Following last week’s easy elimination of Nicole, possible disaster tribe Kele returns to camp down a member and without a single win in this game. Nicole might be gone in the name of tribe strength, but Annie’s not exactly a star physical performer either, so morale can only go so high without flint, supplies, or food (unless you like worms, I guess). But Annie herself doesn’t give a damn about losing. She’s fine with it as long as she can play hard and believe she’s the puppet master, and that means gunning for Jake with Alex as her unwilling ride or die.
It’s this overconfidence and lack of social awareness that puts Annie squarely at the bottom. Not only is she digging her own grave by gunning for the clear leader of the tribe, she’s annoying the hell out of her would-be numbers by acting like a camp dictator. Bossing Sophi and Jeremiah around, making them go coconut hunting, and drinking all the coconut juice for herself. Jake’s so fed up with her he resumes the shoe bandit routine just to get back at her.
Over on Uli, the vibes are the total opposite. Savannah’s catching crabs, Shannon’s a spiritual leader for the group, and Nate’s learning to deal with how open everyone else is, weird Gen Z slang included: aura, cinema, vibes, rizz (not to be confused with Rizo aka The Rizgod). Generational differences aside, Nate and Rizo actually have a connection and solidify a loyal, diverse alliance with Savannah and Shannon that could run the game with their variety of strengths. But we still have a couple of outsiders to address. There’s Sage, who’s really lovable and fun to be around with her wacky stories. Then there’s Jawan, who’s acting super shifty with his wood/idol hunts and already spiraling a little bit. To make it worse, he accidentally takes Savannah’s bag for his firewood collecting, pissing off the warrior princess with the power to send him packing.
All the while, the dominant Hina Tribe is doing as well as a tribe can in terms of the survival elements, and the game’s moving fast. Matt, Steven, and Kristina have a trio in the making with MC as a fourth. But Matt makes it painfully clear that she’s the bottom of that group, so she can’t really commit long term here. So for now, MC’s loyal to this little family if that’s where the votes fall, but she’ll go to Sophie and spill some beans about this trio in the meantime. They want her out before merge as a late game threat, but if the opportunity arises, MC and Sophie can launch a counterattack and usurp power with a bit of finesse and a little luck.
But all these power structures could be upended by the first Journey of the season as Advantage Island looms large. Matt, Jake, and Jawan willingly answer the call and face a challenge: a classic game of tossing coconuts into hanging baskets, with the last person standing winning some kind of power in the game. And praise the gods, nobody’s losing their vote tonight! Did it really take NINE seasons for them to realize that aspect of the format sucked? Yes. But better later than never… Too bad I spoke too soon, though, because there’s still a vote loss mechanic here. Buuuuut it’s not that bad, especially compared to the god awful dice game last season.
As the winner of the challenge, Jawan gets to pick between two rewards. He can either steal one of the two losers’ votes to get an extra vote for himself, or he can penalize one of the other tribes in the next immunity challenge—selfish power versus tribal power. Back at Uli, Jawan returns with good news and reveals he’s penalizing another tribe. Selfish gameplay wouldn’t build the trust he needs to scrape himself off the bottom, but being seen as a team player might get him in good with the powers that be and buy him a lifetime in the game.
Meanwhile, Kele is 0 for 4 with their challenge losses, so it’s another day of low morale and petty annoyances with the shoe bandit’s trickery making it even worse. But as Annie continues bumbling around on the bottom looking for her shoe, Alex finds Kele’s Beware Advantage with Jake and decides to risk it from a position of relative power. The tricky part? He can’t actually start looking for this idol until they lose another challenge, in which case the next clue will be hidden at the well.
A torturous twist on the formula as a player who gets to get stuff done ASAP, but as a viewer, good! Save the idol hunt highlight reels for the strategy-heavy scrambles and let us get to know the players first with chill camp life instead. Maybe it’s just me but like… is production finally learning that new era twists can take a backseat and not be main characters over the actual humans they put on this island?
At the immunity challenge, Hina comes in with another hype dance, only to be slapped down to Earth with Jawan’s challenge penalty. As their punishment, they must carry twenty pounds of coconuts on their backs for the entire course, and deal with sorting through multiple keys to unlock their rope gate instead of just the one. But even against the disaster tribe Kele and a heavily hindered Hina, it’s Uli who manages to shockingly fall behind early on… only for Kele to once again extend their losing streak by bombing the puzzle at the end.
So while the Journey twist might’ve fallen short of some huge TV moment, I still think it paid off. It gave the players actual choices without robbing them of agency, and the impact of the twist wasn’t totally game-breaking even if didn’t succeed in sending Hina to Tribal. Hopefully this is a sign of what’s to come in the future twist-wise.
But what’s to come now is another Kele Tribal Council, and dare we say this is just an easy Annie boot without much suspense? Sophi fears she’s in danger after falling apart on the puzzle, though, and there’s always the talk of taking Jake out, even though he’s probably not going anywhere. Back at camp, though, Annie pivots entirely to targeting Sophi for her challenge performance… and nobody really cares. The others just keep Annie clueless and laugh about how out of the loop she is, and that’s that.
Alex needs to get his vote back and find that idol this evening, so he teams up with Jake and Sophi to get the job done. Digging around the well, they find a ball and chain with a key, alongside a map that leads them to the idol, stored in a locked box that Sophi actually finds first. Despite her attempts to hide it from the bros, Alex finds it anyway. To make things messier, Jeremiah is forced to be included in the search after stumbling across the trio digging in the jungle, so now he’s feeling shaky about his standing with this group himself.
So with the idol in his possession, Alex gets a bold last-minute idea: make a big move to snipe Sophi out of the game, keep Jake all for himself, and use Annie as his secret number to maintain control if Kele loses again, which, let’s be real, they probably will even with their weak links gone. But this last-second change of plans is a flimsy red herring when Annie is unanimously blindsided. It turns out that in this episode, with a literal ball and chain, the biggest ball and chain for this tribe was Annie and her lack of social awareness.
Honestly, after her challenge performance tonight, you might as well say Sophi’s still a ball and chain herself when it comes to puzzles, not that the others are much better at them apparently. This tribe is competent enough physically (mostly thanks to Jake the tank), but everything else? As Rizo would say, they’re cooked.
But as much of a shipwreck as Kele has been, we’ve seen loser tribes go on to produce competent winners like Denise and Kenzie, so early losses won’t always predict later ones. But man, I’m so tired of disaster tribes dominating the pre-merge narrative these days, especially when they seem almost rigged into existence by the new era format and lopsided tribe divisions. And it’s not like Kele is bringing some iconic messy moments like Yanu or Lulu did. They’re not having much fun out there beyond Jake reheating Rupert’s nachos to keep himself sane. They’re not bringing fun dynamics to the table, unlike Vula last season, where every round was a total disaster for better or worse. They’re just losing everything, and it’s just kinda sad to watch.
The season’s still alive, though. It’s just dealing with a slower start. I trust these more cerebral, cutthroat players to bring life to the merge at least, which couldn’t be said for last season’s crop of main characters, who thought they signed up for Survivor: Borneo. It’s just the process of getting to the merge that might be rough. Is Kele just going to keep losing until they’re decimated? Will a swap bail them out and breathe some life into things? And are we really going to lose their strongest player over a sea snake bite next week? No idea. But the loser tribe woes are just a storm we have to weather at this point. Pray for the merge, and pray it’s good, because this is all we have to tide us over until 50.
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As someone who really enjoyed S48, it’s really just not fun reading Cory spouting negativity about it over and over, even into a new season. If you didn’t like it, fair enough. I just don’t find such a negative attitude fun or interesting to read, so I think I might be done with the recaps here for a little while.