Last week, Vokai went to tribal council for the 2nd time and, thanks to some smart and quick thinking by Elaine, the old Lairo 4 were able to block Jason’s vote and send him packing, leaving them with an upper hand in the tribe. What will happen this week? I know as much as you! Let’s get to the re-cap already!

Mary: The fallout from last week’s vote is predictable, with Elaine acknowledging that she knew that Old Vokai would be mad about her secret advantage, but she had to do it to protect her old tribe. It makes sense, and, in the way of Survivor, people are going to be mad about votes at least some of the time (if not most of the time). I still think Elaine’s move was a good one, and her blocking of Jason’s vote made the most sense to me. 

Todd: Totally! Jason seems like the strategic mastermind, so you definitely want to block his vote.

Mary: More importantly, Lauren is upset because she feels like Missy lied to her. We saw Lauren crying during tribal last week, and this explains that reaction in a bit more detail. I still don’t buy Lauren’s tears, which is maybe bad of me. Missy seems to be advocating for a women’s alliance (because she says Lauren is the only contact to the Old Vokai women). We’ll return to this idea later. 

Todd: Indeed, we will! But first! Aaron continues to talk smack about how they have the old Vokai on their heels, and they are in control and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, at Lairo, they are having trouble sleeping because of all the rain and their fire has gone out. Jamal tries and fails to start a fire and, when Kellee offers to help, he almost immediately asks if he can try again. This ticks Kellee off, understandably, and she walks away, which leads Jack to tell Jamal that he maybe should have let Kellee try. Jamal looks at Jack like, “Am I the jerk here?” And Jack says that he is. We then also see Jamal and Noura fight about rice portions. What did you make of all this inter-tribe (and even inter-alliance, supposedly) squabbling, Mary?

Mary: This happens every season, for the most part. When food stores get low, people start fighting, even if the fighting isn’t justified. To be fair to Jamal, Noura did have a huge portion of rice in her shell. It’s like someone going in, getting a big helping of pie, and then saying, wow, where did all the pie go?! Weird! 

The fire thing makes more sense to fight about, in my opinion. Kellee is clearly better at making fire, or at least wanted to try. With Jamal not making any progress at all with the fire, why not let Kellee try? 

Todd: This seems like a moment when Jamal, who is clearly pretty thoughtful about these things usually (see: later in the episode, especially), lets his own biases get the better of him. He is used, I would imagine, to being good at things, and so he just wants to be able to do this thing. I get it, but it is not a good look, and ends up seeming pretty ominous later in the episode.

After all of this, Noura tries to push the idea of a women’s alliance with Janet, who doesn’t really like the idea. She is mostly concerned with getting Dean out next above all and wants Karishma to stay because she thinks she will be a loyal vote.

Mary: Around this time, Janet is called to go to the Island of the Idols, but she’s scared to go! Being absent for any amount of time puts a target on your back, she reasons, and she doesn’t know what’s going to be waiting for her on the island.

When she arrives, she has possibly the cutest meeting with Sandra and Rob. Janet whispers, “Oh my God…” when she sees the two walking towards her, and stands there silently until Rob says, “I’m Rob,” to which she says, “I know.” It’s very sweet that Janet is in such awe to meet them! Once they all settle down and begin talking about the island, Rob offers Janet a challenge. If she wins, she’ll win Safety without Power--the ability to leave before tribal and return after, effectively securing her spot in the tribe but announcing her immunity to everyone else. Janet actually thinks over the decision and talks through the pros and cons with Rob and Sandra, ultimately deciding she doesn’t want to play. 

Rob seems DELIGHTED that someone finally thought about the consequences of playing on Island of the Idols, and seems to appreciate Janet’s calculated decision. I also felt happy for Janet that she thought about her choice before committing! 

Todd: I agree! This was an all-around great trip to the Island of the Big Head Statues, with Janet being the first person to turn down a challenge as it has been offered. While it’s not true that every person to visit the island has been in a position of weakness, Janet is certainly the most secure person so far to visit, and it makes sense that she would turn down a challenge that would only make her more of a threat with the possibility of screwing over her alliance, especially in a scenario where the tribal council could come down to 1 vote.

As Janet leaves, Rob and Sandra are talking on the beach, and Sandra says that she thinks the winner of this season will be a woman and she is waiting for Rob to take her up on that bet. Rob, nobody’s fool, says “I was born at night but not last night.” He knows better than to bet against Sandra (and he gets the title quote, which makes the 2nd or 3rd time that Rob or Sandra have gotten that honor, I believe).

Mary: I agree with Rob and Sandra that we might be seeing a woman win this season--I hope so anyway! There are so many great women in the cast this season. I think Kellee, Missy, and even Elaine are strong contenders.

Todd: I totally agree. And Janet, if she can make it to the final tribal, would have a great story I think, and she seems to have the respect of everyone on her tribe.

Mary: At Vokai, Lauren and Tommy try to (poorly) tell everyone Dan needs to go next. This is intercut with more scenes of Dan being generally gropey and creepy. I don’t like the guy, don’t get me wrong, but...Tommy and Lauren don’t even seem fully convinced he should be the next to go, even as they say it.

Todd: Yeah, this was pretty obvious, and Missy sees through it immediately, so Tommy does not seem to be in a good spot if Vokai loses another immunity challenge. Here’s a question, Mary: do you think Vokai should have thrown the immunity challenge to vote out a big threat like Tommy before the merge? Is that even something that a tribe made up of several athletes could do?

Mary: Any time someone throws an immunity challenge, it kind of blows up, I think, even when it’s a perfectly viable option. Jeff hates it--we know Jeff hates people who “give up” because he once knocked over a fully lit torch of someone who chose to leave the show--and no one really sees it as playing fair. I think it would be a bad idea, even though I get why they would want to. Also, I’m not convinced Tommy is as big of a threat as critics online and in my own home think he is. 

Todd: Look at the edit, Mary! *frothing at the mouth* The EDIIIIIIIIIIIT!

Mary: WE CANNOT TRUST THE EDIT THIS SEASON! 

Todd: *wiping foam from mouth* I...I guess you’re right...but...but...he’s a 4th grade teacher! Who doesn’t love their 4th grade teacher?

Mary: TBH I really loved my fourth grade teacher. She gave me a journal and told me I was a good writer. Her name was Mrs. Brown.

Todd: See what I mean! Now imagine you were competing against her, but she was also a strong Irishman with a thick red beard!

Mary: I think Mrs. Brown could take Tommy. 

Todd: Also imagine being a grown adult who goes by Tommy. Are we off-track?

Mary: Do you want me to start calling you Toddy? 

Todd: I can’t stress this enough: No.

Look: the challenge is tough. There is a physical portion and then a physically demanding puzzle portion. Like many challenges this season, it looks like Lairo is going to win but then Vokai wins. Normally, I would say this is upsetting because Vokai has more interesting possibilities, but with the end result of last week’s tribal, Vokai going to tribal probably would have been an obvious vote out of Tommy or maybe Dan. Instead, we get the insanity that becomes the Lairo vote, all spearheaded by Kellee, who doesn’t want to waste her immunity idol from its titular Island. Mary, this was obviously fun to watch (we have to talk about Kellee’s “moment of inspiration” and give another shout out to the editors) but what did we watch? And was it ultimately good for Kellee’s game?

Mary: I want to note that I love that everyone seemingly respects Kellee and goes to her with decisions. I think that’s putting her in a good spot to go far in the game. No one really suspects her of being a threat, but she’s quietly manipulating a lot of people--and I don’t mean that in a bad way! She also somehow seems like a nice person. That’s hard to do! She also went to Harvard (I think [Todd: I checked her bio, she did!]), so like...she’s super smart. 

Kellee is giving a confessional when she stops talking, and says, “Oh…” then proceeds to have an epiphany ON SCREEN of what to do with her idol. She decides she can use her idol to protect Dean and convince him to vote out who she wants. She also says she can convince Noura to get on her side in voting for someone she wants. I was worried that this would blow up in her face, but...it worked, I think?! 

Todd: It definitely worked, but the question is: was this a good idea, with the merge so quickly approaching? She gets out Jack, who she admits she is close with but who has a lot of connections with people and generally seems like a nice dude who could sweep through the merge but he is also, supposedly, a member of Kellee’s alliance. Kellee apparently made the decision that trusting Detective Dean makes more sense than her own alliance. I am...not sure how wise that will end up being, and adding Noura to this further complicates things. What happens next week when Jamal asks Noura why she voted out Jack and she confesses that Kellee told her to? This was definitely a fun and exciting vote and could be a feather in Kellee’s cap if she makes it to the end, but it could also blow up in her face.

Mary: I’m not sure if it is a good idea. I agree that adding Noura makes things harder. She’s kind of a wild card in how she’ll react to things, you know? Kellee seems to have strong one-on-one relationships with people. Remember when Karishma came to Kellee to entrust everything to her? Or how Dean bonded with her over a shared friend (or ex in Dean’s case)? These individual relationships might mean more than an alliance in a lot of ways. 

Todd: I think that is exactly right, Mary. It seems like Dean has even more of an incentive to stick with Kellee after she saved him this week. If it gets out that Kellee orchestrated this vote however, it could put a lot of heat on her moving into the merge.

Mary: What I’m more interested in is the conversation surrounding the vote this week.

Todd: Agreed! This is now 2 weeks in a row that Survivor has aired a Very Special Conversation. What did you make of the tribal council discussion on gender and expectations?

Mary: I totally agree with Kellee that if this was a men’s alliance, we’d just be calling it an alliance. People always seem terrified of women’s alliances, but what makes them different than any other alliance? I think just as--if not more often--men stick together and vote out women. Sure, they have some other excuse for why they vote them out--like they’re weak, or old--but men who are also “weak” or “old” tend to stay in much longer than the women. Are we supposed to think that’s always a coincidence? 

Todd: If you were to just look at the data, that seems like a statistical improbability. As Kellee points out, the number of times people have been afraid of a women’s alliance on Survivor far outpaces the actual number of successful women’s alliances. In fact, Survivor: Vanuatu, in which the tribes were split by gender from the beginning, had a strong women’s alliance but was ultimately won by a dopey white guy because the women on the bottom decided they would do better with him than with their alliance. 

Because this is Survivor, Jeff inserts himself and tries to make this a larger cultural conversation, and he does a pretty good job, I think, of throwing questions to the women of the tribe instead of just pontificating on what he thinks about this whole gender thing.

Mary: He does, and Janet has some particularly good things to say as the oldest woman in the tribe. She says she’s lived through a lot of discrimination and sees how it’s working in Survivor, too. All I really have to say about this is Go, Women! I’m enjoying the larger cultural conversations that have been happening on this season so far. They feel needed for the franchise and genuine, for the most part. For a lot of seasons, race and gender felt like the elephant in the room--everyone knew they were there but no one would just talk about it. It took until 2019 for some of these conversations to happen, but here we are! Finally! 

Todd: Yep, and a lot of that is due to how empathetic and genuine this cast seems to be. They are all savvy enough to know not only the raw facts about Survivor--who won what season, how many times this challenge has happened, Jeff’s love of balls--but also the meta-facts, like Elaine commenting on how the final tribal number seems to fluctuate depending on Jeff’s mood or Kellee talking about the weirdly present fear of a women’s alliance. It is refreshing to see.

Also, Jamal does a great job being an ally throughout all of this, especially since it was his comments on a women’s alliance that set off the conversation.

Mary: He does, but I also wonder what his other option was--look like a jerk? I think that he tries to tangibly show his belief in the women by using his idol to save Noura, but that kind of blows up. He revealed he had an idol and used it for someone who didn’t even get a single vote against her. What was he trying to accomplish by that? Getting Noura to trust him more? 

Todd: I think Jamal just assumed that Dean, magically having found an idol, would vote the way that he and Jack had told him to earlier in the episode. It is a myopic view of the game that also makes sense for Jamal, considering his earlier desire to start the fire by himself. He seems like a genuinely nice and empathetic guy who nevertheless thinks that he knows what is best and believes that the way he sees the world is probably the right way (and given what we’ve seen he is not wrong about that in some instances, but he is and has been several times throughout this season). It never even occurs to him that someone else could have convinced Dean to vote another way. He is seemingly unaware of Kellee and Dean’s comparatively close relationship.

Mary: Right, right, because Kellee keeps her personal relationships close to the vest! Which I like. 

Ultimately, Jack goes home, and honestly? I didn’t find myself caring much. Other than being in the whole King, Queen, Jack group, I can’t say I’ve thought that much about Jack or what he’s doing. 

Todd: Mary, have you forgotten “Honesty would be chill” so quickly?

Mary: I have. But also kind of not because you say it a lot! 

Todd: Look, honesty would be chill. I say it because it’s true! Also, and somehow we both missed this while watching the episode, Jack is THE FIRST MEMBER OF THE JURY? Which means the jury will have double digit numbers yet again, by my count.

Mary: WHAT EVEN! There are going to be so many jury members! I disbelieved this so much I made you look it up before we started writing this, because it just seems impossible! 

Todd: And yet! Here we are. I think we have had late merges that resulted in someone being on the jury pre-merge, but we have never had this early of a merge and jury member before. Jack doesn’t even know Elaine, Elizabeth, Missy, or Aaron! This gets into the same problem I had with the EoE jury. How can someone who never spent time playing the game with someone have a say in whether or not they played a good game?

Mary: I think that the producers (or the audience, or someone) enjoyed having a big jury last season--and by big jury I do mean every person on the show who wasn’t in the final three or elected to go home. Having that many people on a jury looks cool, and gives more opportunities to have wild reactions and comments from the jury. I think that this season Jack has definitely been in the game long enough to know a lot about some of the other contestants, but not all. He’s not going to be like, say, Reem, who only spent one day or so in the game. 

Todd: True, or Chris Underwood who was voted out on day 8. I mean, what he could he have to say about the eventual winner…*checks notes* wait. That can’t be right…*checks notes again* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

FAVORITES AND LEAST FAVORITES, QUICKLY

Todd: My least favorite this week is...Tommy? Or maybe Dan, for being so handsy. Missy is still my favorite from Vokai, but I am also interested to see how Elizabeth will play in the merge. She seems like kind of an old school, we have to stick with our alliance kind of player, and I’m curious to see what she does when the tribes are dissolved.

Mary: But you said everyone had to love Tommy because he was a fourth grade teacher! My favorite is still Kellee, my girl! My least favorite this week is...IDK, I guess Noura? By default. She seems like an unmanageable type of player. She’s a loose cannon in terms of keeping secrets and being strategic, and she doesn’t seem capable of being really strategic. See: her trying to lie in order to get an advantage last time.

Todd: Also, she laughs at the drop of a hat. Like, a hair-trigger laugh. Very unsettling.

Mary: Honestly though? Same.

THE MERGE

Mary: During the Island of the Idols trip this week, the editors spliced in a scene of Chris using his immunity idol on someone else in order to compete with Rick Devens in a fire making challenge. Personally, I am not ready to see this. Rick Devens is still my favorite.

Todd: I was triggered!

Also, when Janet returns from the Island of the Idols, her tribe asks her to show them the idol and she flashes the tribe! Janet! How scandalous!

In the Survivor fashion corner, I really loved Kellee’s maxi-skirt this week! That is all.

Mary: Kellee is my queen! 

I’m wondering how long the secret of the Island of the Idols is going to keep up. Players who have gone there have shared the secret together, and acknowledged who was there, but is that sustainable? Just people who have been discussing what happens there? 

Todd: I’m not sure! It would be weird if at the Final Tribal Jeff just said, and here’s Rob and Sandra, and like, Jamal, was the only person who was shocked. Surely the secret will be revealed some time during the merge.

Mary: I wonder if Rob and Sandra will get to come in and have part of the merge feast! 

Todd: That would be nice!

AND THAT’S ALL THIS WEEK FOR..

SURVIVOR:

ISLAND

OF

THE

IDOLS!