We’ve made it to the halfway mark, and this season is feeling decidedly mid-tier. It’s no Thailand or One World, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the show at its best — seasons like Cagayan or Cambodia. It’s unfortunate how far we’ve come, considering how much potential the season kicked off with, but this week’s episode is quite a low point. In an attempt to build calculated suspense with advantages or dramatic challenges, the producers have once again lost the plot. People are the key to the Survivor equation! Scheming, lying, building, and promptly destroying trust: This is when the show is strongest. Instead, we’re back to advantage-palooza. And based on what we saw, there’s practically no explanation for this week’s vote. Cody calls Dwight “eerie†once and suddenly the votes are stacked against him? At this point, an unpleasant pattern is emerging.
So far, seven people have been voted off the island. First, we lost Morriah, Justine, and Nneka, three women of color in a row. Lindsay, a smart but paranoid woman whose anxiety blew up her own game, followed. Next on the chopping block was Geo and, most recently, Elie. I’ve said it before, but two women of color winning the past two seasons might be causing some nasty implicit biases to surface. This week, three names caught votes: Ryan, Dwight, and James. James found an advantage that everyone knew about, creating a giant target on his back. Okay, I buy it. Ryan has been a challenge beast and now that we’re down to individual immunity challenges, maybe it’s time to get him out before he goes on a run. Okay … I buy that, too, I guess? But how does Dwight fit into the equation at all here?
Survivor comes to life in the editing bay, but poor editing also kneecaps the show. Hours and hours of footage from multiple camera crews recording constantly for a month is a lot to parse through, and creating a coherent episodic arc that works with the final winner in mind is no doubt extremely difficult work. But this week, we watched a whole hour without really learning anything new about the tribe’s social dynamics. Cassidy, Karla, and Ryan didn’t get a single confessional, and despite being voted off, Dwight had just one. Why are we being kept in the dark, too? Surely, there had to have been more intense conversations we aren’t seeing because the Dwight vote just doesn’t make sense.
We know by now I’m not the fondest of dear Gabler, but here I am, attempting to give credit where credit is due. First, a slight amendment to last week’s recap where I mentioned Gabler is a heart surgeon. He is not. He has, however, been a part of many surgeries as a heart-valve specialist. There’s a little tease about Gabler maybe going home tonight after publicly blowing up the Baka alliance, but the way this season’s trending, it’s no surprise he cuts any possibility of tension by winning individual immunity. Whether or not Gabler was actually at risk, I’m not so sure. He and Sami are clearly tight, and Owen is so wishy-washy about working with or against him. There have been no legitimate threats against Gabler, even when his “enemy†Elie was still around. Instead of spending time explaining where and when this wild-card vote against Dwight came together, this episode spent far too long on the immunity challenge where we learned all about some of Gabler’s former patients. After two weeks of boo-hooing about how exhausted and malnourished and freezing he is, Gabler suddenly has a burst of strength and is able to hold on to a bucket carrying 25 percent of his starting body weight with one hand while he showboats. Add it to the list of things not adding up this week …
When James finds an advantage hidden in the shelter after the challenge, the news that he found something spreads across the beach rapidly. Noelle is leading the charge to vote James out because of this new, unknown power. More importantly, there’s a shuffle of advantages in case James has stumbled upon a Knowledge-Is-Power. Noelle gives her Steal-a-Vote to Owen; again, poor editing makes the rationale blurry for this. Owen already knew Noelle had an advantage from their journey together, but has their relationship strengthened enough since then for her to trust he’ll give the advantage back? Even more befuddling, Jeanine gives her idol (!) to Dwight. First of all, if I ever get my hands on an idol, you’d have to pry it out of cold, dead fingers before I’d just give it to someone else for “safekeeping.†But when did Jeanine and Dwight even connect enough for this to happen? As we’re sitting here trying to piece together where this all went wrong, I’m sure Jeanine was doing the same thing back in Fiji because once Jeff began reading the votes, Dwight was unable to give her idol back. All that legwork to make the DIY idol and it’s flushed away for no reason. A powerful player getting their torch snuffed with an idol in their pocket usually feels like a shining moment of strategic success, but Dwight was neither particularly powerful nor was the vote against him really to flush the idol out. It’s a lucky turn for everyone else that Jeanine’s idol just happened to walk out the door with Dwight.
For a short season with supposedly no time to waste, this episode really felt like filler. The worst part of it all might be that Dwight didn’t even make jury. After all the emphasis on how hard it is to earn the merge, somehow Dwight is actually the final non-juror, not Elie. Making it to the merge is supposed to mean something, and if I were Dwight, I’d be absolutely pissed. He earned his way to the merge tribe and therefore earned his right to remain an essential part of the game as a juror. A confounding episode at best, this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season. Things can change in an instant, but we’re missing a certain charisma from the remaining castaways. If someone like Karla doesn’t shake things up ASAP, this season will just fizzle out.
Burning Thoughts
• “Everyone has told me I’m okay, but I just wanna cry,†actually too relatable, Jeanine.
• Another Owen quote for the title of this episode. Is there anyone out there who has a spreadsheet of any winners who have coined multiple episode titles? I’m dying for Owen to step up a little and make some moves, and I know he has the potential to!
• The only positive thing I have to say about this episode: great immunity necklace, beautiful necklace.
