Back to Earth

Survivor S38E10

I’m having a hard time concentrating to write this post. I’m going to see Avengers: Endgame in a couple of hours and the big battle in Game of Thrones is tonight. I never want to skip an episode of a show I’m writing though so here we are with a new Survivor recap coming your way!

The last couple weeks have had some epic episodes, it was only natural that they would come back to earth at some point. This episode wasn’t bad by any means, it just was a good straight forward classic episode with a pretty predictable result.

After tribal, everyone gets back to camp and Lauren is still shocked. We see a confessional where she doesn’t know who would be best to go after: Wardog and Ron to avenge Kelley, or Devens because he is such a threat. Gavin and Wardog start bickering. Gavin really hates how Wardog was talking to him like a dog, which really struck a chord with him since he mentions it multiple times throughout the episode.

Gavin is forced to jump alliances quite a bit since everyone is blindsiding everyone in any alliance he is part of. He approaches Victoria and Ron, wanting to come back to them; they seem to accept him. Later on, we see Ron apologizing to Julie about leaving her out on the vote. She says it’s okay, it’s better to not always vote together. Seems like a strange thing to say when she had a meltdown a couple weeks ago when she was left out of the vote…but whatever.

The next morning there is a conversation between Devens, Wardog, and Ron, all discussing how they are such biggest players in the game. They are each other’s biggest threats and greatest hope. They discuss how it will be tempting to take each other out but if they can resist that then they can get to the end together. This kind of conversation in an episode is never a good sign; almost always foreshadowing someone’s doom.

Reward Challenge

WHAT!? WE HAVE A REWARD CHALLENGE! I was kind of hoping survivor eliminated them because they are so boring and inconsequential to viewers. I get they are huge for the contestants to get the food and comfort to survive; but rarely do the results impact anything. Julie, Devens, Lauren, and Wardog win the reward. It doesn’t matter what the actual comp was; some sort of race, obstacle course, and puzzle.

The winners got to go to a mud bath spa place. Had some funny scenes of Wardog and Devens rubbing hot mud all over each other. Pretty stark contrast from Devens and Wardog being aggressive to each other after Devens got back in the game. I was happy to see Devens making changes and playing less emotionally. It can’t all be good for Devens though, they show us a confessional where Devens says he isn’t wanting to talk strategy with Julie and Lauren since they aren’t even playing the game. Of course this is immediately followed by Julie and Lauren on their own plotting to take out the two men. Lauren pitches Devens, Julie pitches Wardog; we don’t see their final decision at this time.

Back at camp, the reward challenge losers are hanging out. Ron is bummed after losing the reward but happy to have alone time with Gavin, Victoria, and Aurora. They are trying to figure out who to target. The consensus lands on Devens; Gavin wants Wardog but is willing to vote with the group that has the numbers. They also show us that Ron gives back the extra vote to Aurora to garner trust. I don’t get it, but if he thinks it will help, good for him I suppose.

There is a scene that is shown that felt really weird and out of place and it took me awhile to figure out why. Aurora is making rice, and Ron and Aurora start arguing about how much to make. Aurora says they are both drama queens and she isn’t going to give up an argument. Ron calls her the Rice Nazi; which is a fantastic Seinfeld reference. The scene seemed so out of place and random, we don’t usually see things like this on episodes. Then it hit me what it reminded me of. The way Survivor is currently played is all politics and game play; you get almost no actual camp life and survival. I’m currently watching Season 13 Cook Islands right now and back then there were decent portions of episodes showing camp life and daily annoyances that they had to deal with. The Ron Aurora fight was a good throwback to that.

Edge of Extinction

Man, EoE is pretty damn boring when there isn’t a hidden advantage being hunted down. Kelley is struggling with EoE life and getting voted out with an idol in her pocket. Joe and Aubrey are comforting her and bonding (Where you at David!?). Reem tells us how she is really happy Kelley is finally out and calls Kelley out to her face how she ruined Reems whole survivor experience voting her out first. This was actually not boring at all and pretty funny to watch

Immunity Challenge

It’s the first non endurance individual immunity challenge! It’s an obstacle course with a puzzle at the end. It was a pretty exciting comp resulting in Devens winning again! I was so pumped when it happened that my cheer caused my cat to bolt away and hide on the other side of the room. This was a must win for Devens as it seemed everyone was on the same page to vote him out. I really hope Devens is searching for hidden immunity idols now and production just isn’t showing us because he doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.

After the win, everyone was scrambling for a moment to find who they would target instead. They pretty quickly settle on Wardog. Ron is a little apprehensive because after Wardog, he thinks he will be the biggest threat. Which is a little bit of ego because on the threat level he was 3, behind Wardog and Devens. Wardog of course isn’t going to take this lying down and is trying to get numbers for Aurora. Julie seems to possibly be considering it and Lauren is okay with Aurora going home over Wardog as she states, “I know the Devil I’m working with”. Meaning she knows Wardog more than Aurora and can try to read him better.

Tribal Council

Jury comes in and Kelley looks at Wardog, shaking her head, he smirks at her. Jeff asks how things are going at camp as there are less and less people. Wardog says it’s tough as everyone is talking to everyone. Gavin reacts surprised which of course Jeff calls out and Gavin says Wardog hasn’t spoken to him since right after the Kelley vote where Wardog spoke to him like a dog and he doesn’t like being spoken to that way.

This whole tribal has one buzzword that is used a million times…”Threat”. I was tempted to rewatch tribal and count up how many times it is used and then changed my mind because the number would be so high. Jeff basically goes person to person asking everyone about who they see as a threat and how much a threat they see themselves as. No one is directly naming anyone, which is a smart move. Wardog acknowledges he is the biggest threat after taking out David and Kelley. He groups Ron in here saying THEY did it which made Ron’s eyes get real wide. Jeff calls this out and Ron does accept responsibility for his part in it.

Vote time…and Wardog is gone, shocker! Kelley is ecstatic and mouths “I love you” to Lauren. Which is funny that she loves her so much even though she outed that Lauren has an idol to the EoE group, which means one of them is coming back into the game. Wardog tells them on the way out that they all made the right decision, and that he will be back. I really think Wardog is confused about what the word “threat” really means. Sure, he is a wildcard and would turn on anyone at anytime, but that’s not strategic or anything. It really just puts a huge target on you because you prove no one can trust you. Threat is someone who can strategically take out people and smooth it over after, or make moves to protect you. Wardog burned all of his bridges until he was reliant on two other big threats to cover himself. Also, Wardog can’t win any competitions so that is a huge portion of being a threat he just isn’t capable of doing.

See, it wasn’t a bad episode, but a pretty straightforward one with a predictable ending. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be writing about Devens elimination next week which a pretty big bummer but what can ya do. I really wish the alliance between him and Victoria worked out. There is still time though! I really feel like a floater is going to win this season which will be quite the disappointment from the last few great winners. Well, I have to go get ready to be blown away by Avengers: Endgame and post a bunch of spoilers for everyone…bye!

“Puppet master” curse strikes again

Survivor S38E7

Thanks for everyone who checked out my post last week! Please let me know any feedback you may have. I do this because It’s fun to write about, but also don’t want to torture anyone with terrible writing. Now onto the show!

Last Week Tribal Aftermath

Once again we start the show with no “previously on” or title sequence. I really don’t mind actually, I always find both unnecessary and would rather see more of a show anyway than the 7th time listening to some music and clips of the contestants.

After an episode of pushing Kama Strong so heavily, the rest of Kama kind of poo poo’d that by excluding one of their members in the plan to vote out Joe. Aurora, who was very close with Joe, had no idea he was going to be cut. I have no issue with not telling her; she can say in hindsight all she wants that she wouldn’t have told Joe if that was the plan, but how many times have we seen in the past where someone close to the target was let in on what was going to happen and blew it all up? Regardless, Aurora was very betrayed by being left out and we can now clearly see a rift between her and the rest of Kama. After we are shown Aurora dealing with the hurt of being left out of the blind side, we cut to people already trying to jockey for position in the game. There are a couple important conversations back to back with Ron, David, and Devens and another one with Wardog, Lauren, and Kelley.

We get a confessional from Ron about how David and Devens owe him one now and they will trust him and are loyal to him now. Cut back to this 4 way conversation and Ron blows up Lesu’s plan to vote one of them, making sure to toss in how they were “evil about it” in regards to the way Lesu wanted D&D out. Ron made a great move by working to make the rift between these two and the rest of Lesu as wide as possible. Which we soon find works for one of them, but not the other. We also get the first mention of the apparently coveted Family Visit in this talk, that’ll come back later, many…many times.

Wardog is perplexing to me. I hate his nickname so much, that when talking about the show, I refuse to use it, but will use it here for clarity. I question how much he actually strategizes versus just throwing out every idea until one finally lands. ANYWAY…Wardog throws out the idea of trying to win D&D back to the Lesu side. He wants to tell them they they can be mad Lesu voted for them last tribal council and get revenge, but be at the bottom of Kama, or they can work together and pull in Aurora and take Kama to rocks.

Reward Challenge

My least favorite part of Survivor is reward challenges. I don’t really care about challenges much, aside from their ramifications to the game, and this early when it isn’t a “pick who you like more” reward, they don’t hold much weight to overall game play. Aurora, Eric, Devens, Julie, Wardog, and Victoria win and the biggest effect this had was that Kelley and Lauren could approach and convince David to go with them against Kama6 and also that David needs to convince Devens to join (which David thinks should be easy to do).

NO ONE should ever call themselves a “puppet master,” or they WILL be cursed. The moment you feel confident that you are running everything, you will lose it all . Around the point in the episode where Ron called himself a puppet master, I figured that something was going to happen to Kama.

The best moment of the episode was Devens and Wardog walking through the jungle. It was an overly aggressive and not well thought out conversation by Devens but it was hilarious to watch. Wardog pitches the old Lesu and Aurora plan and Devens is saying how much he’s dying to get back with them now that he knows he can trust them. When I was hearing this, I thought I heard some sarcasm in his voice, but brushed it off because no one is that overtly sarcastic when talking to other contestants. I was wrong. Devens finishes by saying “I really wanna get back with you all…except that I don’t fucking want to get back with you guys at all.” I thought Wardog was going to shit himself. He looked hurt and thrown off that someone would call Lesu out for backstabbing them. Wardog tells Devens that if he stays with Kama, it will only get him 8th or 9th, but with Lesu, it will get him further. Devens makes the great point that he knows it will get Wardog and Kelley further, but he doesn’t know it will get him further. Although I don’t agree with how Devens handled the the situation, I agree with his point. He will be at the bottom of the resurgent Lesu since they already went after him twice, or he could go with Kama and be at an unspecified rank, but not guaranteed bottom with them.

We were able to witness what seems to be the beginning of the end of the D&D partnership. As mentioned earlier, Devens is all for Kama, David is with Lesu. They seem to be at an impasse regarding a plan. The craziest moment is when Devens says he thought David would have given him back the half of the idol and David says he is going to hang on to it for now. It really sounds like David might be looking for a new ally.

Time to check in on Edge of Extinction. They all received messages in a bottle as clues to find a hidden advantage. Everyone goes looking, but Aubrey finds it! She gets to practice for the challenge they will have to do to come back into the game. To me, practicing a challenge isn’t a great advantage. I get that it does help, but if I’m finding an advantage, give me an extra vote or an immunity idol, something big. Lucky for Aubrey, this practice advantage also comes with an extra vote she can give to anyone, which she ends up giving to Aurora.

Immunity Competition

We have another endurance comp this week. Everyone stands on their tip toes and pins a block between their head and a bar above them. There is a scary moment that happens during the competition that may expose how big of an asshole I am when it comes to these games. Lauren is still in the comp and mentions that she is getting dizzy, but stays in. She ends up saying that she can’t see anything and is about to blackout, when she suddenly drops to the ground. Jeff and medical rush to check her out. People out of the competition tell Victoria and Aurora that people are taking care of Lauren and to keep going. While Lauren is being checked out, Aurora starts talking to Victoria, trying to convince Victoria to drop so she can win immunity and feel safe after being left out of the loop last week. Julie and some of the other players are upset that Aurora is talking game while Lauren is passed out. This makes NO sense to be mad about. I’m sorry…I thought the point of coming on this game was to win a million dollars. EVERY win, regardless of what is going on, matters. What happens if Aurora drops and goes home because she was being nice and didn’t make an effort to get the win. She would have literally given up 1 million dollars for someone who ended up being fine anyway. It’s the perfect time to have this conversation because you’re down to one other person you need to convince, and maybe their emotions are high due to what happened, making them more vulnerable. WIN IMMUNITY CHALLENGES. Victoria doesn’t end up giving in, but it doesn’t matter because Victoria drops and Aurora gets the win.

After the challenge, we get back to camp and all the Kama people are talking, planning what to do for tribal council. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I can’t remember seeing people in a group pushing “get to the loved ones” this strongly, but there is Eric and Ron tossing that out over and over to try keeping Kama6 in line to go after Lesu. Again, the point of this game is to win a million dollars. I love you mom and dad, but I’d be in the game to win the money, not see you guys on an island.

For sake of the length of this post, I’m not going to go into all the politicking that happened after the Kama meeting. Many different ideas were tossed around and it wasn’t clear if and how much the plan was going to change. One particularly important exchange was Wardog making a great move by first recognizing what Eric and Ron were doing with Derek and Devens, but then relaying that to Julia so she was aware of the backup plan in their own group.

Tribal Council

It was very interesting how in private meetings last week, the group was called Kama6, but in tribal council in front of everyone, the name switched to Kama7 to include Aurora. Devens goes as public with his Kama support as Ron did exposing and bragging about the Kama allegiance last week. Devens says he was out of the Lesu allegiance when they voted him out of it and will do whatever he can to show he is loyal to Kama.

Second week writing, second blindside! Julia and the other Kama members turned the table on the “Puppet master” and his partner and voted out the partner, Eric. Watching Eric’s face as the votes were read was hilarious, as you could see him doing the math in his head and then when the number got high enough to mean his own tribe turned, you could see the shock in his eyes. We get reaction shots of others and Ron “Puppet master” looks livid and Devens looks upset since he is immediately back on the bottom after connecting himself with Ron and Eric.

I’m torn on how this has been going, with Kama members getting voted out even with the majority. I like a lot of the members of Kama more than I do old Lesu. However, I really don’t understand and have always hated the “stick with your old tribal lines” bull shit. If there is a better game move and you can build a relationship with someone, it shouldn’t matter if they were arbitrarily placed on a different tribe at the beginning of the season as you. With these Kama’s being picked off, hopefully it will encourage more formal tribal mixing, making everything all the more interesting.

This Might Be One of Them!…But probably not.

Survivor S38E6

After I wrote my intro last week I was excited for a new episode to air. The episode opened with an overhead shot of the challenge grounds and no “previously on,” so I knew something big had to be happening. I was a little surprised by how quickly they yada yada’d through the tribe merge that finally would give the poor old Lesu tribe members a fighting chance. Little did I know that we were about to witness THE MOST ICONIC REALITY COMP MOMENT OF THE DECADE!

Jeff begins explaining to the newly formed Vata tribe that certain moments in Survivor become iconic. Some take years (still trying to think of an example of this…let me know if you have any…) and some become iconic the moment they happen. Now while this shpeal is going on I’m thinking to myself, “HOW PERFECT IS THIS!?” considering I had just talked about how much I love iconic moments. Then Jeff is throwing this soft ball right over the plate ready for me to knock it out of the park.

This moment, however, fell flat after Jeff had just tried hyping it up. Jeff gives a shout to “come on out!” and all the previously eliminated Survivors come marching out of the woods.What we got was a Big Brother Buyback that we have been seeing for years. The eliminated players are going to get a chance to compete against one another to get back into the game. Now, the competition itself was a pretty good one : lots of different old comps put together, ending in a really neat curved dragon vertical ball maze. The challenge was pretty close between Chris, Devens, and Wendy. I was hoping it wouldn’t be Wendy, because I still can’t get over the ridiculous hypocritical sudden vegetarianism. Both Chris and Wendy almost pulled it out, but much to my excitement my guy Devens pulled out the W!

Jeff gets a little savage at this moment and went through the rest of the Edge of Extinction (EoE) tribe, giving each of them their big moment to say why Survivor is important to them. It absolutely felt like he was going to send all of them home with a big thanks for playing. Suddenly, BAM, he reveals they get to go back to EoE and everyone goes nuts screaming. Keith’s reaction of dropping to the ground is especially humorous coming up later in the episode, where he and Wendy almost immediately raise the white flag and leave the game. Wendy wasn’t particularly enthused when she was given the news, which is highlighted by standing next to Audrey who looked like she was ready to go through a fucking wall to get back in the game.

The most exciting part of this merge was that we are bound to FINALLY get some screentime with other contestants who we know almost nothing about. The new tribe is all getting to know each other when we get the first glimpse of Kelley’s concern that Devens is back. Which doesn’t really make sense since he was the only person who left Lesu on good terms. Almost everyone back on extinction hates her and would be gunning for her, so Devens was best case scenario for her. From here, we get to see some other “new” faces. Julie is making strong connections with Devens, which he desperately needs with the returning member target on this back. During this, she says in a confessional about there being no way she would want to send him back to EoE.

Now it’s the time for the politicking and getting votes, one of the best parts of a Survivor episode. This is the real game time: making deals, and getting your hands dirty. The first we see is Kelley working on Joe and the old Kama (majority alliance) to go after Devens. Merge episodes are a bit chaotic with the politics. Everyone is sending out feelers and the editing is jumpy, trying to fit it all in. We immediately follow up Kelley and Joe’s talk with an All Girls meeting. The connection Devens made with Julie is almost instantly paying dividends when Kelley and Lauren are pitching him as an easy vote for the merge, which Julie is not on board with whatsoever and eventually makes moves to derail this.

Devens gets a little help though when he is going through his bag and finds a secret advantage. It’s an immunity idol, but with a twist! He needs to give half of it to someone else, and survive this elimination, then if he does, the two halves will become one idol which can be used after this week. He of course gives the other half to his closest ally, David.

Immunity challenge time. I won’t go on too much about this one, partially for length of this unnecessarily long post, but also because nothing wild happens. It’s an endurance comp where they have to balance a statue on a pole while standing on a balance beam. People start dropping fairly quickly and we get down to Julie, Joe, and Lauren. Surprising I think everyone, Julie pulls out the win!

The politicking takes a turn after the immunity challenge when Julie lets Victoria know she wants to go after Kelley and get one of the returnees out. Julie also exposes everyone else’s idea to Devens: they want to go after him, but she isn’t going to let that happen. Basically everything is blowing up.

A majority of the group decides to try to capture the chickens that Wendy released. Joe, of course, couldn’t be bothered to do anything, so he was staying back working on the damn flag instead of being in strategic conversation. Ron asked him what the plan was and Joe decided to be vague and dismissive. No matter what, when someone asks you about a plan, if you don’t have some sort of confident answer, you’re immediately making them nervous and they are going to put a target on your back. Ron realizes that Joe is valuable since he is known to win many comps, so he brings the idea to go after him to one of my budding favorites, Victoria. Victoria brings the Joe idea to the Kama6 and everything still seems up in the air.

Tribal council was a bit aggressive this week. Ron was incredibly open about the Kama6 alliance, rubbing it in the face of the other tribe members that they have a majority. It was not tactful. Victoria makes a vague comment about going after a bigger target than Devens, and Captain Jack Sparrow…er…Joe, took immediate offense. Victoria tried to talk her way out of it, but the cards had already been shown. The votes seem scattershot as they are being read between Devens, Kelley, and David. Then the turn happens and Joe is given the boot! All the Kama6 members have big smiles on their faces while everyone else, including the EoE members who are sitting in the jury spot, are completely stunned. The funniest reaction is Reem over on the jury saying, “Lame”. Could be because she hates Kelley so much, she wanted her gone over everyone, or now she knows she needs to compete against Joey Amazing to get back in the show. Joe is quite angry about being voted out and makes the easy choice to go to EoE.

There has been a lot of criticism of voting out Joe and giving him a chance to come back into the game. I disagree with this. Yes, I’m aware it is highly unlikely that Joe wins every immunity from here on out. However, the longer he is in the game, the more chances he has to make a “Meat Shield” alliance with others. We saw it last season where Nick made it to a point where he could win multiple immunities back to back and he was nowhere near the comp beast that Joe is. It is a much safer idea to get him out now and risk only a chance that he can win his way back in.