Survivor Recap: Split Decision

This episode is a perfect distillation of everything I hate about the “new era.” While there was some uncertainty and intrigue at Tribal Council (which is the thing I love about the new era), I don’t think that justifies the ideological sacrifices the producers made to get there.

I’m pretty much up for all of Jeff and his crew’s experimentation, but I plead with them to adopt two key tenets. The first is to never leave anything down to chance. Jeff assembles the players and tells them they’re going to be divided into two groups of six. How? By drawing rocks. Oh, Jesus. Not this again. There is nothing more boring than a player losing their game because of bad luck. Survivor should be about decisions and their consequences. When there are no decisions, there are still consequences, but they aren’t that interesting. Why did Tiyana go home at the end of this Tribal Council? It’s essentially bad luck.

For the challenge, two groups of six people were selected by random draw. Whichever team lasts the longest, the whole group is safe, gets a reward, and gets to watch Tribal Council but doesn’t get to vote. Whoever lasts longest on the losing team gets individual immunity, but the other five are the only ones who can go home.

Now, imagine this if there were some decisions to be made. What if they all arrived and Jeff said that only two people are competing in the challenge, and the group gets to choose who those people are by a vote. Then, after those two people are chosen, everyone writes down who they think will win on a piece of paper. If they were right, that means those people are safe. If they were wrong, they and the losing player are all up for elimination. This opens up countless scenarios and all sorts of politicking and exposes what players are thinking about each other in a way that will have effects on the rest of the game. Imagine only two people choose one of the players, and there are only three people who can be voted out. That would be super interesting and something Survivor hasn’t done before.

I know Jeff would never adopt this tenet. How? Well, on the “Apply for Survivor” commercial we get every episode, Jeff says, “Random draws are unpredictable. That’s why they’re so much fun!” Know what else is unpredictable? When you get large groups of people together with complex dynamics, you let them make bargains and decisions. A random draw lasts 30 seconds; this could last all episode. But no. Survivor insists on giving us the smallest possible voting group each episode, which leaves no room for maneuvering, no room for surprises unless they come up with an idol or an advantage which, to me, is usually the least interesting part of the game.

The other tenet I would lobby for is that everyone votes every time. I could make an exception for the Shot in the Dark, but so far, that’s only been deployed successfully a couple of times and only once with actual impact on the game, and I would probably get rid of it entirely. I would also make an exception for something like safety without power because, again, that is a decision that someone can make with their own vote rather than just losing it due to circumstances beyond their control. Again, decisions have consequences, and consequences make for good television.

I don’t understand why the safe group doesn’t get to vote and also why they were separated from the losing tribe. Even if the winners did lose their votes, wouldn’t it have been more fun to have them in on the decision rather than just sitting around hunting for idols and playing baseball like the X-Men in the opening panels of an ’80s comic? Wouldn’t the former Gata (RIP yellow team) trying to save Rachel by making bargains with the Tuku Five (RIP blue team) have made for some great scrambling? Also, it puts this decision within the greater context of the game to come, possibly shifting alliances or voting blocs. Again, the bigger the group, the more dynamics at play, which means more potentially explosive gameplay.

But I know why they were separated. It was so that someone on the winning tribe could find an advantage to send over to someone on the losing tribe. In this case, it was Sol, who is a much better advantage finder than Andy, who not only missed it but also alerted everyone that he was looking for it.

Before we continue, a note on “edgic,” the system used by Survivor superfans to determine who the season’s winner is by analyzing the edit and gameplay. So far this season, we have seen Genevieve get a “mastermind edit” where she is thinking and other players’ words are swirling around her head, as seen by flashbacks at the edges of the screen. This happened just before she pulled off the Kishan ouster. In this episode, Andy gets the same “mastermind edit” after he finds out from Sol that Sam threw him under the bus as the backup plan. What if each of the final three or final five gets their own “mastermind moment” over the course of the season? That means Genevieve and Andy are “confirmed” making it to the finale. It will be interesting to see who else gets this new and interesting editing technique.

Anyway, Sol’s advantage gives him the power to choose one of the losers and give that player a choice at two powers, either they can block someone’s vote or they can have a safety without power, where they don’t vote but they can’t be voted out. As soon as he gets it, we know that he’s giving it to Rachel.

The way the teams shake out (stupid luck!) Rachel is the only non-Tuku on her team. That means the easiest thing for them to do is put five votes on her and call it a day. But the Tukus figure out that if they vote in a bloc, the other two tribes, with three members a piece, outnumber them, so they would just pick them all off. However, the talk about voting out one of their own never seems to get off the ground. Tiyana has been gunning for Gabe for weeks, so she tries to get Rachel and Kyle — who is wearing the ugliest immunity necklace created by man or beast but more likely a beast — to vote out Gabe. Her lynchpin is Caroline, but she doesn’t want to bite because she says Rachel is the most dangerous player in the game. She tells Tiyana she would consider it if the sixth person was anyone other than Rachel.

At Tribal, we find out that Rachel has selected safety without power and goes back to camp, leaving Jeff over a bereft former Tuku who doesn’t know what to do. Someone points out that it is like a time warp, and this is basically what would have happened if Tuku had lost immunity and was going to vote someone out. Yes! This is why it sucks breaking people up, especially by luck. We are supposedly past the Tribal section of the game, but it is still alive because stupid Tuku are the only stupid people here at this stupid Tribal because stupid Jeff wants a stupid advantage to cause stupid turmoil so he can get his stupid rocks off. I swear to God, whispers at Tribal Council are like Viagra for Jeffrey Lee Probst. It’s the only thing that excites him anymore.

I’m also convinced that if Rachel hadn’t taken the out given to her by Sol, she would have been going home. This is also a failure of the former Tuku. Rachel is approached by Tiyana about getting Gabe out and Gabe also approaches her about getting Caroline out. If I were Rachel, I would have gone to either Tiyana or Caroline and been like, “Gabe wants Caroline out,” which might have swayed her to vote with Rachel, Tiyana, and Kyle. Also, if any of those groups had made Rachel more comfortable and made her think that their plan might actually work, then she could have taken the Block A Vote, and then she could have pulled a move off with just Kyle and Tiyana and gotten rid of Gabe, but that never seems to have materialized. The failure to do so seems like it’s already backfired on Tuku. In the preview, we hear the other castaways say they’re targeting the tribe because they saw that they were only going to vote out one of their own because luck and Rachel’s power forced them to, not that they were going to do it on their own.

There was also a missed opportunity during the Tribal whispers portion of the evening. Gabe tells Kyle, “Caroline will do whatever we fucking want.” When Kyle goes to talk to Caroline to try to convince her to vote out Gabe, he should have told her that. “Gabe thinks you’re a patsy, and he’s controlling you” would have possibly swayed her away from voting for Tiyana and sticking with her bloc with Gabe and Sue. This was really an episode about a lot of missed opportunities that left us feeling like we were in a previous stage of the game. This episode was interesting, sure, but I feel like relying too much on luck, small groups, and disenfranchised players, the show focuses more on cheap thrills than good gameplay. The only person coming out of this looking great is Sol, who gives a Meryl Streep–level performance, pretending that he doesn’t know about the advantage. But he was given a choice, and he got to make it, which led to consequences. See, that was the best part of the episode.