Survivor is back with another season of 90-minute episodes, 18 new players with some familiar faces in the mix, and despite the usual New Era woes, I’m excited! The last two outings didn’t miss, so can we go three for three, or will the 90 minutes go from a blessing to a curse and give us a legit snoozer?
Right off the bat, Jeff sums up the season’s theme: community. Survivor is ultimately a social experiment with a game layered on top, so while flashy moves and strategy are important, the social skills and dynamics you forge on the island make up the meat of the adventure. And if you thought this would be a subtle part of the season, hold on to your buffs because this season carried on from where 46 left off and delivered a messy premiere for the ages.
Once our players are given their tribe names, it’s off to a reward challenge for supplies which the yellow Gata Tribe wins despite falling behind early on. That leaves the red Lavo Tribe and blue Tuku Tribe to compete for the second set of supplies… but Sweat vs. Savvy is no more! This time, both losing tribes nominate a player for a head-to-head challenge where only one can win.
Tuku sends TK while Lavo sends RHAP podcaster Aysha, forcing them to race through the jungle looking for keys hidden in pictured locations. Asyha finds her keys quickly but struggles to find her way to the beach, where the final key awaits. But TK doesn’t care about trails and paths, opting to storm down to the beach and overtake Asyha for the win.
In the spirit of community, the tribes are all about forming connections and pecking orders. Gata opens with the introduction of Jon Lovett, former speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama turned host of Pod Save America. Nobody knows who he is when he brings it up, so he can rest easy with nobody targeting him for his fame. Meanwhile, Andy is doing the math and finds a solid group of three would give him the best range of connections with the tribe, linking up with Jon as his number one with the number two spot still available. Too bad he might not find a taker, because it’s not long before Sam and the women notice how close that duo is getting and form a loose coalition of four.
On Tuku, eager superfan Gabe is playing hard, forging an early connection with Sue. His goal was to work with the older players because he himself is an old soul, and at 59 years old, Sue fits the bill as a great ally. But while Gabe is thinking strategically, Sue’s thinking socially and actually becoming the core of the tribe here. She quickly bonds with Caroline, taking her under her wing as her island daughter, and she’s got her trio ready to go.
And on Lavo, Teeny and their quirky sense of humor is endearing to the others. Kishan’s medical experience as an ER doctor makes him popular as well, and the two nerds geek out as the first duo on their beach. But Rome is playing hard, too, hoping to work with Teeny and Genevieve. That leaves Sol enigmatically out of the loop and Aysha awaiting judgment for losing their supplies upon her return.
While TK’s victory is appreciated on Tuku and quickly endears him to the other men (much to Caroline’s chagrin as she’s our resident bromance hater), Aysha opts for honesty and finds herself in a solid position as RHAP fan Teeny recognizes her and brings her into the loop. They said Aysha deserved a chance to audition for the fourth spot in the majority, and it seems she won the contest over Rome and Sol.
Speaking of Rome, he’s already confident in his game to the point of marching into the jungle to look for idols as the rest of the group mocks him. But with nobody else looking, he’s able to find a Beware Advantage right away and put the assumed hierarchy of the tribe in danger. But first, he actually has to get the idol, and this season’s not making it easy. Step one is finding a locked box on a public path, and step two is finding the key to unlock it, hopefully without getting caught. Rome doesn’t feel safe going for it just yet, so he hides it away and vows to return at night to claim his prize.
The following day, Rome runs off and finds his box, learning the key is hidden at the bottom of his tribe’s well. Rest in peace Lavo’s drinking water, but Rome’s going in headfirst, covered in dirt and sweat. And while he finds the key, he doesn’t have time to celebrate as the rest of Lavo heads his way. Instead of cooking up a cover story about why he’s soaking wet and panicking, he just bolts down the trail. He might be on his way to having an idol, but he’s also made five enemies and doesn’t even realize it.
While Rome is taking the messy lone wolf approach to his idol hunt, Gabe is going all out on Tuku when he finds his own Beware Advantage. With TK in range of seeing him snatch it up, he makes off with the package and bolts to the box, then to the key… and of course, TK stumbles upon him and knows what’s up. Gabe played too hard instead of using the idol as a bonding moment, which puts the bromance at odds of falling apart as TK reads Gabe like a book. He can try to pass off the random discovery of the key as an out-of-order mistake, but TK wasn’t born yesterday. He knows Gabe’s got info, and it’s only a matter of time before it blows up someone’s game.
So TK is out of the question as a close ally, but Gabe still has Sue to help him out as a lookout. Working together, the old souls pull it off, and Gabe discovers production is in the mood to troll them even more this season. Inside the locked box… is another locked box. Gabe can stop here and take an idol good for one Tribal, or he can sacrifice it to do another task, one that would give him an idol good for three Tribals.
Taking his time to grab the second key from a chunk of driftwood by the beach, Gabe secures the upgraded idol… and finds another locked box. If he accepts and completes a third task, his idol is fully powered to the final five, but Gabe wisely quits while he’s ahead and settles for the middle-tier idol. Not a long-term prospect, but good enough to get him to the merge if he needs to bail himself out of a bad position.
But you know who’s in a really bad position (or at least thinks they are)? Andy. Lovably named Baby Andy in the Survivor community, whose nickname will probably be used against him by toxic trolls because he’s got a case of island paranoia unlike anything we’ve seen in ages, and he quickly rationalizes himself into a downward spiral. Jon’s out there bonding with people a decade younger than himself, and they’re cheering when he cracks coconuts. But when Andy cracks coconuts, it’s all crickets. Sensing he’s at the bottom, he turns to Rachel for help, but she keeps him at arm’s length and thinks he’s coming across too eager and not level-headed enough to really help her long-term.
As night carries on, Andy has a panic attack over feeling left out and once again asks for Rachel’s support. She’ll play nice and do her best to support him human to human, but she knows how this looks to the rest of the tribe: she and Andy are close, and if he’s a liability, she could go down with his ship. Andy senses her pulling away and spirals further, realizing all his talk of having a solid identity on the first day was meaningless. Mentally, he’s right back in high school feeling left out and ignored, and in a million-dollar game where you don’t sleep or eat, the effects are tenfold.
At the immunity challenge, it’s such a blow out for Lavo that we don’t even see them doing their puzzle. Blink and you’ll miss them putting the last piece in before anyone else can even start it. It comes down to Tuku and Gata after both tribes flipped their boats in humorous fashion, but Tuku pulls off the win and ends Gata’s winning streak early. From puzzle masters to puzzle disasters. And just to make Gata look even more like they inherited some of Lulu’s curse via the yellow paint around their camp, Andy has another panic attack and collapses on the sidelines, treated by medical as he feels his elimination coming on the horizon.
I honestly feel for Andy here. I’ve personally gone through those moments of extreme self-doubt where you feel the world is out to get you, and you don’t know where to go or what to do because everything you’ve tried is failing. Not fitting in hurts, and to have your dream crash and burn because of it must feel like Hell.
But I can’t defend Andy on everything, because deciding to spill his entire game and reveal he was going to throw his best friend Jon under the bus to save himself in front of the entire cast? Yeah, we’re in full Lulu territory here, and Andy is just a medium for the spirits of Hannah and Brandon in this episode. Jeff reminds Andy he’s not out of the game yet and sends Gata back to camp for what most people assume is an easy 5-1 boot, and as conversations start, it certainly seems like the writing is not just written on the wall but engraved in it. Andy is a loose cannon. You can’t work with someone like that, so they might as well mercy-boot him before he spirals further.
But Jon is the unexpected wrench in the plan to eliminate the guy who just threw him under the bus because when he discusses the plan with the women, he’s not a fan of being the backup target. Andy has come around to wanting to stay and play, and Jon ropes him into another plan: voting Anika out. Andy agrees to burying the hatchet, but they still need two votes: Sam and Sierra. But Sam ain’t having it. He was sure about Andy going, but with Jon throwing himself on a grenade to save the hot mess, he has second thoughts and floats the idea of voting Jon out instead.
Arguments can be made for each side in the debate between Andy and Jon. Jon is level-headed and fun, but he’s weaker in physical challenges and doesn’t quite fit in with the younger crowd outside of randomly mentioning how much he loves TikTok. Meanwhile, Andy is a disaster emotionally who brings the tribe’s spirits down. Still, he’s at least capable of bulldozing challenges if they need muscle, and he’s not going to outwit anyone strategically in his current mental state. Rachel finds herself conflicted more than anyone. Andy put his trust in her and might be an ally if he cleans up his act, but she can’t be his island therapist and sink her game for his sake if he doesn’t.
Ultimately, it’s a group decision, and the group decides, in a shocking turn of events, that Jon is the first boot of Survivor 47. There was an enormous amount of hype about this man’s reputation and storytelling capabilities, and he’s around for, as he puts it, one glorious and perfect episode. Just one. And he wasn’t even that memorable in it. Definitely a bummer if you’re Jeff imagining Jon as the next Penner or Mike White, and my condolences to the Pod Save America fans out there who only tuned in to watch their guy talk himself off the island immediately. But it seems he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory trying to save Andy, and trying to game the situation to his benefit backfired.
And that’s another premiere in the books. It was emotional, it was dramatic, and it was shocking… but it was also packed with hit or miss treasure hunting drama, so a lot of the cast hasn’t really popped yet. We certainly have big stars on the board with most of them playing terribly so far. But time will tell if this season is going down the full mess path again like its predecessor or if the trainwreck energy is just the early jitters of bad players flaming out in glorious fashion, paving the way for a more savvy cast to run the show.
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