Survivor 48 — Episode 10 Reaction
Another episode of Survivor 48 is in the books! Order is restored in the game as the majority alliance regains their grip on the season. Let’s dive in!
The Death of the Strong Six was Greatly Exaggerated
Leaving last week, I had hoped that with David’s exit would come a chaotic destruction of Survivor 48’s majority alliance and a free-for-all (or “full-tilt boogie” as Jeff Probst would say… Jeff stop trying to make “full-tilt boogie” a thing please) to the final three. I could not have been more wrong. It turns out now that the Strong Six is cancer-free, they plan to ride out the rest of the season together as the Strong Four. Immediately it is established that Kyle, Shauhin, Joe and Eva are still knitted together, and their game plan is to sucker one of the other castaways into their alliance so they can guarantee their safety. David was a variable removed and Mary is jetsam without David. The real alliance can finally play worry-free without fear of a traitor in their midst, and they made their confidence known from the start that they believe they still run this game.
Their confidence was well placed. The result of this vote gives the Strong Four a guaranteed path to the final four. While a big blindside would reinvigorate the season, I am not confident we will get it from this group. The Strong Four like each other too much, and I think each of them believes they can beat any of the others in a Final Tribal Council situation. So the focus goes more towards jury management, and we got a hint of what we could see in the finale with how Kyle and Joe managed their social games.
Joe, while his alliance was on reward, decides he’s going to have a chat with Mary because his Survivor game (and ultimately his final pitch to a jury) is all about the relationships he builds. Joe decides to tell Mary that she is on the bottom because everyone thought she manipulated David, and that she was a threatening player. Mary rightly pegs Joe’s reasoning behind the conversation; he’s clearly trying to butter her up as a future jury member, and Mary does not leave the talk with a good opinion of Joe’s intentions. On the flip side, Kyle realizes that he can’t lean into a game of betrayal anymore and he has to keep all his relationships clean if he wants to win in the end. This makes it complicated with Kamilla. Kamilla is his number one ally but Kamilla is also outside the Strong Four, and when she proposes a blindside on Joe, Kyle can’t bring himself to vote out a man he has opened up to about vulnerable topics. Instead of outright rejecting Kamilla, Kyle says that while he can’t vote out Joe personally he will try to open the door for Kamilla to join the majority alliance, and if Kamilla is able to find a way to get a blindside going against Joe he won’t stand in her way. Kamilla leaves the conversation satisfied enough and it makes her more willing to opt into a safe vote this week, with the opportunity to make her own move later on.
This juxtaposition reveals what could be the decider between Joe and Kyle in a theoretical FTC. While Joe was honest to Mary, it did not come off as a genuine interaction… Mary will only echo whatever sentiments David feels about Joe’s faux-honesty on a jury. Kyle was honest to Kamilla that he can’t be a part of her big plan but still tried to make right with their alliance. If Kamilla ends up on a jury she may be disappointed that Kyle did not ultimately leave the Strong Four for their duo, but I imagine her offering support to the strength of Kyle’s honesty amidst their secret alliance.
This episode made me ready to lock in Kyle as my winner pick. I think he’s playing the best game combined with having the best edit. Shauhin may be playing a good game but his edit has not put him in the role of a major character, which makes me feel he loses in firemaking or something. Joe is a solid player and great at challenges but his jury management leaves much to be desired. Eva has a great story but I can’t get around the fact that she could be demoted by the jury for being Joe’s follower and rarely playing with her own agency. And everyone outside the Strong Four is completely screwed and won’t get any respect for letting the Strong Four run the game.
“The Revolution” Dies as Soon as it Starts
There was talk of rocks for much of the first half of the episode, as castaways outside the Strong Four realized they were in a tough position. The morning after the David vote a lot of talk came from Star, Mary, and Kamilla about needing to band together and tie the vote. MItch was on board for a second when he was left out of a reward and feeling moody about it. The talk immediately ended, however, when Joe won immunity. Mitch quickly changed his tune about voting against the Strong Four, which turned Kamilla off to the possibility of a blindside, which left Mary and Star pleading with the powers that be to spare them this week and vote out the other.
It came down to the risk being too much for Mitch, and the lack of trustworthy players amongst the outsiders. Mitch made it very clear that he had no intention of working with Star, and even when faced with the potential firing squad around the corner in the Strong Four he did not sway from the path. While I hear Mitch’s explanation that he’d rather fall in line and hope an opening arises rather than risk and fail and be the next voted off, it also makes zero sense. It’s the final eight! There’s no more time to waste! To pass on this opportunity is to not only put all your faith in a tightly bonded majority alliance to keep you around over one of their own, but to assume that a jury will understand why you let the people in power walk all over you.
This speaks a lot on Star and Mary too, to be so toxic to Mitch that he will basically opt into being a lamb lined up for slaughter by the Strong Four. Mary has used up all her goodwill in how she snuck her way into the Strong Six with David and now faces the consequences. While she may complain about how her amazing social game is being stifled by these prudish honor-driven tribemates, isn’t a good social game being able to integrate with any group of people? Clearly the way she interacted and “controlled” David left a sour taste in castaways mouth, and her feverish gameplay to find cracks has fallen on deaf ears.
While Star the comedian has been fun in doses this season, Star the Survivor player was exposed for all to see this week. Nice guy Mitch said it was a JOKE that Star would walk up to him and strategize about going to rocks against the Strong Four. Other castaways relished the opportunity to get Star out of the game. While Star stood on her business and went with her gut, she chose to not play Shot in the Dark in a situation where it would’ve made so much sense to, and she goes home without taking a chance at miraculous safety. This even ignores the fact that Star could have had an idol to play in a moment like this, but instead opted to just give it to Eva unprompted and without a worthy reason. Star’s strategies were kept out of the show for most of the season and we can infer the reason why — they probably were half-baked and uninformed. She never had an alliance all season, immediately becoming a social outcast from day one on Lagi. Her strategic input last week was letting Mary and David tell her how to vote. The reality of Star the Survivor player was that she was a crappy strategist and a wild card that no one could trust to follow a plan, because they thought she would just do whatever she felt like doing. This shouldn’t be a knock on the entertainment value she brought to the season, however. She had some fun quotes and she had good TV energy. She just wasn’t a serious player. She’s a fun Survivor 48 meme, and that’s ok.
This Episode was Bad… Next Episode Could be Worse
Some other things need to be talked about before we look ahead. First off, there were two all-time cringe moments and I think we need to have a talk with Survivor production about this. One, what the actual fuck was Jeff trying to do by getting the castaways to chant “Fried Chicken and Waffles” with him? Was this impromptu or planned? Why did the cast go along with it? If that were me you could not get me to participate in some as cringy as that. It makes me think production talked with the cast beforehand and told them Jeff Probst is going to start a chant and you better follow it… or else. Survivor, never again please — unless it’s Applebee’s. You can chant for Applebee’s. Also, and this might be polarizing, I hated the Star freestyle rap confessional. I think it was primarily because this came minutes after the tension of the episode completely died and the reality was shown that Star is bad at Survivor. But even then, I can do without the overproduced bits and putting a beat over her words… she started rapping again in the exit confessional and that was acceptable to me. I’m kinda done with the obvious production bits that the show has leaned more into lately.
We also need to talk about the bloated challenge presentation. They spent way too much airtime at the immunity challenge. It isn’t the challenge itself — personally I love the balancing block tower challenge and I think it’s one of the best recurring challenges they do (I in fact ranked it number one in my “Top Challenges in the New School Era” list as part of my giant series of ranking every castaway to play Survivor between seasons 21 and 42, feel free to check it out). It’s the overdramatizing that wore me down and had me checking my watch and wishing they shortened the proceedings. Did you know they’ve done this challenge or a version of this challenge TWELVE times previously? So as a longtime fan do I need Jeff to repeat all his lines for the hundredth time and explain how tense this challenge is twenty times and states basic concepts of the challenge that any person watching can innately understand by using their eyes, over and over again? I feel like they are trying to fill screen time with the challenges nowadays and Survivor realized they can actually save themselves work by giving us 30 seconds of slo-mo footage of Joe’s concentration face before winning rather than just showing Joe winning the challenge. Now that episodes are ninety minutes and the game of Survivor is 26 days the show needs to drag out these challenges for as much time as possible (ironically while making long endurance challenges shorter to save time) to fill airtime, and it hurts the product.
My complaints haven’t even considered the fact that the rest of the season is set up for a majority alliance of four to coast in the last three votes by systematically eliminating the three castaways on the outside looking in. An alliance stomp can be interesting if there are tense relationships within the alliance, but there is zero conflict or strife with this group of four and they seem content to ride with each other the rest of the way. Mitch and Kamilla probably go down without much fight, and this next episode will just be 6v1 against Mary resulting in the most obvious result of the season. It might be a slog to get through the rest of Survivor 48 and that’s really disappointing.
Yeah, I’m in a state of despair over Survivor 48. I’m praying for some drama down the stretch but I’m pretty convinced we won’t be getting anything truly interesting until the finale. It would take a game-altering advantage like Knowledge is Power being introduced to the right person to make me think any chaos will be occurring next episode.
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Worst Challenge Strategy: Shauhin
I know Shauhin was sitting on his couch at home and thought he absolutely cooked with this challenge strategy of moving incredibly slow through the wobbly block challenge so that he never drops his tower. He ends up dropping his tower despite sticking to his convictions, rendering his whole plan mute. But even if he didn’t drop, the time it took him to add one block to his tower was the same amount of time it took Joe and Kyle to place six blocks on their tower… he probably would’ve been passed up anyway.
Weirdest Overreaction: Jeff Announcing Food Rewards
There has to be a supercut somewhere of just the reactions to Jeff announcing food rewards, because there must be a point where the cast reactions have veered towards unnecessarily over-the-top and a point where Jeff really leaned into getting sensual with his description of normal foods. And even this deep into the blogpost, I’m still not over the fact that Jeff made grown men and women chant for fried chicken.
MVP of the Episode: The Strong Four
Their goal was to brainwash the bottom members of the tribe into falling in line and voting with them. They succeeded in their goal.
Goat of the Episode: Mitch
He was all over the place this episode. One moment he’s realizing his vote is super important and he needs to make a move, the next he is pissed at Star for proposing a tie against the majority alliance to go to rocks. Then he gets moody over Kyle not picking him for rewards and he’s back in for going to rocks. And then the next day he’s completely against going to rocks because “now’s not the time for a big move while Star and Mary are in the game”. My brother, it’s a four-four split: there are no more opportunities for YOU to make a big move… only for someone else to bring you into a big move as a number. Mitch’s strategy was completely confounding and did not help his case for winning the game.
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PLAYER TIER LIST:
OUT OF THE GAME
18. Stephanie
17. Kevin
16. Pizza
15. Thomas
14. Bianca
13. Charity
12. Sai
11. Cedrek
10. Chrissy
9. David
8. Star
BOTTOM OF THE TOTEM POLE
7. Mary
It’s joever. Don’t see anyone wanting to work with Mary at all. She needs to win immunity to survive.
IN AN UNCOMFORTABLE POSITION
6. Mitch
5. Kamilla
Yes, they should be safe this next vote, but they are set up to be picked off at six and five now. It will be very hard for Kamilla to make a move on Joe without any advantages, and I don’t take Mitch seriously as a player anymore.
IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
4. Joe
3. Eva
I wish for Eva’s positively unconcerned attitude towards this game when I find myself in a stressful situation. She is fully confident in the ability of the Strong Four to dominate without any backup plan.
2. Shauhin
1. Kyle
Is there a chance one of the Strong Four gets blindsided before the final four? I just don’t think there is much incentive for anyone to flip on each other, unless they really believe that is what the jury is looking for. I think everyone in this foursome believes they can win in the end which discourages flipping and risking your own life in the game with only a few days left.