Hello from quarantine! Todd and I have been dutifully watching Survivor each week while self isolating, and I have been dutifully winning our family fantasy league each week. (Todd here, and look, I have tried to win, but I am clearly not as good as Mary. Them’s the facts.) 

This week, we thought we’d try something a little different. 

Todd: Hey, so, this week was wild, and a lot of people on the Internet have been saying it’s the best episode of the season. What say you, Mary?

Mary: I don’t know that I think it’s the best episode, but it’s certainly not the worst. I hate to admit this to you, especially you, but Survivor occupies a similar space in my mind to something like The Real Housewives or The Bachelor. It’s fun, and I do enjoy watching (a lot!), but it’s in that reality TV space in my brain that washes in and washes out. This makes it hard for me to think about it in terms of best or worst as the season is happening. It’s easy now to look back at big moments and identify them seasons later, but it’s more difficult for me to think about as I’m watching. 

You didn’t ask for all that, but there you are. TL;DR, it was good. 

Todd: I mean, Survivor, as much as it does not pitch itself this way at all now, is a reality TV show! It is one of the forerunners of reality TV as we know it, and so I don’t think it is wrong to think of it in that way. And certainly the episodes tend to run together. I also think you are spot on that it is hard to know what it is an important in the middle of a season. Also, this episode’s editing was so clear and gave us a great idea of what was happening in ways that earlier episodes haven’t. It makes me think that we didn’t know what was happening in those earlier episodes because it ultimately didn’t matter. It felt like this happened some in the middle of Edge of Extinction--because basically nothing between Day 8 and Day 35 mattered to the endgame. And now it makes more sense. We don’t know what happened last week really, because it feels like that vote was being led by Sophie and we ultimately don’t need to know what happened with Sophie because she got voted out. It makes me pretty certain that Tony is either the next to go or will be in the Final Tribal. 

Speaking of Tony. Mary, you wanted Tony to go off, and he did, in a big way, this episode. What did you make of Mr. Vlachos?

Mary: I never really saw much of Tony in his winning season, and I have been patiently waiting for him to fall back into his old habits of building spy shacks and waiting for someone to happen to come along and say something incriminating. So far, he’s tiptoed into the world of spy shacks, but he hasn’t really let himself fully go there because he wants to vary his play style. 

Probably my favorite moment of the week, where we see how Tony can have emotional highs and lows (I think you have to be kind of emotional to invest so much time into spying and paranoia), is when he gets a disadvantage played against him. Over on the Edge, Parvati and Natalie find a disadvantage that they can play against anyone still in the game. The disadvantage will extort the player into paying them a set number of fire tokens OR sitting out during an immunity challenge and losing his vote. Tony has to somehow round up six fire tokens in order to participate in the challenge--and he only has three. Tony’s face lights up as he reads the note, thinking it’s an advantage, then his shoulders sag as he sees it’s a disadvantage played against him. This is just good television. I felt invested in whether or not Tony would get the tokens and get to play in the challenge. 

Todd: Mmhmm. Tony’s excited tone as he reads the Extortion note is so funny (“I never get to do this in the real world and it seems so fun”, and it contrasts perfectly with how much he hates it when he realizes it is being played against him (“This should be illegal!”). Also funny is the editing of Parvati talking about how they need to play the Extortion on someone who is chaotic and also would be capable of coming up with the Fire Tokens needed. (Cue an overlay of Tony looking out on the ocean.)

The fact that Tony is able to get enough Fire Tokens is incredible, and shows how social his game really is. It made me think of another favorite moment of mine in the episode, when Sarah has a fashion show on the beach. The remaining castaways really ham it up, sashaying down the “runway” and the editors have fun with it as well. Sarah says that she and Tony have drastically different play styles: she is social, and Tony is a wild card. While that certainly is true, this episode goes a long way to showing how social Tony can be. What did you make of this Mary? And do you think Sarah can ever forgive Tony for voting out her ally Sophie?

Mary: I think that this could go one of two ways for Tony. You’re absolutely right that his social game is great--could anyone else have scraped together three fire tokens so quickly?!--but people could quickly take notice that his social game is on point and vote him out. I think that Tony’s unpredictability makes him fun and likable, but it also means that he’s chaotic and untrustworthy to some extent. 

I’m not sure Cops R’ Us has a future ahead of them. Sarah seems very angry at Tony, but she was already unsure of him as an ally. While they’re both cops in the real world, Tony is a good deal more spontaneous and risk-taking than Sarah. Would Sarah lie under a bunch of trash in the hopes of hearing something? I don’t think she would. They both have completely valid play styles, but at the end of the day they’re different. 

Sophie did seem to be on the up and up, but I can’t say that I’m sad to see her go, per se. She’s unobtrusive as a player, and kind of quiet. She doesn’t have a big personality that catches me, really. I think I could have grown to like her, but here she is, voted out when we were just getting to know her.

Todd: Yup. At the end, Sophie laments that she has always felt like a bottom-tier winner. I understand why she might feel this way, and I am sure the Internet has had plenty to say about her winner ever since South Pacific aired, but for me Sophie has always felt like a pretty competent winner. Her gameplay is pretty under-the-radar, but when she shone out here in Fiji, she really shone. Whether through her early powerful alliance with Yul, Nick, and Wendell, to her alliance with Sarah and voting out Boston Rob without ever saying a word to Adam or Ben, Sophie has quietly made her presence known. I will be sad to see her go, but she did herself proud this season. 

It certainly feels like Tony could be on the chopping block. It also maybe feels like these last few episodes could feature a showdown between Kim and Tony, which is not at all where I thought this season might be headed, but I am here for it! Honestly, it feels like almost anyone could still win, except maybe Nick or Ben (sorry guys, but the edit has not been kind to you all).

Mary: I also want to note that the editing has completely thrown me for a loop this season. We think Tony might be on the outs because the preview suggests that he is, but it’s also possible that the editors are intentionally misleading us. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done that this season. 

Todd: True. Maybe Tony wins immunity AGAIN. Weirder things have happened (Ben, I am staring directly at you). I also want to say how fun it was to get so many “slice-of-camp-life” moments this week. I especially loved when we saw people at camp talking, and Nick said that people on the Internet said he looked like a “vampire Donathan,” which was followed up by Ben asking if he filed his teeth down like that on purpose. Great!

Mary: Yes! I loved the look at camp life. My favorite camp moment was Sarah’s fashion show. That seems like a completely weird thing that usually wouldn’t happen in a more recent season of the show, but it did this week. We get an extended scene of Sarah carefully sewing together garments and then having people model them on a “catwalk.” I do think that this was strategic editing. This is where we really begin to see the tension on Sarah and Tony’s alliance; instead of joining in at the fashion show, Tony pointedly walks off because he thinks it’s a waste of time. 

Todd: Mmhmm. It will be interesting to see what happens next week. Last week, I thought Sarah would blow up Tony’s game, but maybe she actually will next episode? Who can say!

That’s all this week for…

SURVIVOR:

WINNERS

AT

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

Ya better be ready...