Thursday, April 7, 2022

Survivor 42 S42E05: I'm Survivor Rich

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‘Survivor’ makes it a bit clear who’s heading home in another fun episode.
by Jeremy Fogelman

On the latest episode of Survivor, as everyone shouts out secret phrases, we wonder: Why did Daniel lose and get voted out? The simple answer, of course, is that he made many mistakes, some more serious than others.

This latest episode saw Hai initiate a “hey, what about his shoulder?” routine to target Daniel as the latter was out failing at spearfishing. What was not mentioned is that swimming leisurely searching for fish is hardly the same as the very intense swimming in the challenges. But as Daniel was already persona non grata in his tribe, everyone was already ready to assume the worst about him.

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Daniel’s shoulder dislocation was of course not a mistake nor his fault, but it didn’t help matters as he had to keep sitting out of challenges. He played hard and at first, reasonably smartly -- but the dude kept making errors, like literally losing Mike’s idol. After his problematic performance with Chanelle when he proclaimed he didn’t want to go to rocks, he had lost his only ally -- and thus was left without anyone willing to trust in him.

Honestly I would’ve been far more surprised if they didn’t vote out Daniel -- the only possible reason to keep him is that he could be seen as a goat, or someone that couldn’t possibly win the game -- but although his tribe felt that way, maybe the others could? So after they made fun of Daniel, I felt like it was inevitable.

Elsewhere on the tribe, we hear a backstory from Lydia about struggling with body image but feeling much better about herself and her Survivor journey. She also made a safe call about protecting her vote, but if she had risked it, and Rocksroy still hadn’t, she’d get an extra vote. But that’s a tricky thing to consider.

The other backstory was from Romeo, who mentioned about his mom sacrificing to help her kids achieve their dreams in America -- and because he’s a pageant coach, women in general and Drea in particular are ideal allies for him. At least it does seem that way for now, although who can say how long that will last.

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But we also get a few potential lighting fires of drama to come, one is Tori explicitly telling us that she’s ready and willing to turn on her tribe as soon as possible. The other is how Maryanne is annoying Jonathan and Lindsay enough to be a target, while Omar believes she’s a critical ally and thus wants to keep her. There’s definitely some interesting clashes that might happen here.

At this point in the season I feel like we’ve gotten a pretty good handle on most of the players and their characters, enough to begin to start rooting for people. Maybe. There’s no obvious early leader like Shan here, but some interesting people anyway. Definitely been enjoying this season so far, I think the Survivor team has been hitting it out of the park with their casting this last two seasons. Even the less “adept” players are still fun to watch.

Next time on Survivor, drop your buffs, and it’s chaos.

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