Tag: CBS

This is quickly turning into a season not about alliances but about voting blocs, and each of those blocs is always targeting each other, with at least one skilled player in the middle, taking turns eliminating each bloc’s power bit by bit. Strangely enough, that player is Sophie the Silent, who we didn’t even peep until about episode seven. But they’re all in danger of being subsumed by the man, the myth, the legend, R-I-Z-G-O-D, whose lame grandstanding and credit-taking is likely to derail all of their games just because he’s the flashiest and thirstiest among the group. He didn’t do much this episode, yet at tribal council, he’s the one looking like the hero in front of the jury.

The episode starts with Sage telling Jawan about Kristina’s idol and then, later, telling Sophie about it as well. Steven made the cardinal sin of telling Sage to gain trust with her. This reminds me of something Sandra Diaz-Twine, the great goddess of strategy, once said: an idol people know about is completely worthless. (I believe she said this on Australian Survivor, which Jeff Probst doesn’t want Americans to see.) The more the information gets out, the more people play around it. Even if a player “wastes” it, then it can save them for a vote while a large coalition mitigates for it, but then it’s effectiveness is done. It can’t really be used to advance a player or a group in the game, like when Parvati Shallow turned the numbers on their head by playing two of them.

After her ally, Alex, was voted out last episode, Kristina is having a tough time trusting anyone on the island and truly being comfortable in the game. This comes to a head at the reward challenge, where Jeff asks her how she’s doing, and she goes through the five stages of grief in about 60 seconds. “I want my mom. I want my mom so bad right now,” she yells, adding that her mother died a few years ago. “And I don’t have her anymore. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair!” Jeff asks Kristina to tell him about her mother, and she shares some stories, and, honestly, it was a touching moment. Kristina then crawled through a balance beam, almost her whole body in the water, as she slithered onto the platform to try to help her team win a reward. Though she got the swell of inspirational moments and kind words from Jeff (rare for a woman who is not doing well in a challenge), it was all for naught.

The winning team is Soph, Sophie, Sage, and Steven, who get to go to The Sanctuary (say it all together, “Where schmood schmings schmappen!!”) and eat hamburgers and hot dogs, and Sage gets to launch her plan with Sophie about getting Savannah out of the game. Going into the immunity challenge there are two factions. The trio of Rizo, Soph, and Savannah wants to team up with Jawan and Sage to get out Steven, who they think is a challenge threat and far too likable because he is an endless source of space facts. Sage has other plans. She wants to draw in her ally Jawan, along with Steven, Kristina, and Sophie, to get rid of Savannah, whom she can’t stand, and who everyone is afraid of winning immunity once again.

Before the immunity challenge, there is a brief intermission when we are entertained by the “musical” stylings of a boy band called 3 Boyz on a Bench. It’s just the remaining three men pretending to rap but mostly just saying “3 Boyz on a Bench,” to a beat repeatedly. I do like the name of their songs — “Don’t Blindside Me Baby,” “You Drive Me Coconuts,” and “I Got Sand in All the Wrong Places” — though I’m not entirely sure if I would like the tunes of any of them.

The immunity challenge is a classic obstacle course where players have to run through the “teeter tunnel,” which was Jeff’s nickname in college, get a bunch of discs off a pole, free the handle underneath, and then use the handle to run puzzle pieces across a balance beam, and then make the classic Survivor logo puzzle. Steven does the best at the puzzle piece balancing, but he is quickly outpaced by Sophie, who wins the challenge. This might be to her detriment because now she’s back in the spotlight as a challenge beast who they might have to send home.

I’ve realized that Survivor is a little bit like an episode of Law & Order. Just as the first main suspect is never the person who did it, the first plan you hear about after the immunity challenge is not the person getting sent home. In this case, we’re hearing a lot about Steven and Savannah, but then Steven and Kristina talk about using her idol on Steven to prevent him from going home. They want to split their votes between Savannah and Rizo so that if Rizo gets spooked and plays his idol for Savannah or himself, one or the other is going home. Sage has this great master plan that after this tribe, Savannah will go home, Rizo will use his idol, and Kristina will use hers. She is only going to get one of those three things accomplished.

That is because Sophie can’t be trusted, at least by Sage and her group. She tells Savannah that Jawan and Sage are going to flip and that Kristina has an idol. The problem is that if Sophie votes with Rizo, Soph, and Savannah, that is only four, which forces a tie. As word of that idol spreads, Soph considers using her Knowledge Is Power to get it for herself. Savannah also reveals that she has an extra vote, so with Sophie, they can turn themselves into the majority rather than just having a tie.

Then Savannah gets an idea. What if, instead of going for Steven or Kristina, who could block their votes with a deft play of an idol, why not go after the flip-floppers and target Sage and Jawan? Savannah is keen to get out Sage because she knows Sage is coming for her and is smart enough to realize Sage is the real mastermind behind all these plans. They pose the question to Sophie, who, as the swing vote, they want to give the power to make the decision. She says she thinks Jawan has a better shot because he’s more likable but still wants to target Steven because she’s afraid that he might have a better shot of beating her at challenges.

Going into tribal, the viewers are in a great position because we’re unclear of just who will use their advantages and how, what effect that might have on the vote, who might catch a stray, and who, exactly, will go home. But, again, we know all of the allegiances, who is voting with whom, who betrayed whom, and why. We also know that Jeff Probst is going to get the kind of Advantage-apalooza that he loves, with everyone emptying their pockets of their trinkets to stay in the game. What I most fear is another of Jeff’s favorite things, a live tribal. God, how I hate getting out of their seats and whispering.

Luckily, we’re spared that, and the trouble is mostly a bunch of people making vague statements about how they can’t trust anyone. It’s after the votes are tallied that we start to get the fireworks. First, Kristina pulls an idol out of her hair and gives it to Jeff to block Steven. Rizo has been fingering a set of beads the whole time and gets up, heading towards Jeff to ask if he can say a few words. “I feel like a lot has happened and I feel like this vote is truly going to show who is with me and who is not,” he says. “I have to do my best to protect myself in this game and for that very reason, I’m playing it for Savannah.”

Then Jeff shocks us by saying that it isn’t a real immunity idol. Seriously, dude, WT-effing-F. He did all of that to psyche everyone out, to rub their noses in it, to make some kind of grandstanding about how he wants to play an idol; he knows their plan is for Savannah, but actually, he doesn’t need it because he feels safe. He’s rubbing their noses in the fact that he knows something they don’t. In the immortal words of Jawan, who is about to walk out the door, “Playa, play the real thing.”

The votes are read, and for a minute, I’m thinking that my girl Sage is definitely about to take the long walk to Ponderosa. Then the votes pour in for Savannah and Jawan, sending Jawan packing and showing Kristina that she “wasted” her idol. Jawan asks who did this and Sophie, Soph, Rizo, and Savannah all raise their hands. But it’s what happens next that they should all be afraid of. Rizo jumps to his feet and tells Jawan to bring it in and give him a hug. “You flipped on me once. I wasn’t going to let it happen again,” he says. This is a major problem that all of his allies should be wary of. He had nothing to do with this move. Sophie brought them the information, and Savannah and Sophie decided to flip it on Sage and Jawan. Rizo played a fake idol, made a big scene, and then said, “I wasn’t going to let it happen again.” Not “we,” “I” singular. He’s hogging the spotlight and taking credit and I hope that, as Sophie manipulates the blocs for them to decimate each other, they come for him next.