Survivor 42 S42E13: It Comes Down To This

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‘Survivor’ crowns a champion when it’s all down to the final council.
by Jeremy Fogelman

Ah, the finale of Season 42 of Survivor has finally arrived, the magic number, and with one of the most engaging and fun casts in the show’s history. Maybe not #1, but this is a great set of players, and especially a great set of jury and final five players. Coming into the finale I predicted that Romeo had no shot while Mike did not necessarily have it over Maryanne, but the way things shook out really was affected by what he did in his last minutes in the game.

For the first vote out where we lost badass Lindsay, there was one of those new “solve a riddle to find a clue to the advantage” challenges, which was pretty amusingly edited -- the show was definitely priming us to root for Lindsay to win that one, with the music stings and big outline of the rock “foot”. But even more amusing was Maryanne intentionally sandbagging the challenge to make sure Lindsay would come back with the advantage.

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And yet, when the time came to possibly save Lindsay, Maryanne kept her idol to herself, in what ultimately was clearly the right move because the way she showed it off at the final tribal council was the highlight of that council -- you could instantly see on the faces of Romeo and Mike that they knew which way it was now likely to go.

But as for poor Lindsay, it’s no surprise she was voted out, as like I said last week, she had a legitimate chance to do well at the final three, while I really don't think Jonathan did. Sure, Mike had his “I gave my word” business but that actually ultimately sunk him. The dude was hinting or outright promising to play his idol on three different people, and two of those people ended up on the jury. The challenge where she was literally one piece away from winning was incredibly tense, and she played a really impressive game -- definitely one of the most athletic female players in a long time.

Coming into the next one, it was the classic (now actually named “Simmotion”) twisty ball challenge, and perhaps one of the shortest we’ve ever seen? Mike lost at one ball, with Maryanne not far behind, and Jonathan really didn’t last that long when he was down to just him and Romeo. And suddenly Romeo had won a challenge, not that he needed it as the least likely person to win, but it was nice that he also had a real moment of something in the game after playing so long from the bottom of the pack.

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That last firemaking challenge was an interesting one, mainly because the only thing Romeo was really doing was making it more or less likely that Maryanne would win. She might’ve won firemaking against Mike and easily crushed the other two, or lose to Mike who certainly would’ve won in that case. But it was certainly the most entertaining option to watch the two dudes both do well at the firemaking challenge, that’s always more fun to watch.

On the final day, we got a really great (new?) thing where we go back between the jury members talking to us about their thoughts on the final three while also hearing from them too. That plus the fun flashback stuff the show’s been introducing has really made the season one of the more compelling seasons -- see, you didn’t need all of those twists, the cast and editing made it great already!

In the final tribal council, I think that a lot of people wanted to get a different sort of answer from Mike about his game -- he started a bit too strong in the “integrity” perspective, but even he had to admit that yes, of course he lied to protect himself. He also suffered in that Maryanne was a demonstrably better speaker, someone who didn’t stumble once in any of her answers. I think that the jury liked both of them well enough, but needed that justification to really vote for Mike.

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It was going in an iffy way for Mike already, but the true nail in the coffin was Maryanne’s reveal of her never played idol at the exact perfect moment. Calling it the “one secret in the game” -- hilarious because everyone was sharing their secrets constantly. I don’t think Mike would’ve been an undeserving winner, but there’s something really nice about someone winning with such a great, fun personality.

At the reunion Jeff is even really nice to Maryanne, calling her a really great winner (and embarrassing her) and hopefully helping to convince the viewers at home. Overall, I’m happy with the winner, even if my #1 winner picks had already been voted out (Omar, Hai, and Drea), Maryanne is a solid winner in my book. I really enjoyed the season, two stupid twists aside, and Survivor has really been killing it with the casting choices.

Next season on Survivor 43, a brand new cast of interesting and diverse people, with some fun new confessionals that are already getting me hyped. Can’t wait!

Survivor 42 S42E12: Caterpillar to a Butterfly

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Survivor gets another shakeup as the game loses another great player.
by Jeremy Fogelman

This week on Survivor, we lost Omar and must ask: How? For a long time, he managed to stay in the shadows, manipulating people and keeping away from attention. Omar was able to get people like Mike to think their plans were all Mike’s ideas, but it all came apart starting last episode. When Omar was involved in Mike “lending” his idol, that was the seed of potential “maybe this guy is too good” but Mike was still not ready to turn on him.

But then Drea called out Omar’s move (in what was a shady and entertaining moment) so everyone knew the dude was super competent. Because of that, despite getting back his idol, Mike now realized he’d have to turn on Omar and tried to convince Maryanne of that, which she was resistant to -- at first. But everything changed again when Lindsay tells Mike about her idol, which he then proceeds to tell everyone but Omar about.

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Suddenly Maryanne thinks she’s perceived as a “goat to be herded” and refuses to accept that -- it’s her time to make a big move. And her only real option is to turn against a big player, and at this point, that’s either Mike or Omar, both of whom have aligned with her in different circumstances. It’s funny that Lindsay revealing this idol (which she doesn’t even need to play) directly led to Omar getting voted out, because Omar didn’t directly do anything.

So Maryanne’s move becomes obvious -- it’s easier to get people to target Omar than Mike, who is so “keeping my word” that he’d probably be a bitter juror if he felt betrayed. The only trick then was to make sure Lindsay didn’t find out about this plan and to get Mike and Jonathan onboard with not voting out the easy choice in Romeo. We didn’t see this particular final choice, but that’s typical for Survivor to keep that suspense going.

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Which means we say farewell to Omar, a great player who really lost due to the “I need to get out a better player” move by Maryanne, a classic move. So going into the finale, we have a really interesting final five contestants. Romeo has no chance to win, so he’d be the perfect goat to take to the end -- but will he get the easy vote out first or will he be carried to the end?

Jonathan is unlikely to win, because he’s annoyed people, and I can’t really think of a combination of two people he’d win against unless they really screwed things up at the last minute. Lindsay has a legitimate chance to win against Romeo and Jonathan for sure, and maybe even Maryanne -- she hasn’t played the most strategic game, but she’s certainly likable.

Maryanne hasn’t done much until recently, but now she has a real shot to convince people -- the only real “strategic” threat left is Mike, and although he could definitely win versus some of the players left, I’m not sure about all of them. So it’s a legitimate tossup -- and I think that means an interesting final five, even if it’s unlikely to be that complicated now that the most strategic players are gone.

It’s been an interesting season of Survivor so far, with a mostly great cast and mostly not-annoying twists (except for the 'Do or Die' and Hourglass ones). I can’t be entirely sure how I feel until I watch the finale, of course.

Next time on the Survivor finale, a battle royale, top five, fake idols, and fighting to the bitter end.

Survivor 42 S42E11: Battle Royale

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Survivor delivers an unneeded twist in an episode of big moves and big mistakes.
by Jeremy Fogelman

This week on Survivor, our dear Drea was voted out but the reason was unfortunately easy to understand: she was a strategic threat already and she foolishly gave away her advantage info to Omar which directly led to her getting voted out. If Drea had simply kept her foreknowledge to herself, her new enemy Mike might’ve gotten voted out instead.

Dear Drea was a strategic threat, but unfortunately an all too obvious one -- her Terminator-like behavior at tribal of repeating “I observe” certainly didn’t sound that friendly or non-threatening. At this point in the game she had merely survived already being a target, so she really needed to outplay the others -- and revealing to Omar was a huge mistake.

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However, her outing of Omar’s betrayal as she entertainingly dragged most of her fellow contestants might spell the end for Omar’s under the radar strategy. She gave Mike the “kiss of death” by calling him as the likely winner if he makes it to the end, but also praises Lindsay and Maryanne. So even for vote out mastermind Mike (and actual vote out mastermind Omar), he suffered from poor optics this episode.

Alas, the Survivor gods shined brightly this week on one person, and one person alone: Lindsay, as she beat the odds in her Monty Hall “Do or Die” twist and stayed in the game despite having (as she noted) made a foolish mistake competing in the immunity challenge. Although this twist is not as bad as the Sinister Hourglass twist, I still don’t like having it ultimately come down to a game of chance.

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Still, I was certainly tense about the winner of the immunity challenge, especially as Lindsay had been getting built up as the only one that can stand against Jonathan in challenges. The big man didn’t have the best episode either, despite having won immunity -- he was clearly annoying people to the point where they wanted him gone, regardless of any immunity prowess.

As for the rest of the gang, Maryanne continues to play the well considered non-threat game -- she considers the double edged sword of being not seen as a threat also meaning that people wouldn’t vote for her to win. She’s definitely a thoughtful player of the game, and certainly a very entertaining one.

At this point I really only see Romeo and Jonathan as the “can’t win” players, as people actively disliked by other players -- which is the real kiss of death for the final winning vote. Omar’s stock went down a bit while Lindsay’s rose a bit, while Mike stayed steady and Maryanne moved up -- Romeo and Jonathan went further down.

Overall, despite the annoying twist, it was quite the fun episode, losing a great player that will clearly become the case until the finale because it’s nearly all great players left. Quite a place to be in.

Next time on Survivor, the Taku four made it to the final six, and Maryanne isn’t a goat to be herded!

Survivor 42 S42E10: Tell a Good Lie, Not a Stupid Lie

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Survivor tosses out a blindside in what has become a new pattern.
by Jeremy Fogelman

As the rain finally calms down and people get some sleep, we ask our question of questions: Why did Hai lose and get voted out? In this case, I put Hai in the Shan camp of being a bit visibly good at the game with a theoretical ally betraying them -- she got voted out 11th while Hai got voted out 10th. This is part of the new school post 'Winners at War' style, which I suppose doesn’t have a name exactly.

At first, Survivor players post-merge would vote out physical and immunity threats, disloyal people, and simply people in the minority. Then you started to shake things up with alliances breaking apart to make big moves, and that was the “big move” era. In that era, the most dangerous people were the obviously social and talented people. In general these were targets that had significant chances of winning the game at the final council.

But now, in the post-“big move” era, people target the theoretical winners of the game once their capabilities become too obvious. That’s why you had Erika winning last season -- twists aside, she was strategic but not too strategic -- but also not too passive. That seems to be the trick to getting further in this era, but as more and more players realize this, it becomes trickier and trickier.

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At this point, Hai was indeed one of those players, but he pushed things a bit too far a few too many times. His move to convince Mike to betray Rocksroy grated on Mike, so he became a super easy target for Omar’s believable lies about Hai. Suddenly Mike was dead set on getting Hai out, just like he was with Chanelle -- and we saw how that went. Hai also miscalculated with his move with Jonathan -- his idol move was definitely an “overplay” moment.

It’d have been one thing to use a fake idol as a trick or threat, but to expect Jonathan to believe Hai would play it for him? Even the less savvy Jonathan wouldn’t fall for that one. Instead, we saw the rise of Lindsay this episode, her winning two challenges in a row, and being on the right side of everyone’s conversations -- her only bad moment was missing an idol. Omar also continued to manage his subtle social game -- if he can keep it up without blowing his spot, he really has a great chance of going to the end.

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Both Drea and Maryanne had good moments too, with the latter finding a new idol and the former managing to stay off anyone’s radar. The episode also had our “loved ones” moment, with a sweet take on the classic “videos of family” idea. That’s all well and good, but the more interesting part was leading into the tribal council when it was legitimately hard to guess who was heading home.

But is Jonathan a real threat to win? Bringing a “goat” or someone less likely to win is still a valid strategy, and at this point I don’t see any way he could win against any other player. At the tribal council we heard such interesting metaphors as “Survivor Jenga” or “Long distance runners with blindfolds on” -- while Lindsay simply hilariously said that they were all sick.

Too bad about Hai, he was a fun player -- but everyone left is also a fun player, one way or another. What a nice way to move into the endgame for this season. Maybe we should’ve guessed it was Hai’s final moments with that lovely little flashback moment for him.

Next time on Survivor, new targets arise and there’s some sort of twist.

Survivor 42 S42E09: Game of Chicken

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Survivor delivers another very special episode that is already generating controversy.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The most recent episode of Survivor presented a case of unusual strategy because it was split into two tribal councils, the result of one directly influencing the second one. The show has done this sort of “two random tribes” thing before, and it’s usually a good idea. Everything started with a classic “never plan excessively” situation where Rocksroy decided that it was time for an all male alliance.

This was certainly a classic misread, as perhaps only Jonathan and Mike might have remotely been okay with that idea. Omar had allies other than the dudes, as did Hai, who besides wasn’t interested in what he called the “misogyny alliance”. And the Survivor gods of chance delighted in this, having the new mini-tribes set as all the dudes on one side except for Jonathan, who joined the ladies on the other -- meaning that the odds were suddenly in that team’s favor.

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Initially Romeo would seem the obvious target, but Rocks’ male alliance business presented a situation where Hai was concerned about him -- it’s a legitimate concern removed from any racial in/out biases. Hai’s closest ally was Mike, so the two were a critical voting bloc -- and Omar was also more connected to either than he was to Rocks or Romeo. So it was in many ways a bit of a tossup, but until the second council, I didn’t really note the pattern -- Chanelle really did make a lot of mistakes after all.

But for the second mini-tribe, our main storyline was Jonathan’s really precipitous fall from grace. The dude salivated over the idea of a big move by targeting Drea and flushing her idol -- again biases aside, she does have the majority of the advantages and is clearly more socially and strategically aware than Tori or Maryanne. But Lindsay easily poked holes in Jonathan’s master plan, which was pretty amusing to watch, and she had a more interesting idea -- split between Tori and Drea in case the latter plays her idol.

And here again Jonathan made a serious error, arguing and telling Lindsay she wasn’t listening and she actually apologized to him. We see that mirrored again in the tribal council when Jonathan accuses Drea of being aggressive and is mainly concerned with not being seen as racist -- in contrast, the more socially aware Lindsay is more verbally an ally and defends Drea in that interaction.

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Once the pattern of black players voted out is pointed out by Drea, it’s hard not to see it -- even if some of these things are incidental or coincidental, the players cannot avoid having their biases despite their best efforts at it. It was a pretty fraught council, with Drea and Maryanne doing their best to explain many of the subtleties of the nature of the game, including the reaction from the audience at home.

So both Drea and Maryanne ended up playing their idols while Jonathan had his immunity, thus it went pretty obviously to Tori, who was already the least trusted person in that group (and perhaps the tribe). Meaning we lose both a man and a woman this episode, keeping the relative weights between men and women about the same.

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But the really interesting thing is that each tribal council was for each mini-tribe, so they didn’t see the other one -- makes you wonder how the information will really disseminate between them. Drea certainly made herself two likely votes on the jury with Chanelle and Rocks, who visibly showed approval at her actions -- and since she has more influence and social game, theoretically, she’s more likely to get those votes than Maryanne.

Lindsay acquitted herself well despite Jonathan probably losing the game for himself, while on the other tribe, only Romeo still seems unlikely to go far. Mike, Hai, and Omar all have decent enough skills in the game -- when Hai and Mike debated voting out Rocks versus Romeo, they both had pretty good points. Sometimes that’s a rarity in this game.

Anyway, don’t read the comments.

Next time on Survivor, names are being brought up all over the place.

Survivor 42 S42E08: You Better Be Wearing a Seatbelt

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Survivor shakes up the obvious vote when paranoia rears its head.
by Jeremy Fogelman

As we shake our heads and wonder at what might have been, we ask the question: Why did Chanelle lose and get voted out? Poor Chanelle was already in a poor position, being someone we saw last week get awkwardly avoided by multiple people. She was already in a bad position and had made a few mistakes, but she didn’t really manage to improve her situation this week at all.

The real danger to Chanelle was the silent (except to us) fury of the scorned Mike, who had gotten a vote from her when she said otherwise -- it’s absurdly personal of him, especially considering he voted for her in that same tribal council! But outside of Chanelle, whose social game isn’t great, Mike has a really good social game.

We see early on Mike mentioning that he’s found the role of the wise older friend who is also more than willing to learn from the youngsters -- after a nice little scene where Omar teaches him about Islam, Mike tells us that “we all ain’t that different” which is certainly true, but amusingly put.

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So Chanelle was already considered the least trustworthy and thus the target, but then Romeo almost ruined his own game with his paranoia -- some panic was warranted as he was the next target, but he really did make it too obvious about his politicking. Thus it seemed that Romeo was next, and Chanelle was maybe playing it correctly by doing nothing, until Mike heard the plan -- he was so hellbent on voting out his former ally that he utilized his social game to switch the targets back. And thus we’ve lost another female contestant.

Otherwise we get interesting play and chat from various people -- Omar continues to be the dude in the shadows, which puts him in a very powerful position if he can stay that way. Maryanne got emotional a lot, both to us about feeling not worth the same, but also cleverly, manipulating Omar into stepping out of the immunity challenge to get more rice for the tribe. She also made Jeff laugh by screaming loudly as she dove into the water.

Drea is also playing a low key, impressive game, managing to gather four advantages of various sorts -- the “red handed” literal paint twist was great, leading to Tori actually realizing that Drea was up to something. It’s a new twist that actually works, even if the Knowledge is Power advantage is still way too powerful.

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And of course, Jonathan continues to dominate at challenges, even if he lost to Tori who is apparently the new immunity challenge beast? A pretty good episode for Tori after a much worse start to the season for her. We also see steady, considered play from Hai, and not much from Rocks or Lindsay -- although there were bits at least of each one.

At this point we do have a decent number of interesting players and pretty good ones too, with an episode that I wasn’t sure how I wanted it to go -- it’s usually a good sign about the editing and pace of the episode. It’s been a pretty good season so far, even if in a lot of ways it does feel really similar to season 41 -- hopefully things really get nuts in the episodes ahead.

Next time on Survivor, more dudes than women, two people will win immunity and two people will go home.

Survivor 42 S42E06: You Can't Hide on Survivor / The Devil You Do or The Devil You Don't

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Survivor double packs its merge episode with a redo of the controversial time travel twist.
by Jeremy Fogelman

As our Delorean comes to a stop and we save ourselves from being erased in a photo, we ask our perennial query: Why did Lydia lose and get voted out? In this case, it seemed that it was a matter of people not trusting the right people, but also other people having the right trust in people.

Coming into the tribal, it seemed clear that Omar had at least raised the possibility of targeting Lydia instead of Jonathan or Maryanne by successfully painting her as someone untrustworthy -- and all because he and Jonathan were such close allies. It helped that Omar was both completely safe and had no vote, making him seem more like someone entirely harmless and without the ability to get a target back on him.

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Lydia’s only clear mistakes were with Chanelle, although she wasn’t the only one. She was awkward and cagey enough that Chanelle noticed, but then again, everyone in that majority alliance attempt was awkward multiple times when Chanelle was around. It certainly made for awkward television, if shades of The Office -- although Lydia does trust Omar enough to tell him that maybe Maryanne is the target.

And Maryanne and Jonathan were both on the Taku tribe with Omar, which certainly could’ve been a dangerous move. So it’s a shame to see someone else interesting go home, and Lydia was a fun character -- but that’s sort of the situation we’re in with this “great cast” season.

The episode started with a recap of all of the various and sundry advantages gained, none of which have been utilized yet -- so you know that things are really going to get nuts soon enough. We also had a cavalcade of great bonding moments between people, like Romeo calling out how much he respects Hai for being completely comfortable with himself, Lydia and Maryanne bonding about their Gen-Z connection, or Mike and Jonathan about preconceived notions about being physically intimidating.

The time travel twist of Season 41 returned, but with another twist on the twist -- this time Jeff actually tells the “winning” tribe that they’d be giving power to the person exiled -- and they picked Rocksroy despite that. I get that, but we did hear at least one person correctly predict what Rocks might be able to do.

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Watching Rocks thrive out on his own was fun, as was hearing his various phrases like “Holy moly!”, “Jiminy Christmas”, and “Yippie Ki Yay” -- pretty hilarious. But it was honestly hard to believe that Rocks would do anything other than save himself and reverse time. The “cons” of the pros and cons of the time travel twist are still not strong enough to justify doing anything but breaking that hourglass.

Still, the ensuing scramble did lead to a pretty fun series of strategic tomfoolery, including the quite impressive run from Omar -- it’s a great addition to a potential winning resume, if he can make it that far. Similarly we have other strong strategic players, even if it’s not always so clear -- I did like Maryanne’s new take on it: A problem is a shield in the future. Only issue is that being clever paints a target on her back, which she doesn’t need. So definitely a lot of interesting possibilities in the future in what was a fairly entertaining episode, even if I hope they seriously reconsider this twist in the future, no pun intended.

Next time on Survivor, someone is creating chaos, people are scurrying and paranoid.

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.

Survivor 42 S42E04: Vibe of the Tribe

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‘Survivor’ sends someone out after people talk a little too much.
by Jeremy Fogelman

As we look back at a particularly chaotic episode, we ask the question: Why did Swati lose and get voted out? The simple answer is that she played a bit too hard and got noticed by another good player, mainly Romeo.

Although I think that’s true, it’s also true that it was down to a bunch of cascading dominos, one of which was Swati’s mistake -- which is telling Tori that Drea was targeting her, because she wanted to get the target on Drea instead. It’s not a terrible idea, but it relies on the premise that Tori would keep that to herself, which she didn’t -- she also managed to keep her heavy annoyance with Rocksroy to herself and the confessionals and got useful information from him while telling him about Swati’s reveal.

Going through all of these people and back and forth, it is revealed that Swati was playing the “young, shy, unassuming girl” game and telling everyone she was their number one. It’s theoretically a good game, except that she pushed too hard, too early -- if she had simply allowed Rocks or Tori to get voted out (as they were the easy targets) I think she could’ve lasted much longer in the game. Or even to the end, as that was sort of how Erika won Season 41.

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So we say goodbye to a smart, pretty decent player, but one that was a little too careless with her plans. It’s a shame that we’ve lost two interesting people these last two weeks that weren’t simply screwing things up, but at least Swati is more the author of her own demise -- makes a better tale if she ever returns.

As for Tori, I was a bit concerned about her mentioning her therapy work and that Rocks was acting like a narcissist -- if she’s saying he has a narcissistic personality disorder, that’s pretty specific and unreasonable. If not, she’s being irresponsible from a professional perspective -- but then again, I can see how she might simply have been trying to simply add color to her confessional by making it personal about her unique perspective.

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As for the other tribes, we get a little bit with Taku with a weirdly troubling backstory from Jonathan but also some acknowledgement that he is aware he is a physical shield for others on his tribe. I wonder how things will blow up when it becomes a liability to keep him around -- I mean the dude is called “Goliath” and “Thor” by people on the other tribes after helping Taku dominate two challenges in a row.

Otherwise we have another “obvious tribe loss” edit situation here, where we focus nearly entirely on the tribe that’s going to lose. Although it’s useful to get information about what’s going on, I feel like it’s an easy pattern to notice, so I hope the show shakes things up as we move forward. Can Taku even lose at this point? A tribe swap is likely inevitable, considering that only Taku hasn’t lost anyone.

As for our friends back on Vati, Daniel acknowledges to us that both he messed up and Chanelle is refusing to admit her role in things. Both true, of course, but because of Daniel’s frenetic behavior last time, people are clearly less interested in listening to him -- we do see Mike agree to switch to Hai and Lydia instead, which certainly does not bode well for Daniel.

Altogether a messy but entertaining episode -- I prefer watching people lose because they’re playing too hard then by twists and circumstances, so I can’t be mad about that, even if I’ll miss another interesting player.

Next time on Survivor, more fights and more potential problems.

Survivor 42 S42E03: Go For The Gusto

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Survivor showcases a great physical performance and a lot of terrible strategic ones.
by Jeremy Fogelman

It was a ridiculous series of unforced errors that answered the perennial question: Why did Jenny lose and get voted out? Unfortunately despite clearly being smart and good at  puzzles (she certainly helped with that triangle one), both she and Lydia were on the “not strong” part of the targets. But it was also about a very specific split team and a mistake made in multiple places.

I don’t really think Jenny made a particular mistake, at least that we saw, so instead we need to look at the bizarre situation where she was betrayed by an ally.

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After Jonathan absolutely destroyed the challenge, Omar and Chanelle get sent to the risk your vote island -- and both give excellent, correct reasons to protect their vote -- and then both switch at the last minute and lose it! Chanelle should’ve realized how precarious her position was and protected herself -- that would’ve been enough to protect her alliance.

As for noted superfan and paranoid Daniel, he had quite a few “epic fails” -- he dropped Mike’s idol for one, and spiraled out of control when it came down to the unprecedented “two votes left” situation at the tribal council. Hai immediately had a stronger position since Daniel was saying he didn’t want to go to rocks -- but if he had a stronger reason other than uncertainty, we didn’t hear it.

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Daniel kept throwing Chanelle under the bus to make himself seem less of a strategic thinker, which she correctly pointed out -- and of course, he eventually backed down and voted out Jenny. So Daniel leaves this episode in a pretty bad social position, and poor Jenny is the victim -- although if Chanelle had not lost her vote, likely Lydia would’ve been voted out instead.

Most of the episode focused on these strategic choices, but we did see Maryanne find the second of the threeway shared advantage and pretty cleverly drop her odd phrase at the immunity challenge. Mike noticed but didn’t say anything (smartly), as the third one hadn’t yet been found. And of course, it was highly impressive to watch Jonathan manage physical feats no one else could manage, and acted fairly humbly afterwards about it -- he’s an interesting player so far, certainly. Not the cliché of the physical dude who brags about his prowess.

So two firsts for the episode, one that was Jeff skipping half a challenge due to safety reasons and the other where it was literally down to two people with votes. But that made the episode both exciting and frustrating, because I don’t really like watching people make errors when they shouldn’t have to -- everyone makes mistakes, especially as the game continues and people get hungrier.

But at this early stage of the game, it’s less enjoyable and forgivable. Still, there are plenty of interesting players left in the game, even if it’s likely Vati may be permanently damaged. Curious to see how these people will act after this terrible situation.

Next time on Survivor, even more arguments seem to arise.