A fresh twist, great cast dynamics, and another gripping Tribal Council continue the season’s outstanding start.
Photo: Robert Voets/CBS
Another episode of Survivor 51, another fantastic, gripping tribal council. These first three episodes are the best start to a Survivor season in several years. I’m in shock and awe. Even the twists are fresh, not overblown, and based in character and tribe dynamics. Nothing has been overly done or too silly. Even Jeff, post-premiere, has been a delight, just kind of letting the game play out and not foisting metaphors upon us at Tribal Council. Right now, Survivor is something I look forward to each week. Nothing but net.
I think the strength of the season comes down to the casting. This week, we essentially “meet” three new characters who have been used in previous episodes but not to the full extent that they are here. And I liked all of them. Clearly, the bench is full this season. They are: Lewis, the Irish farmer who turns out to be a lot more wily than anyone might have expected; Carter, the crab warrior who is funny, guileless, and enthusiastic; and Thien An, who isn’t necessarily the main character of the episode, but should get a lot of credit for driving the vote. All of these people, it turns out, are worthy of screen time and will keep me coming back for more, even if we do otherwise lose two great characters this week. Additionally, Kilby gets a lot more focus this week than he ever has previously. He wins the battle, but I’m not sure he’s won the war; he is shown to make a lot of misreads and to be too abrasive for many of the other players, even those who worked with him this week. I’m not sure this David is a permanent Goliath slayer.
The episode starts over on the Purple tribe. Carter is licking his wounds after the rest of the tribe sent Ana home in a blindside. Linnea makes it clear that she doesn’t hold it against Ori or Carter, leaving Rob… elsewhere. On the beach, in fact. Post-Ana’s elimination, Rob is feeling even more like he wants to go home. Especially because, he now reveals, he has a cut on his foot, and he’s pretty sure it’s infected up to the knee. The show and the other players are skeptical of this. Jeff brings in the medical team, who are like, “Well, technically any cut could get infected,” and Rob decides to leave the game. Upon learning this, Linnea all but boos him. Look, I don’t like when people leave the game, but I had a feeling this could happen based on last week, when Rob also tried to leave the game. It’s the one truly dour and disappointing note in an episode of fun. Still, he gives Carter his idol, which is honorable of him.
On Yellow, Devin despises Kilby. To be fair, we are shown why. Kilby tells Patt that playing Survivor with Brady is like playing a video game with a 5-year-old whose controller you’ve unplugged. That is pretty needlessly cruel, and I’m not surprised that, when word gets back to Brady, he does not want to work with Kilby further.
Instead of a reward challenge this week, we get a twist: One member of each tribe will go visit the other tribe. This is a great twist that they haven’t done in forever. The best thing about it is that we get to be a listener with the new person to learn more about tribe dynamics, which can only be good this early in the season. It is a strategy- and character-based twist that reveals interpersonal dynamics, rather than a luck-based twist, which Survivor relied on way too much in the 40s.
On the Purple Tribe, everybody wants to go, so they pick randomly, and Carter wins, to the rest of the tribe’s chagrin. On Yellow, interestingly, nobody wants to go, so Devin has to volunteer. While on the boat, both boys learn that there is a twist: There is an advantage on both beaches that only they know about, and, if they so choose, they can stay on their new tribe’s beach. Gasp! A mutiny? I remember Candice Woodcock so well.
Devin immediately spills the beans about pretty much everything going on at the Purple beach. He then checks with Sharonda, since they are both in the Helicopter Alliance, and gets the advantage in front of her. He tells everybody Kilby sucks. Finally, he checks in again with the other Helicopter Alliance member, Ori, shows him his advantage, and confirms they’re locked in as well. Then, advantage in hand, he leaves. A successful trip!
Carter’s trip is a little crazier. While Devin is pretty secure with his group of five, Carter thinks maybe he should defect after being on the bottom at last night’s tribal and losing two allies in under 24 hours. (He should.) While he’s off talking with Mike, the rest of the Yellow Tribe decides to go through his bag. There, they immediately find his piece of paper and learn about the advantage, which is on one of the rowboat’s oars. They run to get it, and Brady ends up fully destroying the oars. He’s one of the last two looking, along with Maggie, when they find the advantage. He grabs it. She’s pissed. But then… she asks him for it, and he gives it to her. Okay!
Brady, meanwhile, knowing that Carter has the ability to defect tribes, wants a new ally. He promises Carter that they’re locked in brodies (gag). When the boat to take Carter back to the Purple beach arrives, he goes to look for the advantage. He cannot find it because the tribe has destroyed the oars. While he’s looking, the boat leaves, effectively stranding him on this beach. It’s a funny scene, but I do think Carter already knew he was staying. He was drawing dead at Purple.
When they get to the immunity challenge, the tribe difference is stark. The tribes have each been to Tribal once, but Yellow replaced Aaliyah with Lewis, and then Purple lost both Rob and Carter. Now, it’s 11 to seven. The challenge (obstacle course ending in a puzzle) begins, and Yellow has a crazy advantage by the time they begin the final puzzle. Unfortunately, Jenna sucks at puzzles, and Christian (who the editors are still not allowing to talk) is great at them. He and Kristen fly through the puzzle challenge, and Yellow has to go to Tribal. Devin is like, “That’s fine we’ll just get out Kilby, who sucks.”
But that is not how things go. You see, the Yellow Tribe has noticed that the group of five (Devin, Brady, Patt, Jelly, Mike) is a group of five. Generally, people seem to like Jelly, Devin, and Brady, but Thien An is suspicious of Patt, and nobody really cares about Mike. The Fab Five decide to get Carter and Lewis on their side. The two outsider boys, meanwhile, form a bond and realize they’re in control of the vote.
Kilby thinks Brady is loyal to him over Devin (wild), but Maggie is like, “What the Hell are you talking about?” Still, he and Maggie decide that they should target Mike. Thien An convinces everybody that Patt is a bigger target. They tell Brady and he scoffs. “No disrespect, Thien An, but you have absolutely no pull to make any call in this game,” he says in confessional. Well…
It ultimately comes down to Lewis and Carter. On the one hand, if they go with the Fab Five, they can lay low for a while longer because they’re bigger targets. On the other hand, they’re clearly six and seven in that alliance. The other group is a little more spread out, giving more opportunity. Lewis, especially, knows this and diagrams it out to Carter. “Do you have big balls?” he asks Carter. Fun duo.
At Tribal, it’s clear that the five think they’ve got it locked down. But when it’s time to vote, things go awry. It goes back and forth between Kilby and Patt, and the camera cuts to Brady having the biggest, shit-eating grin on his face. They’re all convinced they’ve got it. But then the fifth Patt vote comes up, and she knows she’s screwed. The boys went against her and their whole group. Devin and Jelly are, again, on the wrong side of the vote. Pantsless Patt, who could have been a real contender if Thien An hadn’t targeted her, goes home third. A blindside! And a fascinating one. Another great, great episode. If they can keep this up, we’ve got an all-timer season on our hands.
• I was pretty confident Patt was going home because of how heavily production was telegraphing that the Fab Five was due for comeuppance. But I’m not someone who needs every vote to be a surprise — I’d prefer great storytelling. Remember when they showed us every vote for Erik at the amazing Micronesia vote? Worth it!
• Someone should make a supercut of everything Christian has said so far on this season. I think the total at the moment is 10 words.
• Carter’s impression is that Sharonda and Linnea are running the show at the Purple beach. It’s not that this is a surprise to me, but I’m worried for those girls if that’s so obvious.
• I’m glad the vote went how it did tonight, but I’m not a Kilby fan. He’s got historically bad reads, and the Brady comment was below the belt.
• Next week on Survivor: Fake merge?
