I can’t believe the first thing that I’m going to say about Survivor 49 is that the man, the myth, the legend, R-I-Z-G-O-D, Rizgod, baby, might actually be a good Survivor player. Does this mean he’s one of the two from this season coming back for Survivor 50? (If I had to guess, I would say it’s down to Rizo, Savannah, Sage, or maybe Jawan.) The episode starts with Rizo and Savannah returning from a half-assed tribal council where only half of the people voted and they’re triumphant. Everyone at camp who didn’t vote thinks that Sophie would go home for being a challenge beast and that they would flush Rizo’s idol. Neither of those things happened. Instead, Rizo convinced everyone to eject MC, saying she had too many allies back at camp and that this was their chance to get rid of a strong competitor. By the end of the episode, he would sway yet another vote and continue to hold onto that idol that absolutely everyone knows about.
Before the reward challenge, Sophie says something that really stuck with me. She’s upset that everyone assumed she would be going home, and that made her rethink her alliances. “My freshman floor friends are not my friends,” she says. Yes! Exactly that. I’ve written before about how three small tribes of six is an unmitigated disaster, and this sums it up perfectly. When you first arrive at college, you bond with those immediately around you out of survival. You’re new, you’re lonely, you want to do keg stands and hook up, and all of those other things college kids are supposed to do. But you slowly find out there are others out there who you gel with, who you have more in common with, and you leave those freshman floor friends for your real people. On a tribe of six people, you have to make those close connections for survival. But, because everyone on their tribe does the same, that is how you end up with “Hina Strong” throughout the game, because there are not enough available people to connect with who also want to connect with you. Players end up sticking to their original tribe not out of any real affinity but because of game mechanics.
I’m glad that Sophie is coming out of that nightmare and wants to play her own game. As it stands right now, it seems like there are a few axes of power in the game, all of which think that they’re in control. There is Jawan and Sage, forged in their mutual hatred of Shannon, who have a close alliance that everyone knows about. There are Steven and Kristina, who were on their first two tribes together with Sophie, still hanging around the periphery. Then there are Rizo, Savannah, and Soph, who seem like the strongest group in the game, mainly because they have an idol, an extra vote, and a Knowledge Is Power, respectively. Alex is knowingly playing in between all of these groups and refusing to pick a side until he sees where things shake out.
The reward challenge divides the group into two teams of four, with Soph sitting on the bench. The only remarkable thing is that Kristina’s team, with Sophie, Alex, and Savannah, wins the challenge, and Kristina decides to give her spot at the fried chicken dinner to Jawan, the only person left in the game who has not eaten real food at a reward. He doesn’t want to accept it, saying he doesn’t feel like he earned it. Finally, after some cajoling from the rest of the crowd, he says, “I think I want to eat the chicken, Uncle Jeff.”
Let’s stop right there. Of all the things about the new era that I hate, the one I hate the most is calling Probst “Uncle Jeff” or, even worse, “Uncle J.” Yes, I know that we’ve all been watching this man on television for 25 years, and he feels a part of the family. However, Jeff is not your uncle, Jeff is not your brother, Jeff is not your friend. This man has you out there starving, running around in challenges, and voting each other out for his amusement. Also, Jeff is the one who keeps making the game harder. He’s taken away rice from the tribes, he has started stealing the flints of the losers, he is making it even harder to bargain for the basic necessities of life, and they think this guy is cute and cuddly? You’re absolutely crazy! I don’t think that Jeff would take kindly to being called “unc” in the modern sense if he knew that it meant everyone thinks he’s old.
Before the immunity challenge, there are two schools of thought on who needs to go. Kristina and Steven are trying to whip people to get rid of Rizo because he has an idol. They want to split the vote between him and Savannah so that if he plays it, she catches the stray and gets sent packing. Sage is on board with that plan because she thinks that Savannah gives off “mean girl energy,” and that is just what I love about her. Rizo is working to convince Savannah, Soph, and the rest that Alex is dangerous because he’s playing in the middle. Jawan thinks that there are bigger fish to fry than Alex and wants to get rid of Savannah.
The immunity challenge has players holding up a heavy disc with just their feet; when the disc drops, they are out. The twist is that there is immunity for the last man remaining and the last woman remaining. Almost immediately, Rizo and Kristina drop, and Jawan asks Steven, who is a rocket scientist, to distract them all with space facts. He starts rattling them off like Charlie Davis from Survivor 46 rattling off Taylor Swift songs. This show is not beating the allegations of being full of nerds. After 10 minutes of space facts, Sage finally drops, and Jeff says, “Sage can’t take it anymore.” He doesn’t mean the challenge; he means the extreme nerdery happening around him. And neither can Jeff because after that, he’s basically like, “Respectfully, shut up with the space facts.”
They may have helped Steven win the men’s immunity, besting Jawan. It was another showdown between Savannah and Sophie, with Savannah taking the necklace for the second time in a row. Here they were all worried about Sophie being the comp beast, and it’s little Savannah and her Pilates body who keeps taking down these endurance challenges. This reconfigures the whole alchemy of who is going home that night. Steven and Kristina think they can just swap Soph out for Savannah as the target who goes home if Rizo plays his idol. That’s the plan that they’re selling everyone.
Meanwhile, Rizo is going around blowing up Alex’s game and alerting everyone that he is playing the middle. The emphasis is on what is going on with Sage and Jawan, who are crucial to either side’s numbers, especially if Steven and Kristina’s plan to switch votes is going to work. Jawan says that he wants to get rid of Rizo and flush that idol, but that Alex is making that plan difficult because no one can read what he is going to do. It seems like Soph being the new backup target isn’t enough to sway Sage and Jawan, who really only liked splitting the votes if it ricocheted on mean girl Savannah. Sophie is another factor, because Steven and Kristina think she’s still with them, but she’s trying to get rid of her freshman friends for good and find some new people whose games more closely align with hers.
Going into tribal, I have no clue who it will be. There are two options, and I know why and I know how it might happen, so this is the perfect kind of editing. We’re in suspense, but we’re not totally in the dark. When the votes are read, Rizo gets his way for the second week in a row, and Alex goes home. “This is what I get for playing both sides. You guys all talk?” Alex says on his way out, to lots of laughs. At least he can cop to what he did and why he went home.
Personally, I don’t know why Rizo was so fixated on getting rid of him when he could have turned it on Kristina or Steven, who are actively gunning for him, which he knows because both Soph and Sophie alerted him to those plans. Alex might have been hard to pin down, but he’s not the opposition. Also, he could be a number in the future if he really was playing the middle. Now, Rizo still has just as much opposition, and everyone is locked into their voting blocs. But this leaves him in a great position. He has Savannah and Soph on lock with Steven and Kristina the only ones (besides Alex) left out of the vote. They now know that Sophie can’t be trusted and that Jawan and Sage might not be as keen to work with them as they anticipated. They’re on their own, and all the power seems to rest with someone who I don’t want to admit might just be the man, the myth, and the legend.
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Brian Moylan
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