I hate nothing more than being wrong, so I must admit that the Shot in the Dark turned out to be a halfway decent twist this week. After saying for a few seasons that it’s never used correctly and it doesn’t add anything to the game, it turned Tribal Council totally on its head. I have to admit when Jeff unscrolled the scroll and it said “SAFE,” I screamed a little bit in my living room.
While I was wrong about the SITD, this episode just proves to me that I’ve been right about everything else in the new era. This episode proved that all the things I (and plenty of other fans) hate about the post–Winners at War status quo created a crisis in the game itself, which led to one person on a tribe of four deciding who gets to go home. No one who believes in the integrity of the game and its ideology — that the tribe decides who wins and loses — should be onboard with these changes.
Let’s start with the first thing wrong, which is dividing everyone into three small tribes where, in almost every instance, one of those tribes is decimated. The episode starts with equal time for all of the tribes, but none of it really matters. Based on how much we saw of David in the recap and how much time was spent on him talking about how he lives in a trailer in his father’s front yard, it seemed for sure like he would be a linchpin to the whole episode. However, it’s all moot. (I will add that David needs to dump his girlfriend. He says if he doesn’t win $1 million so that she can be a stay-at-home mother of four kids, then she’s going to break up with him. She is more in love with some idealized, imaginary lifestyle than she is with David, the person, so even if he wins, he needs to show her the door. Even his friends think so!)
Similarly, everything we learn at Lagi (purple like the nerple) — about how Eva is throwing out Thomas and Bianca’s names, and they’re now gravitating closer to Star in order to get her out — is negated. We got another great moment with my doppelgänger Thomas where Bianca tells him that she lost her vote for him to then keep his advantage all to himself, but what little joy that brought me does not outweigh what seems like wasted time.
Both of these tribes are essentially moot. Why? Because Vulu (green with anything but envy) loses their third straight challenge, this one a Survivor classic where a caller has to guide their blindfolded tribemates through an obstacle course. They’re going to tribal again, and so it’s only the dynamics of their tribe that matter.
As the challenge ended, it was only halfway through the episode, so I knew something had to be going on because there was still a lot of episode left. There is a journey, of course, but even after the journey, the timing seemed off. Anyway, Lagi won and decides who goes on the journey, sending Bianca from their own tribe, Kamilla from Civa (orange you glad I didn’t say Civa), and Justin from Vulu. This brings me to problem No. 2, which is the new era and possibly my biggest complaint. The journey is a dice game with seven dice with skulls and flames on them. If the person rolls four skulls first, they lose their vote; if they roll four flames, they get an extra vote. Nothing on Survivor should ever be left to chance. Period. Players don’t even have a choice on whether or not they want to play. A puzzle I don’t mind because it requires skill. I also wouldn’t mind something else that challenges players’ morals or intellect, like whether they take a big bag of rice for the tribe or an extra vote for themselves. But this is just dumb luck and the thing about dumb luck is that it is dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Justin, who is going to the Tribal Council, loses his vote, as does Bianca, leaving Kamilla the only one with a victory and an extra vote. I might care if we ever got to spend any time at Civa, but we don’t because we’re always at Vulu being annoyed by Sai’s gameplay that is giving Rome 2.0. Justin also decides to keep his loss a secret and tells the tribe that he was rolling dice with different-colored question marks. Oh, wait, he’s from Boston. The dice had different-colored question mahhhhhhhhks.
The day before losing, Mary was running all around the camp, trying to get away from Sai long enough to find an idol. However, after their loss, she comes back and decides to take a swim to make it look like she may have an idol or some advantage. This was actually brilliant gameplay because Sai can only think of one way of playing the game, which is harder than JD Vance in a Jennifer Convertibles. “I can’t believe you’re giving up like this; something ain’t right,” Sai tells Mary, who just shrugs and tells her it is her time to go, and she has accepted it.
It seems like it’s working on Sai, who wants Cedrek and Justin to vote Mary and her to vote Justin so that if Mary has something and votes for Sai, then Sai is protected. The only problem is, Justin doesn’t have a vote. Justin was smart not to tell anyone, because if Mary figured out Sai would vote for Justin and she also voted for him, then Justin would go home.
However, when we get to voting, there is still a lot of episode left. There is no idol in play, so what, exactly, is going to happen with this here vote? As I said above, Mary plays her SITD and is safe. The SITD is chance, of course, but I don’t mind it so much because it is a chance the player opts into. Mary didn’t need to leave it up to chance, but she sacrificed something, her vote, and made a decision to leave it up to chance. Decisions and their consequences are great; just blindly rolling dice is boring.
Jeff reads the two votes, which are both for Mary. I was a little bit shocked that Sai hadn’t gone rogue and voted for Justin, because she does not seem like the type of player to listen to anyone else. Also, that there were only two votes should have been the first clue to Sai and Cedrek that something funky was going on. They go to revote, and as Sai approaches the podium, she says, “This is what happens when you trust boys.” I think that both Thomas and I can tell her, from bitter experience, that you should never trust a boy, especially a cute one.
Jeff reads the votes, and there is one for Justin and one for Sai. Jeff tells us that in the event of a tie, the tied voters can’t vote — but in this instance, since Justin has no vote, then Sai gets to vote, but she can only vote for Justin. That means Cedrek is essentially deciding if he wants to send Justin home with Sai or force another tie. They vote again, with Sai approaching the parchment and saying, “Cedrek is honestly the worst.” Cedrek votes for Sai again, probably because he knows that she hates him now. This is when things get complicated. Know how we know? Because Jeff goes from his vote-counting podium and sits back in his chair. Gather ’round, children, Grandpa Probst is going to tell you about the time his machinations broke the game. Oh, wait, that’s not how he’s framing it. He’s saying it’s “historic.” Yeah, well, the COVID-19 pandemic was historic, and look at how much all of us loved that.
Grandpa Jeff tells us that typically with a deadlock, the tribe would discuss and if they can’t come up with a decision on who to send home, they draw rocks. However, those with votes against them don’t draw rocks, and Mary is safe. So that means Cedrek would essentially be dooming his own game, which he should have figured out when he voted against Sai the second time. This means that Cedrek is the only person who decides who gets to stay or go.
This is what I hate about the new era: paralysis. Jeff wants us to think this is exciting because we don’t know what is going to happen, but the suspense isn’t for a good reason. It’s not because someone played an idol well, flipped the numbers, or figured out a loophole and voted differently than they said they would. No, we’re in suspense because we don’t know the deep parliamentary rules of Survivor about what happens when one person has lost his vote, one has given up a vote and been named safe by the SITD, and one person is a surgeon who wouldn’t know good gameplay if it stabbed him with his own scalpel.
Cedrek says he met Justin first, which makes it seem like he’s going to keep him even though the order in which they met seems to be almost as arbitrary as rolling skull dice. Then Sai makes the only good argument, which is that she has always told him the truth and that Justin lied to him about losing his vote. This seems to work, and Cedrek turns to Mary and Sai and says that he will make a decision based only on the stipulation that Mary and Sai can squash their beef and start working as a tribe.
This is foolish for several reasons. Cedrek just betrayed Sai’s trust not once but twice. Why would she ever work with him again? If Sai were smart, she would squash her beef with Mary by teaming up with her and getting rid of Cedrek. He put all his trust in Justin, so why not just boot Sai for good? Secondly, as we saw in the preview, they’re going to be switching tribes in the next episode, so the bargain he made for a stronger tribe is a complete wash. Now instead of having a loyal soldier in Justin, who would have been on his side for saving him, Cedrek now has Sai going to another tribe and telling everyone that Cedrek can’t be trusted. He’s essentially ruined his whole game after being painted into a corner thanks to a Kafkaesque set of rules that had to be written because there are too many twists, too many risks, too many people losing their votes, which is something that should never happen. We watch Survivor to be excited by the interpersonal dynamics, the blindsides that happen because of betrayals of trust, the reversals when someone chooses themselves over loyalty. All of that is exciting and human. What we don’t watch Survivor for is Jeff reading us the fine print, which is what we got tonight.