Hello! And welcome back to our coverage of this season of Survivor. It is the 3rd episode and somehow Rob and Parvati are still here? Who would have guessed that? Not me. Are their days numbered? Maybe, but who knows! Can their tribe ever win an immunity challenge? Well, no, they cannot. Is Mary winning the Survivor fantasy league? Yes, she is. But is Todd in 2nd place? Yes! He is. Have we had enough of this question-answer format? Yes, so let’s get on to the recap!

MARY’S MOMENT OF THE WEEK 

Mary: As someone who has never watched one of Tony’s seasons, I continue to be perplexed by him, and perhaps even more perplexed by his relationship (alliance?) with Sara, which they’re calling Cops R Us. I truly hate everything about this partnership.

My moment of the week is when Sara is granted an advantage--if she can complete the task of sneaking into the other tribe’s camp. Sara says she has to “go undercover” and enlist the help of her cop buddy Tony to help her look the part. Tony obliges by painting Sara’s face with ash, but things go wrong when the ash doesn’t stick to her, falling off into the sand in clumps. So Tony and Sara both begin spitting in the ash. After making a spit-ash paste, the pair rub it on Sara’s face and...it doesn’t really seem to do much. There’s some weird editing once Sara actually begins to sneak into the rival camp, and we see Ethan messing around in the fire, then lying down to sleep. The editing makes it appear as if Ethan just lied down to sleep, but once Sara begins sneaking around, it seems like he’s truly out. Sara fiddles around with the torches, finds her advantage, and gets out of the camp without issue.

But in what I would call a lackluster episode (except for the vote at the end), Tony and Sara spitting into coconut ash to make a face-paste is the thing I keep thinking about. This season of Survivor seems to be trying to mesh the “old school” with the “new school”--a theme the players themselves keep coming back to throughout the show--through their editing tactics and story focus. Older seasons of Survivor might spend time on weird things that happen at camp (like encountering a wild animal or making something silly with trash lying around camp--ahem, like Tony’s ladder), but newer seasons favor fast paced social drama, with people swapping and reswapping their alliance. Where earlier seasons might want to present, as Jeff so frequently says, a microcosm of America, new seasons want to focus on the game, not the people (as much). Winners at War is doing some of both, and I think it’s interesting to see these styles colliding. I love the silly stuff that happens at camp, and I also love the intense social game, so the marriage of the two is working for me! 

TODD’S MOMENT OF THE WEEK

Todd: This definitely does feel like a lackluster episode, but in almost any other season it would still be one of the best probably? I feel like, because we already know all these players, we don’t have to spend any time getting to know them, and so we get to jump into their strategizing and antics. This season is really like a little kid sitting down and wondering what would happen if Captain Marvel* got to hang out with Superman (*Sandra, obvs **Boston Rob). 

My moment of the week has to be Rob going up to Jeremy and Michele. Michele tries to tell Rob that they were thinking about Ben or Adam or Denise, but Rob immediately stops her. “I know the real plan,” he says. And Jeremy, amazingly, just winks at Rob and says it’s not him tonight. Now, while this moment doesn’t ultimately lead to Rob’s target (Adam) getting voted out, it does show that Rob still has a lot of power in this game. In any other season Rob would already be sitting on the Edge with his wife, contemplating how it all went wrong, but nobody wants to get out the biggest threat on the island, because that means they might be the next biggest threat. The only problem with this strategy is that if you leave big threats like Rob and Parvati and Sandra and Tyson around long enough, they can just run away with the game! Still, it has been a lot of fun watching Rob and Parvati play with each other so far this season!

PLAYERS ON THE RISE

Mary: I’m really sad to see Ethan go this week, as I think he could have easily been on the rise for me. I still have hope that he could come back from the edge of extinction, but I’m not sure that the show is interested in a redemption arc for Ethan. Truly, if he got back in the game at the end, he’d win based on his story alone. 

My player on the rise this week, as much as it pains me to say it, is Michele. My joke for the season so far is to say, “who’s this?” every time Michele comes on screen. She hasn’t done much and has said that she’s aware people think she didn’t deserve to win her season. While I haven’t seen her season and don’t have an opinion on that, she’s been, well...bland. Michele has sat around in the background while other players made big moves, just sort of going along with everyone else’s strategy. We also haven’t seen many confessionals from her, so really...who is she?! However, this episode sees Michele doing some pretty big things, namely trying to coordinate to get Ethan kicked out of the game. I think Michele rightly assesses her place in the camp by saying that she’s watching other people make moves and she needs to do something for herself. So Michele begins to make rumblings that Ethan is the one that needs to go. And it works. Look, I don’t like Michele, but I can’t deny this is a good move on her part.

Todd: Truly, Michele was my pick as well. Her lowkey strong alliance with Jeremy (at least as we have seen it on the show so far) is working well for her, and she correctly assesses that they can weaken Rob without removing a huge meat shield from the game. You go, Michele!

As for my player on the rise, I am going to say Denise. While I hate that Denise does seem to be truly cursed to always attend a tribal council, she is very smart and is able to move deftly between alliances, even flipping on her strongest ally Adam when he makes a boneheaded move. We also saw in the episode that Adam gave her back his half of the idol, so she has a whole, powerful idol. If she can avoid at least a couple tribal councils before the Merge, she could be in a very good position, and with an idol to boot, the sky’s the limit for Denise!

PLAYERS ON THE EDGE

Mary: Adam. It’s got to be Adam, though it pains me to say it because he’s on my fantasy league! Adam made a major misstep this week, as you mentioned in your moment of the week, Todd, by trying to cross Rob to his face. This is just not what you do to anyone, but especially not Rob. Adam has put a target on his back by openly opposing Rob, and by trying to get out Parvati--although I’m not sure why they want to keep Parvati around, if I’m being perfectly honest. *sigh* I hope Adam keeps it together.

Todd: It is, without a doubt, Adam, which makes me think Adam is probably safe, at least for another week? In recent seasons, people that seem like obvious votes have been kept around longer than they normally would (I’m thinking of Karishma from IoI), and so I don’t think Sele, if they lose again (and I really hope they don’t!), would vote Adam out next.

It would be easy to say Rob or especially Parvati is the person on the edge, but I am actually going to be a little counterintuitive and say that Tony is on the edge. Practically every story we have gotten from the Dakal tribe has involved Tony and his antics, and it really feels like the producers are trying to get as much Crazy Tony content into the show as they can, while they still can. Part of me is hoping this is not the case, but c’mon! How long would you put up with Tony on an island?

What did you think? Who do you think is headed for the Extinction? Let us know in the comments below, and we will see you next week for more…

SURVIVOR:

WINNERS

AT

WAR!