Survivor Recap: Strong Bonds

The thing that annoyed me about this episode wasn’t the challenge, it wasn’t the new era, it wasn’t Jeff rambling on about something stupid, and it wasn’t even “club condo” becoming a thing that, much like “fetch,” no one wants to happen. What annoyed me was good old-fashioned stupid gameplay. How old-school! It’s practically quaint. I will even go so far as to say I liked some of the new challenge elements we got in this episode. Is production finally getting it? I don’t know, right?

The episode starts with a very modest conversation about the largest animal each contestant thinks they could take down. Joe, our resident strongman firefighter, says he would go for either a retired gorilla or a big fat pig on a farm. Kyle says he could take out a hyena. Chrissy says, “Um, I guess a gerbil, maybe? Or like a drunk flamingo? Definitely a possum, but that’s only because they would play dead.” No, Chrissy didn’t say any of that, but I was just thinking how annoyed she and the other non-beefcakes must feel having to have these conversations with all the big strong men who are left.

During the animal chat, Tree Mail arrives and tells everyone to divide into pairs for that day’s immunity challenge. They start talking about how they will sort them out, whether they should choose or be random. Joe utters the most words he has strung together all season and argues that this is their shot for the win; whom they pick really matters. That’s when Shauhin picks Kamilla, which sets off a whole thing that will take over the episode. When Jeff asks why he picked her, he says he was just making eyes with her, so he thought she was as good a choice as any. Then David picks Mary, who seems to be the brains of his brawny operation. Joe, of course, picks Eva, and everyone collectively is just letting this strong duo go unchecked, which is baffling to me. Kyle takes Chrissy. And that’s everyone. Oh no, wait. There are ten players. Who’s left? Oh yeah, Mitch and Star, whom everyone seems to have collectively forgotten about.

Everyone decides these are the pairs who want to work together, except viewers know the secret alliance is between Kyle and Kamilla, who are far too smart to choose each other. Because this is the way it shook out, I was really hoping they were going to pull a Squid Game and people would have to compete against their partners, but alas, they did not.

Instead, this is a challenge that works in stages. The first is crawling through a cage and digging up puzzle pieces; the first three teams move on. The second stage is building a step puzzle and then getting across some ropes with three planks; the top two teams move on. Then, in the final round, the four remaining players go head-to-head in a challenge I like to call Circle Jerk. Why? Because it’s about who can keep their hands on the pole the longest. ZING! The twist is that the first two teams eliminated have to go on a journey. Yes! This is what I’m talking about. No one chooses, it’s not down to luck, it’s down to the players’ poor performance, and then they are in jeopardy of losing their vote. That all seems entirely fair to me.

Surprising absolutely no one, David and Mary and Joe and Eva are in the final four, but Circle Jerk, ironically, is not a challenge for the boys, especially these boys. They’re too big and heavy to stay on that pole for too long. The women, with a better weight-to-strength ratio, can just clip on that pole like a pair of koalas and sit up there all day. Eva takes it handily. At the taco reward — did I forget there was a taco reward for the four who love pole? — Eva finds a scroll in her tortilla chips saying she can find an advantage in the game the following night. As disappointed as I was that we have to wait for the next episode to see it, I was more disappointed that Tostitos isn’t sponsoring it. Jeff, you are leaving money on the table here.

On the journey, they play a new game with a row of balls where each player has to take either one or two. There are gray balls that mean nothing, red balls that mean danger, and blue balls that mean they didn’t get to play Circle Jerk. (Sorry. That’s the last one.) The first player to get three red balls loses their vote. While I don’t love people losing their vote, I think this is a great challenge. It’s almost entirely strategy and math, and I love how it forces the players, like Kamilla and Mitch, to work together to make sure someone other than they loses their vote. In this case, it’s Star, which doesn’t seem like much of a loss because, other than a very amusing summation of what the afternoon was like before the vote, Star has done nothing the entire episode. Kamilla knew she and Mitch needed votes for her to pull off a move, which was smart, but she should have tried to block Shauhin because at this point Star seemed like a number up for grabs.

When the losing four are on their journey and the winning four are getting explosive diarrhea from eating tacos after starving themselves for two weeks, Kyle and Chrissy are alone at the camp and the first words out of Chrissy’s mouth are “We have to break up Joe and Eva.” Yes! Exactly! They’re going to keep winning things, and Eva has an idol. They will also keep supporting each other and take each other to the end if they can. This is the chance to strike a blow at Joe and leave Eva unmoored and poachable. However, absolutely no one is onboard, not even Kyle, who seems like he’ll be the first person to turn on the Strong Five.

Maybe this is what I want because having the strong guys winning is boring. They’ll just run through all the challenges, picking off the weak players every week, and it will just be a slog to the finale. But also, has none of them thought this strategy through? If the final challenge is brute strength, Shauhin and Eva probably don’t have a shot against David and Joe. Yes, they’re all strong and faithful, but if that’s how they all roll to the end, how does one game differentiate itself from the others? It seems foolhardy to play the game this way in this age of Survivor.

But something Chrissy says at tribal stuck with me: She wants to take out the big guys so the “Mighty Mouses” like her will have a better shot in the game. This is why I’m so opposed to this strongman alliance. It always seems Survivor as an institution (and Jeff Probst as an individual) prizes a specific way of playing the game that is based more on strength than the other qualities (politicking, alliance building, shrewdness, deception, and emotional intelligence) that I think make for a much more interesting game. Just look at how Eva gets an advantage in this challenge, which is strength-based. Why not do this at a puzzle? As in the previous episode, the strong are rewarded above those with other skills.

This elevation of strength goes way back, of course. Just think about how Ben Driebergen was given idol after idol and a fire-making challenge just so he could win. Think about how Boston Rob was brought back time after time so he could notch a victory. Or how Jeff Probst said there aren’t as many interesting female characters on the show as there are male ones. It seems Chrissy is fighting against not just her tribe mates but also the structure and preferences of the show itself.

At tribal council, she gets on her soapbox and tells everyone to go after the strong players. David is so bent out of shape it’s like someone just told him chocolate milk will be subject to 340 percent tariffs. “The one season the strong guys say enough is enough, she’s up in arms,” he says. “As opposed to season after season when we’re used as shields … Everyone else can form an alliance except us.”

Boo-fucking-hoo, dude. Seriously. What about every single season where the strong guys get to stay in the early votes to keep “tribe strength” and the weak people — usually older people and women — are voted out? Here are some stats for you: “Compared to men, women have greater odds of being voted out of their tribe first, lower odds of making it to the individual-competition stage of the game, and lower odds of winning,” psychologist Erin O’Mara Kunz discovered crunching the numbers on the shows first 40 seasons. And David is mad because people think he might be too strong? Take all of the seats, stand up again, and then take them a second time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Right now, we have to talk about how Kyle reports back to the Strong Five that Chrissy is coming after Joe. However, David and Mary, but especially Mary, want Kamilla gone. Why? Because they think Shauhin wants to work with her, they don’t trust him, and they want to weaken him. Weaken him? How about this: Vote him out. If you don’t trust this dude, why keep him around so he can have another chance to double-cross you? Just cut him now, and let’s really start playing this game.

They don’t want to do that. The Kamilla choice is a little baffling, and Kyle reacts strongly to it because he doesn’t want his girl kicked off. But he makes excellent points to keep her. She’s voting with them now, so why get rid of her instead of Chrissy, who is actively voting against them? Kamilla is right: David is not there to play Survivor; he’s there to do challenges because he can’t think strategically at all. David does clock that Kyle is fighting a little too hard for Kamilla and that they may be working together. Everyone in the group decides it should be Kamilla because “she won’t see it coming,” but will she see it next week? What does the element of surprise get them? They’re the dominant alliance, they don’t need to surprise her, and they can just do what they want.

We get to tribal, and Chrissy just puts her whole game on the line coming after the strong dudes. David throws a hissy fit, they all vote for Chrissy, and she goes home. But we never get to see the shift in attitude. Joe and Kyle talk about flipping the vote to Chrissy anyway and pissing off David, but all the votes signal something else has happened. Either Joe and/or Kyle convinced them to switch before they got to tribal or Chrissy coming for them so explicitly was enough to make them all somehow change their votes using only telepathy. In any case, this season is in danger of getting staid, and for a change, I’m hating the players instead of hating the game.