The following contains spoilers for Episode 8 of Survivor Season 41.
With the Merge out of the way, the individual portion ofSurvivorcan finally begin, and it certainly took off with a bang this week. The remaining players of Season 41 are all trying to figure out their alliances and who they can trust in this game, and scrambling to figure out which moves are going to be the best for their own personal games in the long run. Luckily for the audience, this is the perfect recipe for compelling TV, and this week’s episode (entitled “Betraydar”) didn’t disappoint.
Episode 8 felt very close to a return to typicalSurvivorform, which was nice to see in the midst of a season that has been trying to hard to differentiate itself from the past that it was starting to lose the elements that made the show great in the first place. There was a lot of focus onthe players and their strategies, as well as how those strategies affect their relationships with the other castaways. It’s easy to see how badly every person wants to be on that beach this season, because they’re all bringing as much intensity as they can, sometimes to the detriment of their own games.
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The episode begins by pointing out how far the remaining members of the Yase tribe have fallen, as all of them seem to have gone their separate ways after sharing so many bonding moments early on in the game (there’s even a flashback tothe turtle moment from Episode 4that was one of the highlights of the season). Xander, Evvie, and Tiffany are all wandering the camp and pitching their case to anyone who will listen, all completely willing to be open and go with whatever alliance will have them, while Liana finds herself in a solid alliance with Shan, Danny, and Deshawn. It will be really interesting to see if the remaining Yase members (Xander and Evvie especially) will be able to worm their way into a new alliance and make it far in the game, or if this is just the beginning of them getting picked off one by one.
Then it’s the reward challenge, which begins with yet another section of hostJeff Probst addressing the audience directly, explaining that there’s going to be an advantage hidden underneath the “sit-out bench” for the player who is excluded from participating in the challenge. These chats with the viewer were an interesting idea at first, but they’re starting to get a bit tiresome. It might be a great device for a first-timeSurvivorviewer, as Jeff is often explaining some element of the game, but it’s a little annoying for the more seasoned audience member.
It just feels like the show is trying to spell things out directly that were always implied and never needed to be stated. The audience can understand why it’s an interesting idea to have a hidden advantage at a challenge and how that tests a player’s gameplay skills without it needing to be directly explained by the host. Perhaps the intention really was to helpexplain the game to new viewers, but it’s starting to come off as a little insulting to the audience’s intelligence.
At the reward challenge, the players draw rocks to see who will have to sit out, and though Erika once again draws the sit-out rock, Xander volunteers to take her place. It’s unclear what his exact intentions here were, but he was obviouslyaware that an advantage might be hidden there, and he might have been trying to get into Erika’s good graces. He later states that he also wanted to be at camp with the losing team afterward in hopes that they would recruit him in a desperate attempt for numbers. Whatever the reason, it didn’t really seem to pay off, because he never finds the advantage and it doesn’t seem like he gains a whole lot of friends from this either.
Back at camp, it’s clear that more alliances than just the Yase Four have cracks, because the show presents yet another instance of Shan and Ricard at odds with each other, despite their close alliance. These two seem really volatile around each other, and the smallest things set them off, even a little piece of papaya. All of these little moments might be a hint towardsa big breakup of this alliancesometime in the future, because every Shan and Ricard interaction feels like a ticking time bomb.
This week’s immunity challenge also included an interesting twist before the challenge even started. Jeff informs the players that if individual people want to opt out of the challenge, they’ll be given a portion of rice, and if multiple people opt out, the whole tribe gets enough rice for three days.This gives the players a compelling dilemmaof whether or not to sacrifice themselves in hopes that the tribe will reward the act by not voting them out. It’s clear that some players are unwilling to give up their shot for immunity (understandably), but in the end, Shan, Naseer, Xander, and Ricard all volunteer to sit out of the challenge and get the rice for the tribe. In a challenge that was insanely short, Evvie ends up winning individual immunity, which is perfect because the tribe had basically agreed to vote her out that night.
The challenge passing so quickly did finally give the audience a glimpse of how the scant amounts of food are affecting the players. The season was marketed to beso much tougher than past ones, but there have only been a few mentions about the hardships of the actual survival aspects of the show so far. However, now the viewers finally get to see the toll that so little food has had on the castaways’s bodies. Most of them aren’t able to stand on the platform for more than a few seconds without losing their balance. This is one of the more interesting effects of the game this season, and it would have been great to see more of a focus on it this season.
Back at camp, names are being thrown out left, right, and center, and it’s never really clear if anyone ever came to a consensus. The show gives the audience a glimpse of yetanother alliance forming cracks, this time between Deshawn and Shan. Deshawn feels like Shan talks over him and won’t listen to his ideas, and though she only implies this subtly, it’s clear that Shan thinks he’s overreacting. This comes up again at Tribal Council, and is clearly going to be a problem for them in the future.
At Tribal, everything goes fairly calmly until Heather of all people,who has been incredibly absent from the edit this season, starts trying to change the plan last minute and almost gets herself voted out in the process. In the end, Tiffany receives the most votes and ends up getting her torch snuffed, becoming the first member of the Jury. The whisper frenzies at Tribal are something that have come along in more recent seasons, and some fans are very opposed to the players being able to strategize at the last moment like that. However, it’s clear that this element isn’t going to be outlawed anytime soon because it makes for entertaining television, and adds a lot of chaos to Tribal Councils that can otherwise be a bit boring.
This episode was simple and mostly about gameplay, which is exactly wherethe show should be turning its focusin order to remain successful. Now that the players are thinking more about themselves than the tribe as a whole, it will be interesting to see how the alliances shake out. Something about this group of players feels more hostile towards each other than a lot of past groups, and it seems like some of them only get along for the purpose of the game. Of course,Survivorisn’t necessarily about making friends, and sometimes those tense relationships make for the bestSurvivormoments.
