The Survivor 46 episode seven immunity challenge started 10 minutes into the episode, an inauspicious start considering how this season has failed to justify 90-minute episode lengths.
But while this season’s bar is lying on the ground, this episode surprised me by delivering a far more watchable series of events, focused nearly entirely on interpersonal dynamics and related strategy. Yay!
Even the title of this episode was clever: “Episode Several.” Episode titles have mostly been quotes from one of the players, but this callback—and shade—to Jelinsky’s reference to “several” equaling seven, and this being the seventh episode, was a nice little wink.
First, though, we had to get through the inexplicable part.
“Boy, it feels good to make the merge,” Probst said to the players as they climbed onto a floating dock, and then seconds later told them, “You’re going to be randomly divided into two groups of six.”
Then the editors cut to a commercial as if this rock draw was worth a cliffhanger, when instead it should have just been edited out.
I genuinely would like to understand the logic of merging only to split back into two tribes. It’s effectively taking three tribes and turning them into two. They even go to separate camps!
That is a thing Survivor used to do before the merge, and it was called a tribe swap or shuffle. I’d love to see a season start with two tribes, and split into three, or start with three if we must, and then split into two.
Why not do this before the merge? Does doing it this way add any kind of benefit? Maybe there’s more time for everyone to get to know each other before they’re mixed up, and that creates more potential for drama?
The challenge itself was the stand-on-a-floating-pyramid thing. A flashback reminded us that, the last time we saw it, in season 42, it was more dramatic, with waves knocking everyone off in moments.
Not this season: Everyone was just standing there like they were in a parking lot. The best part about this was that, for a few moments, everything was quiet, tranquil, still. A challenge without shouting, without dramatic music. It’s a miracle!
Q started the alphabet game so they could amuse themselves—and then proceeded to create rules on the fly and get frustrated with how no one was following his rules. Probst giggled repeatedly, which made me giggle.
Q and Soda fell off first during the final transition, but everyone else remained, just standing there. Then came two of my favorite exchanges in the history of Survivor:
Tim: What’s up, Jeff?
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Q: No, Jeff, that’s how Black people ask you what the time is.
Probst: I learn a lot on this show.
Then:
Tim: What’s up, Jeff?
Probst: You are 23 minutes in.
Tim then went through people’s family members and gave them shout-outs, which was a little too Big Brother for my taste.
“Most fun I’ve had at a challenge in a long time,” Probst said. Yes, see what happens when you just watch and listen?!?
After 30 minutes standing on top of their triangle thingy, players had to stand on one foot—a way to swiftly end the challenge, since everyone except Soda and Q were still standing. People dropped swiftly.
Kenzie won immunity for her group, but Tevin and Maria were still going on purple, so they got reward and the knowledge that the player they voted off would become the first jury member.
Maria won, and Jeff asked her to narrate her emotions. So close, yet so far.
New orange tribe
The temporary orange tribe consisted of Ben, Hunter, Kenzie, Q, Tiffany, and Tim—the entire Yanu tribe! And they had the majority.
Q told us that, during the challenge, “I jumped off on purpose to see if my alliance was really strong.” He told Tim, “I committed to the six thing.” I really wish his alliance booted him just for that, because what the heck!
He’s really holding to that tightly, which is probably a mistake, and he was also frustrated that Tim was concerned with original tribal alliances. So Q decided to target Tim.
Tim, meanwhile, wanted to take out Hunter as a physical threat, and Tiffany thought Ben was a bigger threat, “a secret agent of chaos.” But Q was insisting on Tim for “flipping, flopping.”
Ironically, that is what Q himself was doing, challenging the bonds that he had with Tiffany and Kenzie. After chatting with Ben, Q decided they had to vote for Ben.
“This is a conversation; you’re not just telling us where to place our votes,” Tiffany told us. She told Kenzie, “At some point, that ain’t going to work for us.” I doubt, however, they’d do that at this moment, when they have a strong three.
That changed Q’s mind, and Q once again just insisted upon a player. I think this is going to bite him. “Why is it you, the only one, deciding the way the votes go? We’re three; we’re supposed to be working together,” Kenzie said.
Ben’s name coming up did make the opening scene of Ben’s nighttime panic attack, and Kenzie helping him through it, play into the actual game! Kenzie and Ben talked, and she struggled with her friendship with him versus who to stay with in the game.
Even that moment was handled well: Instead of Ben narrating his history of panic attacks, we just were in the moment with him. “Can somebody just hold my hand through it?” he asked. Kenzie did, and told us, “I’ve been helping people regulate sleep and anxiety before I knew what that was, really.” Despite that soundbite, the focus stayed on the scene. Wow!
At Tribal Council, they went with the original plan: Hunter joining the Yanu to vote out Tim. Hunter even said, “I would love to be a Yanu member right now,” a sentence no one expected anyone on planet earth would ever say.
“I’m getting the impression this is going to be a tough vote tonight,” Probst said. I don’t know how he determined that. Maybe it was multiple players having water coming out of their eye holes?
The first person voted out this episode and the last member of pre-jury Ponderosa was Tim. And now we know what he was practically invisible for most of the season.
New purple tribe
Charlie, Liz, Maria, Tevin, Soda, and Venus were the second tribe.
With four Nami and two Siga, and one of those two—Maria—immune, Charlie said, “If they stick together, I’m gone.” That made him “calm on the outside, losing it on the inside.”
But it was everyone else who was losing it. Soda said Charlie’s loyalty matters more to her than sticking with her original tribe and Venus, who she wanted to target.
Yet Tevin thought Soda was the bigger threat: “She’s good at making every single person feel comfortable,” he said.
Earlier, Tevin said, “Soda hasn’t listened to me, and now they’re digging their own graves, and showing the people how toxic and dangerous they are to the game, and I hope they continue to do that.”
I also don’t quite understand this, which is to say we haven’t actually seen that happen.
Speaking of mysteries, somehow Maria is now committed to the six-person alliance despite saying she was not last episode. The editing is not really connecting the dots from episode to episode.
Liz was glad to jump aboard: “I don’t care about Nami strong. Soda has to go.”
Venus, though, said, “I want to play with fire.” She proposed voting out Tevin, though Maria was skeptical.
Meanwhile, obvious Charlie smiled like he was a pig in sh*t, or perhaps had shat some pig from their reward/second merge snack.
At the second Tribal Council, Liz said she didn’t bring her bag because she’s “Nami strong,” and I kinda wish they’d decided to vote her out then.
So which direction would they go? We did see Charlie say “not tonight” to his shot in the dark, and thus cast a vote. “You’re way too dangerous,” Soda said as she cast her vote.
Votes went to Venus and Soda, and when Soda saw the second vote for her, her jaw dropped. “Wow,” she said. No one said anything. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Soda asked Venus, who said, “yeah.”
What’s funny about this is it was Venus who voted for her, but not Venus’s idea; it was Tevin’s idea, from what we saw, and yet he voted for Venus.
“Excellent, excellent move,” Soda said in her exit interview. “I got to live inside my favorite TV show ever.” I’m sorry she didn’t get to live in a better season, but at least her exit was part of its best episode yet.
Alas, her exit has also started to form a pattern:
- Survivor 43: James and Ryan
- Survivor 45: Sifu and Kaleb
- Survivor 46: Tim and Soda
Three out of the five times Survivor has split the merged tribe and voted at two separate Tribal Councils, two Black players have been voted out of the game.
That would have also happened a fouth time, in season 42, when Rocksroy was voted out first and Maryanne and Drea were the next tribe’s targets. But that was prevented when Maryanne and Drea played idols—before which they discussed this very pattern.
In isolation, these are individual votes; this episode, of course, had other Black players who suggested these moves, and the fact that there are more Black players in the game—and, in this episode, on one tribe—makes that statistically more likely. But it’s curious that it continues to happen at this exact point in the game.
Corrections: This story initially misidentified Liz as Moriah. Apologies to them both!
This story initially incorrectly said that every time the new era had a split tribe twist, two Black players were voted out. That was inaccurate; the twist has happened five times in the six new era seasons, and was on track to happen a fourth time, as noted above.
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