someone you want to argue against in a Final Tribal Council. Even against six people, he walked away with what he wanted.

Fired up about their recent victory, Vesi rocks up to the Immunity Challenge ready to win again. Today’s challenge involves some brute strength to start and concludes by using the same four puzzle pieces to make two different shapes. As a puzzle-minded person, I absolutely love this design. It’s like the dress; once you see it one way, are you able to actively shift your brain into seeing it another way? Once again, it’s a super close race down to the last moments of the challenge. After Vesi claims their second victory in a row, Noelle takes a massive risk and helps  Baka finish their second puzzle, edging out Coco and sending them to Tribal Council for the first time. This moment is where Lindsay’s downfall begins.

It’s rare to see tribes helping each other at challenges like this, but Vesi very clearly wants to knock Coco down a peg or two. They’ve lived a relatively easy life as the victors of nearly every challenge this season, and after raiding their camp, Vesi wants to seal the coffin of Coco’s fate. No one takes the assist particularly well. There’s talk of still being “undefeated” because they’re positive Baka wouldn’t have figured out the puzzle without Vesi’s help. It’s a bad look. In a way, this is the start of the game for Coco. This realization is dawning on everyone as they head back to camp and start strategizing for the first time with stakes that matter.

Lindsay immediately lets paranoia and rage cloud her judgment. She was completely safe and had an alliance on her side that really trusted her. Her name wasn’t even going to be the other one written down! Geo and Lindsay are positioned as two sides of the same overconfident coin. Geo is so confident in his gameplay, he thinks no one would ever vote for him. At first, he seems like the easy vote tonight for the alliance of Lindsay, Karla, James, and Cassidy. On the other hand, Lindsay is absolutely terrified. She sets quite a mental trap for herself and she’s convinced that she’s so smart and such a threat that of course they’re coming after her first. This assumption really wasn’t true — until the moment it was. As the day passes, Lindsay’s increasing paranoia creates a bigger and bigger target on her back. With Lindsay actively blowing up her own game all day, Karla starts stirring up an underground insurgency against one of her strongest allies.

It’s tough to watch such an implosion from a player who had so much potential. Lindsay was a strong competitor, outwardly smart, and hadn’t been pigeonholed into the “older woman” archetype that basically every woman over 30 gets pegged as on this show. If she had made it through just one trip to Tribal, maybe she would’ve had some renewed confidence. If they had gone to Tribal sooner, maybe Lindsay couldn’t have sabotaged her game so brutally. Maybe Karla and James could’ve quelled her paranoia a little more effectively. All these maybes can’t make up for the fact that relationships are transactional on Survivor, and if it takes more energy to work with you than to vote you out, well, you’re SOL.

Burning Thoughts

• Honestly, Jeff needs to be meaner again! There’s nothing better than a sassy little Jeff quip, and his dig at Dwight for “moving about as slow as you can move, and still actually be moving” was almost as good as Dwight channeling his inner Courtney to respond with a curt “Thank you, Jeffery!”

• Ryan voted against Lindsay with Karla, James, and Cassidy, leaving Geo completely in the dark. Seems like a new alliance is on the come-up, and that’s bad news for Geo.

• In the wake of Mike White’s Emmy wins and Survivor references, I’ve been rewatching David vs. Goliath and the difference in how Noelle and Angelina negotiate with Jeff is astounding. Nothing makes me feel like less of a feminist than hating on strong, type-A women, but Angelina is up there among my least favorite Survivor players of all time. In the end, despite her “elective negotiation classes while she got an MBA from Yale,” she took Jeff’s first counteroffer and martyred herself for the tribe to get some more rice. While both women acted out of necessity for their tribes, Noelle was thinking on her toes rather than meticulously calculating the way to earn a resume booster for her Final Tribal speech.