RECAP: “Survivor 47” Episode 1
“New Era” “Survivor”: give us a premiere episode in which a tribe member does not experience a deeply uncomfortable mental-health crisis. Challenge Level: Impossible.
Roughly an hour into tonight’s two-hour season premiere for “Survivor,” I thought, “You know, these folks might not be super exciting, or even particularly interesting or charismatic (yes, that’s a read), but at least none of them seem like trainwrecks like we’ve gotten in recent seasons like Bhanu, or Brandon, or that girl who quit at first Tribal because apparently she just realized she didn’t particularly like being in nature. But then we got to the second hour, and the unraveling started. And by the end of the episode, at least two, if not more of these cast members, are already serving up some sparkling incompetence (we can’t technically call it buffoonery unless it comes from the Buffoon region of France). And after the first tribal, they’re all still here. Amazing.
Read on for my thoughts on the two-hour premiere episode. Disagree with my takes? Drop yours in the comments!
I’m going to break this down by tribe, even though we barely got to know more than half of these contestants. I know it’s challenging for 18 people to all push through in the first episode, but I felt the least level of connection to this cast overall than I have in multiple seasons. Take that as you will. I’ll list them from winning tribe in the Immunity Challenge to the losers.
LAVO (Red Tribe)
Based only on the premiere, Lavo is the tribe I’m most interested to watch. Going into this season I was already intrigued by Sol (who I will be lovingly refer to as “SWOL” this season, because he has a terrific thicc body), ER doc Kishan, quirky Elaine type Teeny, and “Rob Has a Podcast” commentator Aysha. It easily has the most collective star power of the three groups in this game.
We didn’t get too much from Lavo, aside from their total domination in the Immunity Challenge — that may be because they’re genuinely just really good, or it may have been the other two teams’ disastrous performances. That’s not an exaggeration; Lavo had finished the challenge completely before either other team even made it to the beach. They were just standing there watching the others fumble around for second place. Yikes.
Among the major notes we got from Lavo, Aysha optied to go on the excursion after Gata won the arrival challenge, where she competed directly against Tuku’s TK to secure supplies for their tribes. At first it seemed like Aysha had the upper hand in this key-location challenge, but after she got turned around the jungle, she couldn’t find her way back to the ocean. Although she made a play to get the final key while TK already had the buoy in his hands, she ended up going home empty handed. A few things here: Aysha is smart — and knows this game — well enough that the only play was full transparency with her tribe. Maybe they just didn’t show us this, but she sure didn’t seem to be in a huge rush to get to that final key. She lost it by seconds, and it seemed based on the edit that she was just kind of…poking around trying to find her way out of the jungle. That’s a bummer.
The other major storyline over at Lavo is Rome. I knew Rome would be a disaster based on his cast Q&A. The man brags about not having eaten a vegetable in decades. He is a child. And we got that this episode, as he blatantly, without any guile whatsoever, shot off looking for a hidden idol on Day 1. The good news is that he managed to find one, and showed some smarts by not digging up the hidden chest in broad daylight (he waited until dark). But he continued to get progressively less chill as the Beware Advantage’s Matryoshka Doll-style treasure box within a treasure box had him doing more and more insane things, including pouring water all over pieces of wood to reveal a hidden message (cool trick, prop folks) and then physically dunking himself in the tribe’s drinking-water well to get a key. First: that’s nasty, you couldn’t have just fished it out with the ladle? Second, Rome’s entire tribe knew exactly what he was doing, and at one point caught him while leaving the well, and he just walked off not even acknowledging them. Social game? What social game. Rome is on everyone’s radar, and it’s good he has that Idol, because he’s likely going to need it sooner rather than later.
TUKU (Blue Tribe)
Tuku probably got the least amount of screentime this episode, with Kyle and Tiyana in particular being almost invisible after the opening segment. (Personally I have high hopes for Tiyana, I really liked her cast-reveal video.) TK became Big Man on Campus after securing the supplies for the tribe. Meanwhile, Sue seems to be the social butterfly, quickly making strong connections with Caroline and Gabe.
Gabe was the story of the night for Tuku, as he also embarked on an idol hunt, and was successful —at least at first. In fact, I thought he demonstrated some skill in the way he navigated the initial finding, which happened right in front of TK. But then he totally blew it in the second phase of the Beware Advantage’s ridiculous fetch quest, involving tearing down vines to get a key. TK caught him in the process, and rather than come clean about finding the clue, Gabe just lied and said he happened to stumble on a mysterious key hanging off a vine way above their heads. TK didn’t buy that for a second.
Gabe continued to display questionable decision making for the rest of the episode, as he smashed driftwood and dug up boxes all within plain sight and earshot of his tribe mates, eventually bringing in Sue to act as his lookout. So now one half of that tribe knows he has some kind of advantage. That’s going to make his idol a lot less effective, and him a much bigger target. The honking bassoons of idiocy should have kicked in when Gabe was going through the idol boxes on a pile of rocks — in his BARE FEET — and then dropped the box, which went crashing down, apparently creating so much noise that they could hear him back at camp. (This could have been creative editing, but I buy it.) In the end, Gabe got to Level 2 of the Beware Advantage, bestowing him an idol good for three Tribal Councils. But he balked at the final level, which would have granted him an idol good up until Final 5. It’s hard to know if that was the right decision. He must have been running up against the Immunity Challenge at that point, and had he lost, he wouldn’t have been able to vote — huge issue. At the same time, if you’ve gone that far, to only get a three-tribal idol out of it feels like a waste.
GATA (Yellow Tribe)
Gata actually started out strong, winning the initial challenge that resulted in them getting supplies and flint before anyone else. I thought they had the makings of a solid six, and one of the much-hyped arcs of the season, with “Pod Save America” host Jon Lovett on their team. Jon without question received the most pre-show hype of any player this season, and is a genuinely big “get” for “Survivor.”
He was also older than anyone else on his tribe, which led to some challenges from the beginning. Jon learned quickly he was the “old man” on the island (though Sol and Sue are older), and much was made about his inability to relate to these cool, hip kids. The thing is, Rachel is not even 10 years younger than Jon. Andy is just 10 years his junior. It’s not like a HUGE gulf, but you would have thought it was Boomers vs. Gen Z the way they were talking. Jon is technically a Millennial. Half the tribe is Millennials (Andy, Rachel), the other is Gen Z (Sam, Sierra, an Anika, the youngest at 26).
Things at camp started to go sour when Andy began to spiral. This was, honestly, difficult to watch. Off the bat — like on the beach when they all were marooned — Andy proclaimed that he always had trouble fitting in. Watching this, you get a sense of why: he seems to have very little self confidence, and an abundance of anxiety and paranoia. He was overly solicitous with several of the other Gata tribe members in a way that, again, felt deeply awkward, and it peaked when he woke Rachel up in the middle of the night to tell her how out of place he felt. This continued to build at camp, with Andy seething that nobody was paying attention to him (“nobody applauded when I opened a coconut”) and stating that he knew nobody liked him.
At the Immunity Challenge, it erupted again. When it became clear the team was losing, Andy walked off the field — with the challenge ongoing! — laid down next to Jeff Probst, and started to rant that they were going to send him home. Jeff had to call in medical to check on Andy — he thought he might have passed out — but no, he was just unraveling mentally, leading to an embarrassing tirade in front of the ENTIRE group of castaways in which he proclaimed that his tribe hated him, and that he planned to throw Jon under the bus at tribal.
In Andy’s defense, apparently he had overheated in the challenge — which was quite physical, involving pulling a boat laden with puzzle pieces up the shore — and that may have contributed to his behavior. But even that aside, I don’t understand how players like Andy (and Bhanu, and Brandon) are passing the psych test to make it on this show. A team of mental-health professionals thought this man was capable of handling this game? It was Day 2 and he was already collapsing. I’m not mocking Andy, or anyone else who is struggling with mental health issues. I want everyone to find the help they need. I am questioning why this show, which absolutely includes assessments around these kinds of issues during casting, keeps casting people who do not seem to be mentally/emotionally stable enough to play this game. Do they think it makes for compelling television? It doesn’t. It makes me uncomfortable, especially seeing it season after season now, and I can’t help but feel that it’s predatory on behalf of the show to broadcast these crises. It feels exploitative to me.
Anyway, after Andy’s implosion at the challenge, the tribe regrouped at camp. At first the girls assured Jon that he was in no danger, that they would vote Andy out, but tell him they were voting for Jon (the argument being, Andy is physically strong, and Jon is not, and we need physical strength for challenges). That didn’t sit well with Jon, who tried to solidify things with an apologetic Andy, and then cook up a counter plan to go after Anika for…reasons? I guess also the physical-strength argument?
But it was all a ruse. Because at tribal, the entire tribe voted for Jon, Jon voted for Anika, and Jon was the first person eliminated from “Survivor 47.” Ridiculous. Listen, was Jon a physical powerhouse? No, he was not. But one of your tribe members has had several serious meltdowns and it is only DAY 3. The man is unstable. I don’t care if he is a WALL of flesh, keeping him around is going to be a liability for you in every other aspect of this game. And given that every single other member of that tribe voted for Jon and kept Andy, Gata will deserve whatever befalls them from now on. Absolutely zero sympathy from me going forward.
As for Jon, he took it like a champ, and said the good news is his friends and family will now have something to mock him for mercilessly from now on. I don’t think Jon played poorly. I’m actually impressed he came out and played at ALL. He got screwed by the age politics of his tribe — which is, again, completely insane that a less-than-20-year swing between oldest and youngest castaways is somehow insurmountable to most of them — and by a bunch of people making a terrible call at tribal. Jon has nothing to feel embarrassed about. It’s not like he told the entire cast his paranoid delusions or anything…
What do you think of the Season 47 premiere? What do you think of this cast? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
