‘Survivor’ Recap, Season 48, Episode 4

Of all the innovations of the new era, the thing I hate the most is three tribes of six. No, wait, it’s the final four fire-making challenge. No, wait, it’s the tribes. No, it’s the fire. No, it’s the tribes. But tonight, it really is about the tribes. I think this episode proves that having three small tribes is an absolute failure because, so often, one of those tribes is decimated, and it screws up the game entirely. Jeff says he likes the small tribes because there is nowhere to hide. I’m telling you where they can hide: a winning tribe! After this week’s elimination, there are 14 players remaining in the game, and only seven of them have been to tribal council. Is this how we do it on Survivor, Jeff? Half the people can be almost to the merge and never have engaged in voting someone off, the defining activity of the whole game.

This episode marked what I would consider a failure of a tribe swap, taking one tribe of three and two tribes of six and combining them into three tribes of five, which makes sense for all sorts of challenge reasons. After tonight’s episode, you can go to Jeff’s overly complicated URL and vote on what will happen in Survivor 50, including whether or not there should be a tribe swap. Even this vote is a little bit bullshitt-y because it’s not just a question about if the tribes are swapped but how. I don’t mind a tribe swap, but we’re 50 seasons in; can’t we switch it up a bit?

This swap relied on the classic Survivor method of everyone drawing new buffs, and that determines what tribe they are on. Yes, it’s up to luck. You might as well have them roll dice. As I always say, nothing on this show should be left up to luck. I would also contend that swapping up three full tribes this early in the game when we haven’t really gotten to know two of the tribes, because they haven’t been to tribal council, actually makes it a worse viewing experience. It’s hard to keep track of who is where and what the dynamics of that tribe are. Now, we need to learn where everyone is now, where they were before, who they talked to before, and who they talk to now, and keep that all straight for three tribes. For the casual viewer, that’s far too much.

What if, to even out the tribes, they kept them mostly the way they were? All you really needed was to add one player from each of the bigger tribes to Vulu, which you don’t even know what color that is because you’re still learning the tribes. (Actually, you know it’s green because they’re the ones that keep losing.) That way, viewers still know mostly who is on Cika and who is on Lavo, and they won’t get too confused. (Actually, it’s Civa and Lagi, but you didn’t even notice the difference because you still haven’t learned the tribes.) By subtracting one number from each tribe and adding them to a new tribe, it will allow all new dynamics and relationships to flourish with the least amount of intervention.

There are a number of creative ways to divvy this up that have nothing to do with luck. Let’s say Civa and Lagi both do a challenge, like the classic hold-a-bucket-of-water-up-as-long-as-you-possibly-can challenge. Whoever drops their bucket first goes to Vulu. Or better yet, whoever wins picks the person from their tribe (which could also be themselves!) to go to Vulu. This is also going to create movement in the dynamics, because if the evicted Civa or Lagi member makes it to the merge, they’re going to hate the person who sent them there and maybe their whole tribe, which would then keep the post-merge game from being all about the same tribes they started in.

There’s another method that I think Survivor needs to explore more, and that is taking some of the social-experiment dynamics from shows like Squid Game: The Challenge and Beast Games, things that will be familiar to the younger YouTube-addicted fans who also watch Survivor. This show was the true pioneer of reality television, but without pushing some boundaries and going into some new experimental directions, it’s in danger of looking tame and boring in comparison.

What if Jeff said, “There are 15 of you, and you have 15 minutes to make three new tribes. If you don’t do it in 15 minutes, we’re eliminating two people.” This would be a real twist because not even these superfans on the cast would see it coming. It’s totally new and would require them to think about the game in a way without precedent. Or, even better, he tells each tribe they need to get rid of one person to go to Vulu; he doesn’t care how they figure it out, but they have to do it in an allotted time.

What has always made this show interesting, from when Richard Hatch invented the idea of alliances, is the interpersonal dynamics at play. We’ve seen from both the aforementioned shows that letting the players select their own destiny under pressure is a lot more heart-wrenching and surprising than just letting good old Lady Luck decide what is going to happen.

Okay, enough free ideas from me for this recap. After the utterly random selection of tribes, we have Chrissy, Mitch, Cedrek, Sai, and Bianca on the new Civa; David, Eva, Charity, Star, and Mary on the new Lagi; and Joe, Shauhin, Thomas, Kyle, and Kamilla on the new Vulu. Immediately, we know that Vulu is going to be the one to lose and go to tribal council. Why? Because the “Previously on Survivor…” is all about Thomas and his Steal-a-Vote, Kamilla and her extra vote, and Kyle and his idol. Why would we need to know and remember all of this unless it’s coming up at tribal?

Rather than bore you with the details of the challenge, which we already know how it’s going to end, let’s have a little update on David and his girlfriend, who we learned last episode told him she was going to dump him if he didn’t win $1 million so she can be the stay-at-home mom of four. Well, it turns out she already has. When talking to his new tribe, he says she dumped him over money issues. David, this woman does not want you! She wants a rich man who is going to give her the kind of life you can’t give her right now, which means she doesn’t love you. She loves an ideal of a certain kind of life, and she’ll take it from anyone (with at least six visible abdominal muscles). David says if he wins the big prize, then the first thing he’s going to do is ask her about her ring size. Why? She’s already dumped you, dude. This relationship is gone! Let it go! (This suddenly feels way more like one of my Real Housewives recaps than it does Survivor.)

As much as I hated the tribe change-up, the episode was saved by Kyle and Kamilla’s fantastic performance post-merge at Vulu. They’re all slumming it in a shitty camp with no flint — punishing the new tribe members for losses made by people who are no longer on the tribe — and Kyle and Kamilla make the smart decision to pretend like they’re not that close or working together. Kamilla tells the California Girls — Thomas, Shauhin, and Joe — that she wants Kyle out, and Kyle tells them he wants Kamilla out. The best part, honestly, was Kamilla saying she was at the bottom of her tribe and they were going to vote her out. The California Girls hear this and think they can keep her around and add her as a number. She quickly establishes so much trust in these guys that Shauhin searches Kyle’s bag right in front of her, essentially telegraphing to her how they’re going to lay their votes at that night’s tribal council.

Shauhin didn’t find the idol (it was in Kyle’s shoe, not his bag), and the CGs made no contingency plans, mostly because Thomas didn’t tell him about his extra vote. I’m always banging on about not telling people they have advantages, but this was the time for Thomas to speak up. Even though they didn’t find an idol, they could have done two on Kyle and two on Kamilla, and even if Kyle played his idol and they both voted for Thomas, it would have been a tie, and the remaining players could have sent Kamilla home. Instead, they loaded up on Kyle, who played his idol, and Kyle and Kamilla voted out Thomas, my middle-aged, mustachioed, slightly bitchy (complimentary) doppelgänger. At least now I know that if I played Survivor, I would be voted out on day eight.

However, there are two reasons why the California Girls didn’t switch up their strategy. Why? First is because Kamilla is playing an excellent game. (Based on editing, David, Sai, Kamilla, and Eva seem to be the ones to watch.) The other reason why they didn’t play as much defense is that they had never been to tribal council before. They don’t know how it works. Why? Because they were hiding on a winning tribe. So, while I will definitely be voting that there is no tribe swap, I’d much rather be voting to go back to the old days with two bigger tribes where really interesting dynamics were allowed to flourish. It’s not called hiding; it’s called relationships, and that’s why we’re here.