A lot of people say this was better than the premiere. I agree, but the threshold of surpassing the premiere was not sky-high. I get the sense that standards were lowered to a degree that any episode following the premiere was going to be embarrassingly revered, sort of how the premiere of RI was seen as a god-tier episode after the shit ones came in. Was this a good episode? Well, I definitely don’t see it as a top ten season after two episodes, and two episodes in I thought Cambodia was going to be great, but I would classify this episode as… pretty good.

I should give it a medal. The “not as shit as it could have been” award.

People have noticed that this episode was a volley of character scenes all presented as strategy. This can be both good and bad- good because character scenes are so rare nowadays, and bad because strategy scenes are really not. Still, what drove this episode from pretty okay to pretty good was the fact that while the two other tribes could have been boring, Yawa was a constellation. I’d say all of their members delivered something- for better or worse. Okay, maybe not Devon, but Devon strikes me as someone who gets credit for things he was adjacent to regardless.

Last week I honestly think I deserved a pat on the back for making an article out of nothing happening, but this article will be simpler. Levu sifted through the aftermath of last tribal, and Soko yadda yadda idols. Yawa is where it’s at, and while it’s not Casaya levels yet, it’s definitely a tribe I want to see more of.

Kill Your Heroes

On the surface, the Levu vote was simple. Five votes for the older woman, one for another woman. You’d think that they would just go back to camp and relax while fantasizing about voting off the other older woman. And yet, the tribe just went off. Alan about JP and Ashley, Ashley about how Alan is definitely out of the alliance, and Ben wondering how the hell his simple perfect plans went to hell. In the middle of all that sits the older woman who was slated to be next, Chrissy.

After Levu got back to camp everyone accepted that the “core four” was dead. Ashley wanted Alan out, Alan said whether or not he was right he accomplished his goals, Ben lamented that they all were idiots, and J.P. was probably chasing a butterfly or things like that. No one was happier than Chrissy, probably the player of the episode.

(J.P., god bless his soul, is almost charming in how bland he is. Every time he rattles off a “things like that” type word filler I crack up. It’s like a warped I Spy to listen for one as he talks. Add to that his inability to carry on a non-awkward conversation [starting off a conversation with casually denying his connections with Ashley before asking Chrissy how her day was] and you have a character who hits my top half through sheer amusing blandness.)

As explained in Katrina’s exit interviews, Chrissy was working overtime to distance herself from Katrina, and it paid off in this episode. She got both the Ashley/JP pairs and Ben/Alan pairs on her side. Even better, she got them all as individuals on her side, and with Ben anxious against Alan, she’s in a powerful position where she could survive her entire tribe. People like Ali earned that through a fantastic social game off the bat, but Chrissy had to do that on a tribe that held a stigma against her. Fantastic.

I like this Levu, the more fractured the better. Even better that everyone seems to play a part in this mess. Chrissy as the shrewd strategist who politely keeps them divided, Alan as this wild-eyed overstrategist who retains confidence in splitting them up, J.P. in his ultimate blandness, Ashley in her wtf-type straight woman reactions, and Ben wondering where the hell literally everything went wrong. Before the season aired I thought they would be harmonious and boring, but that’s a prediction I am happy to have gotten wrong.

The Biggest Character This Episode

Still not much to speak of on Soko. Literally four people got zero airtime. Two episodes have gone by with thirteen confessionals, with only Joe getting at least one an episode. Joe this episode can be summarized by this- he found an idol. He’s cocky. Cole helped him. End. I don’t think we need to talk further about the affectionately dubbed RC Cola Tony.

That leaves Cole, the other Soko with slight focus. We got a good bit of Cole this episode. Obviously the showmance between Cole and Jessica is starting to bloom, but compared to most, there’s something… pure about it. The way they talked about each other in two episodes hints at admiration for the other but insecurity that they’ll be pursued by the other. It’s like watching two adolescents have crushes on each other they presume are one-sided, not about looks or attraction. It makes it more real than the others, and is certainly a good palate cleanser after whatever the hell Taylor did to piss on the idea.

Cole being a sweetheart with a permanent ^_^ face summarizes his stint in the episode. He claimed what could turn Jessica off of him was that she could see him as just a boy since she was a full five years older than him. He also freely helped Joe out with the clue while Joe gave confessionals about how smart he was. I think Cole differs from other hot guys even on this season in that he’s humble while still having a personality.

(Sure, Cole didn’t mean to help Joe as he explained on Twitter but I honestly like that he’s got a streak of overeager naivete. It helps give him a personality and flaws.)

There’s still a lot of Soko I wish were shown as on paper they have a great cast. We’ve barely seen any of Desi and Roark, and we’ve only seen Jessica tangentially. Even those we have seen have barely been fleshed out. I’m hoping we see more of them in the future- they really need the focus.

Mandatory Fun

Like I said going in, Yawa are the stars. They’re the tribe I’m most hyped to watch and five out of the six of them bring something to the table, for better or Ryan. Oh, Ryan. I feel silly for saying he could be a good character. The guy just makes me uncomfortable. It isn’t the archetype he’s in- this may get me banned in certain circles, but I quite like Adam. I like Cochran. I like Todd. The young male geeky superfan archetype has hits and misses but definitely a few hits. However, few make me as uncomfortable as Ryan, his forced analogies, his desperation to go LCD, and his condescending attitude. It isn’t too late to reverse course but I get the bad feeling that he will not think to.

On the other end, there’s Ali. As I will go into detail below, the longevity of women of color on this show is… depressing, and Sandras and Ciries aside very few tend to get respect. Yet, here she is, genuinely connected to everyone. Sure, she sort of knew Patrick kinda, but even if they were a secret ironclad bond, that’s one of her five tribesmates. Not only do they all like her (in Simone’s case even post-game) but they respect her as a leader and strategic head. She’s smooth, cool, unshaken, and coordinated, and I love that we get to see that and that she’s worked her way up there.

Since day zero, Lauren has had a part, and she’s played it as well as she could. She’s the no-nonsense tribe worker bee with no time for shenanigans. Seeing her bounce off of Patrick as he turns her done-with-this-shit meter up to eleven has been, and will continue to be, quite fun. Speaking of Patrick… something tells me he will get annoying fast, with all his screaming, hyperactivity, and screenhogging behavior, but for now while it’s fresh I will enjoy it.

That leaves us with Simone, the eliminated contender. Ultimately, I cannot talk about her without talking about a number of things that generally go unsaid or unheard, so join me in the next part- and by all means, put your finger down and read before you lecture.

Bitching and Simoaning

It’s a sad fact in life that the earlier boots tend to be women. Sadder fact of life still that they tend to be older women and women of color. Those are the first two boots that we have had so far. You can do the statistics if you’re as crazy as me, but 53% of the women of color cast go pre-merge in the 39% of slots that are pre-merge, and exactly half of the older women cast go pre-merge. 57% of the fourteen over-40 women of color go pre-merge. If we lower the age limit from 40, then we would get some very sad results indeed.

This is billed as one of the greatest social experiments in America and the world. Though in later years the late-game especially is dominated by making big moves, in the earlier and later parts this is very true. Older women and women of color end up as 31% of the pre-merge boots and 20% of the post-merge cast despite only making up 24% of the cast. How is that not reflective of the society in America despite being a social experiment meant to be reflective of America?

Our two latest examples are Katrina and Simone. I have not been a huge fan of how they were treated. I expressed this last week with Katrina, how she was immediately put into the “mom squad” despite her limited connection with Katrina, and how she was called a physical liability simply for her age and gender- despite being an Olympic swimmer.

Simone’s exit was a little easier to justify- she was struggling with survival elements by her own admission- but how she was described was… telling, let’s say. She was “weird”, “not fitting in”, “not as smart as I thought”, and “a liability”. These words are memetic in describing early boots who are people of color.

There are people who try and erase every mention of bias in regards to either group that tends to be an early target. Despite the attempted silencing, the fact remains- every early boot older woman and woman of color cannot all have been legitimately without bias in the reason they were sent home early. Even in Simone’s case, she was up against alternate boot Patrick.

Patrick was so weird he was screaming at crabs and chatting Lauren’s ear off. He blew the puzzle with Simone quite badly. He’s quite the knucklehead and does not go with the flow. However, he only got Simone’s vote and was not even addressed on many of those things. Those that were, they were not seen as offenses worth voting him out for, even though many of them were presented as quite worse.

This feels unfair to Simone, who deserves an actual assessment other than being a statistic. Not only because that’s a dick move, but because she’s more impressive than that. Pre-game the consensus was that Simone would be cutting and mean, giving fans a negative perception of her as she gave them her own Brutal Cast Assessment. However, she had a sweet story that felt cut short of her trying to adapt to the environment and having ten siblings to give her practice in surviving on a “tribe”.

Sadly, she got a lot of comments about how weird and unfitting she was, but Ali was around to shut those down by curtailing perceptions in confessional that Simone was a diva. I admire that, because Simone wasn’t a diva getting worse, she was working to be better, and was cut down before she got to show that.

(Also, apparently she got into an argument with Jessica Lewis from MvGX about how Jessica called her a goat. I love Jessica, but deeming someone a goat who barely made it to day 6 is Caramoan thinking.)

Simone came into the game as a diversity advocate. It’s a shame she went out as stereotypically as it gets for women of color.

—–

Next Week on Survivor

I have high hopes for Episode 3, probably too high. The preview has shown scenes of people struggling with camp life, the Soko tribe existing, and Lauren and Patrick acting as natural rivals do and clashing heavily. I’m terrified that Lauren goes home, but as far as this episode goes, it looks like what I’ve wanted. Can’t complain about that!

We’ll see how things work out.

-Cameron

P.S. #teamfranky